It was Halloween night and we were eight years old. My parents had dressed up as Hogwarts students and went to a party at the fire chief’s vacation home. It was an Adults Only party which made no sense to me at all, because Halloween was specifically a holiday for kids. At least it was in my mind. But they had Adult Stuff to do and I wasn’t allowed, so I stayed at my aunt and uncle’s house instead.

Cece’s parents were occasional foster parents, usually for babies or toddlers who were temporarily taken away from their real parents. None of the kids ever stayed over that long, but that Halloween night, there was a sadness in the air. Cece told me it was because this newborn boy they’d fostered for two weeks was taken back to their real family that morning. My aunt had grown a little too fond of him and was sad to see him go. All night I could tell something was a little off, but Aunt Summer was the kind of loving parent who would do anything to make us happy, no matter what she was feeling inside.

Cece and I dressed as M&Ms candies—she was blue and I was red—and those foam circles were just one cute getup in a long-standing tradition of matching costumes. Thomas never wanted to join in with us because our ideas were too girly and didn’t contain enough fake muscles for his liking.  He was Batman that year because he’d discovered that costumes with masks gave him more confidence. While I’d known him my whole life and the birthmark on his temple was never something I thought about, it bothered him more than we knew.

Aunt Summer took us around the block to go trick-or-treating, but not many people were handing out candy, so instead, she packed us up in her SUV and took us to the nice neighborhood on the other side of town. Our bags were overflowing with sugary goodness by the time we finished, and Aunt Summer was in a really great mood. Halloween was one of those days that you looked forward to every year, spent weeks planning your costumes, and then suddenly before you realized it, the night was over.

We returned to Cece’s house to find that someone had taken the trick part of trick-or-treat literally. Aunt Summer’s mailbox was blown up. It turned out that some teenage punks had driven down the street putting M80 firecrackers into everyone’s mailbox.

In the morning, while my parents were sleeping off a hangover at home, I’d woken up in Cece’s bedroom to the sound of my uncle cursing in the driveway. As valiant as his attempts to make a new mailbox were, the thing wouldn’t stand up straight in the hole he’d shoved it into. Aunt Summer said he needed to fill the base with concrete, but he didn’t feel like it. When he finally relented and followed her advice, the wooden pole had slipped at an angle and froze like that in the hardened concrete.

The tires of Mom’s Malibu crunch over months of fallen pine needles and dead leaves that cover the driveway of Cece’s old house. The brand new real estate sign in the front yard is a contrast to the overgrown grass and faded paint on the house. The for sale part of the sign is covered with a white plastic rectangle that says COMING SOON. The moment we pass the crooked mailbox, nostalgia hits me hard, wrapping around my heart and squeezing as I pull to a stop and park the car.

Cece’s house sits at the end of the road, nestled between miles of trees and sloping hills on the outskirts of Telico. The grey shingled roof has black streaks running down it from age, but the red bricks and navy blue shutters are just how I remember them. Cece doesn’t say a word as we step out of the car. The smell of pine trees and the sound of birds singing in the distance bring me back to my childhood, playing in this front yard with my cousins, back when there were two of them. Back when you figured your parents would live forever and no one would ever go crazy.

Cece walks toward the garage on the right side of the house. I stand here, gazing up at the clouds, feeling like I’ve stepped out of a dream or a memory and that this isn’t reality at all. It’s too weird to be real. The last time I was here, I was thirteen years old and Mom was frantically rooting through Aunt Summer’s jewelry box, looking for the perfect necklace to bury her in. She was furious that the funeral home people had dolled her up with too much makeup and she wanted to bury her sister with something that felt more like her style.

Cece reaches for the keypad on the side of the garage door.

“There’s no electricity,” I say, holding up the single key I took from the rack near our back door. “We have to go inside the old school way.”

She stares at the key and frowns. “Right. I’m just used to going in the garage.”

She follows me to the front door, where the potted ferns that Aunt Summer used to decorate with lights for Christmas are now dead, their leaves flaking away with the wind. I go to unlock the door but then I stop.

