7 Minutes in Heaven Read online

  “Yeah, it’s fine.”

  “Thanks, Gracey. I know it’s not fun to give up your weekend like that.”

  “It’s what I’m here for,” I joke lightly.

  Dad doesn’t join me. His face is serious when he tells me, “No, it’s not. You shouldn’t have to pitch in like you do, but I want you to know your mom and I really do appreciate it. With Ashley and the shop, we’re stretched pretty thin sometimes. We’re lucky you’re so quick to help out.”

  I feel a pinch in my chest that pricks at the back of my eyes. “It’s fine. Seriously. I like the shop.”

  “And you love your sister,” he fills in for me, but the statement hangs between us like a challenge. Like a question.

  My eyes well. I don’t mean them to, but I don’t know how to stop them either. Ashley is a lot of things to me. She’s frustrating and all consuming, eating the attention in any room faster than Pac Man chasing dots, but she’s my sister. She’s sweet and smart and, yeah, I love her. More than anything. “Of course I love my sister.”

  “She can be a lot of work. And she gets a lot of our attention.”

  “I don’t feel neglected, Dad,” I tell him, my words weighted. Heavy. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “I hope that’s true.”

  “You timed how long I sat in a truck with a boy. You’re not neglecting me. If anything, you’re smothering me.”

  “If you feel smothered, that means I’m doing my job.”

  “You could lay off a little. Maybe sweat me a little less.”

  “Nope. I’m committed.” He grins into his beer. “I’m always going to sweat you, Gracey. Even when you’re married with your own kids, I’ll worry about you.”

  “Whatever makes you happy, Dad.”

  Mom and Ashley come home about ten minutes later. By then, my hands are starting to tingle from the cold even though Dad has a heater rumbling next to the table. He flicks it off as we leave the garage to go help with the groceries Mom and Ashley always bring home on a Monday night. It’s part of their routine. Same store. Same time. Almost always the same items. Ashley is smiling when she opens the door for Mom. She has her favorite cloth shopping bag on her arm. It’s blue with little sea turtles swimming across the front.

  “Do you want me to take it?” I ask her.

  “No.”

  She breezes by without a glance. It’s a cold greeting, but it’s not meant to be. It’s just Ashley.

  “If she doesn’t want help, I’ll take it,” Mom huffs from the porch. Her arms are laden with bags hanging from both wrists. She’s carrying way more than she should, but Mom is adamant about not making two trips to bring everything inside. She’d balance a watermelon on top of her head to avoid it.

  Dad and I lessen her load before following her into the kitchen. Ashley has been there and gone. Her bag is on the counter but she’s nowhere in sight.

  “Dinner in thirty, Ash!” Mom shouts to her.

  Ashley’s voice is bouncing up the stairs when she shouts back, “Okay!”

  “How come you guys get to yell and I can’t?” I ask.

  Mom sighs. “Because if I chased her everywhere she went, I’d die. She has way too much energy.”

  “So if I’m more inconvenient, I’ll get away with more?”

  “Don’t start, please. I’m too tired, Grace.”

  “What am I starting?”

  Dad puts his hand on my shoulder as he squeezes past me to get to the refrigerator. “Let it go. Your mom’s had a long day.”

  “So have I. My keys disappeared, I had to walk to school—”

  Mom frowns at me over the island. “You walked to school? Why? We found your keys in the car before I left.”

  “The tire was flat. I didn’t have time to fix it so I walked.”

  “I wish I’d known. I would have driven you. It’s too cold to be walking.” She glances out the window over the sink. Snow is falling hard in the fading light. It whips past the window like static on a TV screen. “Was it snowing when you walked home?”

  “Barely.”

  “And she didn’t walk home,” Dad tells Mom in a teasing voice that’s meant for me. “She got a ride with the boy next door.”

  “Across the street, not next door, and it was no big deal,” I remind him vehemently.

  It’s too late. Mom is smiling at me. “Really? Kyle?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s handsome.”

  “He’s okay.”

  Dad snorts in disbelief.

