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I take a sip of coffee. It is pretty good. I shrug. “I don’t know. I’m just happy to have something to do, I guess.”
Sherry’s eyes narrow at me. “I don’t know… there’s something different about you today…” Her face lights up like she’s just discovered the answer to whatever this mysterious thing is, but she doesn’t say anything. She just takes another sip of coffee.
“Why is there blue tape all over the floor?” I ask.
“You like that?” she asks, stepping back out of the office to admire the concrete floor. “I did that last night. It’s the floor plan for our haunted house.”
“I hope it’s not as confusing as it looks,” I say, squinting my eyes at the blue mess and trying to make sense of it.
“No worries. The tape is a life saver. We used it last year and it was a thousand times easier to set everything up when you knew where it was supposed to go.” She pats my arm again. Sherry really likes to touch people. “Let’s finish our coffee and by then the boys should be here and we’ll get started.”
“The boys?” I ask. She can’t possibly mean…
“We’re here!” a familiar voice echoes throughout the barn. “And we brought donuts!” another familiar voice calls out.
The good mood I’ve been in all morning suddenly raises to epic proportions as I step out of the office and see the two faces I’d hung out with all of yesterday afternoon.
“Well, look at that,” Tyler says to Marcus when I step into view. “I guess they’ll let anyone in here.”
I counter his cocky smile with one of my own. “I was thinking the same thing.”
A few older people who are about Sherry’s age arrive shortly after and we all get to work. The older people all have a job and know exactly what to do. Marcus and Tyler had set up the walls of the haunted house last year, so they’re put on wall duty again this year. I’m the only one without a predetermined job, and I would really, really like wall duty.
Sherry shakes her head when I suggest it. “They’re fine with the walls. I need you over here.” She motions for me to follow her and I glance back at Tyler. He pokes out his bottom lip, giving me a sad little puppy face that is so stupid it’s actually adorable. I don’t make a face back at him. He doesn’t need to know that I feel the same way.
My first job is kind of insanely easy—pulling price tags and packaging materials off all of the new decorations and sorting them by placing them in the appropriate blue taped shape on the floor. Then when the walls are assembled, some look like theater backdrops and others are just PVC piping with black shiny vinyl sectioning off sections into walls, it actually looks like the beginnings of a haunted house. And it’s huge.
Marcus climbs up to the visible rafters in the ceiling and hangs various items from the joists. One is an empty plastic boulder on a rope that will be thrown down to the visitors, barely stopping in the air before crashing into them. It doesn’t seem very safe, but Marcus promises me that it is.
I’m stretching tons of black extension cords on rollers up and down all the aisles and duct taping them to the floor when Grandpa’s watch slides down my elbow and gets stuck on the roll of tape around my wrist. Seeing it jars me out of Halloween planning mode and back to reality, and I realize that for the first time since I’ve been in Salt Gap, hell for the first time in a long time, I am happy.
Really, really happy.
I press the tape against the concrete, smoothing out both sides with my fingers. Then I drag the extension cord out of the roller a few feet at a time and slide backwards, preparing to slap another piece of tape on it. Only my back presses against something, something warm, something moving. I jump, flailing backwards and trip over my roll of duct tape as it falls off my wrist.
Tyler’s hand grabs my elbow, gripping tightly to prevent me from falling. “Whoa,” he says, tiling his head as he lets me go. My wide eyes return to normal. It was just Tyler. It wasn’t a monster. I can’t believe I jumped like that. “It barely looks like a haunted house in here,” he says, lifting a massive sledge hammer covered in fake blood and cobwebs up over his shoulder, lumberjack style. “Why are you so jumpy?”
He pokes me in the stomach with his free hand. I roll my eyes. “I’m not jumpy. I was lost in thought.”
“I wasn’t looking or anything, but that hot pink thong you’re wearing was hanging out the back of your jeans just now.” He gives me this fake concerned face, and my hands instinctively slap against my back, feeling the waistband of my jeans. But of course, since I’m standing up now, I don’t feel anything. “Well if you weren’t looking, then it doesn’t matter,” I say, lifting my chin and turning around. My face flushes a deep red, so I bend down (carefully this time) and attempt to go back to taping down the extension cord, just so he won’t see me blushing.
He chuckles to himself and heads to the next area of the haunted house. “Hey, Robin,” he says. I look up but can’t see him. “Yeah?” I call back, wondering where he is. If these fake plastic walls weren’t up, we’d probably be very close to each other. There’s shuffling sounds to my left and then the distinct sound of metal on concrete as he probably sets down the sledgehammer. “You want to hang out tomorrow?” he asks. His words are softer than usual, almost hesitant.
“I promised Miranda we’d go shopping since it’s Sunday and she’s finally off work,” I call back, feeling weirdly relieved that I can’t see his face right now. “But maybe after?”
“Cool,” he says. I’ll bring dinner. I won’t bring a movie because you have tons of those already.”
“Do I get to pick which one we watch?”
I hear him sigh. “I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have a choice even if I said no.”
A smile hits me. One of those goofy, hard to contain smiles. “It’s like you’ve known me forever.”
Chapter 4
I wake up to the smell of bacon. Maple bacon. I roll over in bed, turning to face the window where the sun has just risen over the horizon. It’s Sunday, Miranda’s only day off work. I’m going to take her shopping—at least that’s what my personal plan has been since the beginning of the week. Miranda will probably whine about not wanting to be seen in public looking like a ‘fat sea cow’ and I’ll tell her she’s so not a fat sea cow and that she’s an adorable pregnant chick. Then she’ll sigh and stick out her tongue and begrudgingly agree to go with me.
And then we’ll have an awesome day. Because I am just a tiny bit tired of hanging out in town for the last week and I would really love to get out of here and see some unfamiliar faces in unfamiliar stores.
