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Joseph laughs. “Do you honestly think I’m too uppity to enjoy the sheer convenience of a frozen pizza?”
“You talked about going fox hunting the other day, and you grew up in a house with a name,” I say.
“Touché.”
Outside, rain pelts the window, and thunder claps so loud it shakes the windows. I can’t help myself. I jump.
“Are you scared of storms?” Joseph asks as we head into the kitchen.
“Not usually,” I say.
Joseph grabs the frozen pizza from the freezer and flips the box over to read the instructions, “This place does get a little eerie when it rains,” he says.
“A little?”
“I guess I’m desensitized to it. I grew up here, after all.”
“Was that strange for you?” I ask.
Joseph crosses the room and turns the dial on the oven. “I didn’t know anything else. But, yeah, I mean, kids are cruel. They used to tease me on the playground and say that I was next. Then, on Devil’s Night, I’d want to go out with my friends and all they would want to do was summon a demon in my stupid attic.”
“Not to be that girl, but I spent plenty of sleepovers trying to make my own Ouija board.”
Joseph laughs. “Yeah, but you’re, well, you. I wouldn’t expect anything less. I will say the first time I ever spent the night alone in here, I was freaked out. I was thirteen, and my mother was visiting her sister in Seattle. I told her I’d be fine but slept with the lights on.”
He slips the pizza into the oven. We spent the next half hour joking and talking. He asks about what’s happening with the library and doesn’t even joke about the diary. It’s times like these when his strong jaw is illuminated by the atmospheric glow of the warm kitchen lights when I find myself thinking that I might like Joseph as someone more than an infuriating friend.
That feeling immediately disappears when I discover that Joseph uses a knife and fork when he eats pizza.
“Okay, you at least have to let me make fun of you for this,” I say.
“It’s more sanitary this way.” He scowls, cutting into a piece of pepperoni.
“Yes, because God forbid your million-dollar hands touch tomato sauce.”
“For your information, my hands are insured for two million dollars.
I wait for him to let up on the joke, but he’s serious.
“How?”
“Well, as the CEO of TritonTech, I’m a very important man.”
“So, you’re telling me that if someone tries to shiv you during a handshake, you’ll be covered by insurance?”
“That’s a vulgar way to put it, but yes.”
Suddenly, an electric screech pierces the air. We’re in total darkness. The darkness at Idylewylde Hall has a dense like weight like trying to move through concrete. I’ve discovered, during my late nights in the attic, that most flashlights don’t stand a chance. I’ve started taking a massive camping flashlight up to the attic with me, and I wish I had it now.
“Shit, the storm must’ve blown a fuse,” Joseph grumbles. He turns on his phone flashlight, which only provides the weakest bright spot in the penetrating darkness. I can barely see his face.
“Do you have a breaker somewhere?” I ask.
“Yeah, it’s in the basement.”
My stomach ignores my attempts at logic and plummets to my knees. A cold sweat breaks out on the back of my neck. I’ve grown to love the attic, but I won’t even look at the entrance to the basement. I don’t know why. I grew up in Ohio, I’m used to a musty Midwest basement with a dirty floor and constant chill, but something about the belly of Idylewylde Hall gives me the creeps.
Joseph must sense my hesitation. “You don’t have to go with me,” he starts.
