Chapter Two Charlie pulled to a stop, feeling the soft give of dirt under her tires, and turned off the car. She got out and surveyed their surroundings. The sky was arich, dark blue, the last trails of the sunset streaking off to the west. The parking lot was unpaved, and before them lay a sprawling monster of a building, a rising acre of glass and concrete. There were lamps in the parking lot that had never been used, and no lights shone out onto the lot. The building itself looked like an abandoned sanctuary, entombed in black trees amid the distant roar of civilization. She looked at Jessica in the passenger seat, who was craning her neck out the window.
“Ts this the right place?” Jessica asked.
Charlie shook her head slowly, not quite certain what she was seeing. “J don’t know,” she whispered.
Charlie got out of the car and stood in silence as John and Carlton pulled up beside her.
“What is this?” John stepped out of the car cautiously and stared blankly at the monument. “Does anyone have a flashlight?” He looked at each of them. Carlton held up his key chain and waved around the feeble glow of a penlight for a minute.
“Great,” John muttered, walking away with resignation.
“Hold on a sec,” Charlie said and went around to her trunk. “My aunt makes me carry around a bunch of stuff for emergencies.”
Aunt Jen, loving but severe, had taught Charlie self-reliance above almost anything else. Before she let Charlie have her old blue Honda, she had insisted that Charlie know how to change a tire, check the oil, and know the basic parts of the engine. In the trunk, in a black box tucked in next to the jack, spare tire, and small crowbar; she had a blanket, a heavy police-issue flashlight, bottled water, granola bars, matches, and emergency flares. Charlie grabbed the flashlight; Carlton grabbed a granola bar.
Almost by silent agreement, they began to walk the building’s perimeter, Charlie holding up the light in a steady beam in front of them. The building itself looked mostly finished, but the ground was all dirt and rock, uneven and soft. Charlie shone the light on the ground, where grass had grown patchy in the dirt, inches long.
“No one has been digging for a while,” Charlie said.
The place was massive, and it took a long time to circumnavigate. It wasn’t long before the rich blue of the evening was overtaken by a blanket of scattered silver clouds and stars. The surfaces of the building were all the same smooth, beige concrete, with windows too high up on the walls to see inside.
“Did they really build this whole thing and then just leave?” Jessica said.
“Carlton,” said John, “you really don’t know anything about what happened?”
Carlton shrugged expansively. “I told you, I knew there was construction, but I don’t know anything else.”
“Why would they do this?” John seemed almost paranoid, scouting the trees as though eyes might be looking back at him. “It just goes on and on.” He squinted, gazing along the outside wall of the building, which seemed to stretch endlessly into the distance. He glanced back to the trees as if making sure they hadn’t missed a building somehow. “No, it was here.” He placed his hand on the drab concrete facing. “It’s gone.”
After a moment, he gestured to the others and began to walk back the way they came. Reluctantly, Charlie turned back, following the group. They kept going until they could see their cars again up ahead in the darkness.
“Sorry, guys; I hoped there would at least be something familiar,” Carlton said exhaustedly.
“Yeah,” Charlie said. She had known it would be, but seeing that Freddy’s had been razed to the ground was still a shock. It was so paramount, sometimes, in her mind, that she wanted to get rid of it, wanted to scrub the memories—good and bad—from her head, as if they had never been. Now someone had scrubbed it from the landscape, and it felt like a violation. It should have been up to her. Right, she thought, because you had the money to buy it and preserve it, like Aunt Jen did with the house.
“Charlie?” John was saying her name, and it sounded like he was repeating it.
“Sorry,” she said. “What were you saying?”
“Do you want to go inside?” Jessica asked.
Charlie was surprised they were only now considering this, but then again none of them was usually prone to criminal activity. The thought was a release, and she took a deep breath, speaking on her exhale. “Why not?” she said, almost laughing. She hefted the flashlight. Her arms were getting tired. “Anyone else want a tum?” She waved it back and forth like a pendulum.
Carlton grabbed it and took a moment to appreciate its weight.
“Why is this so heavy?” he said, passing it off to John. “Here you
”
£0.
“Tt’s a police flashlight,” Charlie said absently. “You can hit people with it.”
Jessica wrinkled her nose. “Your aunt really wasn’t kidding around, huh? Ever used it?”
“Not yet.” Charlie winked and made a half-threatening glance at John, who returned an uncertain half smile, unsure how to react.
The wide entrances were sealed with hammered metal doors, no doubt intended to be temporary until construction was finished. Still, it wasn’t difficult to find a way in, since many large mounds of gravel and sand scaled the walls, leading right up to the edges of the large, gaping windows.
“Not trying hard to keep people out,” John said.
“What’s anyone going to steal?” Charlie said, staring at the blank, towering walls.
They climbed the hills slowly, the gravel shifting and sliding beneath their feet as they went. Carlton reached the window first and peered through. Jessica looked over his shoulder.
“Can we drop down?” John asked.
“Yes,” said Carlton.
“No,” Jessica said at precisely the same time.
“T’ll go,” Charlie said. She felt reckless. Without looking through to see how far the fall was, she put her feet through the opening and let herself drop. She landed, knees bent; the impact rocked her, but it did not hurt. She looked up at her friends staring down. “Oh. Hang on!” Charlie called, pulling a short stepladder from a wall nearby and setting it under the window. “Okay,” she said. “Come on!”
