“There’s no one here,” I say to Michael, looking at a huge room full of empty tables.

“They aren’t open for lunch,” he replies matter-of-factly.

I stop in my tracks. “Then why are we here?”

Michael laughs in that rolling hills way again. “It’s okay. I own the place. Well, I will when I turn eighteen.”

I don’t move. Strike number two. Rich, cute boys are rarely fun to play with, and you surely wouldn’t want to actually date one. I’ve been forced to meet enough of his type through Dad’s social circles to know that much. They actually think they don’t have to be decent human beings, because, well, they’ve got what everyone wants. Only for me, they totally don’t. Read the rest of this entry

I close Anna’s door behind me. It’s too close to lunch to take her out and I can’t wait one more minute to tell her all that happened. I’m not supposed to shut the door, but it’s not a huge rule. I can’t risk talking to her with the door open, but with it closed, no one will hear a thing. They made the doors and walls soundproof, so that patients don’t hear each other at night.

“It’s me,” I say, kneeling in front of Anna’s chair. I must remember to get her a pair of glasses, even if she can only wear them around me. Her head is dropped and she has a slight pulse to upper body, repeatedly moving just an inch forward and back. Read the rest of this entry

Some might call it rage.

Whatever is burning up inside of me, I know I’m partly to blame. I’ve been fanning the flames by imagining Mrs. Hamilton poisoning Scottie ever since Jake planted the idea in my head. I even asked Rod, on the ride home (and yes, he was more than ticked off at waiting so long), if he thought the cook who has worked for us for the last two years could be capable of such a thing. He’s never met this one, but he said sure, and that people are always capable of stupid acts of grotesque horror when acting in their own selfish interests. That wasn’t really what I was looking for, but it told me his frame of mind was no more reliable than mine. So I just shut up, petted sweet Scottie, and let the flames within grow.

There’s a really cool thing about our front door. It’s hugely heavy—super tall, nearly double-wide and at least triple thick compared to most. When you slam it, the whole freakin house shakes. It is impossible to do on accident, so if it’s slammed, you know someone meant to slam it. Fortunately, in my house, you are allowed such shows of utter infuriation, or at least my dad is. I only get away with it when used sparingly. Read the rest of this entry

Two things have happened that I’ll never be able to explain.

One, Scottie is up and walking around, checking out the place, like she hasn’t been sick a day in her life. The other is, I’m getting my first lesson in magic.

It all happened so fast. I just told Bea everything about Anna and how I came to find this place. I’ve never seen anyone listen the way that woman does. I swear, she was listening with her eyes, ears, fingers and toes. Maybe even the length of her spine. She got it all on the first take, no explanations needed. Even Jake seemed to need no further information than what I gave. And it’s not like they were not interested. You could have heard a crow caw, which we did, quite often in fact. Read the rest of this entry

I don’t know, maybe someone could look a woman like this in the eye right off the bat. But it would be a braver person than me.

I wasn’t twenty feet in—just past where Rod could see me through the trees—and she appeared. Not a sound, mind you. Not a twig breaking to warn me. Stealth personified. She’s wild, too. I mean, like, really wild. Like she was born wild. Now she’s sniffing me like an animal. I’m too weirded out to put out my hands, to do anything but wait in my soaking wet pants, trying not to pee them.

I look at the ground while she looks at me. From the glimpse I did get of her face, she doesn’t look like Anna at all. Darker skinned, for one thing. And she’s much, much shorter. Her hair is a mess, matted down in places like there’s gum stuck in it, so that it look even more crazy than I wear mine. To top it off, she smells like goats cheese. Old, moldy, just-throw-it-out-won’t-you-PLEASE goats cheese. Read the rest of this entry

People probably think I don’t think much, because I don’t talk much. But they would be wrong. So very, very wrong. I think about everything, from every angle, over and over again until it’s like I’ve eaten three meals at once and would practically want to barf my brains out—if I could only get myself to move. I feel like that now, waiting for Rod, watching the rain through the screened in breezeway that attaches the main house to the six-car garage, wondering if the water will be too high to get across to the land Anna says her sister lives on.

Anna. That’s the big mind jam. Ever since leaving her in what now feels like an abysmally lifeless nursing home room, with her playing  out her hidden identity (dulled eyes, slumped back, and mumbling nonsense like a pro), I’ve been Rubik’s-cubing my brain to try to make sense of each and every aspect of what she said, including what she didn’t say. Read the rest of this entry

“You have a boyfriend,” Anna says, more a statement than a question, and as if she doesn’t really like the idea. Or maybe she’s just frowning at the small slug she’s got up close to her eyes.

Either way, I’m not thrilled to have her bring up the one topic I’ve been brooding about forever. No, I don’t have a boyfriend. In fact, I’ve never had a boyfriend. There, the cold hard truth. Not even a date at the mall. I realize this makes me a bit of a freak at age 16. But really, the vast majority of guys at school are idiots, and those that are decent like girls that are… well, not me. Not that I’m going to confess all this to an old lady.

“Not really,” I reply.

“But I’ve seen that brown boy around you,” she argues, her thin eyebrows squeezed as she squints at the slug and then peels him off of her finger. Read the rest of this entry

I’m stuck.

Not where I should be, out in the woods with Anna. But right here on the third floor, hallway B, of the Sun Heritage Village’s Pine Crest building. Dr. Garcia, who happens to be making a house call, stopped me on my way out the door. Since she also happens to have been a  nurse here years ago, which is how her daughter came to be one of my two best friends, I kind of have to talk to her.

My hands are in a sweaty grip around Anna’s wheelchair handles. There’s a sick feeling in my stomach, and an urge to turn around. Dr. Garcia could be a witness, now. I get a flash image of Anna’s normally absent family yanking me into a courtroom for doing something terrible to their feeble old grandmother, with Dr. Garcia reluctantly standing up to testify against me. Read the rest of this entry

Today, the old lady is going to talk. I just know it. I woke up knowing it. It could be desperation on my part, given how Scottie, my tabby cat, is as weak as I’ve seen her. But I don’t think so. I think Mrs.Anna Bayless really is going to give me enough information to find…whatever it is she has been trying to tell me I have to find, if I want to save Scottie.

I’m nervous as I reach for the buzzer at the main door. I shouldn’t be. After all, I’ve spent a lot of my life in old folks homes. The internationally recognized Sun Heritage Village community was probably my first babysitter. Exactly when it was that I started babysitting the old folks, instead of the other way around, it’s hard to say. It was a gradual thing that nobody really noticed.   Read the rest of this entry

In this category, you’ll find the very first blush written on a chapter. It may not be pretty, edited, or even coherent…but it will be the REAL first draft. Soon….