Long Lost, стр. 32

Arden might have noticed she was missing by now. But she didn’t have proof that Fiona had left the house. If Fiona was careful, she might be able to get back up to her bedroom without Arden spotting her.

She inched open the garage door.

Arden was sitting at the kitchen table.

A notepad and a set of neatly sharpened colored pencils lay beside her. She was wearing earbuds, but she tugged them out as Fiona stepped inside. She didn’t speak. A tiny lift of her eyebrows told Fiona that Arden had been waiting for her.

Fiona felt the air whoosh out of her body.

“How long have you been sitting there?”

“Right here?” Arden tapped the table with the end of a pale blue pencil. “Not that long. I’ve just been working on my planner, listening to my program music. But I noticed you were gone forever ago.” One corner of her mouth started to smile. “Making a fake body in the bed? Seriously? When has that ever worked, outside of the movies?”

“I just had to get something from the library,” said Fiona tightly. “It was urgent.”

“Um-hmm,” said Arden, in a way that might have meant she believed this or not, and that it didn’t matter either way.

“I suppose you’re going to tell on me?” Fiona clenched both fists. “Ruin my life even more?”

The smile on Arden’s lips disappeared. “I wasn’t going to. Even if I probably should.”

Fiona tried to read her sister’s face, but over the past couple of years, Arden’s face had gotten very hard to read. Much harder than the fine print in an old book. “You weren’t going to tell?”

“I didn’t tell that you trashed my room the other day,” said Arden coolly. “Even though I know it was you.”

“I thought you had taken a book of mine without asking.”

Arden flashed Fiona a baffled look. “I’d probably borrow your toothbrush before I borrowed one of your weird books.” She set the pencil down. “Listen. We’re old enough to handle some problems ourselves, right?”

“Right,” said Fiona uncertainly.

“So, we can do that now. If we agree on a few things.”

“Like what?” Dread began to crystalize in Fiona’s stomach. “Are you going to force me to do your laundry and dust your trophies and come clap at all your practices or something?”

“No,” said Arden. “I know you’d never come clap for me anyway.”

The words were so bitter, Fiona took a teeny step backward.

Arden rolled the pencil back and forth under her fingers. “I know something is going on with you,” she said. “You’ve got some new project or obsession that you’re working on, and it obviously has to do with the library, or research, or whatever. And by the way, sneaking out of the house when you’re grounded just to go to the library is the most Fiona-ish thing you could possibly do.”

Fiona almost smiled. But she wouldn’t have wanted Arden to see it.

“And maybe I feel kind of bad,” Arden went on. “About you having to leave your friends and missing that party and everything. So I’m going to be extra understanding. And in exchange, you can do something for me.”

“Like what?” said Fiona.

“I don’t know yet. I’ll decide when the time comes. For now, we’ll just say that you owe me a big favor, and when I ask you for it, you won’t say no.”

Fiona thought. Arden could demand something really unpleasant. Something that could cause serious trouble. But what options did she have? It was say yes and maybe hurt herself in the future, or say no and definitely hurt herself now.

“Fine,” she answered.

“Good.” Arden tapped the pencil on the tabletop again. Tap tap tap.

Fiona squared her shoulders. If Arden was waiting for her to explain, or to apologize, or to even start making up, she was going to be disappointed.

“I’m going to my room,” she said at last, grasping both backpack straps and heading toward the hall.

But Arden was already fitting her earbuds back into place.

Upstairs, Fiona flopped across her bed. She unzipped her backpack and pulled out The Lost One. She flipped through the pages to the point where the story broke off, as though somehow this time things would be different. It wasn’t.

She was flipping through the blank pages so quickly that all she saw at first was one flash of paler white. Fiona stopped and turned slowly backward.

Someone had wedged a scrap of notebook paper between the blank pages. And written on it, in blocky, tilted letters, was a message.

Don’t stop now. You’re on the right track. KEEP DIGGING.