“Six hundred and nine dollars, and you didn’t ask him?”
“I wasn’t sure. I mean, I’m pretty sure. He was the only one in there. He’s the only one who knows where I keep it.”
There are so many reasons why this is impractical. First, Caleb didn’t need the money. The reason he could afford private school, I learned, was because his father had set up a trust in his name, in his will. A lawyer was in charge of the account, but the money was his, and he received a monthly stipend on top of bigger items he’d sometimes get approval for, like school tuition. He didn’t have to worry about affording college, like Max. He didn’t need the scholarship, or a job. But none of those things mattered as much as what I said. “Caleb wouldn’t steal from you. You’re his best friend.”
He narrows his eyes. “And best friends never take each other’s things, right?”
The heat rises to my face, I can’t stop it.
He brushes past me, his anger focused on me instead of Caleb.
He searches the shelves, the boxes. Kicks the garbage can, reaches his hand into the empty boxes of food. Moves the leftover hangers. It’s a vortex. A storm. I picture a structure being torn metal from metal, limb from limb.
“Stop,” I yell, looking at what he’s doing to the room.
But he doesn’t hear me. Or he doesn’t want to. He runs his fingers between the mattress and box spring. Pushes it completely off, with a great thud.
He stops and slowly turns around.
I must’ve yelled again.
My hands are over my ears, and I slam my eyes shut from the roaring in my head.
He pries my hands off, gently. His mouth is saying he’s sorry, and he is, and so am I. He pulls me to his chest and I wrap my arms around his rib cage. I pull him so close it hurts.
“I’m sorry, Jessa,” he says once more. I feel the shudder in his chest, and I know he’s crying.
He leaves me there, frozen in this room. He doesn’t look up as he walks across the lawn, right past Eve and Mia, who don’t even notice him. He doesn’t even bother opening the gate. He launches himself over the fence, and he runs. He doesn’t stop.
It takes me a moment to realize that the noise from outside has stopped. And that something’s off in the room. Something more than the chaos and the anger and the lingering adrenaline. It feels colder in here, despite the fact that my heart rate has picked up and I’m breathing heavily. And then I realize what it is—as if a ghost is watching and wants to make himself known: the lights are out, the fan is off, there’s no red glow of light under his desk from the power supply. The sounds of the house, the ticking of the clock, above and below, echo and reverberate in the silence.
I’m standing beside the window, and feel the cold air seeping through the cracks at the base. I hold my palm to the sill, in the place where the wood gaps against the wall, a fine spider web of cracks running through. It feels like tiny tendrils of smoke, making their way into the room, taking over the house.
I’ve been inside the room like this once before, when all the noises were elevated, more focused, closer. And this feeling comes right back, an unsettling, like everything has been displaced, even myself. Like the walls lean too far, and the carpet bubbles up, and there’s a scent—debris and dust and things once buried, brought to the surface.
I close my eyes and imagine Caleb standing beside me in this room, with no light, no heat, no electricity. I hear the echo of his sigh. Feel the chill of the cold, seeping under the window seal. Feel him brush up against me when I shut my eyes, and me reaching out a hand for the shape of him in the darkness, coming up empty.
—
It was the end of November, nearly a year ago. A Friday night. We had been out at the movies with Max and Sophie, Hailey and a short-term boyfriend named Charles who was so short-lived I had almost forgotten about him. He may have only lasted this single date. There was nothing remarkable about him; he was no match for Hailey. I imagined, briefly upon meeting him, that he would become devoured by her, merely by standing too close.
I was telling Caleb this as we walked up the front steps of his house. “Devoured?” he asked, sliding his key into the lock.
“Or, like, absorbed into her aura,” I said.
“Hailey has an aura now?” he asked, his hand flat on the door.
“Yes,” I said, rubbing my upper arms. To make him laugh, I added, “It’s orange. Now hurry up.” I was shivering and bundled under several layers, aching for the heat inside the house. My curfew wasn’t for another hour and a half, and we were in the habit of utilizing every spare minute. We were at that stage where we couldn’t see enough of each other. Meeting for the two minutes between classes; him pulling me onto his lap in the cafeteria, until a teacher gave a curt shake of the head and I’d slide to the chair beside him; hanging out the ten minutes before practice, leaning close and talking until the very last possible moment.
It was the phase that Hailey made a face about, sticking out her tongue, mock-gagging. Give me my friend back, she joked, waving her arm in front of me like she was wielding an imaginary wand. Undo this curse. She smiles too much; it’s embarrassing.
Caleb paused as he pushed through the front door, as if he could sense something slightly off, even then.
“Hello?” he called into the empty space. His mom and Sean were supposed to be out, and his sister was at a sleepover.
He flicked a light switch, but nothing happened. I tripped over something I couldn’t see—a leg of the entryway table, maybe. But in the dark, everything felt slightly out of place.
Caleb tried another switch, cursed to himself. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said.
I felt, in the pitch dark, the shock of his skin against mine, unexpected, from nowhere. His fingers lacing through my own. “Wait here,” he said. And then he left me.
I heard him exit a door in the back of the house, presumably into the garage. The seconds ticked down, a wisp of cold brushed over my exposed skin, like something was alive inside this house.
