Free Angels Burning by Tawni O’Dell

see her and disappears behind a ruffled curtain.
    â€œI figured if we weren’t going to go Cam at least owed me an explanation, but she wouldn’t give me one,” he continues. “We got in this fight and I told her I was going to take someone else. She said she wouldn’t be mad at me if I did. That made me feel even worse, so I told her we’d just skip the stupid junior prom. And she smiled and said that’s why she loves me, because I’m on her side.”
    My phone beeps. It’s a text from Nolan: +ID. Camio Jane Truly, 17.
    When I look up from it, all of Zane’s youthful nonchalance is gone, replaced by the adult tenseness that comes from a premonition of tragedy.
    The break in our conversation gave him a chance to finally wonder what’s going on.
    â€œWhy are you asking me all this stuff? I haven’t heard from Cam since last night. I’m starting to worry about her. Do you know where she is?”
    â€œYes,” I tell him.
    The relief on his face breaks my heart.

chapter six
    WHEN WE WERE GROWING UP, Neely, Champ, and I lived in a leaky, creaky, flaky, cobwebby, moldy, sweltering in summer, barn cold in winter, slightly left-leaning structure on Springfield Street that from a distance looked as if someone had plunked down a weather-beaten birdhouse in the middle of a row of beloved but rarely played-with dollhouses.
    We spent our childhood there until we moved to Gil’s mansion when we were fourteen, twelve, and nine. His wall-to-wall-carpeted four bedrooms, two bathrooms, formal dining room, living room, eat-in kitchen, and even a rec room enclosed behind a pink brick façade, two white columns, and sparkling clean windows we could actually see out of wasn’t really a mansion, but compared to Chez Cissy it certainly was, and we always referred to it in an English accent as Rankin Manor.
    We were even able to get Grandma in on the game. She’s ninety-two now and in a nursing home, but to this day if our conversations turn to her daughter’s brief, ill-fated marriage, she raises her voice to an imperial croak that would make Dame Maggie Smith proud and reminisces about Rankin Manor and Lord Gil.
    On the surface Gil’s house certainly seemed better suited to our freshly scrubbed, expertly made-up, flashily dressed mother than our previous one, but she never seemed as comfortable there as she did in the pseudo-shack. None of us were. This was through no fault of LordGil’s. He did his best to accommodate us. He decorated one of the bedrooms in marshmallow Peep yellow and teal for Neely and me. We both found the room too alarming for sleep and took our bedding into the walk-in closet that was bigger than our old room anyway.
    He did better connecting with Champ. Neely and I weren’t offended. We chalked it up to them both being male and the fact that little kids are easier for adults to deal with than older kids. I was a teen and had the feeling Gil looked at me as a piece of adolescent pottery that had already been fired in the kiln. I was hard and set, whereas Champ was still squishy and malleable and his wide-eyed, frisky presence cried out for caresses and shaping.
    Neely was only twelve, but she was an intense, eerily observant, uncompromising kid who wasn’t to everyone’s liking. She wasn’t shy or standoffish. Timidity stems from fear, and aloofness comes from a feeling of superiority; neither applied to my sister.
    I’ve never known anyone else like her, and lacking anyone to compare her to, I was never able to come up with an adequate summation of her personality in my mind until she began her work with service dogs and subsequent love affair with German shepherds in particular. Neely is just like her dogs. Her silence is louder than most people’s shouting.
    The house I live in now is on Springfield Street. A psychologist might have something to say about my deciding to live a few blocks down from my childhood