The House

by Christina Lauren

  “I found a picture in the bathroom a few years ago,” he said. “The wood in there swells sometimes from the humidity, and I pulled out one of the drawers that had been getting stuck. The photo was taped to the bottom.”

  Delilah didn’t comment on how odd it was to find a photograph purposely affixed that way, like someone had deliberately hidden it—a thought Gavin had had enough times for the both of them—instead asking, “But how did you know it was her?”

  “There was a baby carriage in the background,” he explained, “this rickety old thing that had to have come from an antique store or a flea market or something. I think she was—well, from the pictures I’ve seen—a little strange? Eccentric maybe? She had this long wavy hair and wore all these drapey things. She was beautiful but sort of a hippie, or something. Anyway, the stroller. It had these things hanging from the hood. An arrowhead, a feather, a wooden bear, some coins, and a few things I couldn’t make out. I recognized some of them. I’ve had the arrowhead as long as I can remember. I’m pretty sure the carriage was mine.”

  Gavin wondered if Delilah would think this was too little to draw a conclusion from, but she was already bursting with more questions. Turning to face him, Delilah bent her leg and brought it up to rest on the bench between them, her knee pressed into his hip. And in what seemed like a completely natural move, she reached for his hand, holding it in both of her own.

  “Have you ever asked anyone about your parents?”

  “I don’t honestly know where to start without making people realize that I’m alone there,” he said, and then swallowed heavily. “I’m cared for. I’m loved. If Social Services or whoever knew that I didn’t have parents, they’d take me away. They’d put me in foster care and take House apart. When I was old enough to realize that. . . I knew enough to know how bad it could be.”

  “So where did she go?” she said to herself, looking down at his fingers. “That’s what we have to figure out.”

  This is where Gavin usually stopped thinking. It was just too much to imagine she had been in an accident, leaving House to care for him or—worse—that she’d purposefully left him there alone.

  But in true Delilah fashion, she would not be deterred.

  “There has to be an explanation we can find without letting people know you’ve been alone.. . .” She rubbed his middle finger with the tip of her thumb. “A way to keep you both safe.”

  This close it was impossible to miss the way her eyelashes looked resting against her cheeks when she blinked, or how her forehead furrowed in concentration. She twisted her fingers with his, examining them one by one. His hand looked positively massive next to hers, giant palms with long spindly fingers smudged with ink. His mind had started to bend away from the topic, and he was just starting to imagine how his large hands would look on parts of her body he hadn’t seen before, when she spoke, snapping his attention back to her.

  “You don’t think,” she began, then paused, chewing on her bottom lip. The parts of Gavin that were distinctly boy took notice; he even licked his own lips in response. “You don’t think the house had anything to do with—”

  Ice filled Gavin’s veins, and he leaned forward, placing his fingers over Delilah’s mouth to silence her. “Don’t say that,” he whispered, eyes darting around the room. Even the idea of House doing something malignant made his stomach do a hideous flip. To imagine House hearing them talk about it like that made him dizzy.

  Had he just felt a shuffle from under the floor? A slither? The part of Gavin that had grown paranoid in the past twenty-four hours felt certain that something had moved—stretched or uncoiled—beneath his shoes. Carpet covered aluminum, aluminum rested on cement, cement covered dirt, and inside that dirt were rocks and bugs, the roots of trees. He froze, meeting Delilah’s startled gaze.

  “What is it?” she mumbled behind his fingertips, but he could only shake his head. Sweat pricked at the back of his neck, and Gavin closed his eyes, counted to ten before he stood and walked to the door, opening it just enough to peek out at the rows of trees that lined the sidewalk clear to Mulberry Street.

  To his neighborhood.

  Closing the door, he said, “She left me, Delilah. She left, and House didn’t. That’s all I know.”

  The walls had ears. The sky had eyes. And Gavin wondered if there were answers somewhere to questions he’d never thought to ask and where he would need to look to find them.

