It takes me a moment to realize that the noise from outside has stopped. And that something’s off in the room. Something more than the chaos and the anger and the lingering adrenaline. It feels colder in here, despite the fact that my heart rate has picked up and I’m breathing heavily. And then I realize what it is—as if a ghost is watching and wants to make himself known: the lights are out, the fan is off, there’s no red glow of light under his desk from the power supply. The sounds of the house, the ticking of the clock, above and below, echo and reverberate in the silence.
I’m standing beside the window, and feel the cold air seeping through the cracks at the base. I hold my palm to the sill, in the place where the wood gaps against the wall, a fine spider web of cracks running through. It feels like tiny tendrils of smoke, making their way into the room, taking over the house.
I’ve been inside the room like this once before, when all the noises were elevated, more focused, closer. And this feeling comes right back, an unsettling, like everything has been displaced, even myself. Like the walls lean too far, and the carpet bubbles up, and there’s a scent—debris and dust and things once buried, brought to the surface.
I close my eyes and imagine Caleb standing beside me in this room, with no light, no heat, no electricity. I hear the echo of his sigh. Feel the chill of the cold, seeping under the window seal. Feel him brush up against me when I shut my eyes, and me reaching out a hand for the shape of him in the darkness, coming up empty.
It was the end of November, nearly a year ago. A Friday night. We had been out at the movies with Max and Sophie, Hailey and a short-term boyfriend named Charles who was so short-lived I had almost forgotten about him. He may have only lasted this single date. There was nothing remarkable about him; he was no match for Hailey. I imagined, briefly upon meeting him, that he would become devoured by her, merely by standing too close.
I was telling Caleb this as we walked up the front steps of his house. “Devoured?” he asked, sliding his key into the lock.
“Or, like, absorbed into her aura,” I said.
“Hailey has an aura now?” he asked, his hand flat on the door.
“Yes,” I said, rubbing my upper arms. To make him laugh, I added, “It’s orange. Now hurry up.” I was shivering and bundled under several layers, aching for the heat inside the house. My curfew wasn’t for another hour and a half, and we were in the habit of utilizing every spare minute. We were at that stage where we couldn’t see enough of each other. Meeting for the two minutes between classes; him pulling me onto his lap in the cafeteria, until a teacher gave a curt shake of the head and I’d slide to the chair beside him; hanging out the ten minutes before practice, leaning close and talking until the very last possible moment.
It was the phase that Hailey made a face about, sticking out her tongue, mock-gagging. Give me my friend back, she joked, waving her arm in front of me like she was wielding an imaginary wand. Undo this curse. She smiles too much; it’s embarrassing.
Caleb paused as he pushed through the front door, as if he could sense something slightly off, even then.
“Hello?” he called into the empty space. His mom and Sean were supposed to be out, and his sister was at a sleepover.
He flicked a light switch, but nothing happened. I tripped over something I couldn’t see—a leg of the entryway table, maybe. But in the dark, everything felt slightly out of place.
Caleb tried another switch, cursed to himself. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said.
I felt, in the pitch dark, the shock of his skin against mine, unexpected, from nowhere. His fingers lacing through my own. “Wait here,” he said. And then he left me.
I heard him exit a door in the back of the house, presumably into the garage. The seconds ticked down, a wisp of cold brushed over my exposed skin, like something was alive inside this house.
“Jessa?” Caleb called.
“I’m here,” I called back. He seemed infinitely far away, though he was maybe one room, one wall beyond my sight.
“I tried resetting. The wiring is crappy, so sometimes that happens when the system is overloaded. But it’s out.”
Then I saw a light heading my way, his phone shining in the dark.
He grabbed my hand, pulled me up the stairs, the beam of light illuminating the steps in front of us. When we reached his room, he held the phone to his ear, and I could hear the ringing in the silence. The cold, from the lack of heat, seemed to grow as time moved on, and a shiver worked its way up my spine and over my arms.
I heard his mother’s voicemail pick up, no response from her. He said, “Electricity was shut off. In case you didn’t know.” And then he hung up the phone, and all I heard was his breathing, thick with something else—anger, I guessed.
And yet, I moved closer.
“Should you try the electric company?” I said.
He was silent for a moment, and I pushed open the curtains so that the moonlight shone through, a light spot on the rug, on him.
He sat on the edge of his bed, and he told me, with his head in his hands, “It won’t make a difference. They cut the power, because my mom and Sean didn’t pay the bill.”
I was trying to find a place for this information in my mind. Caleb, at our private school. Caleb, with his new lacrosse gear. Planning for a ski trip this winter. Everyone I knew may not have had money, but they weren’t lacking it in any substantial way—not in a way that would lead to something like this.
“But…,” I said. Anything I might say seemed both not enough and also too much. “You go to our school….”
He sighed. His arms reached for my waist, pulling me closer, so his forehead rested against my stomach. “My dad died when I was a kid,” he said. “There’s a trust in my name. I get a monthly stipend, in addition to using it for school tuition—but I don’t control it yet. I can’t just go get the money whenever I want.”
“Oh,” I said. So he had money, and his mom and stepdad didn’t.
“It’s not like I’m rich and they’re not,” he said. “It’s not going to last forever. But it will get me through college, maybe help with my first house….”
Then he pushed me back, abruptly, and stood on top of his bed, reaching up for the ceiling fan. The base was a metallic semicircle, and when he unscrewed the bottom, there seemed to be nothing there but the exposed wiring, tucked inside.
But he reached inside the metal compartment and pulled out an envelope.
He opened the top of the envelope, and I saw the thick stack of money. My eyes went wide. “You keep it there? What you get each month?” Banks are safer, I was thinking; there’s a reason for them, so our money is safe and insured.
He set his jaw, as if debating what to say. “You can’t be the only signature on a bank account until you’re eighteen. Some of the money already gets put toward the house bills, to keep me living in the lifestyle to which I am accustomed.” He said it in an official capacity, like he was repeating the words his mother or a lawyer had once used. “I’m trying to keep an eye on the rest.”
It took me a moment to understand what he was saying. That whoever else might sign the account with him could also take the money. I couldn’t imagine a parent doing that, and it made me angry on his behalf.
Though we were separated by the expanse of his bed, I thought we couldn’t get any closer than this. This sharing of secrets. The bond tightening between us. He counted off a stack of bills, replaced the money, and motioned for me to follow down the steps.
When we reached the kitchen, he left the money on the table and exhaled. “I have to get out of here.”
I pulled his hand, leading him back toward the front door, thinking Then let’s go. He followed me out to his car.
Sitting in his car, he turned the ignition, rested his head back, and said, “I can’t wait until I’m eighteen. And then college.”
And I realized he meant more than leaving his room, his house, in that moment. And that I too would eventually be left behind.
I think, now, of the things kept just out of sight in this room. Max has uncovered the hidden space between the mattress and box spring. The only thing there is the sealed strip of condoms, now on display. This was the point at which Max had stopped. When he’d frozen, and remembered I was standing here, watching. When he realized that he was unearthing not just Caleb but me.
I throw them into my purse—the things a mother shouldn’t see—and right the bed again.
I stand on the mattress like Caleb had once done, and unscrew the bottom of his ceiling fan. It falls off quickly in my hands, before I’ve had a chance to turn it. It’s empty. And inside, the wires are pulled lower, torn apart, as if someone has already been through here, and did not like what they found.