Page 24 of Play Nice

We get stoned and have sex in the back seat of his car like we’re sixteen.

Then he takes me to the local diner, and we order breakfast even though it’s nine p.m. We sit quietly across from each other in a booth, waiting for our food.

He makes a pyramid out of those little packets of jam.

I fidget with my necklace, make the snake dance.

I could attempt conversation, but I’m beginning to wonder if there’s anything left for us to talk about. Maybe we’ve exhausted our chemistry. Maybe we’re too high. Maybe I’m too tired. Maybe I’m busy wishing I could think about something other than Mom’s demons, both figurative and literal.

“Here we go,” says the waitress, dropping off plates of pancakes and eggs and bacon and a giant Belgian waffle. “Enjoy.”

“This is a ridiculous amount of food,” I say to Austin, who looks disappointed at the destruction of his jam pyramid, which was knocked over by the plate of scrambled eggs.

“Well, seemed like a good idea twenty minutes ago,” he says. “Now I want disco fries.”

“Shh. Don’t let the bacon hear you. You’ll hurt its feelings.”

“Sorry,” he says. “Didn’t mean to offend.”

“We made our choices and now we must live with them,” I say, stabbing a pancake. “Be adults.”

“Nothing about this is adult,” he says. “We’re eating breakfast after dark at a shitty diner because you don’t want to go home. Don’t want to deal with what’s there.”

“That took an unexpected turn to earnestness,” I say, reaching for the syrup.

“I’ve grieved a parent,” he says, looking me in the eye. I wonder if mine are as bloodshot as his. He’s so pretty, even with his red eyes. His natural lashes look like the ones girls I know pay for. “You can talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

I consider my responses. I could tell him how pretty he is, change the subject.

I could be combative, say I’m not grieving because it’s impossible to grieve someone I didn’t know, whose memory is shrouded in lies.

Or I could confess that I think my house is in fact haunted.

That for all her mistakes, all her fictions, all the chaos she created, Mom might have been right about Edgewood.

But if I tell him that, and he doesn’t believe me, this will be over.

If I tell him and he does believe me, I’m not sure what then.

“It’s not grief,” I say, which is truth adjacent. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m not avoiding the house because it makes me sad. I’m just used to the city. To constant movement. People everywhere. I’m a social creature.”

“Fair enough,” he says. He’s not convinced, but he can take a hint. “Lucky for you the neighbors are friendly.”

“Lucky me.”

—

Austin accepts my invitation to sleep over. I take him to Leda and Daphne’s room, press the two twin beds together. It’s not comfortable, but it’s fine. More comfortable than being here by myself.

The house feels different with him here. It’s smellier—he stinks of diner grease and weed and sweat. Louder—he snores. Warmer—he spoons me, which usually I hate but currently don’t mind, and is also necessary given the size of the mattresses.

I drift in and out of restless sleep.

At some point in the night, the door creaks open, the hinges holding out the note, and I become aware that there’s something in the room with us.

I keep my eyes shut tight, try to ignore the suspicion and go back to sleep.

I’m almost there when I feel the blanket slowly falling away.

My feet are exposed. My ankles. It’s cold in the room, though I swear it wasn’t a second ago.

Sweat freezes at the nape of my neck, at my temples.

My toes go numb. A weird sensation travels up from my heels to my calves, a phantom tickling.

There’s breathing that could be my breathing. That could be Austin’s breathing. But then, why do I feel breath on my face? He’s behind me, and I’ve been holding in an exhale for so long my lungs are burning.

I could be dreaming. I could be imagining things. I could be remembering.

One night, I woke up to Mom stumbling down the stairs, down the hall.

Heavy footsteps. Thud thud thud. I never slept with my door all the way shut, and I opened one eye to see the slice of light from the hall was interrupted by her figure.

She stood in my doorway, watching me, breathing intensely.

Panting. I shut my eye and pretended to be asleep. But I could feel her watching.

Eventually, I opened my eyes, and she was gone.

I open my eyes now, anticipating nothing, an empty room. What I see are two giant pale eyes staring back at me.

The next thing I see is the floor. It comes up to meet me. The impact makes everything dark.

“Shit! Are you okay?” Austin gently turns me over onto my back. “Fuck. Did I knock you out of bed? I’m so sorry. Clio? Breathe.”

I gasp. I only remember how to inhale.

“Clio,” he says. “Breathe. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

The exhale is cut short by a sob.

“Clio. Hey.”

“I’m fine,” I say, sitting up and pushing my hair out of my face. “Bad dream.”

“How’s your head? Your face? Do you want ice?”

“No, I don’t want ice. I don’t even have ice,” I say, looking around the room to see where it went. If it went. Whatever might have been here. “I’m fine .”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a flash of movement. A shape. A shadow. A strange protrusion. Long and narrow. It moves like a serpent behind the wall. Under the paint. It glides toward the door, and then it vanishes around the corner into the hall.

“Okay,” Austin says.