“Jessa?” Caleb called.
“I’m here,” I called back. He seemed infinitely far away, though he was maybe one room, one wall beyond my sight.
“I tried resetting. The wiring is crappy, so sometimes that happens when the system is overloaded. But it’s out.”
Then I saw a light heading my way, his phone shining in the dark.
He grabbed my hand, pulled me up the stairs, the beam of light illuminating the steps in front of us. When we reached his room, he held the phone to his ear, and I could hear the ringing in the silence. The cold, from the lack of heat, seemed to grow as time moved on, and a shiver worked its way up my spine and over my arms.
I heard his mother’s voicemail pick up, no response from her. He said, “Electricity was shut off. In case you didn’t know.” And then he hung up the phone, and all I heard was his breathing, thick with something else—anger, I guessed.
And yet, I moved closer.
“Should you try the electric company?” I said.
He was silent for a moment, and I pushed open the curtains so that the moonlight shone through, a light spot on the rug, on him.
He sat on the edge of his bed, and he told me, with his head in his hands, “It won’t make a difference. They cut the power, because my mom and Sean didn’t pay the bill.”
I was trying to find a place for this information in my mind. Caleb, at our private school. Caleb, with his new lacrosse gear. Planning for a ski trip this winter. Everyone I knew may not have had money, but they weren’t lacking it in any substantial way—not in a way that would lead to something like this.
“But…,” I said. Anything I might say seemed both not enough and also too much. “You go to our school….”
He sighed. His arms reached for my waist, pulling me closer, so his forehead rested against my stomach. “My dad died when I was a kid,” he said. “There’s a trust in my name. I get a monthly stipend, in addition to using it for school tuition—but I don’t control it yet. I can�
�t just go get the money whenever I want.”
“Oh,” I said. So he had money, and his mom and stepdad didn’t.
“It’s not like I’m rich and they’re not,” he said. “It’s not going to last forever. But it will get me through college, maybe help with my first house….”
Then he pushed me back, abruptly, and stood on top of his bed, reaching up for the ceiling fan. The base was a metallic semicircle, and when he unscrewed the bottom, there seemed to be nothing there but the exposed wiring, tucked inside.
But he reached inside the metal compartment and pulled out an envelope.
He opened the top of the envelope, and I saw the thick stack of money. My eyes went wide. “You keep it there? What you get each month?” Banks are safer, I was thinking; there’s a reason for them, so our money is safe and insured.
He set his jaw, as if debating what to say. “You can’t be the only signature on a bank account until you’re eighteen. Some of the money already gets put toward the house bills, to keep me living in the lifestyle to which I am accustomed.” He said it in an official capacity, like he was repeating the words his mother or a lawyer had once used. “I’m trying to keep an eye on the rest.”
It took me a moment to understand what he was saying. That whoever else might sign the account with him could also take the money. I couldn’t imagine a parent doing that, and it made me angry on his behalf.
Though we were separated by the expanse of his bed, I thought we couldn’t get any closer than this. This sharing of secrets. The bond tightening between us. He counted off a stack of bills, replaced the money, and motioned for me to follow down the steps.
When we reached the kitchen, he left the money on the table and exhaled. “I have to get out of here.”
I pulled his hand, leading him back toward the front door, thinking Then let’s go. He followed me out to his car.
Sitting in his car, he turned the ignition, rested his head back, and said, “I can’t wait until I’m eighteen. And then college.”
And I realized he meant more than leaving his room, his house, in that moment. And that I too would eventually be left behind.
—
I think, now, of the things kept just out of sight in this room. Max has uncovered the hidden space between the mattress and box spring. The only thing there is the sealed strip of condoms, now on display. This was the point at which Max had stopped. When he’d frozen, and remembered I was standing here, watching. When he realized that he was unearthing not just Caleb but me.
I throw them into my purse—the things a mother shouldn’t see—and right the bed again.
I stand on the mattress like Caleb had once done, and unscrew the bottom of his ceiling fan. It falls off quickly in my hands, before I’ve had a chance to turn it. It’s empty. And inside, the wires are pulled lower, torn apart, as if someone has already been through here, and did not like what they found.
There’s nothing here. Nothing left. I wonder if maybe Caleb found a new hiding spot. I can still hear the blood pulsing inside my skull. Trying to understand Max’s words. Money, taken. Money stolen. It makes no sense, because Caleb had access to money, if he needed it.
But still, the thought lingers: money that maybe Caleb had used for something else that day, something that has nothing to do with me. Somewhere else to shift the guilt. Another possibility.
And yet: It was money that Max needs. And he took this room apart, in his fury.
I’m still standing on the mattress in the middle of the mess when I hear Eve and Mia come in from the backyard.
“Try the lights up there,” Eve says.
Someone walks up the steps, and I panic.
The shelves are a mess. The floor is a mess. The room is nothing like it should be, and I give up on trying to maintain an ordered chaos.
I jump down onto the carpet and start stacking all the books on the floor into a box.
But the footsteps stop at the bottom, at Mia’s room. “They’re not working,” Mia yells.
