by Ali Standish
“Is it poisonous?” I ask, craning my neck to see its scaly tail slither into the grass.
“No,” she says, already shaking off her shock. “Just a black snake. Not a copperhead. Did I tell you about the time I got bit by the copperhead?”
“Yeah,” I say, suddenly eager to make it to the porch steps. Until I realize that it is probably just as likely that snakes live inside the house as out here.
Coralee goes first up the stairs. We have to be careful because the wood has rotted so much that holes the size of tennis balls pepper the steps.
When she tries the knob of the front door, it won’t budge. She moves to the door knocker and drops it. It bangs against the wood and echoes like a gunshot.
The sound makes me flinch, and I look to see if anyone is around to witness our trespassing. Mr. Bondurant is nowhere to be seen, and the Milsap kid is elbow deep in his mud pit.
“I don’t think anyone’s been home for a while,” I say.
Coralee slinks over to the windows and tries to lift them, but they stick in their frames.
I’m secretly hoping that she’ll give up now, that we’ll turn around and go home.
But then I hear Kacey’s voice in my head again. Boo, you wimp! Like she’s standing there next to me.
Suddenly I feel like I need to be moving, like I can’t stand on this porch for another second, so I aim a hard kick just below the doorknob. For a second, Coralee looks at me like I’m a stranger she’s never seen before. Then the door squeaks open, and an incredulous smile spreads across her face.
I manage a sly grin. “I saw it on TV.”
Coralee nods, impressed. She doesn’t see that my arms and legs are shaking.
This time, I go first. The floorboards moan as we step inside. Darkness descends, and the air grows thick and mossy. Something brushes past my arm, and I jump to the side. Coralee glides around me into the hall as I pull cobwebs from my T-shirt, then raise it up over my nose. “It stinks in here.”
I keep my voice light and steady, but my heart drums as my eyes adjust to the darkness. Something is off. I don’t know why, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s someone else here. That Coralee and I aren’t quite alone.
My gaze flits around the entry hall, as though I’m expecting to pick out a third, shadowy figure lurking in a corner. I can make out a curving staircase in front of us and closed doors to our left and right. I suck in my breath when I catch sight of a looming silhouette next to Coralee.
But it’s just an old coatrack with a ratty raincoat hung on it.
There’s no one else here.
“I knew it,” Coralee whispers. “I knew I remembered this place.”
“What?”
“The first time I came over to your house and saw this place, I had a feeling I had been here before, and now I know I have,” she says, her voice quick with excitement.
I shake my head in disbelief. This has to be some practical joke Coralee has cooked up.
“That’s why you wanted to come here?”
Coralee turns to me. “Look,” she commands. “This is the entrance. That’s obvious, okay. But that door to the left leads to the kitchen, and then—yeah, then there’s a dining room. That corridor goes to the living room, and the door to the right is a study with a big coat closet.”
I stare at her. This is no joke. I can tell she believes what she’s saying.
She grabs my wrist and drags me through the door on our left. “I’ll prove it to you,” she says. “See? Kitchen.”
A counter covered in plastic sheeting and a thick layer of dust juts from the wall to our left. I can make out a sink and an ancient oven to our right, and a space where a refrigerator used to be.
“Lucky guess?” I venture.
But then she takes me to the next room, which boasts a long dining table and a chandelier that has become a nest for some kind of animal.
“And through here is the living room. There used to be a piano. And a fireplace. And everything was yellow.”
She is right about the living room and the fireplace. But if there was a piano here, it’s long gone, and any hint of color was sucked out of the walls years ago.
I hear a groan that sounds like a footstep on the floorboards above us. “Did you hear that?” I whisper.
I look up. Watery light catches on the cobwebs that cling like draped sheets to the ceiling. Everything is quiet now.
Coralee shakes her head. “Probably just a rat. Come on.”