  “Ugh,” I groan. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “You keep saying that,” Mom points out.

  “It makes it seem like maybe it is a big deal,” Dad agrees from inside the fridge.

  I push the grocery bag I was carrying across the island to them. “Whatever. I’m going to watch TV. Let me know when dinner is ready.”

  They don’t even wait for me to leave the room before they start talking about me. I can hear Mom asking Dad about my ride home. He gives her the one-hour-and-thirteen-minutes count he gave me, making her whistle low and long. I feel like going back to tell them to knock it off, but it’ll only make it worse. They did this when I dated Mark too. They made a big deal of everything. It was so annoying.

  Not that I’m dating Kyle. I know I’m not. It was one ride home. That’s it.

  No big deal. Like I said.

  In the living room, I curl up under a blanket and turn on my favorite murder mystery. It’s an old episode I’ve seen a thousand times. The mom did it. She killed her daughter’s boyfriend because he was a bad influence. He got her into drugs. Got her pregnant. The mom ran him over with her car and burned his body in the backyard. The entire thing is an insane mess, made worse by the fact that it’s based on a true story.

  People are nuts.

  I’m fading inside the warmth of the blanket, mesmerized by the crackle of the fire on the other side of the room. Outside, the snow is falling harder. The world is getting darker. Still, I can see the brilliant white shape of Kyle’s house standing tall across the street. There’s a light on in their living room. Another in what’s probably the kitchen, and a third upstairs. I wonder if that’s his bedroom. I wonder what he’s doing.

  I wonder why my fingers are still so icy cold.

  chapter six

  I’m underwater. It’s freezing. My hand aches and bleeds in dark swirls that look like ink. I can’t move. I try to kick my feet, reach with my arms, but the surface is too far away. Layers of ice shift over me like clouds across a broken sky. The sun is weak overhead. It burns my eyes that ache with the cold, but I don’t dare close them. I’ll die if I do.

  I’ll die if I don’t.

  My body feels distant. Like I’m disconnected from it somehow. Nothing works like it should, and that sets off alarms in my brain that’s starting to fade and fuzz. My thoughts are blurry. Inconsistent. I feel like I should scream for help but I know I can’t. My lungs are full of water. My body is sinking slowly.

  I’m drowning.

  I’m dying.

  “Grace!”

  ***

  I jolt awake, practically leaping from the nightmare. I sit up straight in my bed, my mouth open and gasping. My heart hammers loudly in my ears, but at least it’s beating. It wasn’t in my dream. Everything about me was frozen solid, my blood ice water in my veins.

  I’m sweating now. My skin is coated in a thin sheen of it that makes me feel sick and relieved at the same time. At least I’m alive.

  A quick glance at the clock tells me I’m up early. I cancel my alarm and make a beeline for the bathroom. I need to get there before Ashley does and I end up late again like yesterday. As I wait for the water to warm up in the shower, I look at the palm of my left hand. It stings a little, the way it did in my nightmare, but there’s nothing there. Not a mark on me. I shake it out, telling myself to get a grip. It was just a dream.

  Twenty minutes later, my hair is washed and dried, straightened flat into a shiny, amber waterfall d
own my back. My keys are where I left them. It’s a good start to a day that feels oddly ominous. I’m apprehensive and I have no idea why. Maybe because yesterday was so frantic, I’m worried it’ll happen again.

  “Do you have everything?” Mom asks, pouring me a glass of apple juice.

  “Yeah, I think so. Dad said he fixed my tire yesterday.”

  “Good. I don’t have time to take you to school.”

  “I don’t need you to,” I mumble into my juice.

  Mom pauses to frown at me, but she doesn’t respond. She has to focus on Ashley’s lunch. Uncrustable (strawberry only), cheese stick (Cheesehead only), CapriSun (tropical fruit only), and a banana (no brown spots). She’s eaten the exact same lunch for the last four years. We should buy stock in Uncrustables for how often she eats them.

  Mom zips up Ashley’s lunch bag with a hard tug. “Do you need lunch money?”

