Light as a Feather, Cold as Marble

Chapter 20

"Well, look who's finally awake."

Mom was in the kitchen, still trying to repair the laptop, when I stumbled out of my room around two-thirty in the afternoon, after arriving home from our little adventure and slipping in through my window. I had just assumed on our drive back to Wisconsin in Henry's pick-up that I'd be in serious trouble when I got home, seeing as how I was still technically sick. But I hadn't gotten too freaked out about it—after all, my thoughts were consumed by fear that we would get into a horrific car accident on our way back. So it was kind of like a late Christmas present that somehow my mom hadn't entered into my room all morning to check on me.

"I feel so much better," I said, which wasn't a total lie. I hadn't experienced the cloudy-headed feeling of having a high temperature all day, which was a huge relief. For the last few days I had been so sick that I had forgotten what it felt like not to feel sick.

"Well, I'm still glad the judge granted your extended stay at home," Mom told me. "It'll be good for you to rest up before you go back to that place. Do they keep your rooms well-heated at night? Do you think they'd allow me to send you back with extra blankets?"

"It's warm enough," I admitted. The dorms at Dearborn were the first place I'd ever slept regularly with steam heat, and during my first few nights there, the rattling radiator in the room I shared with Alecia had kept me awake. At night, our room became so humid and hot from steam heat that I often kicked off my blankets in my sleep, and there was no relief—there were bars over our window, preventing us from opening it, even just a crack. Surely that had to have been some kind of fire hazard, but I didn't think it would be fair to inform my mom of that and push her panic buttons. "Don't bother giving me extra blankets. You know their policy about what I'm allowed to bring from home." What I was permitted to bring was essentially nothing but clean underwear, my freshly washed uniform, a pair of athletic shoes, and anything necessary for medical reasons, like contact lenses or an orthodontic retainer. Even items like toothbrushes and hairbrushes had to be bought at the school commissary because they were so strict about items being brought in from outside. Contraband candy was traded in dark corners as if it was cocaine.

"What are you cooking?" I asked, noticing that the kitchen smelled delectable.

"Baking a bread pudding," Mom said. "I thought it might be nice for Glenn to join us tomorrow for a special New Year's Eve dinner, since you didn't really get to meet him the other night."

"Oh, cool," I said. With my additional three days at home, I'd at least get to enjoy New Year's Eve a little without dreading my return to school.

I was distracted by the ringing of my phone later as I sat at my desk trying to do more catch-up homework from my old Weeping Willow High School textbooks. Concentrating was difficult when I knew that the pendulum was inches away from me, in my desk drawer. Taking it out and playing with it was very tempting, but the safety precautions taken by Laura in the store prevented me from doing so. I didn't have any sage—and conducting paranormal tests in my bedroom without protecting it first seemed like a mighty bad idea. It was Henry calling, and I had to steady my nervous before I answered it, both because of the strange morning we'd experienced together and also because the idea of talking to him on the phone made me anxious.

"Hey," I said, trying to sound casual.

"Hey, McKenna," he said. "My parents do this thing every year, it's kind of a New Year's Eve family tradition. My mom fixes a big lunch and we make resolutions as a family. It's a Swedish thing. Since Olivia's not with us this year, it would mean a lot to her if you and Mischa could join us."

"Oh," I said, "Okay. I'll ask my mom. I'd just have to be home in time for dinner, because my mom has something special planned."

"And McKenna?" he added, sounding a little uneasy. "Do you think you could bring that pendulum? When we were at the store and we saw Olivia in the mirror, it looked like she was trying to tell me something. It's been bothering me all day. I'd really like to know what it was."