We walk through the living room and into a corridor with a few smaller rooms. Coralee points out each one. “Drawing room, bathroom, study,” she lists. She opens the door to the study, walks through it, and then swings open the one that leads back to the main entrance. “Oh, and coat closet,” she adds, pointing to the right wall of the study.
A chill trickles through me like someone has spilled ice water down my neck.
“How do you know all this?” I ask. The thought crosses my mind that she could have come in and scouted the place out one day on her way home from my house. But the door and the windows were all locked, and Coralee couldn’t have kicked the door open on her own.
“I’m not sure,” she replies, and I’m surprised to hear a shiver in her voice. “I don’t remember being here. I just remember here. Like I lived here in a past life or something.”
“Well, now you’ve seen it,” I say. “Let’s go.”
She follows me back into the main entry hall, where I almost run into the coatrack.
“Can we go upstairs first?”
My eyes catch on something and I freeze. The ratty raincoat I saw earlier. It’s not ratty at all. I reach my hand out. It’s not damp and dusty, like a coat that’s been rotting away in this house for years. It’s crisp and dry and smells of perfume. Like someone might have just taken it off.
“Coralee,” I whisper. I can barely hear my voice over the thrumming of my heart. “I don’t think we’re alone here.”
Coralee stands next to me, so that our shoulders are touching, and examines the raincoat. She reaches for the pockets and begins to pat them down.
“What are you doing?” I rasp, my throat suddenly dry. “We need to go. Now.”
“Maybe there’s something in the pockets that will tell us who—”
But before Coralee can finish, I hear a thud from upstairs and spin around. My heart does a running backflip in my chest, and a rush of adrenaline surges through me.
Then Coralee turns too, and I see her jump like a scalded cat, her spine arching in midair. She raises a shaking hand and points to the second floor landing, where we can both clearly see the shadowy outline of a woman standing motionless at the top of the stairs. She’s so still, I think she must be a dummy. Until she takes a step forward.
Coralee’s scream rings out. I grab her shoulders and turn her toward the door, and we tumble out of the house and down the stairs. Her foot falls through one of the holes in the wood, and she gasps.
“Help me!” she cries. I pin my shoulder under hers and lift her out and down the last two stairs.
Together, we sprint to our bikes and pick them up out of the weeds.
“This way!” I yell to Coralee, who starts to bike toward the main road, away from my house.
She shakes her head. “No way am I passing this place again today,” she says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I don’t want Coralee to go. I want to know how she knew everything about this house. I want to know who she thinks the woman is. But if I make her come home with me now, I’ll have to bike back out here with her later, which means I’ll have to pass the house by myself to get home again.
So I start pedaling and yell, “See you tomorrow!” over my shoulder.
And then I ride like the devil himself is chasing me.
The Voice on the Phone
I CAN’T SLEEP THAT night, and it has nothing to do with the angry music Roddie is blasting. My head reels, and every time I close my eyes, I see the silhouette of the woman stand
ing at the top of the stairs. Surely no one would choose to live there if they had another place to go. She must be a squatter.
Unless.
I remember the feeling I had when we first walked into the house, like someone else was there beside us.
“No,” I whisper aloud. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
And even if there were, that wouldn’t explain the raincoat. Right?
Finally, I throw my covers off and pick up the phone sitting in the cradle on my dresser. It’s late, but I’m sure Coralee will still be awake. She told me she practices violin every night for two hours after she finishes all her homework. I have to talk to her. I rummage in my backpack for the sheet of paper where she wrote down her number weeks ago. When I find it, I pick up the phone, but there’s no dial tone.
I listen for a moment and hear a man’s voice. Not my dad’s, or Roddie’s, or Grandpa Ike’s. But the voice on the phone is familiar.
“—have just been so hard. On all of us, but her mother is taking it the worst.”
A pang of hurt shoots through me, skewering me like I’m a human kebab. I know that voice. It’s a voice I never thought I’d hear again. One I never wanted to.
It’s Mr. Reid. Kacey’s father.
