For This Life Only by Stacey Kade

Author:Stacey Kade
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

* * *

“SO WHERE ARE WE going exactly?” I asked Thera. The interior of her car was immaculate—not so much as a stray receipt or straw wrapper on the worn and stained gray mat beneath my feet. With the heater running full blast, it was warm in here and smelled of old dust, flowery air-freshener, and, faintly, her mint shampoo.

Thera grinned, keeping her focus on the road in front of her. “You’ll see. You’ll like it, I promise.”

“Okay,” I said. “But if we’re making a run for the Canadian border, we’re going to need more snacks.” I held up the plastic baggie that had once contained a half dozen sugar cookies she’d evidently picked up at home. Now only a few small crumbs remained in one corner. She’d had one, and I’d demolished the rest. They were really good.

“Hmm.” She pretended to consider that. “How do you feel about the Wisconsin border instead?”

I lowered the bag. “Seriously?”

I’d called my mom at lunch and told her that I was getting a ride home from Zach. Expecting a barrage of questions, I’d prepared an entire story about staying after school to work on Eli’s memorial page for the yearbook, which was half true. The yearbook advisor, Mrs. Rafferty, had asked me about it on Monday, and it was something I would need to do eventually. But I didn’t feel ready yet.

But when my mom answered, she’d sounded distracted.

“Okay, that’s fine,” she’d said once I’d finished explaining. “Just be home before dark, please.” Then she’d hung up before I’d had a chance to reassure her that I would.

Her distraction was to my advantage today.

I watched as houses grew farther and farther apart and fields and horses took their place. Holy shit, maybe Thera wasn’t kidding about the Wisconsin thing.

“So how do you know about this place, wherever it is?” I asked.

“Do you remember the hardware store that used to be on Main?” she asked. “A couple blocks from my house?”

“Sort of.” My parents tended to go to the Home Depot on the other side of town. “It closed, right? Like years ago.”

“That was my grandpa’s.”

“Yeah?”

She nodded. “He used to take me places with him, local vendors and random errands, during the summer, just to get me outside.” She paused. “My mom doesn’t really go out. Ever.”

That wasn’t news to me. There’d been rumors for years, ranging from ridiculously stupid to kind of plausible, about why that was. Psychic Mary was a werewolf. A serial killer. Horribly disfigured. Cursed. In a wheelchair.

But now it occurred to me there might be another reason. “Because of the whole psychic thing? Like she gets vibrations or . . .”

“Technically, she’s a psychic medium, so it would be more like seeing ghosts, if it was anything.” Thera shook her head, and I wasn’t sure if it was a denial of the idea or of her mother’s ability. “But it’s not that, or at least, not just that,” she said flatly.

Before I could decide if pushing further was

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