Up All Night

by Laura Silverman

  “Thanks, Chris.”

  “Call me Maybank.”

  “Okay.”

  I’d known he was called Maybank, but had never been invited to call him that myself. It was annoying that all three of them managed to make talking to people look so easy. I’d always thought popularity had more to do with how much money you had, or how good you were at being mean, but all they’d done was be chill. I was chill, wasn’t I? I didn’t judge people for what they said or did or looked like—

  I’d done exactly that to all of them. Now that I thought of it, I’d done that to a lot of people. But that wasn’t the reason people didn’t like me. A lot of them judged me, too. Ugh. I bet none of them were analyzing every minute social interaction of their life right now. I flopped around trying to push up the sleeves of Maybank’s letter jacket.

  There was a soft crack in the trees to our right. Maybank stopped and said, “Did anyone else hear that?”

  Then a dark form, misshapen and yelling, flew out of the underbrush. A shriek cut through the night as the shape crashed into Maybank, sending him to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Grace had her phone flashlight on them in the same instant Maybank shot up in victory, holding a cartoon alligator head in the air. Sprawled before him was Sami, cackling with laughter.

  “Oh my god, you dick.” Maybank turned away, scrubbing a hand over his head.

  “You screamed!” Sami clapped his hands together and rolled up onto his knees. “I didn’t know you had such a great falsetto, Mabes!”

  Allegra swore under her breath. Grace lowered her phone with a sound of relief.

  I was stuck between frustrated and rattled. Sami had to be so loud, and he had to do stupid stuff like jump out and interrupt us—

  “I can’t believe you all really thought I wasn’t coming,” Sami said. “Am I that good of a liar? I am, aren’t I?”

  “Get off the ground, you goob,” Allegra said, helping him up. “It’s not cool to scare someone like that. He could have hurt you.”

  “Nah, Mabes wouldn’t do that.” Sami brushed off his jacket and pants. Maybank threw the alligator head at Sami’s chest so hard Sami lost his breath and stumbled backward. Then he laughed again. “You should go out for shotput, Mabes. Anyways, I changed my mind. I am coming with you.”

  My lips curled back. Grace immediately lit up. Maybank turned away, and Allegra put her hands on her hips. “No more scaring people,” she said.

  Sami put his hand over his heart. “Not on purpose. I swear it.”

  Allegra and Sami followed Maybank. Grace paused when she saw me standing there.

  “You okay, Sydney? That was kind of scary.”

  “No, I’m not scared,” I snapped. Tony never messed around like this. “I just—I don’t like it when things get loud.”

  “Oh. Sami’s pretty loud, isn’t he?” She looked apologetic. “We should have asked if it was okay first for him to come. I’m sorry.”

  Grace did look genuinely sorry. How was it possible that everything she said sounded so honest? And how could she make me feel so bad about it? Anger drained out of me.

  “Whatever,” I said. “It’s fine. Let’s go.”

  “Hey!” Sami called from the bend in the path ahead. His voice carried twice as far in the night. “Hurry up, we have to get there before the sun comes up!”

  Grace smiled and jogged to catch up. I plodded after her.

  “Your brother is Tony Endrizzi, right?”

  “I mean . . . do you know many other Endrizzis?” I asked.

  Behind me, Allegra ignored the sarcasm and climbed over bubbled tree roots with a gymnast’s ease. We’d left the path behind and now cut straight through the woods, a route Tony and I had taken every year, which meant I had to lead our little pack now. Unfortunately, I was the slowest of everyone, and the least in shape, and having the rest of them watching me from behind wasn’t helping my coordination. I nearly pitched headfirst over a large boulder hidden behind a root. There were lots of stories of people dying out here, and plenty were from bad falls. Yet another reason I didn’t come here without Tony.

  “Yeah, he’s my brother,” I said, putting all my attention into staying upright. “He graduated last year.”

  “He’s so funny. He used to tell us about coming out here.”

  I glanced back at her, eyebrows shooting up. “You know him?”