“I’m sorry, Rick. When we got your message this morning, we thought maybe—”
“No, but thanks for calling back. I feel very—”
I press the red “end” button on the phone and let it fall onto the floor. Then I drag myself back to bed and curl into a ball. My mouth goes sour, and the room starts to spin.
I lie still, the covers above my head, letting my breath in and out in careful measures. Just like I did the nights after the incident. I know if I lie here long enough, the room will stop spinning.
The shadow woman is pushed from my mind completely.
A real ghost takes her place.
I stuff my pillow over my head, trying to block out the sound of Mr. Reid’s voice.
And the words that have haunted me since Boston.
You killed her, Ethan Truitt.
What I Remember from after the Incident
1. My hands, sticky with dark blood.
2. Yelling for help until Mrs. Juarez, Briana’s mother, ran out of the house and found us.
3. Being frozen at Kacey’s side. Mr. Juarez shouting for me to move out of the way.
4. Someone screaming her name.
5. Mrs. Juarez pulling me away from Kacey and holding me.
6. Loud, flashing lights.
7. Spinning darkness.
8. Waking up to mechanical ticks and beeps, bright plastic lights, and a sore throat.
9. Telling Mom and Mrs. Reid about the dare and the tree branch and the rock; Mom smoothing the hair from my forehead, whispering, “It’s okay, you’re okay,” because she didn’t understand what I was telling her.
10. Asking about Kacey. “Where is Kacey, is Kacey okay, when can I see Kacey?”
11. Whispers outside my room.
12. Driving home with Mom and Dad in the rain.
13. Staring at Kacey’s empty house, her dark window, willing her to come home.
14. More darkness. Darkness that just wouldn’t lift until . . .
15. A light flashing on in Kacey’s window.
Eavesdropping
SO MUCH OF THE days after the incident still blurs into a blank in my mind. I’ve seen TV shows where someone loses their memory and spends the whole hour trying to put together the pieces. But I’m grateful I don’t remember more than I do.
The dare. The tree branch. The rock.
The light in Kacey’s window.
The square of white paper.
You killed her, Ethan Truitt.
After running over the list of things I remember in my head a couple hundred more times, I finally fall asleep for a few hours, waking up to an ashy sky.
I can’t go back to sleep once I’m awake, and I’ll have to get up for school soon anyway, so I go downstairs and pour myself a glass of milk.
I tiptoe past Grandpa Ike’s room and Mom’s study. But as I’m passing Mom and Dad’s room, I hear my name. I pause outside their door. Eavesdropping is why I couldn’t sleep last night and what will probably keep me awake again tonight.
On the other hand, why are they talking about me?
I press my ear up to the door.
“—just stirred up a lot of emotions that I would have liked to forget about for a while.”
“But we don’t need to tell Ethan that Rick called, do we?” says Mom.
“No, of course not,” says Dad. “But it just started me thinking about everything again. Ethan was so close with Kacey. I worry that his new friend—”
“Coralee.”
“Right, Coralee. What if she’s just his substitute for Kacey? What if he’s using her as an excuse not to move on, not to process his emotions?”
I wonder if Dad has been talking to Dr. Gorman. It sure sounds like it.
There’s a pause, and I hear one of them open the wardrobe.
“You think he should start going to therapy again?” Mom asks.
“I think we should be cautious about how much time he spends with Coralee. I don’t want him to get too attached to her. What do we know about her, anyway? Besides the fact that she got expelled from boarding school, that is? What if she’s taking advantage of him? He’s so vulnerable right now.”
“She does tell some interesting stories,” Mom admits. She sounds uncomfortable. “But she’s a lovely girl. Very different from Kacey, but lovely.”
I hear footsteps moving toward me and run on light feet back to my room. I dive through my door just as I hear theirs creak open.
I listen as they move downstairs and into the kitchen. My heart is pulsing in my ears, and it’s not just because I was almost caught eavesdropping.
