Allen & Unwin

13 min read

I'll Be Waiting For You Extract

Read an extract from I'll Be Waiting For You by Mariko Turk.

chapter one

It’s our last night in Estes Park. Imogen and I are making the most of it—hanging out in the lobby of the Harlow Hotel, scarfing down a bag of Cherry Sours, and communing with the ghost of Agnes Thripp.

“Agnes,” I say with my mouth full, leaning over the Ouija board and touching my fingers to the planchette. “You’re an upstanding woman. A real straight shooter.”

Imogen snorts, clapping a hand over her mouth like she doesn’t snort-laugh all the time. “Why do you sound like my dad?”

That sets off my giggle reflex, and then we’re in a full-on laughing fit. We’re doing a good job of pretending the best part of summer isn’t about to be over. Pretending it isn’t wildly unfair that best friends only get to hang out for two weeks in June and then basically not see each other until school starts, all because one of them is a genius destined for the Ivy Leagues and the other one is me. But we can’t pretend forever.

“It’s why we come to you, oh wise Agnes,” I continue. “With a question so important, the answer could change everything.”

Imogen’s smile fades as her eyebrows quirk up—half- curious, half-wary.

“Should Imogen go to piano camp this summer, even though it sucks and she hates it there?”

Imogen throws a Cherry Sour at me as she sinks back into the leather chair. “I knew it.”

“It’s true, though.” I slide the planchette toward her. “You do hate it there.”

“Of course I hate it there. It’s Midsommar-level creepy. Everyone acts all bright and happy, but they’re secretly planning to bludgeon you. Metaphorically.”

I nod, remembering all the times she FaceTimed me from a bathroom stall last summer, hiding from the ultra-competitive piano camp kids who smiled sweetly while negging her into the ground. “So don’t go.”

“I have to go. My parents expect me to, and I know what you think about that, but I can’t just not do it.”

“Well, I already asked Agnes, so . . .” I tap my finger on the beat-up Ouija board resting between us on the polished coffee table.

“Fiiiine.” Imogen sighs, resting two fingers on the planchette and fixing her gray eyes on me. “But for the record—”

“Shhh. Let Agnes think,” I whisper. My voice blends with the hum of tourists drifting around the Harlow Hotel lobby, admiring its old, spooky vibe. The dim lighting casts off the crimson carpet and mahogany furniture, giving everything a reddish glow. There’s a taxidermied mountain goat staring eerily from the front corner, its glassy eyes somewhere between sinister and sad. The walls are lined with photographs of the mediums who founded the hotel in the late 1800s, making it a center for supernatural exploration. They all practiced Spiritualism, a religion that believed the dead could communicate with the living.

Nowadays, more people come to the Harlow Hotel for elk mating season than for séances. A family-friendly resort surrounds it, with rental cabins, a crafts center, tennis courts, stables, and mini golf. But the Harlow—bless its creepy little heart—leans into its Spiritualist history, preserving its antique look, playing up its haunted status, and employing a resident medium, who has an office in the basement and pretty decent Yelp reviews. Imogen and I have never gotten to spend the night here—it’s way too expensive for that—but at least our cabins are nearby on the resort, only a quarter mile up the hill.

Imogen’s leg bounces up and down as she stares at the planchette. “I know you’re going to move it.”

I almost snort this time. Obviously, I’m going to move it. Who else is going to do it, a ghost?

Don’t get me wrong, I love spooky stuff. I played “Possessed Girl” at Terror in the Corn last Halloween. My one and only life plan is to become a TV ghost hunter on Ghost Chasers so I can travel to cool, creepy places with host Joshua Jacobs—the hottest human being on the planet—while occasionally shouting things like, Something touched me! and, Oh my God, what was that?

But I don’t believe in actual ghosts. It would be great if when you died, you became a transparent version of yourself that could walk through walls and send cryptic messages and finish unfinished business. I just don’t believe it’s true.

I didn’t get out the Ouija board to contact a ghost. I did it to make a point, and my point is this: Imogen should finally stand up for herself and tell her parents she’s not going to piano camp, aka the thing she hates but her parents ship her off to every year so she’ll be a more attractive candidate to Ivy League schools, aka the schools she’ll get into anyway because she’s the most brilliant person ever.