  “My sister was friends with him. He made this place sound so cool and mystical. I always wanted to go.” She walked as if she was on level ground, hardly looking down. “Why didn’t he come this year?”

  Somewhere behind us, Sami cursed. “You all right?” Allegra called.

  “Stupid alligator head,” Sami called back, with no further explanation. I thought of Grace’s sorry expression and counted backward from ten.

  Allegra turned to me again.

  “He’s in school on the other side of the country,” I said. One foot after the other.

  Allegra rolled her eyes and nodded. “I know that feeling. My sister decided to go to school in London, and it’s not like she has the money to come home. That bitch. I really miss her.”

  I slipped on a root. A big hand shot out to grab my right arm, and Allegra grabbed my left; together she and Maybank held me up while I found my footing again. “Ah, thanks, sorry.” I scrambled back into place. My face burned, but neither of them laughed or teased me.

  I cleared my throat and said loud enough for all of them to hear, “The ground is going to level out. Then we’re going to get to the road on the hill. The hill is steep and the road is narrow, and we’ll have to walk on the side of it so we don’t get hit by any cars. They swing through fast. Then we’ll come to a shoulder where the steps to the cemetery are.”

  They followed me across the last level patch of the forest before we met the cracked asphalt of the hill road. There were no streetlights here, and the trees rose tall and branchless above us. Phantom cars had been seen running off this road, only to vanish without any sign of a crash. The cemetery steps began at a tiny shoulder, only visible once I held my lantern over my head. The staircase was concrete, sunken into the side of the hill, cracked with weeds. Some of the steps had been completely overtaken.

  “There are supposed to be fifty steps,” I said, “but I’ve counted, and there are only thirty-five. We have to step on every one on the way up to be able to see the ghost, and we have to step on every one coming back down to stop her from following you home.”

  “Wait,” Maybank said, “she follows you home?”

  Sami clapped Maybank on the shoulder. “No skipping steps on this staircase, bud.” Sami, who was known for bounding three steps at a time with his own lanky grasshopper legs, looked almost silly taking the narrow, densely packed stone staircase one step at a time. I went next—after swallowing a long sigh—so the lantern light led the way for the others.

  We ascended slowly. Even Sami paced himself so he didn’t leave the pool of light. Talk ceased so we could pay attention to our feet, to make sure we didn’t miss the steps that had crumbled away or sunken into the hill until they were little more than a concrete face. Grace’s breath fanned across the back of my neck. The trees twisted together overhead, blocking out the moonlight.

  “Is there a reason for this?” Grace asked. Even though she whispered, the rest of us froze at her voice.

  I shook myself out of it. “When you hit every stair, the ghost can hear your footsteps and knows you’ve arrived.” I nudged Sami in the back to get him moving again. The stairs ended before we crested the hill, and the tangle of trees gave way. At the top, revealed by moonlight, was a cemetery twice the size of a basketball court, nestled in the woods. The headstones were worn as badly as the steps. No insects stirred in the darkness; the air hung still.

  “Over here,” I said, leading them to the center of the cemetery. A wrought-iron fence ringed what had
once been a small paved circle where the paths through the cemetery met. In the circle’s center was an overgrown flowerbed and a statue of an angel with her face in her hands, bearing a rusted plaque that read Moss Hill Cemetery. I set down my backpack and lantern by the angel. Grace dropped her bag with mine, and Sami set the alligator head beside them. “The first thing we do is circle up here, hold hands, and call the ghost.”

  They gathered with little fuss, but as we all joined hands, Sami said, “Is this like a Ouija board thing? Don’t break the circle?”

  “Yes,” I said. “If you let go, the ghost climbs up your butt and moves you like a hand puppet.”

  Maybank spluttered, then cracked up. Sami, Grace, and Allegra all looked at me like they couldn’t believe I’d said it. Apparently if you’re a weirdo who likes ghosts too much, you can’t also be funny.

  When we were all ready, there was a long, uncertain pause. Tony had always been the one to recite the call when we’d come here. Now I was the only one who knew it. The others looked to me, waiting.