  “No. Dad gave me a twenty over the weekend. I still have some of it.”

  “Good. Can you go upstairs and get your sister for me?”

  “Always.”

  Mom casts me another look before leaving the kitchen.

  She’s not a fan of my attitude this morning. Or any morning.

  Ashley is at her computer, as usual. I give her the minute warning, counting it down monotonously for her. She’s not flustered by it. She listens patiently, finally closing things down when I get to three. She’s out of her chair with her backpack in hand at two, and by the time I finish with one, she’s already out the door. I follow after her and that purple jellyfish.

  Mom is waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs. “Do you have everything you need?”

  “I have everything,” Ashley answers evenly.

  “Here’s your lunch.”

  “Is it an Uncrustable?”

  “Yes.”

  “Strawberry.”

  “Of course.”

  Ashley smiles mildly. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome, baby.” Mom opens the door for her, casting me a quick grin. “Have a good day, Grace.”

  “You too. Bye, Ash!”

  Ashley waves goodbye over her shoulder before disappearing into the bright morning waiting outside.

  When they’re gone, I quickly finish my breakfast the way I usually do when I’m not running around the house like a psycho trying to find my magically disappearing keys. I’m painfully aware of Kyle’s house outside the window as I stand in the kitchen with my bowl of Cheerios. I try not to look at it. I do my best not to think about him. I’ve been playing this game with myself all morning because my brain keeps drifting back to him, and I’m worried that if I’m not careful, he’ll become an obsession for me like fish are for Ashley. I could easily get lost in him, and it’s a stupid thing to do. He gave me a ride home because he felt bad for nearly decapitating me. That’s nothing to get all girly about.

  Still, even with all that logic, I can’t help but look. His truck is still there in the driveway. He hasn’t left yet. But I should.

  I step out into the cold, crisp air with an irritated frown. The snow has stopped but it’s everywhere. It’s on every surface, painting the world in white that glows in a morning sun that won’t muster the strength to melt it. We’re stuck with it; for better or worse.

  “Grace!”

  I jolt in surprise. My heart skips a beat, my body reacting immediately to the sound of his voice. I’m instantly filled with fear.

  It was Kyle’s voice in my nightmare. I didn’t realize it until now, but it was him calling to me. Screaming my name.

  I take a deep breath, telling myself to calm down. It was only a dream. A weird one, yeah, but still. Just a dream. Kyle is across the street. He comes around from the front of his truck, ice scraper in hand. He smiles at me warmly.

  I smile back, bigger than I mean to. “Hey!”

  “Five inches!” he proclaims, gesturing to the mountain of snow piled up along the side of the road. The spot where we were parked in front of my house is almost non-existent. It’s halfway to a bunny slope thanks to the plows that worked through the night to keep the roads clear.

  “It’s only the beginning!” I warn him. I step carefully onto the icy path leading to the driveway. “Winter hasn’t even gotten started yet!”

  Kyle laughs. He walks gingerly to the end of his own driveway where he doesn’t have to yell. “Don’t tell me that. I was hoping this was the worst of it.”

  “Not even close.”

  “Come on, Grace. Can’t you lie to me?”

  I smile, shaking my head. “I could but I won’t.”

  “That’s cold, but you’re honest. I like that.”

  I like the way his smile makes me feel like I’m melting.

  I gesture to my car, falling a reluctant step in that direction. “We should get going. I’ll see you at school?”

  “Yeah, or . . .” He quickly looks both ways down our deserted street before stepping into it. He takes a few steps toward me, drawing me to do the same until I’m in the street too. There’s only ten feet of frosty air between us. “We could go together. If you want a ride. My truck’s already warm.”

  That offer is so tempting for so many reasons. Most of them are in the color of his eyes. Shades of green and brown that search mine, waiting. Hoping. It makes me almost dizzy with how good it feels.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I protest weakly.

  “I want to. If you want to.”

  “I want to.”

  “Cool.”

