Free The Ghost and the Goth by Stacey Kade Page B

tea cups and ceramic figurines with a few hardbound books for decoration. On my right, a barf-ugly but perfectly preserved peach-and-teal-plaid sofa from, like, 1993 occupied the wall. Next to it were two matching swinging doors with that awful cheap wood louvering. They were closed, but they appeared to be the only way out of the room.
    As if to confirm that fact, I heard a commotion through the wooden slats, a sudden thump-stumble and the jingle of keys, and figured that Killian and Joonie had finally made it through the back door, into whatever room lay behind the swinging doors.
    I strode toward the doors but stopped just short of trying to walk through them. If they turned out to be solid and I came busting through, Joonie would definitely see it. Not me, but the doors opening. While it might scare her off, she struck me more as the type who’d stick around and demand an explanation from Killian, which I so did not want. So, I waited until their unique shuffle-drag sounded farther away. Then I reached out for the doors and my hand slipped right through. Perfect.
    The rest of me followed my hand without an issue, and I made it into what turned out to be the kitchen—bright orange paint and HUGE orange flowers on the wallpaper;was somebody color-blind? I mean, seriously—just in time to see Killian and Joonie stumbling out another doorway on the other side of the room.
    I followed at a distance, turning right out of the kitchen into a tiny hall. Three doors led out of the hall, not including the kitchen. That was it. This was NOT one of those houses that looked bigger on the inside than it did from the outside.
    Ahead of me, Joonie and Killian chose door number two, which turned out to be, no surprise, Killian’s room. It wasn’t nearly as disgusting as I expected. No moldy food laying around or gothlike black paint or Marilyn Manson posters. Just a normal-looking guy bedroom: off-white walls, beige carpeting, blue-and-green-plaid curtains to match the blue-and-green-plaid flannel comforter and sheets on the twin bed. One of those cheap, assemble-it-yourself bookcases, crammed full of books and comics, stood next to the left of the bed. A matching nightstand was on the right. Across from the foot of the bed, a battered-looking desk held more books, and the desk chair, turned to face away from the desk, was covered with several layers of black T-shirts and raggedy-looking jeans.
    I took a tentative sniff of the air. It smelled like fresh laundry and boy in here. Not sweaty, old-gym-socks boy smell, but that good clean scent I sometimes used to catch when I kissed Chris’s neck and he’d forgotten to put on his cologne.
    Not that Will Killian smelled good. No, no, no. I wasn’t saying that. Just that his room did.
    “Here.” Joonie helped Killian toward the bed, and he practically fell face-first onto it.
    “Thanks, J,” he said, sounding muffled by the pillow.
    Oh, God, I hoped he didn’t suffocate. Then again, that might make this conversation happen more quickly.
    I tapped my foot, waiting for Joonie to leave, but she just stood there, still breathing hard from the effort of moving him, and watched him. Yeah, because that’s not creepy or anything.
    The sound of Killian’s deep even breathing—not quite snoring, but certainly not that almost silent, barely there breaths he’d been taking before—filled the room. Still, she did not leave.
    She tugged at one of the piercings in her lip, like a nervous twitch or something, and I winced.
    “I have to go,” she said finally, speaking to Killian’s sleeping backside. “If I miss PE again, Higgins will fail me and I won’t graduate. And you know”—she gave a weird little laugh—“I have to get out of that house.”
    Okay, descending to new levels of freakiness here.
    “I need you to be honest with me, Will. I think you’re lying to me, trying to protect me.”
    A tiny ping sounded, and I looked down in time to see one of her safety pins skitter