  I cleared my throat.

  “Winnifred Marsh,” I said, “we summon you from your long sleep. Show yourself here before the hour of dawn and share the secrets of the afterlife.”

  Silence fell. Allegra, Maybank, and Sami looked around the cemetery as if expecting her to appear right there. Grace was the only one who watched me.

  “How long do we have to stand like this?” Allegra asked.

  “Until one of us feels a touch on the back of our neck,” I said, and Maybank let out a very soft groan of discomfort.

  After a few minutes of staring at each other, Allegra jumped and said, “I felt it! Oh my god, I felt it! On my neck! Four fingers and a thumb, like a little squeeze! Oh! Oh that was weird!”

  “We can let go now,” I said, and Allegra released me to clap a hand to her neck. She looked around at the rest of us with wonder. I’d had a hunch that one of them would feel something, or at least think they felt something. That was how it worked with spooky places: they made even the most unbelievable things real.

  I couldn’t help smiling. “That means she’s here. There’s a good chance she’ll show herself to us before sunrise.”

  Grace went for her bag. “I did some research. I brought recorders to try to pick up sounds, and a video camera to see if we can catch anything.” She glanced at me. “Just so I can say we did it for the story.”

  I shrugged. They could waste all the time they wanted.

  “Now we wait?” Maybank said, shoulders hunched around his ears again. “All night here?”

  “It’s already midnight,” Sami said.

  “We would’ve been hanging out on the dock anyway,” Allegra added, wandering off to look at the headstones. Maybank helped Grace with her equipment; Sami loped off to join Allegra.

  I found my usual place against the wrought-iron fence, where a bed of moss and vines had grown over the stones and the bottom of the wrought iron. I dumped the snacks out of my bag, grabbed a package of Twizzlers, and took my phone from my pocket. No signal out here, of course, but it made me feel better to look at the screen. Until I saw the time. We had to sit out here for at least six more hours, and the others showed no signs of giving up early.

  With Tony, filling time had never been a problem. We played cards, ate snacks, talked until sunrise. There was nothing wrong with Grace and Allegra and Maybank—and Sami too, I guess, though he could stand to shut up sometimes—but this just didn’t seem like it would be the same.

  “Are you okay, Syd?” Grace asked. We were already on a nickname basis, apparently, but I found it didn’t bother me so much.

  I started to respond, realized my throat was tight, and coughed to clear it. I waved the Twizzlers, as if that answered her question at all. “How’s the setup?”

  Grace had a recorder at the edge of the flowerbed and another in her hands. “I know we’re not going to get anything, but it’s fun to think we might. Makes things creepier, you know?” She sat next to me. Maybank had gone off to join Allegra and Sami at the north edge of the cemetery, where they’d found something on one of the headstones. “I hope them coming along didn’t ruin your night. I know you didn’t want to do this.”

  I glanced sideways at her and offered her a Twizzler. She took it.

  “They’re fine,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes. “Come on. Sami has been bugging the crap out of you all night. It’s okay—he bugs me sometimes, too.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Something bugs you? I thought you only had positive emotions.”

  I worried suddenly that she would take that the wrong way, but she laughed like I’d been joking with her instead of at her, which I had. “Hey, I can be mysterious, too! If Sami says or does something to annoy you, tell him to stop, and he will. It’s kind of magic—you know how, when you tell boys to stop doing something, usually they’ll do it more? Sami’s not like that. And he thinks you’re cool, so he’ll do whatever you tell him.”

  “He thinks I’m cool?”

  “He told me he saw you in the cafeteria line one time and was trying to think of things he could talk to you about. I guess he thought you would have been angry if he’d brought up ghosts.”

  He was right, I would have been angry. I would have thought he was making fun of me. I didn’t need Sami Bitar to think I was cool, but the idea that someone was actively trying to get to know me was way more endearing than I expected it to be.