Is Dad right? Is being friends with Coralee just my way of replacing Kacey? Is Coralee somehow “taking advantage” of me? What did Mom mean by “interesting stories?” Did she mean stories like stories, or stories like lies?
I think of Coralee leading me through the Blackwood house, pointing out where everything would be. Was it some kind of trick after all?
I wish I could talk to Kacey. She would know what to do.
But then, if I could talk to Kacey, I wouldn’t be here.
I pull the covers up over my head again, and I don’t move until Mom comes to shake me awake.
Space
WHEN I WALK INTO homeroom, I don’t make eye contact with anyone, especially not Coralee. Ms. Silva announces the winner of the red wolf diorama contest, who, depressingly, is Suzanne. Her diorama of the pup den will be sent to the wolf preserve to be displayed for visitors. After everyone applauds, Suzanne’s little doll ears go annoyingly pink with pleasure, homeroom is dismissed, and I hurry out into the hall.
I don’t make it far before I feel someone tugging on my sleeve.
“Hey,” Coralee says. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I reply. “I just need to—”
“Because we have to talk about yesterday,” she chitters. “I have to tell you—”
“I need to—” I interrupt, pointing toward the bathroom. I make a beeline for the door before she can object, and I decide to stay in there until everyone else has already gone to first period. I stand by the hand dryer and pretend to be finishing homework that’s due today. When I hear the bell ring, I peek out the door. Coralee is gone. I walk to health, where we’re watching another movie (today it’s cardiovascular disease), and slip into an empty desk in the front of the room at the opposite corner from where Coralee and I usually sit.
“You’re late, Truitt,” Coach Sluggs barks.
“Sorry, Coach.”
Suzanne and Maisie sit in the two desks to my left. They’re laughing about something, but their giggling stops when I sit down. Suzanne shoots me a suspicious glance, then writes something on the corner of her paper and shoves it toward Maisie, who nods wisely.
<
br /> I can’t see Coralee, but I can feel her eyes on me: a silent, questioning rebuke.
I dodge her for the rest of the day, trying to remember everything I’ve ever heard Roddie say about how to break up with a girl. He went through a lot of them before he got together with Grace.
Not that Coralee and I are breaking up. We weren’t dating or anything like that. I just need some space. I sit next to Herman in science and English and stay with Ms. Silva to do extra credit during lunch. I don’t want to have to sit next to Coralee and wonder if Dad was right, if being friends with her is just my way of forgetting about Kacey. I don’t want to listen to another one of her stories and wonder if she’s telling the truth.
After school, I hide out in the gym until I’m sure Coralee will give up and go to Mack’s without me. And when I go home, I cycle the long way around Main Street so I won’t pass Mack’s Hardware Store at all.
The Ethan I Was Before
WHEN I GET HOME after school, Grandpa Ike’s truck is in the driveway, and Mom and Dad are working in the yard, pulling up weeds and replacing them with new plants.
“Where’s Coralee?” Dad asks, taking a sip from his water bottle and spilling some down his shirt.
“She had something to do after school, I think.”
Mom and Dad exchange a silent look. Since the incident, they have perfected the art of the silent look. I think sometimes they have whole conversations that way. Dad pushes his glasses up the ridge of his nose and lifts his chin approvingly.
“You look tired, Ethan,” Mom says. She takes off her gardening glove and touches the back of her smooth hand to my forehead. “You don’t feel hot. Are you sick?”
I shake my head. She runs her fingers through my hair. “Why don’t you go lie down for a while anyway? You have dark circles under your eyes.”
Her voice trembles with a chord of worry, one I haven’t heard since before Coralee started coming around.
“Thanks, Mom.” I can’t muster the energy to force any enthusiasm into my voice. “I think I will.”
I almost wheel my bike over Roddie when I take it into the garage. I see his legs sticking out from under the Fixer-Upper just in time. But he must hear me, because he scoots out from under the truck, brushing his hands together. Then he stomps off into the kitchen without a glance in my direction.