“Do you want to do it?” I ask, holding up the key.

She shakes her head. “You do it.”

Cece is two inches taller than me and she outweighs me by three jeans sizes, but right now she looks like the ten-year-old who cried into my shoulder while the pastor gave a sermon at her parents’ funeral. My heart begins to pound as I realize what I’ve done. Mom didn’t want us coming here alone for a reason. What if this is too much for her? Do I have the strength to get her back in the car safely if she freaks out?

Cece clears her throat. “Do you need me to teach you how to unlock a door?”

“Oh ha-freaking-ha,” I say, rolling my eyes. Sarcasm means she’s fine. This will be fine. It takes a little elbow grease to get the deadbolt to twist and unlock, but finally it works and the door frame crunches as I push open the heavy metal door. It’s like entering a crypt.

Everything smells stale and old, stagnant. Dead. There’s not even a hint of the lilac potpourri Aunt Summer kept all over the house in little crystal dishes. I let Cece walk in first, and then I look to the wooden shelf in the foyer. The dish of potpourri is still there, covered in a fine layer of dust, but its fragrance wore off years ago.

The air is thick as we make our way through the foyer and into the living room. I let Cece set the pace, and I stay a few steps behind her while she takes it all in. There are spider webs in the corners, dust covering everything. The hot June air makes my skin sticky with sweat but it doesn’t seem to bother Cece. She walks into the living room; the only sound is her flip flops smacking on the hardwood floor. She runs her fingers across the back of their brown suede couch, the one with the black Sharpie stain on the side from when Cece and I were making a college of cute boys from magazines one morning.

That was the day I officially decided Justin Bieber was kind of cute after years of declaring that I hated him and preferred Austin Mahone as my boy celebrity crush. Aunt Summer told us to take a break from collaging because she had made waffles for breakfast. We covered them in spray whipped cream.

Weird how I remember these things. My throat feels like there’s a softball lodged inside it as I look at the framed pictures of what used to be a family, whole and happy.

Cece walks into the kitchen, pulls open a drawer and takes out an ice cream scoop. She shoves it in the back pocket of her pink corduroy pants and closes the drawer. I lift an eyebrow. “The ice cream scoop at your house sucks,” she says, walking past me and into the hallway.

I follow her, blinking as my eyes adjust to the near darkness in the narrow hallway. The walls are painted navy blue, a color that I guess was trendy years ago when Aunt Summer chose it. Cece stops at the second door to the left—her bedroom.

“You okay?” I ask softly, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Yeah, I think so.”

She pushes open the door and a burst of light from the window burns my eyes. I squint and then follow her into her old room. Tears fill my eyes as I look around. It’s like a snapshot of five years ago. Cece’s white framed twin bed, Hello Kitty sheets all rumpled. There wasn’t room to bring it to our house so we shared my queen sized bed.

Her dresser is here too, covered with plastic beads and necklaces she’d made over the summer. There was one to match every outfit she owned. The accordion door of her closet is half open, unwanted shoes and toys and clothes spilling everywhere. It hits me now that even though everything has changed, not much really has. Cece is still messy. She’s still colorful and matches jewelry to outfits she’s bought at the thrift store. She’s still obsessed with Hello Kitty and she’s still right here next to me like she always used to be.

I turn around, the memory of Aunt Summer walking by with a smile on her face, a cup of chai tea in her hand so real I can almost see it. My heart clenches and I put a shaky hand to my mouth. “Shit,” I say, just as the hot tears stinging my eyes begin to fall.

Cece turns around, her green eyes wide. “Lilah!”

I am not expecting it at all when the person I barely talk to now pulls me into a hug. And it’s a good hug, too. All warm and squishy and smelling like Cece’s vanilla shampoo. She rocks slightly, holding onto me like she’s the adult here. Like she’s the one supposed to take care of me instead of the other way around. “We can leave.”

I pull back and wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. “Why aren’t you crying about this? You’re not upset?”