  Sami, Allegra, and Maybank came trotting back to us then, Sami looking jazzed, Allegra wide awake, and Maybank on alert. They’d found a tombstone near the back that Sami swore had Winnifred Marsh’s name on it. As Sami finished his story, he eyed my Twizzlers, and after a moment of deliberation, I held the package out for him. To his credit, he took only one.

  “So, Sydney,” he said, “does this mean you’re going to talk to us at school now?”

  I snorted. “Why would you want me to do that?”

  I only realized how harsh it sounded after it was out of my mouth. They all fell into silence, expressions confused. I cleared my throat and said, “I—do—do I not talk to you often? I mean—you actually want me to talk to you?”

  Grace, always the champion, waved her hands as if she could scrub out the conversation. “It’s just that you’re aloof, you know?” She looked to the others. “Mysterious, right?”

  They nodded. “Like you’re secretly a spy,” Sami said.

  “If I was a spy, I’d blend in better.” A strange sort of numbness began in my feet and spread up my legs.

  Allegra shrugged. “I don’t know anyone who really knows you. I thought you didn’t need friends.”

  “Didn’t need friends?”

  “Some people don’t, at least not in school,” she went on, as if it wasn’t anything strange. “They have friends outside of school, in church or clubs or whatever. I’m not big on forcing myself on people who don’t want more friends.”

  I rocked back and let their still-confused looks sink in. I hadn’t had friends this whole time not because they thought I was weird and didn’t want to be near me, but because I hadn’t put myself out there? When I was little, it hadn’t been like this; I’d had Tony, and kids on our street, and other kids in my class who either went to different schools or grew apart from me. No one had ever said one day I’d have to put in work to find friends—friends were supposed to show up and click with you and everything was supposed to make perfect sense.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, keeping my voice as level as I could, “I’m having a small existential crisis right now. I was convinced you all thought I was the weirdest person alive and wouldn’t have touched me with a ten-foot pole.”

  Sami didn’t even hesitate. “I’ve literally been trying to be friends with you since kindergarten.”

  “You were in my kindergarten class?”

  “Yes. You had shoes
that lit up when you walked.” He was sitting on his knees now, holding out his hands as if he wanted to squeeze my head between them. “And you had the big box of crayons and you used all of them. You were so cool.”

  “We didn’t think you were weird,” Grace said, cocking her head to the side and smiling, like I’d told a small joke. “Quiet, sure. You liked being alone.”

  Maybank grunted. “And you saved my biology grade freshman year.”

  I had to think about that one. “With the presentation on chromosomes? When we were in a group together?” I’d done most of the work because my group mates were all football players and had an important game at the end of that week.

  Maybank nodded and looked embarrassed. “I’ve been meaning to make it up to you.”

  “Oh my god!” I yelled, loud enough that Maybank jumped and a few dark shapes fluttered out of the trees. “Am I clinically oblivious?”

  Maybank scratched the back of his neck. “You’re not oblivious.”

  Both he and Allegra flushed, looking the most ashamed I’d ever seen them. “You weren’t completely wrong,” Allegra said. “About—about the weirdness. But we didn’t know you, and it’s easy to make assumptions about a person when you don’t know them. We’re really sorry.”

  Maybank nodded.

  “It’s . . . okay,” I said. I had already thought they found me weird; the apology was the surprising part. “Apologies accepted. As long as you don’t start treating me like I’m weird again.”

  “I promise,” Allegra said, holding up a hand. Maybank quickly copied her, and Sami and Grace followed, even though they hadn’t had to apologize.

  Then I laughed, because I couldn’t think of what else to do, shook my head, and rubbed my eyes. “We’re dumbasses.”

  “Yeah, kind of,” Sami said.

  Then we all laughed.

  And like that, we were five friends hanging out in a graveyard.

  While Grace dumped her protein bars and granola in the pile with the chips and candy, Allegra declared a round of blackjack using Skittles as currency. Maybank sat so close to me our knees were touching, like it wasn’t anything weird to be sharing space. Sami promised he was going to take us for all we were worth, then proceeded to bust four times in a row.