  • • •

  Gavin wasn’t sure if he was going crazy. How was it possible to feel so warm and secure one day and so paranoid the next? House hadn’t changed; he had. He’d become suspicious and untrusting, and as he made his way around the corner across from home, he felt a wave of guilt. House had protected him through winter storms and lonely days. It had fed him and clothed him and been everything he’d always needed it to be. Until Delilah.

  He wondered if this was what every parent and child went through. Growing pains, he reasoned. That was all this was. Despite what House wanted, Gavin wasn’t a little boy anymore, content with model airplanes and boxes of Legos. Things were changing, and they would both have to adjust.

  The gate creaked open and the air seemed to warm around him. Vines unfurled and gripped his T-shirt as he passed. Front Door opened as soon as he started his way up the walk. Smoke puffed from Chimney in black, sooty spirals, the clouds heavier and more persistent the closer to House he got. It reminded him of a dog who’d just heard their owner’s keys jiggle in the lock, and he could almost imagine a tail sprouting out of the back door, wagging wildly.

  His steps sounded on the porch, and he walked inside, the scent of warm cookies filling the air.

  “I’m home,” he said, just like he did every day.

  The furniture seemed to angle itself toward him; everything seemed to be listening. But for what? Everything was the same, and yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. That House was waiting.

  “Thanks for the cookies,” he said, crossing the gleaming floor and reaching for a plate already piled with fresh-from-the-oven chocolate-chip cookies. His favorite.

  House wouldn’t have made cookies if it had heard Gavin talking about his mother; instinctively, he knew it. But TV didn’t turn on. Piano didn’t play. He found a glass of ice-cold milk on the counter and carried them both to Kitchen Table, taking a seat and trying not to think. His unease didn’t come from a sense of fear, but rather that something had happened the day before, and both he and House were walking on eggshells.

  The entire feeling made Gavin think of a housewife who discovers a secret about her husband but doesn’t tell him immediately, instead letting him give himself away slowly, one word at a time, waiting until he makes a mistake. He just wasn’t sure which of them—he or House—was the one with a secret.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Her

  For the next few weeks, their relationship felt a little homeless. Gavin didn’t want to take her back to his house, and she insisted her parents would never let the two of them set foot in the door together. So they wandered the streets of their small town, talking about favorite candies and horror novelists, about movies and giant trees. He would sometimes kiss her on these walks—small touches and the occasional sharp nibble—but Delilah was almost constantly thinking about how she could find a way to press the front of her body all along the front of his. It was a tight sort of desperation that came from liking him more with every new piece of himself he shared and also needing to know that she stood a fighting chance if he ever had to choose between her and the house.

  She looked up and noticed they’d reached the place their walks always ended: her house. This was the point when, in their new routine of wandering, he would ask her a question and she would answer, stretch for his last kiss of the day, and then walk inside to stare at the wall until she could clear her mind of him enough to focus on her homework.

  What his question would be each day had become a game. On the days she demanded kiss after kiss on eve
ry street corner, he would end their walk with something innocent—Do you prefer red or green grapes? But on days she was wrapped up in talking, or thinking, he would invariably reel her in with something like, Do you ever sleep bare, without a stitch of clothing on?

  When he’d asked this two weeks ago, his eyes had become so black and his voice so low that Delilah’s skin caught fire and her soul slid from her body into his.

  She’d finally answered, “No. But now I will.”

  But one drizzly Thursday, when her house rose out of the street so abruptly, and Delilah was neither overly hungry for him nor quietly thoughtful, Gavin leaned down, licked her bottom lip before kissing it sweetly, and asked her where her parents were.

  She looked up, realizing the blue Chevy wasn’t at the curb and the gold Cadillac wasn’t in the driveway, and said, “I have no idea.”