“Jessa?” his mother calls from down below. “Are you up there?”
“Yes,” I call. “The power’s off.”
“Just a short,” she says. “Hold on.”
I get back to work, and eventually the house reboots. A door closes below, and I know Eve has been out to the garage, to reset the power. The power source under his desk glows red. The light in the corner clicks on, the gust of heat from the vent lifting the hair off my neck, like a breath.
I keep stacking, trying to put the room back in some sort of order, in case Eve comes upstairs. One of the books, a paperback purchased Used (so says the yellow sticker on the back that he never peeled off), has tears in the edges of the back cover. When I flip to the front cover, it catches me around the throat in a heartbeat, remembering the last time I saw this. I found it for him near the end of the school year. Under the seat of his car.
We were driving to one of Julian and Max’s ball games in late May, some big playoff game, and I had my phone out, directing Caleb. The windows were rolled down, and the air smelled of spring and exhaust.
“Oh, crap,” Caleb said, craning his head at the sign overhead. “Toll.”
“How much?” I asked, scrambling.
I opened the glove compartment, but only found the car manual, a mini-flashlight, his insurance and registration cards. I ran my fingers through the cup holders, the side compartments in the doors.
“Check under the seat,” he said.
I pulled out a candy wrapper, three quarters—“I knew it,” he declared when I raised them in victory—and a book, facedown, spine broken down the middle.
“Some light reading?” I asked, holding it up to him. “What, can’t possibly get enough of The Grapes of Wrath?”
He grabbed it from me with one hand, his eyes drifting from the road momentarily. “You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve been looking for that forever. I had to go sit at the school library for thirty minutes until I finished, because Mrs. Laverne wouldn’t let me check it out, since there was a wait list. Not that anyone actually came to check it out that week, I might add.”
“And how exactly did it end up under your seat?”
He shrugged, slipping it into the gap beside his seat. He paid the toll, took the exit. “Guess it fell out of my bag. You must’ve kicked it under the seat.” But he was smiling when he said it.
I gasped. “Me?”
“Yeah. You can never sit still.” He put a hand on my leg for emphasis. The leg that I’d just tucked under the other, unbuckling for a moment to get more comfortable.
Then we passed a small sign with a town’s name on it and his fingers tightened slightly, kind of in play, kind of not. “Hey, I want to check something out first. Okay?”
“What?”
But he didn’t answer, and he ignored the directions I gave him. “Just, hold on.”
We drove for miles, past cornfields, into a more densely wooded area, down curvier roads. Eventually, he swung the car onto an unmarked drive down an unpaved road.
“There,” he said, nodding out the front window.
He eased the car to a slow stop, but left the engine running.
“Whoa.” We had pulled up alongside what looked like an old barn, blackened in sections and caved in, with boarded-up windows. “What is this place?”
He turned off the engine and grabbed the flashlight from the glove compartment. “Come on, want to check it out?”
I didn’t, really. But I didn’t want to sit in the car alone while Caleb did, either.
“Caleb, my parents will be worried if I don’t show up.” They would already be there by now, arriving with the team. And the game was set to start in ten minutes. Julian was pitching, and I should be there.
“Five minutes,” he said, brushing the comment aside.
The grass was overgrown and dry, dead around the perimeter, a scorched earth. The door was thin, and gave with the slightest shove. Inside smelled of exposed wood, singed plastic, mold. Caleb ha
d his flashlight in his hand and shone it across the floor, because the windows were boarded up. The floorboards were angled haphazardly, and seemed to give way underneath, to a blackened hole below. I heard birds flying by from outside the boarded-up windows.
Caleb laughed at my expression. “It’s just a house, Jessa,” he said.
“It’s about to collapse,” I said. “Caleb, don’t.” But he was already heading for the stairs.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, and I held my breath, listening to his steps, the door creaking open, more steps, a pause. Eventually, he made his way back downstairs, looked around the remains of the kitchen, and returned to the front door, where I had never left.
“Satisfied?” I asked.
He pursed his lips, his eyes taking in the rooms again. “I was born here,” he said.
“Oh.” I looked around again, placing the furniture from his house into these hollowed rooms instead, trying to see it as a home.
“I don’t remember it. I just wanted to see.”
And then my body stiffened. “Is this where…your dad…” But I let the thought trail. I felt the ghosts circling, smelled the fire, heard a baby cry.
“No,” he said. He brushed the hair from my face, stepping closer. “That was a car accident. I was five. I don’t remember this place at all. I don’t know what happened to it.”
—
Now I turn the book over in my hands. I don’t remember what happened after, with the book. I just know I found it in his car, and then forgot about it. We left the dilapidated home. Went to Julian and Max’s game. Had dinner with the team at a diner after to celebrate, the parents all sitting in half the restaurant, Caleb and I tucked in a booth with Max and a few of his friends on the other side. I left with my parents, after. He must’ve brought the book inside when he got back home, adding it to the collection on his shelf.
It looked like there was still a bookmark inside, which there hadn’t been that day. That day, it had been folded open, stuck at the place he’d left off. I thought of him coming back up here, rereading sections of the book. Putting it down, forgetting about it. I opened the book, to see where he’d given up.
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