Seriously. She’s on track for valedictorian. She can explain cryptocurrency in a way that makes sense. In seventh grade, when we had to write a short story for English and I dared her to write hers about a cannibalistic bunny named Beaniford, Mr. Quinn read it out loud to the class. Such is the power of Imogen Lucas’s brain.

But instead of trusting in that, her parents ship her off to piano camp for three weeks every summer, and after that, coding classes and debate intensives and any other awful thing they think will up her chances. It totally ruins our summers.

The only reason I get to spend any time with my best friend over the summer is because, when we were eleven, we decided to take matters into our own hands. At a sleepover one night, we Googled around and found a Wall Street Journal article that said unstructured time in the great outdoors could improve the brain’s executive functioning. I convinced my mom that it wouldn’t be manipulative if she casually brought up the article to Imogen’s parents at the next PTA meeting, and then casually mentioned that we rent a cabin in Estes Park—the tiny town at the base of the Rocky Mountains—for two weeks every summer. Mom must have really sold it, because the Lucases started renting the cabin next door that very summer and every summer since.

Which means that for two weeks, Imogen is free. We can ride bumper boats and wander the winding trails. We can paint matching merman mugs and hang out behind the library downtown, in the secret, shaded spot we named Oasis. We can watch horror movies, sprawled on the thick woven rug in my tiny cabin bedroom, screaming at the good ones, laughing at the bad ones, debating what’s scarier—ghosts or demons or aliens or slashers or monsters that are metaphors for real stuff, like depression or racism or the internet.

Imogen loves a good horror movie metaphor. She wants to write screenplays like that one day—stories that take

the darkness of the everyday and translate it into monsters that make you think about the human condition. I’m more of an Evil Dead II kind of girl, personally. Give me Bruce Campbell gutting demons with a chainsaw arm over metaphors any day. Not that I won’t be there to see all of Imogen’s movies on opening day, bragging to anyone who’ll listen about how she’s my best friend.

“Natalie, come on,” Imogen says, shifting in the leather chair. “I know you’re going to move it, so just—” The planchette zips sharply to the corner of the board, the circular window coming to an abrupt stop over the bold print NO.

“Cheese and crackers!” Imogen gasps out, snatching her hands away like she’s been burned. And then I die from laughter. Because in sixth grade, Imogen read the expression “cheese and crackers” in a book and started using it all the time until she realized it was British slang for testicles and stopped. But every once in a while, it still slips out.

Imogen is laughing, too, her cheeks pink with embarrassment because people are starting to look over, but we can’t stop. Until a sharp, insistent sound splits the air.

Imogen’s curfew alarm. Our last night is over. And no matter how much Imogen hates piano camp, no matter how much I try to convince her the world won’t end if she disappoints her parents just this once, it won’t matter. Tomorrow, our families will drive fifty minutes down the mountain back to Boulder, and then it’s off to separate summers.

Imogen solemnly zips up her favorite hoodie. The white one that says ESTES PARK on the back, with elk antlers growing out of the letters and spreading onto the shoulders, like wings. I tug on my beaded bracelet, contemplating the rest of the summer. I can stay out later when I’m not bound by Imogen’s curfew. I can play beer pong without her describing in detail all the bacteria that’s swimming around in those Solo cups. But somehow, the prospect of late nights and guilt-free pong doesn’t make me feel better. It only makes me feel bored and sad and basic.

“Thank you for communicating with us, Agnes,” Imogen is saying, swirling the planchette around the board. “Goodbye.” She blinks up at me expectantly.

“Really?”

“The box says if we don’t say goodbye, the door to the spirit world stays open.”

I sigh. I don’t understand how Imogen can believe that. “I know, I know.” Imogen waves her hand in the air. “It’s totally irrational, but we don’t know the secrets of the universe. And we don’t want to leave Agnes hanging.” Her eyes slide to the photograph mounted over the stone fireplace. It’s of Agnes Thripp—one of the psychic mediums who founded the hotel—sitting in a rocking chair on the wide front porch of the Harlow, staring into the camera.