  It wasn’t like the three of them had mastered the art of comfortable dinnertime discussion where future outings were shared. Her parents expected her to be home by sunset, do her homework, and wash the dishes after dinner. She expected her parents to cook and then watch the nightly news or read worn copies of romance novels. So she didn’t have a clue why both parents appeared to be gone, but nor did she waste another second. She grabbed Gavin’s hand and pulled him inside. For some unknown reason, she wanted him inside her house this time.

  His fingers shook a little around hers as they walked through the living room, dining room, and kitchen. He seemed more afraid of accidentally touching anything than she had been when intentionally touching things in his house, which, to be honest, Delilah found a little funny. Nothing here would reach out and grab him, tickle him, or shudder beneath him. Nothing, that is, except Delilah herself.

  He looked down at his feet as they squeaked across the floor. “Why is there plastic on your carpet?”

  “My mother doesn’t like dirty feet in the house, so she put plastic down over the places people walk.”

  Gavin didn’t say anything else, but his grip tightened until they reached the stairs, and he climbed up behind her as she grew hyperaware of the cloying scent: floral air freshener, cleaning chemicals, the plastic on the carpet.

  Her bedroom was essentially the same as every ten-year-old girl’s room anywhere, Delilah thought. Why had her parents never updated it between her visits home? It seemed funny that they should ignore Delilah’s growth as much as Gavin’s house seemed to ignore his.

  She closed the door behind them, and his long, dark form shadowed the entire room. It seemed like there was hardly space for them to move independently around each other.

  “You make my room look tiny,” she said, stepping up behind him. His attention moved away from her tiny bed and seemed to linger on a collection of ceramic unicorns on a shelf on the wall. The room was cluttered with her little-girl stuff, and she wondered if, for Gavin, it felt somehow both too dull in personality and too bright in color.

  Delilah thought of all the nights she’d stared at the ceiling lately, waiting for the thoughts of him to slip away so she could sleep. She’d spent so many nights in the dorms or at Nonna’s that even after being home for three months, she still felt like she was sleeping in someone else’s house.

  She didn’t realize she’d been staring at her bed until Gavin said, “I don’t think I’d be able to sleep here.”

  “Well, no. My father would kill you, for one, and we both wouldn’t—”

  “Not what I meant,” he cut in, sounding embarrassed. “I mean, it’s just so different. At school or work it’s easy to handle being in flat, inanimate spaces. But this room feels like it should be alive. . . and it isn’t.”

  “Most bedrooms aren’t alive. Someday when we’re older and we have—”

  “It’s okay,” he interrupted her, shaking his head quickly. “It’ll just take some getting used to when I’m over here.”

  Her brow furrowed, but she forced a small smile. The truth was, she knew it wouldn’t be easy for Gavin to ever live anywhere else, but someday he would. Whether he or the house knew it. “You know I’ll just drag you with me anyway,” she said, grinning, “so you may as well get used to houses being both this purple and this boring.”

  “Delilah,” he whispered harshly, stepping close enough for her to feel the vibration of his voice in his chest. “You can’t say things like that. I know it sounds crazy, but what if it can somehow hear you even here? I don’t want it to have any reason to freak out on you again.”

  She studied him, hating how dark and anxious his eyes had become. “I think you’re being paranoid.” But deep down, she didn’t. Not really. What she’d wanted was for him to agree with her, to tell her not to worry, that away from the house, they would be safe.

  Gavin shrugged, but he also seemed unconvinced. “Maybe.”

  Suddenly the room felt too small and colorful, as if they were standing in the heart of a wilting wildflower. She took his hand and led him back out of the house, needing air and not wanting to be home yet.

  “I want to walk some more with you.” She wanted another question from him at the end of the walk, something about kissing her, or leaving this town together, or what kind of house they’d agree on. Definitely not a question about her parents’ whereabouts.

  They walked, without discussion, toward the enormous park in the middle of town, with huge oak trees. She loved the idea of curling with him beneath one and reminding him that, in places like these, they were completely alone. And when she stopped in front of a tree and looked up at him, his lip snared between sharp teeth, her entire world reduced to the very simple desire to kiss him, for hours.

