We’re in a dining room. Music is playing loudly from a speaker I can’t find. The table is long and draped with flimsy lace that is full of holes. Decaying food rots on fine china, crawling with what I truly hope are some kind of fake insects.
I stare in disgust at the display, and when I glance at Stevie, her expression matches what I imagine mine must be. “This is nasty.”
I nod in agreement, but before I can respond, a teen boy dressed in an all black outfit painted to look like a skeleton comes running out of the hallway on the opposite side of the table, zipping the fly of his pants.
“Shit, sorry. I had to take a pee break. I was supposed to scare you,” he says. He glances between the two of us, his eyes pleading. “Don’t tell my boss. He caught me hitting my vape in here yesterday and told me I’m on thin ice.”
Stevie rolls her lips together to keep from laughing, and I have to fight against it myself. But I tell the kid, “Secret’s safe with us.”
“Thanks, man,” he says and runs to what I’m assuming is his mark at the head of the table. “Would you mind screaming? To sell it for the boss?”
I lift a brow, but Stevie lets out a blood curdling scream that makes me levitate. I turn to her, eyes wide, only to find her grinning, teeth bright in the darkness.
“You’re insane.”
She grabs onto my arm this time, abandoning my jacket, and pulls me toward the hallway. “This is fun.”
We make our way through the kitchen where a man covered in fake blood hacks at what looks like entrails on a red-stained cutting board, then through another hallway before heading up a set of stairs. They’re narrow, forcing Stevie to let go of my arm, but I feel her at my back again, the tugging of her weight on my jacket. Everywhere she touches sets off fireworks beneath my skin, making my blood heat despite the chill in the house.
When we get to the top of the stairs, she reaches for my arm again. The upstairs is filled with childish laughter that seems to float frombehindthe walls. A woman sobbing in a four-post bed, thrashing beneath the sheets and screaming at the ceiling. When a door slams beside us, Stevie inches even closer, her hand slipping from my arm to grab my hand.
I can feel every place our skin touches, each pinpoint sparking, and I can’t focus on anything else as we make our way up another set of stairs to an attic that’s shrouded in darkness. It’s eerily silent. The door swings shut behind us, groaning on its hinges.
Stevie’s hand tightens on mine. I feel her tugging me back in the direction of the door, hear her fumbling for something. All at once, dozens of candles, presumably fake, flare to light. A man covered in deep gashes, fake blood oozing from them, stands in the middle of a pentagram, chanting unintelligibly.
“Nope,” Stevie says, decisive, pulling me handily back toward the door.
She rips it open and tears down the stairs, me in her wake. We don’t stop until we’re back downstairs, following the signs leading us out the back door. Cold night air rushes into our lungs as we stop on the back porch, catching our breath. Stevie’s eyes lock on mine, and a slow smile builds on her face before laughter slips out of her. Music on the wind.
“I don’t think we’re cut out for haunted houses.”
“No,” I agree. “We’re not.”
We.
That’s new.
I think I like it. Too much.
Wefoundamoonshinebooth on our way back to the car. Growing up in Appalachia, I’d partaken of my fair share of moonshine, but Jack said he’d never tried any. He picked out a few different jars and checked out, me shaking my head the entire time.
“How strong can it really be?” he asked me, catching my amused smile.
“Just you wait.”
Now, we’re back at the cabin, parked in front of a fire we made in the stone fire pit out back, drunk from taste testing the various bottles.
“It’s stronger than I was anticipating,” Jack says, his head rolling across the back of the Adirondack chair to face me. His words are slurring together just a touch. In the flickering firelight, his eyes are glassy, his cheeks flushed from the alcohol and the cold. He looks good. Messy, relaxed.
“I tried to warn you.”
He takes another sip of moonshine from the coffee mug I picked out for him at a booth selling ceramics by a local potter.I told him it was a perfect keepsake, his own mug to drink his fancy coffee from. He gave me an indulgent smile, shook his head, and purchased it without a word. But when we got home, he carefully peeled back the paper it was wrapped in, washed it, and carried it out with us to the fire pit.
“Do you know anything about the stars?” he asks. He’s turned away from me, staring instead up at the wide expanse of black above us, dotted with pinpricks of light.
I shrug, pull the flannel blanket tighter around my shoulders, and say, “Just the basics, I guess. You?”
When I glance over at him, he nods, eyes still fixed on the sky. “I was really into astronomy as a kid. Used to check out all kinds of books on it from the library and read them in bed while I waited for my mom to get home when she worked late shifts.” His voice is soft, the way it always is when he talks about his mom. “She’d come home and find me reading with a flashlight and would tell me I could get up. Evan slept like the dead, so we would go outside and sit on the balcony. She’d ask me to tell her about the stars, to point out the constellations.”
