Stay(51)
“You don’t owe me anything, Adeline.” He gave me a small smile and went upstairs.
I ate breakfast and paced around the basement while Phoebe slept. Lily and Rochelle went to work at the club the night before and had yet to return. Phoebe didn’t feel well again, and for three days, all she had done was sleep when she wasn’t working.
I went to the table and shuffled the worn deck of cards. I tried building a house, but the edges of the cards were too worn and bent to stay upright. I tossed them in the middle and leaned back in the chair, the hard metal pressing against my spine. I inhaled deeply and sighed, blowing loose strands of hair from my face.
The basement door creaked open and heels clicked on the wooden steps. Rochelle hurried to the vanity where she plugged in the curling iron and plopped onto the stool to fix her makeup. Lily went straight to her cot. Dark circles hung under her eyes, and lipstick was smeared across her face. She sank down on the mattress and flipped her head over, pulling her red locks into a bun on the top of her head. She stripped down to her undergarments and got under the quilt.
I stayed at the table, absentmindedly shuffling the cards while Rochelle primped and polished her already stunning face and Lily slept. When my feet began to fall asleep, I got up and paced around the basement.
“How do I look?” Rochelle asked me and stood from the stool.
“Beautiful.” It was the truth.
“Great, thanks.” She turned to inspect herself in the mirror one more time. “I hope Zane thinks so too.” She changed her clothes and then skipped up the stairs. She knocked on the basement door and waited. About a minute later, the door opened just long enough for Rochelle to leave. Then it slammed shut, waking Lily.
“Is Phoebe working?” Lily rubbed her eyes and pushed herself up.
“No,” I told her and pointed to the bed. “She hasn’t gotten up yet.”
Lily’s young face muddled with worry. “Is she sick?”
I shook my head. “She has to be.”
Lily bit her lip and looked concerned. “She’s been sick on and off for so long now.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Hey,” she said suddenly. “Want to test me to see if I’m psychic?”
I blinked. “Uh, sure. How?”
She joined me at the table and shuffled the deck of cards. “You hold them up and I’ll try to read your thoughts and say if it’s red or black.”
“And that can determine if you can see the future?”
“No, psychic,” she said.
“Lily, you do know what being psychic means, right?”
“Yeah, duh. It means you, like, know things you can’t explain.”
I couldn’t refute that. I got up, keeping my blanket close to my body, and joined Lily at the table. “If you can read my thoughts, you’d be telepathic, not psychic. Though I suppose telepathy is under the broad spectrum of ‘psychic powers’.” I shuffled the cards.#p#分页标题#e#
“How do you know that?”
I took a deep breath and sighed. “Books.”
“Like witchcraft books?” she asked and leaned forward.
“Not quite. Fiction books, technically. About fantasy and magic. I used to read a lot.”
“I don’t like to read,” she said casually. “It’s boring.”
“You sound like my sister,” I said. I wanted to ask her how anything could be any more boring than being stuck in the basement but withheld my comment.
“What was her name again?”
“Arianna.”
“Do you still miss her?”
“Of course,” I said. “What do you mean ‘still?’”
She shrugged. “I don’t miss my family or friends anymore. I, like, never really missed my mom, and I definitely don’t miss my asshole stepdad. I kinda missed my cousin at first. Then I stopped caring.”
“That’s sad, Lily.”
She shrugged again. “They never cared about me, not really. But, like, whatever, right?” She closed her eyes. “Black?”
“Uh,” I started. I hadn’t even looked at the cards. “Red.”
“Damn it.” She closed her eyes. “Are you thinking? I’m not hearing anything.”
I looked down at the black nine of clubs. “Why is Rochelle so obsessed with Zane?”
Lily shrugged. “He’s nice to her, most of the time.”
“I wouldn’t care if he was nice to me all of the time, I know what kind of person he is. And I would never be obsessed with him.”
“They used to, like, date.”
“Date?” I shuffled the cards again.