comforter.
“Hey,” he whispered.
“What?”
“You did the Ouija board thing, didn’t you?”
I pressed my face into my pillow. “Why?”
He chuckled and his shoulder blades knocked into mine. “Because the box is sticking out from under your bed, Einstein.”
I cringed. “Yeah. I tried it.”
“Well,” he turned over on his side to look at me but I kept my face buried in the cool safety of my pillow. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” I lied. “Nothing happened.”
Cash didn’t say anything. He snuggled down into the blankets and pressed his back against mine. I soaked in his heat and fought off sleep. I would have given anything not to dream, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I could already feel it pulling me under.
Chapter 17
Emma Sunday morning, I tapped on my laptop waiting for the search results to tell me who Finn Carter really was. The first name that popped up was an actress. The second was some kid’s Facebook page in New Jersey. I glanced up at Cash still sleeping in my bed, the covers wrapped around him like a cocoon, and wondered where Finn was. Seriously, where did a dead guy go for a whole day and night? After scrolling through a few pages of search results, I finally reached a point in the list that caught my eye and frowned.
“Are you going to sleep all day or what?”
Cash sat up and combed his fingers through his messy black hair. He squinted at the alarm clock and then at me. “Why? Do you have somewhere you need to be?”
“Actually, yeah.” I jerked the blankets off of him and grabbed his bag out from under my bed. “So move it. Besides, if Mom comes home and finds you in here, I’m dead.”
Cash stood up, pulled his T-shirt over his head and dug in his bag for a clean one. I couldn’t help but look. This must have been how Cash got the girls at school to fall for his crap. Make them laugh with a funny T-shirt, then peel it off and make them drool. His chest was a hard sheet smoothed out by tan skin. The muscles in his stomach stood out as he stretched the new T-shirt over his head. Most girls would have been entranced. All I could think about was what Finn might look like with his shirt off. My face felt warm, so I looked away and fumbled for one of the tubes of peppermint ChapStick that littered my vanity.
“Where are you going, anyway?” He mumbled through the fabric over his face. “I could go with you if you want. The only plan I had for today was sleeping in and since you’ve already screwed that up…” His head popped through the other side of the T-shirt and he grinned.
“I’m going to the library,” I said, sliding on the lip balm.
“The library?” Cash sat on my bed and dug through his bag. “It’s Sunday. Why in God’s name would you want to go there?”
When he pulled out a pair of jeans and grabbed the waistband of his sweats, I tossed the tube back onto the vanity and held my hand up. “Keep it in its cage, Casanova. And not everyone thinks the library is a waste of time. Some people actually
Cash rolled his eyes. “I always knew there was something wrong with you. Now turn around so I don’t ruin you for other men.”
I slapped my hands over my eyes and turned around, listening to him shimmy in and out of his clothes. When he was done, I grabbed my backpack and slid the window open for him. I hated sending Cash back home when his dad was there, but I didn’t really have a choice. If there was information about Finn out there, I was going to find it.
…
“Emma!” Ms. Godfrey, the librarian, said in a loud whisper as she opened the locked library doors. I don’t think I’d ever heard the woman speak louder than that. “It’s been so long.”
I smiled, thankful I could always count on Ms. Godfrey to be here on a Sunday and let me in outside of business hours, even though I’d avoided the place for the last two years. I followed her in and looked around at the stacks and shelves I used to hide in when I was a kid. There were so many memories of Dad here. “Yeah, it has.”
“You know, your father’s books are still one of our most popular series,” she said, correctly interpreting my silence. “I had to order extra copies because we couldn’t keep them on the shelf.”
My lips felt numb from the fake smile. My gaze drifted to the local author section, where they still had Dad’s picture up. He smiled back at me, his dark hair rumpled like he’d meant for it to look that way.
I looked away. “That’s really great, Ms. Godfrey. I’m sure he’d be happy to hear that.”
She pushed her glasses up her nose and touched my shoulder, giving me the sympathetic look that everyone around here had mastered over the last two years. “What brings you here on a Sunday, honey? Are you working on something for school?”
I pulled the folded paper out of my back pocket. “Yeah, actually. I need to find an old newspaper article for a report I’m doing for history.”
I handed her the paper and she gave it a quick once-over before handing it back. “You’ll have to check the archives by year.” She pointed me to the back of the library and patted my shoulder. “Let me know if you need any help.”
“I will.” I forced one more smile, then made my way to the tables where the newspaper viewers sat.
After two hours of searching and coming up empty, Finn Carter was starting to look like nothing more than figment of my imagination. I was about to give up, but then there it was. There
Something in me sank, ached, but I read on anyway.
A fighter pilot, Second Lt. Finn S. Carter, has officially been reported dead as of early Monday morning, according to his father, John S. Carter of Charleston, SC. He had previously been missing since June 6, 1942 over the Pacific Ocean where he lost radio signal somewhere near the Midway Atoll.
Lt. Carter enlisted in May 1941 and won his wings in April 1942 in Dothan, Alabama. He had been overseas a little over a month when he died. He attended Charleston High School, and worked on his family’s peach farm. He is survived by a father, a mother, Susan Carter, and one younger brother, Henry Carter.
I clutched the edge of the desk and leaned in close when I saw the picture. A very alive Second Lt.
Finn Carter stared back at me in black and white. His uniform was pressed. His smile was wide and bright and young. Way too young to be dead. He looked like he was ready to take on the world. I reached up and touched the screen. For once, I wasn’t shaking. For once, I had the proof that what I thought was reality and not a hallucination.
A laugh slipped from between my lips and I slapped my hand over my mouth to stop it. This was real. He was real. And if he was real… My giddiness over finding the article faded. If he was real, he was really dead. The sweet, funny, beautiful ghost of a boy who had been in my house less than twenty-four hours ago had really rotted at the bottom of the ocean somewhere. I shoved myself away from the desk feeling nauseated.
The feeling stayed with me all the way to my Jeep. I wrapped my hands around the steering wheel and stared out the windshield. How long could Finn keep this protecting thing up? It was obvious he was supposed to be somewhere else or he wouldn’t keep disappearing. He said he was breaking rules to be here with me. How
