I stand up and reach my hands to the top shelf, feeling for anything left behind. There’s an assortment of ties, and what look like shin guards, maybe from soccer, though I don’t recall him playing soccer.
My hands brush something larger that rolls when I bump against it, and I strain my fingers, then close them around a rubber edge.
I pull down a flashlight, in black and red, with a switch at the base. I run my fingers over it, push it on, and shine it into the corners. I feel him behind me then, hear his whisper in my ear as this flashlight was in my hand, surrounded by the cold night air, and the dark.
Turn it off, he says.
It was sometime in the middle of March and we were not supposed to be out. Caleb had gotten into some fight with Sean, and Sean had grounded him. But Caleb maintained that Sean didn’t have the right to ground him, daring him to say otherwise.
“You’re not my father,” he’d said. We had come home from school, dropped the keys on the entrance table, and had made it halfway to the steps when Sean rounded the corner from the kitchen. Caleb had not expected for Sean to be here. Apparently he hadn’t expected us either.
“I thought you were supposed to be studying at the library,” he said, raising an eyebrow.
“I thought you were supposed to be at work,” Caleb answered.
“Of course you did,” Sean said. “Is this what you do instead? You tell us you’re busy so Mia has to go to the sitter’s, and then you bring your girlfriend here? You lie to us, and Mia, so you can screw around with her?”
I jerked back. “Hey,” I said. The tone of his voice made me stiffen my backbone, plant my feet.
But Caleb stepped forward. “We came for my books, Sean.”
“Sure you did.”
He brushed by him, pushing his shoulder into his. Sean grabbed Caleb’s car keys from the table.
“Why aren’t you at work, Sean?” Caleb asked, not backing down.
“Leave,” Sean said to me, over Caleb’s shoulder. But I had nowhere to go. Caleb was my ride. I thought, briefly, of heading to Max’s place. Thought about knocking and saying, Caleb’s stepfather kicked me out. Thought about calling Julian, or my parents.
There was something off in the dynamic—I wasn’t sure whether he had caught Caleb, or Caleb had caught Sean, but neither was backing down.
And then, before anyone could make a decision, the lights flickered once and went dead. The washing machine wound down—I hadn’t realized it was on until that moment, when I heard it stopping. Sean frowned, flipping the wall switch a few times.
“Seriously?” Caleb’s eyes bored into Sean’s, and I remembered that night from November, when the lights turned off, because they hadn’t paid the bill.
“It’s just a surge,” Sean said, his words on the offense, instead of the defense as I had expected.
Caleb rolled his eyes. “This house is falling apart.” Then he grabbed the flashlight from the kitchen drawer and opened the door to the garage. I followed him into the darkness. Then he called back into the house, “What do you do with the money, Sean? Really?”
The door slammed shut behind me, the lock turning. I felt the gust of air from the swinging door, pushing me inside.
“Watch your step,” he said. There were two wooden steps down until I hit the concrete floor.
They didn’t put cars in here—it was mostly for storage. It smelled of paint stripper and gasoline and wood shavings. He flipped the flashlight on and made his way to the circuit board, where he flipped the switches back and forth in one smooth motion, like he’d done it a hundred times, and the house rebooted.
Then, staring at the door back into the house, he hit the garage door opener instead. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.
We both went to Max’s house, and stayed there until after dinner. His mom ordered pizza for us. Max didn’t ask what we were doing there, and Caleb didn’t offer up the information. My parents had called twice—once to wonder if I’d be having dinner with them (no), the second to ask if I was still at the library. I hated lying to my parents. I was terrible at lying to my parents.
“I’ll tell Julian to pick me up here,” I mumbled. I’d owe him one, I’d have to put up with the questions in his silence, but I knew he’d at least keep it between us.
“No,” Caleb said. “I’ll drive you.” But I thought of Sean with his keys, in that house. Still, he didn’t seem to want to talk about it in front of Max, so I agreed.
He handed me the flashlight and we walked through Max’s backyard, shining it in our path.
“Turn it off,” Caleb whispered as we approached his gate. We walked in the dark through his backyard, the frost-covered grass from the remains of an early spring snow crunching under our steps.
At the back door, we could hear his parents arguing, muffled through the walls.
“Probably about me,” Caleb whispered. “Don’t move,” he said. He took the light and shone it into a window on the second floor. Then he turned it off and did it again. Eventually, Mia’s face came into frame. Caleb mimed opening the window.
“Mia,” he said. “I need you to get the spare keys. They’re in Mom’s purse.”
We waited in the darkness until Mia reappeared. She held out her small hand and dropped the keys into Caleb’s below.
He shone the light in his face, so you could see his smile, now eerie from the angle. He mouthed Thank you, grabbed my arm, and we left.
I wonder now if he snuck back upstairs after dropping me off. If he kept the flashlight because he didn’t want to make any noise.
I asked him the next day, what happened, and he said, Nothing, Jessa. Nothing happened.