Edgewater Read Online Free

falling off in strips, as if Edgewater was being peeled like a banana. I made myself look up, past the row of broken dormer windows on the third floor, to the heather-colored sky above. The sunset was breathtaking, per usual. You could always count on nature.
    Lennox cut the engine. “I’m going to run in and get your money first,” I told her. “Wait here, okay?”
    â€œOf course,” she said. “I know the drill.”
    She knew the drill, that I didn’t let anyone—not even her—into my house. I opened the car door, and the ubiquitous roar of the ocean sounded off in the distance. Being in Idlewild was like having a conch shell permanently pressed against your ear. It practically made me seasick.
    I ran up the porch steps and took one last deep breath of outside air. Then I pushed open the front door. The foyer was dark—darker than it was outside. The bulbs in the chandelier had long ago burned out, so now the fixture hung down uselessly from two stories above, with dust dangling from the prisms like tinsel. In the center of the room was a fountain, dried up for years, and, beyond that, a winding staircase once famous for its mahogany banister and custom-carved pineapple newels. Back in the day, it had actually been pictured in
Architectural Digest
.
    Trying to keep the house clean on my own was a losing battle. We had more creatures living in Edgewater than I could possibly keep count of. Despite Claire Glidewell’s suggestion to just clean it myself, there was simply no way for one person to keep up with such a massive estate. I’d called in a housekeeper once, but as soon as she stepped inside, one of the cats dropped a decapitated mouse at her feet. She screamed and ran straight back out. That was five years ago. Now the house was even more far gone.
    I switched on a floor lamp and crossed the room to the squat Victorian dresser at the base of the stairs. Susannah and I always called the top drawer the Money Drawer, because it was where Gigi stashed the cash she withdrew from the bank. At times the drawer was practically bursting with twenties and fifties and sometimes hundreds. Other times the offerings were a bit leaner. Still, you could count on there being
something
—a couple hundred bucks at least—and Susannah and I were allowed to dip in, no questions asked. Usually I took only what I needed, but this time, I decided, I’d take whatever was in there—all ofit. I’d give Lennox the cash for the plane ticket, and if I had enough left over, I’d pay my way back into Woodscape. I could spend the summer there with Orion, after all, and I’d play off my abrupt departure to the other girls as if it had all been a misunderstanding—
Can you believe it? Pamela Bunn is lucky I don’t get her fired
.
    I yanked open the Money Drawer and rooted around. But all I found was . . . nothing. Not so much as a lone dollar bill. My throat burned with the need to gulp fresh air. I ran back outside and hurried across to Lennox, careful to avoid the plank on the porch that had partially rotted through. I held my hands up to her to signify that they were empty. “I’m sorry,” I told her through the car window. “I can’t believe this.”
    â€œIt’s all right. Really.”
    â€œI can’t believe I’m back here,” I said.
    â€œI know,” she said. “But I have an idea.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œSo you’re home, and you don’t want to be home, and that blows. But what if you just think of it as starting senior year early? We have a couple extra months together that we didn’t think we’d have. We’ll make it really good, starting now.”
    We had talked about that—making senior year the best ever, packing in as many memories as we possibly could before we were off, most likely to separate colleges.
    â€œWe can head to town and grab a bite,” she went