The lights cut out and Henry lifts himself off of me. “Wait here,” he tells me.
“Where are you going?” My back stiffens and there’s panic in my voice.
He’s crouching down in front of me. Waiting. Watching. Like a predator tracking its prey. “I’m just going to see if the coast is clear.”
As he crawls past me I grab his wrist. “Don’t leave me, Henry, I’m scared.”
“I promise I’ll be right back.”
His feet crunch against the grass and the sound of footsteps echo in the distance. Pretty soon, the sound of the footsteps cut out all-together.
I wait. For seconds. Minutes. I reach into my pocket and whip out my cell. A text from Rosa.
R U ok? Did U make it out?
I text her back.
Yeah.
My eyes shift to the time. Henry has been gone for almost an hour. I’m worried and angry. He promised me he’d come back for me.
I get up on my knees and peer over the grass. The cops aren’t in the backyard anymore. On my feet, I creep toward the house, trying to be as quiet as possible in case I might be surprised again.
There’s no wind and an eerie silence has crept over the property. My nerves are all over the place and an uneasy feeling swirls around in the pit of my stomach. Henry, where are you? I lurch forward and stop at the side of the house. There is a cop car parked toward the end of the driveway. I squint, and I think I see a cop sitting in the car.
I wonder if he’s taken down my license plate number. I wonder if he’s called my mom. I don’t want to get close enough to find out.
I walk around the back of the house and open the sliding glass door. “Henry,” I whisper. “Henry are you in here?”
The house is creepy, belting out eerie creaks from the upstairs, and dark, the only light is the moon, beaming in through the back door. Unknown shadows dance along the brown walls and I swear I hear whispering. The flickering lamp that used to be in the kitchen is gone. A door swings open and I jump. Then a bright light fills the room. Henry smiles at me from the utility closet and holds out a red cup. “Want some?”
Shaking my head, I tiptoe forward and once I’m inside, Henry closes the door and locks it. I snatch the cup from him and fill it up. Then I hop up on the dryer and take a giant gulp.
Henry looks at me puzzled. “What’s wrong?”
“You left me out there for an hour by myself.” Even though I’m overjoyed to see him and glad that nothing has happened to him, I’m still mad about him not keeping his word.
He scoffs, “The second I tried to come back outside the cops were back there again. I wasn’t trying to get arrested.”
“So you leave me so I can?”
Henry hops up onto the washer and sits next to me. “Relax, Ry. If I thought something bad was going to ha
ppen to you, I wouldn’t have left you.”
I roll my eyes. “How chivalrous.”
A wicked leer appears on his lips. “Somebody is being difficult.”
We laugh. He knows me so well. He knows that I always have to be the first to get my point across, that I hate to be the first one to admit I’m wrong, that I hate gossip, and broken promises. His eyes find mine. An intense glare and he’s memorized every inch of me, inside and out.
He breaks out into a full on stare. I’m blushing and inside I’m singing a chorus of praises for him, but that chorus fades and is replaced with fear. “Henry?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s going to happen to us?”
He scoots closer. “What do you mean?”