  “This isn’t a trap, right?” I joke, taking a careful step closer to him. He smells like warmth and coconuts. Oranges. Tropical breezes and afternoons by a beach I’ve never seen. “You’re not gonna finish what you started yesterday in the gym?”

  His eyes dance with laughter. “You mean am I going to kill you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Trust me, Grace,” he replies with a grin. “If I was really trying to kill you, you’d already be dead.”

  “Oh, well, that’s reassuring.”

  He chuckles, lowering his head. Dropping three chunky locks of black hair over his forehead like Superman on a windy day. “Yeah, I guess that sounded creepier than I meant it to.”

  I grin, closing the distance between us to a very cozy three feet. On the outside, I’m cool as the air settling heavily around us. I’m arctic chill. But inside, I’m a mess. I’m butterflies swarming and bulls running and elephants stampeding. I’m half a heartbeat away from cardiac arrest as I look up into his eyes that remind me of the lake in the summertime.

  “Lucky for you, I’m into creepy,” I chuckle tremulously.

  He can hear my insides in my voice. He hears the flutter of the wings and the tremble of hooves on the ground. He hears it but he doesn’t revel in it. He gives me another grin that’s a little shaky at the corner, and I think that’s my payback. That’s my sign that he’s not as cool as he looks either.

  It’s not a long drive to Roosevelt High, but we make it last. We talk the entire time about sports and TV. Kyle loves sports. Especially basketball. He was on Varsity at his last school. He’s a point guard and he’s good. I promise to come to the games to cheer him on, though with his ego, I’m not so sure he needs the extra support.

  I tell him about my obsession with murder shows. I’m fascinated by serial killers. So is Ashley. We binge the shows together when Mom and Dad aren’t around to tell her she’s too young. Kyle asks a lot of questions and I give way too many answers in pretty gory detail, but he never looks uncomfortable. He never stops asking.

  “Who’s your favorite one?” he asks curiously.

  “My favorite murderer?”

  “Yeah.”

  It’s an odd question. Is it even odder that I have an answer? “I don’t think I’d call him a favorite, but H.H. Holmes is the craziest to me.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “No one is a hundred percent sure because he lied about everything. He was married to three different women at once and used a bunch
of different names. He confessed to killing twenty-seven people but right before he was hanged he said it was only two. He confessed to killing people that turned out to be alive. He mutilated corpses that he stole from a university to try to claim insurance on them. He sold the skeletons of his victims to labs and schools for research. He ran a hotel during the World’s Fair in Chicago where some researchers think he killed over a hundred people. There were gas lines leading into bedrooms, doors that opened into brick walls, stairs that went nowhere, rooms without windows, and two furnaces with chutes big enough for a body leading down to them. He had lye pits and acid in the basement.”

  “Wow,” Kyle mutters in amazement. “That’s crazy.”

  “And weird,” I admit halfheartedly. “I probably shouldn’t have told you I know all of that.”

  “It wasn’t weird. It was interesting.”

  “Yeah, but now every time you look at me you’re going to think, ‘There goes that crazy serial killer chick’.”

  “I won’t think that. I promise.”

  “Oh no? What will you think?”

  “I don’t know yet. What do you think when you look at me?”

  “He hates it here,” I answer instantly.

  It’s honest, but it was probably the wrong thing to say. It’s not fun or flirty. I’m terrible at that. Marcy and Makena are great at it. Neither of them would have told him about lye pits and murder mansions. They would talk about the summers here by the lake so he’d picture them in bathing suits or talk about a movie coming out that they really want to see. Hint. Hint. They’d give him an opening to ask them out, not remind him that he hates his life. That’s not sexy.

  Kyle pauses, considering my answer. I wish he wouldn’t. I wish he’d let it slide and do me the favor of forgetting I said it.

  “I don’t hate it here,” he says quietly. “Not as much as I thought I was going to.”

  He pulls us into the school parking lot, taking one of the only slots left open at the back. He kills the engine, sitting back in his seat to look at me.

  “I’ll meet you back here at three?” he asks.

  I can’t help but smile at the prospect. “Sounds good.”