Ethan sees me and grimaces.
“What?”
“Mrs Norris was very naughty.”
I look at the black cat quizzically. “How naughty?”
“She peed on your pillow, naughty.”
“She what?” I storm into my room; the pungent smell hits me first and I back out in a hurry. “Oh God, that’s disgusting. What do I do?”
Ethan looks similarly undecided. He takes the soiled pillow and disappears to the laundry. “I put it in the wash, but . . . we might need to buy you another pillow.”
Grumpily, I head back into my room. It still stinks. “Well I can’t sleep in here.”
“Yeah.” Ethan opens the windows, tugs me out of the room, and shuts the door. He doesn’t look too unhappy about all this. In fact, he looks pretty relieved. “Guess you’ll have to sleep in my room.”
We strip to our boxers and slide into his cool, neatly-made cotton sheets. The lights are off but Ethan insists on the curtains being open for natural light, at least. He shudders and jumps at sounds, moving shadows. The movie did a number on him.
But I get it. It freaked me out too.
“Do you think ghosts are real?” he says, aiming for nonchalant, but really . . .
I turn on my side. “The spirits of our ancestors, yes.”
He shifts his head, looking toward the picture of his mum on the wall. She’s mostly shades of black and grey, but I’ve spent many moments before admiring how beautiful she was. How much of Ethan I see in her.
“They’re the good spirits,” I tell him. “They protect us.”
He nods and curls toward me. “Thank you for letting me freak out without making me feel less.”
I find his hand under the sheet and hold it. My fingers start to slide between his but I withdraw them. This is supposed to be platonic.
The tingles stretching through my body say otherwise.
I shake off the thought and lightly squeeze our clammy palms together. “I’m okay with everything. The good and the painful.”
He squeezes back. “Me too.”
My gaze is drawn over him to his mum’s picture again. “Do you miss her?”
“Every time I look in the mirror.”
The bond that has been growing between us from day one solidifies, and I know it’ll be permanent. Forever.
The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.
K. Mansfield, Letter
“Come on, Fin. No one will care.”
“What if I drive us into a fence!”
Ethan snorts and throws me the keys over the roof of his car. “Good excuse to fix ’em, finally.”
“Good excuse for Tom to ground me forever, you mean.”
It’s been almost one year since Mum and I first moved in, and the pear trees are in bloom. Petals are tossed by the breeze into this large grassy paddock, where I’m climbing into Ethan’s car, about to drive for real for the first time.
He’s not supposed to teach me, since he’s only just got his full license, but he’s also right. We’re not on the streets; no one will care.
“He wouldn’t ground you.”
“What about winter break?”
“Oh, that.”
“It was two weeks without a phone. I never should’ve agreed to that guardianship thing.”
“It was the kind thing to do,” Ethan murmurs, but his frown catches in the reflection in his window.
“Um, yeah.” It had made Mum so happy.
“Besides, your mum was even more pissed than Dad . . . staying out all night with Maria without telling anyone where you were almost gave them both heart attacks.”
I wince. There’d been some crazy commotion with her boyfriend and I got caught in the middle—a shoulder to cry on until they figured it out. But . . . I should have called.
“Fine. How do I drive this thing?”
Ethan directs me step by step until we’re bumping over lumpy grass, and I’m muttering on horrified repeat that I’m about to kill us both.
I steer well away from the fences and make big loops. In a fit of laughter, Ethan loses his cap and searches for it at his feet. I freak out when I see he’s not watching what I’m doing and I jump on the brakes.
“Oof.” Ethan comes up shaking his head. “It’s a work in progress. Another round? Shall we try reversing?”
“You want more?”
Ethan laughs warmly and places his hand over mine on the gear shift. Shivers warp through my body as he guides me into reverse. “Six months, and you’ll have your restricted.”
“I’ll need, uh” —I glance at our hands and quickly out the windshield, and my voice gets wispy— “a lot of practice.”
His hand lingers atop mine, then drags away slowly. “I’ll teach you everything I know.”
Over the summer and following autumn, Tom takes up hiking on Sundays. He always asks Ethan and me to join him. And I always say no.
Ethan is kinder. He goes every other weekend, comes back saying his dad wished I’d been there too. I roll the comment off, and he drops it.