She gives me this sad smile, her eyes watery. “I am.” Her voice is soft as her lips slide to the side. “It’s these damned pharmaceuticals.” She gives a little shrug. “It makes it hard to feel anything.”

I swallow and look down, wiping the remaining tears from my cheeks. Cece’s medication makes her appear normal to everyone else, but at the cost of the things that also make her human. “I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it. But some things have to be the way they are. She has to take her medication or she puts her life at risk. I may have forgotten a lot of things about our old friendship, but I’ll never forget the time she almost took her own life on accident. It was a manic episode and she had no idea what she was doing. If the drugs ensure that never happens again, then I’m a fan of the drugs.

A moment of silence stretches out between us, and then Cece brightens. “Let’s get the other thing I came here for, then we can go home.”

“What’s that?” I say, following her out into the hallway.

She presses her hand to the door across from hers. Her shoulders rise and then she shoves it open. Thomas’s room still smells like him. His bed is gone, moved into his room at my house that now belongs to Cece. Stuffed animals and old shoes that used to be tucked underneath remain, and the carpet is still pressed in where each foot of the bed used to be, even after all these years. His room sports trophies and posters of video games. He was fifteen when he moved in with us, and he didn’t bring many things back then, just a bed, clothes, and a dresser. I hang back by the door while Cece gazes around the haphazard remainder of her brother’s old room.

She walks over to the nightstand. I guess they never moved it to our house because it wouldn’t fit. She reaches for a framed picture of her and Thomas on Christmas morning. She was a pink-faced baby in a red Santa onesie and he was probably four or five with a jagged haircut he must have done to himself. Her hand stops just before she takes it. She jerks away and takes a step back.

“Do you smell that?” she asks, her voice higher than usual.

“Smell what?”

“Thomas.”

I walk into the room even though being this close to all these old memories feels like I’m suffocating. “I smell his cologne, yeah. He used to wear way too much of it.”

“Coolwater,” she says so softly I almost don’t hear it. She points toward the nightstand and I walk over to see what’s got her so freaked out.

A mostly empty blue glass bottle of men’s cologne sits on the nightstand next to the picture frame. “I’m surprised he didn’t take it with him,” I say. “He was obsessed with that stuff. Must have been in a hurry.”

Cece shakes her head softly. When her eyes meet mine, there’s fear behind her green irises. She looks out the window into the back yard that’s overgrown and unkempt. “I wasn’t talking about the cologne,” she says.

I look back at the nightstand. There’s cologne and a picture frame. “Then what are you talking about?”

“This,” she says, pressing her finger to the clean circle of wood next to the bottle. “Everything in this house is covered in dust, except this. The cologne was moved.” She looks up, her eyes searching franticly around the room. “Someone’s been in this house. Someone sprayed his cologne and that’s why it smells like him in here.”

Chills prickle down my arms and I realize where she’s going with this the second her lips twist into a grin. I know I can’t let her hop on this conspiracy train of thought and ride it into a manic episode again.

Deflect.

Deflect!

“Gross, there’s probably squatters in here,” I say quickly, grabbing the picture frame and shoving it into her hands. “We should go in case they come back. I’ve heard homeless people who squat in empty houses can be really violent.” At first I say it just to scare her, but then I scare myself. Someone has definitely been in this house, and they might still be here. “Let’s go.”

She shakes her head, her knees locking as she roots herself to the dusty carpet in her dead brother’s bedroom.

“You know what this means, Lilah?” Her eyes fill with tears again, but this time there’s no sadness in them, only joy.

“It means we need to go,” I say, grabbing her arm. Of all the times her medication mutes her feelings, it has to stop working now? “We have to get out of here before the squatters come back. We’ll call the police and they’ll get it taken care of.”

She shakes her head. “No, Lilah. It’s not squatters. It’s my brother. He’s been here recently.”

She takes my hands in hers and squeezes them so hard it hurts. Her eyes have this fiery sparkle that sends a chill down my spine. “I knew it. This whole time I knew it.”

“Cece—” I begin, but she cuts me off with a sharp glare.

“Lilah, he’s alive.”