What’s cool about the picture is that it looks like there are dark flecks hovering above her head. When you look closer, you see the flecks are hummingbirds, flitting in between the feeders hanging from the awning. It’s a famous photo because Agnes is the only person to have died at the Harlow Hotel. It was a big deal at the time, and the circumstances surrounding her death were publicized in all the newspapers. The Harlow still has exhibits about it sometimes.

“You don’t have to say it out loud,” Imogen says, finally tearing her eyes away from the photo and heaving her backpack onto her shoulders. “Just think it.”

“Fine.” I close my eyes. But I don’t think it, not even a little bit.

We return the Ouija board box to the game shelf and walk out onto the wide front porch, down the steps, and through the front courtyard, setting off across the resort.

A dusky gray has settled around the pines and dirt paths. The tree-covered mountains surrounding us look soft and muted in the dim light, like a vintage postcard. In fifteen minutes, it’ll be totally dark.

“Headlamp,” Imogen says, adjusting the elastic band around her head and straightening the LED bulb in front as we pass the mini golf course. She reaches into my tote bag and pulls out an identical headlamp, the one she made me buy last summer at REI for “wilderness safety purposes.”

“I’ll just use my phone.” I’m against headlamps on account of they look super dorky.

“No way.” Imogen shoves it into my hands. “It’ll be mountain dark soon.”

I strap the thing on begrudgingly as we reach the Starlight Trail, the short, winding path that dips down into the trees, runs along the creek, and takes us back to our cabins.

The harsh, bright glow from our heads lights up every protruding tree root and stone as the darkness grows heavier, snaking its way through the branches.

Imogen is right—in the mountains, darkness is different. It almost feels alive. Like it breathes and moves and tugs on our shirts, brushes our skin.

It would freak me out more, if it wasn’t for all the familiar landmarks along the path. The silver-green sage filling the air with a fresh, spicy scent. The little white yarrow flowers that look like bouquets shrunken down to Barbie size. We pass Harvey, the aspen with black scars in the shape of a goofy, smiling face. And Buttview, the flat rock we were standing on last year when we saw a hiker drop her pants to pee.

We’re going up a slight incline when I notice Imogen’s eyes are fixed on something up ahead. “What?” I ask, trying to see what she sees.

“Nothing.”

We walk another minute in silence, and then Imogen stops suddenly. “Seriously, what?” I say before realizing where we are.

Agnes Tree. A giant ponderosa pine with a rough trunk shooting up into the sky, its bare, naked branches sticking out at odd angles all the way up, like the arms I used to draw on my stick people. Pine needles cover the higher, twistier branches that blend into the dark sky. Most importantly, there’s a gaping hole gouged into the trunk about three quarters of the way up.

We discovered it our first summer in Estes Park. Imogen had been convinced there was something inside the hollow. She’d wanted so badly to climb up to find out if she was right, but was way too afraid of heights, the disapproval of park rangers, and broken bones, in that order. So, I’d climbed the tree. And the bizarre thing? There actually was something in the hollow.

An old hummingbird figurine, covered in dirt.

It was all we talked about for the rest of the trip. Imogen spun this whole story about how it was a message from Agnes Thripp. She couldn’t wait to come back the next summer to see what other messages Agnes would leave for us. But when we came back, and I climbed up, all I found inside the hollow were rocks and sticks and dirt. And that was all we’d ever found every summer since. It was a huge letdown, even though I didn’t believe Imogen’s story.

“Aren’t you going to climb it?” Imogen asks. She looks up at the tree and then back to me expectantly.

“What’s the point?” I scuff my sneaker along the loose rocks. “Nothing’s up there.”

Imogen’s mouth drops open. “But what if there is?”

“There isn’t.” We used to get the hummingbird out every time I slept over at Imogen’s, just to look at it, and then Imogen would carefully tuck it back into the miniature wardrobe in her dollhouse. We hadn’t done that in forever. “Don’t you think it’s time to move on?”

“Moving on is overrated,” Imogen says, her eyes bouncing frantically between me and the tree again. “Please? It’s a just-in-case thing. Like how we said goodbye to Agnes with the Ouija board.”

“Right,” I say, a beat too late.

“Wait, what?” Imogen’s tone is immediately tense. She always knows when I’m lying.

