Lock and Key Read Online Free PDF

I actually felt a pang of guilt. Like I’d let him down or something. Which was just ridiculous; we didn’t even know each other. “Nothing,” I said.
    “Is everything okay?” He looked up at the fence, then back at me, as Roscoe, who’d finally shut up, sniffed around his feet, making snorting noises.
    “Yeah,” I said. I was making it a point to speak slowly. Calmly. Tone was everything. “I was just . . .”
    Truth was, at that moment, I didn’t know what I was planning to say. I was just hoping for some plausible excuse to pop out of my mouth, which, considering my luck so far, was admittedly kind of a long shot. Still, I was going to go for it. But before I could even open my mouth, there was a thunk from the other side of the fence, and a face appeared above us. It was the guy from the pool, who, in this better light, I could now see was about my age. His hair was blond and wet, and there was a towel around his neck.
    “Jamie,” he said. “Hey. What’s up?”
    Jamie looked up at him. “Hey,” he replied. To me he said, “So . . . you met Nate?”
    I shot a glance at the guy. Oh, well, I thought. It’s better than what I had planned. “Yeah.” I nodded. “I was just—”
    “She came to tell me my music was too loud,” the guy— Nate?—told Jamie. Unlike me, he didn’t seem to be straining in the least, holding himself over the top of the fence. I wondered if he was standing on something. To me he added, “Sorry about that. I crank it up so I can hear it under the water.”
    “Right,” I said. “I just . . . I couldn’t sleep.”
    At my feet, Roscoe suddenly coughed, hacking up something. We all looked at him, and then Jamie said slowly, “Well . . . it’s late. We’ve got an early day tomorrow, so . . .”
    “Yeah. I should get to bed, too,” Nate said, reaching down to pull up one edge of his towel and wiping it across his face. He had to be on a deck chair or something, I thought. No one has that kind of upper-body strength. “Nice meeting you, Ruby.”
    “You, too,” I replied.
    He waved at Jamie, then dropped out of sight. Jamie looked at me for a moment, as if still trying to decipher what had happened. I tried not to flinch as he continued to study my face, only relaxing once he’d slid his hands in his pockets and started across the lawn, Roscoe tagging along at his heels.
    I’d just reached the line of trees, following him, when I heard a “Pssst!” from behind me. When I turned around, Nate had pushed open part of the fence and was passing my bag through. “Might need this,” he said.
    Like I was supposed to be grateful. Unbelievable, I thought as I walked over, picking up the bag.
    “So what’s it to?”
    I glanced up at him. He had his hand on the gate and had pulled on a dark-colored T-shirt, and his hair was starting to dry now, sticking up slightly. In the flickering light from the nearby pool I could finally make out his face enough to see that he was kind of cute, but in a rich-boy way, all jocky and smooth edges, not my type at all. “What?” I said.
    “The key.” He pointed to my neck. “What’s it to?”
    Jamie was going into the house now, leaving the door open for me behind him. I reached up, twining my fingers around the chain hanging there. “Nothing,” I told him.
    I shifted my bag behind me, keeping it in my shadow as I headed across the lawn to the back door. So close, I thought. A shorter fence, a fatter dog, and everything would be different. But wasn’t that always the way. It’s never something huge that changes everything, but instead the tiniest of details, irrevocably tweaking the balance of the universe while you’re busy focusing on the big picture.
    When I got to the house, there was no sign of Jamie or Roscoe. Still, I figured it wasn’t worth risking bringing my bag inside, and since the balcony was too high to toss it up, I decided to just stow it someplace and come back down for it in a couple of hours when the coast was