  The groove formed by the enormous roots felt, to Delilah, a bit like sitting in the hull of a boat. She felt mildly subterranean when she lay down and tugged Gavin over her. He resisted, all long arms and forever-long torso trying to figure out how to position his body above hers.

  “I’m worried I’ll crush you,” he said.

  Delilah spread her arms and shifted until she was comfortable on her back. “I’m not.” In fact, she half hoped he would.

  “I don’t feel like we’re alone here.” This time he whispered the words so she could barely hear him and looked back over his shoulder as if expecting to see a table, chair, or strip of spying wallpaper slithering through the grass.

  “Gavin, no one is here except us. We never get to be alone; will you just come here and kiss me?”

  Finally he gave in, shifting so he was over her, propped up on sharp elbows, the broad length of him making the space even darker and warmer. Gavin’s kisses were never particularly gentle—all edge and growl—but Delilah could tell he liked this angle, face to face, where he didn’t have to bend so far down or lift her from the ground. It was so new like this, and it felt wildly dangerous to be lying prone together in the middle of a public park on a school day.

  The rustle of the branches overhead grew louder even though the sound of the wind seemed to disappear, and Gavin jerked above her, looking up and around them at ground level. When his lips returned to hers, it was with a new kind of determination that she didn’t quite understand, but he turned slightly desperate and she found herself grateful for whatever seemed to have flipped a switch in him.

  The kisses grew deeper, touches firmer and braver, and soon he was rocking above her and she was moving up from below—chasing the same thing he was—wanting more and more and needing to stretch this moment into days. The sky seemed to have disappeared now, too, and from behind her closed lids it felt like midnight in this tiny cocoon. When she opened her eyes just to look at him, his were squeezed tightly shut and the branches just behind him somehow seemed closer than before, making their spot perfectly secluded.

  Delilah closed her eyes again and smiled against Gavin’s mouth, sliding her legs up along his sides. She felt his fingers tease down her arms to wrap around her wrists and trap them beside her hips. When he did this, her need for him became heavy and tangible; the bind by his fingers caused her to dissolve into som
ething dizzy, and incoherent, and shapeless. How did he know she would want him to be like this—demanding and capable and hungry?

  But somehow the hands that pinned her were also moving up her shirt and over the soft fabric of her bra. His mouth grew hungrier, wetter on hers, with teeth and sounds. He had grown wild, but a tickling awareness pricked across Delilah’s skin, as if she had touched a bare wire.

  “Gavin,” she murmured against his lips, trying to pull back and understand how he could pin her wrists while simultaneously touching her chest.

  “Touch me back?” He pushed his words and breath against her lips, and when their meaning took shape in Delilah’s head—he didn’t realize she was bound at her wrists and couldn’t touch him—daylight disappeared completely, and at once she had the sense of being surrounded. Delilah opened her eyes.

  The darkness wasn’t from the sun disappearing behind clouds or the simple cover of her eyelids over her eyes. It was the tree itself, bending to make a web around them of black, spindly branches that cut out the last beams of sunlight.

  Dark twigs curled possessively around Gavin’s back, their edges slipping beneath the hem of his shirt, into the sleeves and around his shoulders, spiraling down his biceps. Even still, he kissed along her neck, nibbled gently on her ear. “Delilah, please don’t stop.”

  Delilah dug her feet into the soft earth and tried to push out from beneath him. Swallowing a scream, she felt the thick twist of branches around her skin, pinching her. When she started to struggle in earnest, they unwound from her wrists with a slow slither. Gavin sat up more slowly, impatiently pushing the branches out from under his shirt. They slipped away, slinking as if chastened.

  He knew, she thought with horror. All this time he knew the tree was moving, was crowding into his space and claiming him, and he didn’t even care.