“Okay…” I don’t want him to know that I’m afraid. He can’t know. I manage a deep breath. Inhale. Exhale.

“But just in case,” he says, tilting my face so he can look at me. “I want to make sure you’re not concussed.”

“Is that it? Or do you want to look deep into my eyes because you’re a hopeless romantic.”

“Both,” he says. “How’s your vision? Blurry? Any double vision? Shadows? Squiggles?”

“What? No,” I say, defensive.

“All right,” he says. “Okay.”

He helps me up and back into bed. He props a pillow behind me.

“I have a queen bed,” he says. “Just throwing that out there. It’s a queen in my mom’s basement, but it’s a queen.”

“Will Dawn judge me?” I ask, though I’m not sure I care. I’d take her judgment for somewhere else to sleep. “I like your mom. I don’t want to scandalize her.”

“Nah, she’s cool,” he says.

I get up and start to get dressed. “Let’s go.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now,” I say, tossing him his shirt. “Take me to your queen.”

—

We wake up to his obnoxious alarm. He tells me I can stay in bed, and I take him up on his offer. I go back to sleep.

My phone wakes me up again sometime later. My group chat with Veronica, Hannah, Emma, Samantha, Kiera, and Kaleigh. Kaleigh just announced her partnership with SLIP, a loungewear brand. I congratulate her in emojis. I can’t be bothered with words.

Veronica hits me and Hannah on the side, in our more exclusive group chat. This is going to be a DISASTER! They sent me a sleep set once and it literally fell apart in the wash. Like literally disso lved.

It’s sweatshop pajamas , Hannah replies.

I almost ask them how much they think she got paid, but then I realize I don’t care and that I have a terrible headache.

I have missed texts from Daphne and Leda on our sister thread. Daphne sent us a picture of the sun rising over the Hudson Valley. Leda with the sunrise over Boston. The sun is already up here; I have nothing to contribute.

They wouldn’t want a picture of the sun rising over Edgewood Drive anyway. No matter how pretty.

I yawn and sit up, look around the room. Austin’s room. It was dark and late last night, and he was with me, so I couldn’t snoop.

Brave of him to leave me here alone.

Light pours in through the egress window. He has no curtains.

His sheets are plaid. Teenage boy sheets.

His furniture appears to be Ikea. He has a bookshelf with books on it, a good sign.

Framed artwork, also promising. If I found out a man with posters taped to his wall was giving me multiple orgasms, I might have gone into crisis.

I go through his drawers but find nothing offensive. His clothes are clean and folded. His pay stubs are sad but organized.

His laptop is password protected.

Once I’ve exhausted my search, I realize there’s nothing to do but leave. Go back to the house.

I worry I’ll run into Dawn on my way out and, lovely as she is, I don’t feel like making small talk, not with this lump of dread in my throat and pounding inside my skull.

Thankfully, she’s not around. My exit is quick and uninterrupted.

My walk down the street is a funeral march.

I catch myself playing with my necklace again, my snake charm with its bright diamond eyes. It occurs to me that maybe the reason why I’m so attached to it is because I received it the night Mom died.

It’s not grief, I told Austin just hours ago. But it could be. I’ve never grieved before. Maybe I’m underestimating it. Maybe I wrote that response on the sketchpad. Maybe I didn’t really see big pale eyes in the dark. Maybe I’m worrying about the wrong demons.

I imagine my mother drunk, walking toward me up Edgewood. Seeing her like Dawn saw her for the final time. Disheveled, rambling, slurring. It’s not hard to picture—her three sheets to the wind, making no sense—since she’s inebriated in about half of what memories I do have of her.

And I was stoned out of my mind last night.

My fear of the uncanny dissipates as I make it to the house, as I make amends with logic, as I swear off self-medicating.

I punch in the code, and the front door swings open.

I climb the stairs slowly.

The air in the house is stagnant.

With every step I take, the dread creeps back in. The fear. My neck prickles. I shiver, even as sweat drips from the thick nest of my hair, as it pools in the small of my back.

I reach the top step, and I’m suddenly disoriented, like I’m being held upside down. The world has capsized, turned on me. Nothing makes any sense. My hands slap to my face to hold it together so my jaw doesn’t fall loose.

What am I looking at? What am I seeing? How?

There’s paper scattered everywhere. Pages ripped out of my sketchpad.

I trip, land hard on my knees.

It’s the same word scribbled on all of them, on all the pages.

Hello

Hello

Hello

Hello

Hello

Hello

I crawl forward, start to gather them up, crumple them. I want to set them on fire. Pretend this never happened. I want to scream, so I scream. I scream until I can’t anymore.

Until I find the sheet with a different message, that shuts me up.

Remember?

I go down the hall to Leda and Daphne’s room. I grab my suitcase and I call a car to take me to the train station.

I wait outside.

It wanted my attention, and so it got my attention.

It’s real.

It’s real.

It’s real, and now I know it. But I also know that no one will believe me.