I heave a sigh. “I didn’t say goodbye to Agnes. I didn’t think it.” It’s quiet for a few seconds, the only sound a slow wind wandering through the trees. It picks up suddenly, lifting our hair, carrying the slight butterscotch scent of the ponderosa pine bark.

Imogen casts one last look up Agnes Tree, her face scrunching up like some sort of death match is going on in her head.

“Don’t freak out—” I cut off when a clicking moth flits between us, making us both jump.

“Okay, okay, let’s just go.” Imogen breathes out, gravel scraping under her feet as she speed-walks down the trail.

I jog to catch up. “Dude, we’re fine.”

“This is how horror movies start,” Imogen mutters. “This isn’t a horror movie. If it was, it would get terrible reviews.”

“Shhh!” Imogen flaps her hands at me. “This is what horror movies do. They drag things out so the characters get all smug and say stuff like that. Like, ‘This isn’t a horror movie.’ Like, ‘Hahaha, nothing’s going to happen to me.’ It builds tension. And then bam. Agnes comes out of the dark, and her flock of demon hummingbirds peck at us until we turn into rabid human-hummingbird hybrids and flitter around these woods forever.”

I blink at Imogen, her posture rigid, hurrying straight down the trail like Agnes and her hummingbirds from hell are right behind us.

This happens a lot. Imogen thinking real life is like a horror movie, where every little transgression will lead to an outrageous punishment. It’s why she’ll make amazing horror movies one day. But it’s also why she always follows the rules. Because if we don’t say goodbye to the spirit world, if she doesn’t go to piano camp, if she doesn’t always obey her parents, who knows what horrifying thing will happen?

The gap between us widens as Imogen hustles down the trail, and a familiar double wish settles over me. I wish Imogen wasn’t so scared all the time. I wish I didn’t have to miss her all summer.

And then I’m running off the trail before I even know what I’m doing. I heave myself onto a large boulder, cup my hands around my mouth, and tilt my head up to the sky. “Hahaha, nothing is going to happen to me!” I yell as loud as I can. “Do you hear that, Agnes? I’m smug!”

My voice lifts into the trees as Imogen skids to a stop and rushes over. “What are you doing?” Her voice is somewhere between a whisper and a screech.

“I’m showing you there isn’t anything out here to be scared of!” I stretch my arms out wide and call out to Agnes again. I’m about to run out of breath when Imogen grabs my elbow, and I startle. She tightens her grip, the coldness of her fingers seeping through my flannel shirt.

“Okay, I get it,” she says, still whispering. “It’s irrational, but can we please go?”

I jump off the boulder, and Imogen keeps her hand on my elbow the whole way out of the woods. It’s only when we see our lit-up cabins that she lets go. But I still feel the imprint of her fingers on my arm.

“You’re the worst,” she says. And then we start laughing at the same time. Because we’re out of the woods, and nothing bad happened, and Imogen isn’t scared anymore.

In bed later, I scroll through my Instagram, tapping on a selfie I took of us yesterday. We’re on the Harlow’s front porch, squeezed into one wicker rocking chair, leaning back as far as we can so we’ll both be in frame. I snapped the picture at the exact moment we tipped back too far, the chair losing its balance for a second before we righted it again. Our reactions are perfectly captured. Me mid- laugh, Imogen mid-scream.

I’m about to put my phone down when a notification pops up. Imogen just commented on the rocking-chair photo.

cheese and crackers!!!!!

I respond with a row of crying laughing emojis. I put my phone down on the nightstand, smiling as my eyelids get heavier. Because even though it’s our last night in Estes Park, there’s always next summer. And the one after that.

But Imogen would say that horror movies do this, too.

Lull you into a false sense of security. A character does something smug in the woods, so you hold your breath, expecting the worst. But they make it. Everything is okay. You relax.

Then bam. Jason Voorhees bursts out of the lake. Nell Crain lunges from the back seat of the car. Carrie’s hand shoots up from the rubble. And you scream even louder because you don’t see it coming.

I don’t see it coming.

And it’s not a slasher or a creepy doll. It’s my mom, standing at the foot of my bed, her face gaunt in the early morning light, telling me that last night, while everyone was sleeping, Imogen had a sudden cardiac arrest. Her heart literally stopped beating. And instantly, on the last night of vacation, in the dark of the mountains, she died.