They dropped down one by one, and looked around them. Inside was an atrium, or maybe it would have become a food court, with metal benches and plastic tables scattered around, some bolted to the floor. The ceiling rose up high above them, with a glass roof where they could see the stars peering down at them.
“Very postapocalyptic,” Charlie joked, her voice echoing in the open space.
Jessica sang a brief, wordless scale suddenly, startling them all into silence. Her voice rang out pure and clear, something beautiful in the emptiness.
“Very nice, but let’s not call too much attention to ourselves,” John said.
“Right,” Jessica said, still very happy with herself. As they walked on, Carlton swept up and took her arm.
“Your voice is amazing,” he said.
“It’s just good acoustics,” Jessica said, attempting humility but not meaning a word of it.
They walked the empty halls, peering into each of the massive cavities where a department store might have been. Some parts of the mall had been almost finished, while others were in shambles. Some hallways were littered with piles of dusty concrete bricks and stacks of wood; others were lined with glass-paneled storefronts, lights hanging in perfect rows above their heads.
“Tt’s like a lost city,” John said.
“Like Pompeii,” said Jessica, “just without the volcano.”
“No,” Charlie said, “there’s nothing here.” The whole place had a sterile feel to it. It was not abandoned—it had never sustained life at all.
She looked in a store window across from her, one of the few with glass, wondering what would have been displayed. She imagined mannequins, dressed in bright clothing, but when she tried to picture them, all she could see was blank faces, concealing something. She suddenly felt out of place, unwelcomed by the building itself. Charlie began to feel restless, some of the luster wearing off the adventure. They had come; Freddy’s was gone, and so was the shrine she had kept in her thoughts, where she could still find Michael playing where she last saw him.
John stopped suddenly, turning off the flashlight as carefully as he could. He put a finger to his lips, motioning for silence. He gestured back the way they had come. In the distance, they saw a small light bobbing in the darkness like a ship in the fog.
“Someone else is here,” he hissed.
“A night guard, maybe?” Carlton whispered.
“Why would an abandoned building need a guard?” Charlie wondered.
“Kids probably come here to party,” Carlton said, then grinned. “I would have come here to party, too, if I’d known about it, or if I partied.”
“Okay, well, let’s backtrack slowly,” John said. “Jessica ...” he started, then made a zip-it motion across his lips.
They continued down the hallway, this time with only the dimmer light of Carlton’s key chain.
“Wait.” Jessica stopped with a whisper, looking intently at the walls surrounding them. “Something’s not right.”
“Yeah, no giant pretzels. I know.” Carlton seemed sincere. Jessica waved a hand at him impatiently.
“No, something isn’t right about the architecture.” She took several steps back, trying to see the whole of it. “Something is definitely not right,” she repeated. “It’s bigger on the outside.”
“Bigger on the outside?” Charlie repeated, sounding puzzled.
“J mean there’s a big difference between where the inside wall is and where the outside wall is. Look.” Jessica ran along a length of wall between where two stores would have been.
“There would have been a store here and a store there.” John pointed to the obvious, not understanding the problem.
“But there’s something in the middle!” Jessica exclaimed, beating her hands against an empty portion of the wall. “This part juts out into the parking lot like the stores on each side, but there’s no way into it.”
“You’re right.” Charlie started walking toward Jessica, studying the walls. “There should be another entrance here.”
“And”—Jessica dropped her voice so that only Charlie could hear her —‘“about the same size as Freddy’s, don’t you think?” Charlie’s eyes widened, and she took a quick step back from Jessica.
“What are you two whispering about?” Carlton stepped closer.
“We're talking about you,” Jessica said sharply, and they walked into one of the vacant department stores that seemed to sandwich the sealed space. “Come on,” she said, “let’s take a look.” They started combing the wall as a group, clustered around the tiny light.
Charlie was not sure what to hope for. Aunt Jen had warned her about coming back. She didn’t encourage Charlie to skip the memorial, not directly, but she wasn’t pleased that Charlie was returning to Hurricane.
Just be careful, Aunt Jen had said. Some things, some memories, are best left undisturbed. Is that why you kept Dad’s house? Charlie thought now. Is that why you kept paying for it, leaving it untouched like some kind of shrine, but never visiting ?
“Hey!” John was gesturing wildly, running inside to catch up to the rest of them. “Hide!”
The light was out in the hall again, bobbing up and down, and it was coming closer. Charlie glanced around. They were already too deep inside the massive store to get out in time, and there seemed to be nowhere to hide.
“Here, here!” Jessica whispered. There was a break in the wall beside a rig of scaffolding, and they hurried into it, squeezing past stacks of open boxes and sheets of plastic hanging from the ceiling.
They made their way down what appeared to be a makeshift hallway just on the other side of the department store wall. It was really more like an alley; it was incongruous with the rest of the mall, not shiny and new but dank and musty. One wall was made of the same concrete as the outside of the building, though it was rough and unfinished, and the other was exposed brick, some parts faded smooth with age, others with the mortar crumbling, leaving chinks and holes. Heavy wooden shelves of cleaning equipment stood against the wall, listing to the side, their boards sinking under the weight of old paint cans and mysterious buckets. Something was dripping from uncovered pipes overhead, leaving puddles that they all stepped carefully around. A mouse scuttled by, almost running over Carlton’s foot. Carlton made a strangled sound, hand over his mouth.
They crouched down behind one of the wooden shelving units, pressing up against the wall. Charlie doused the light and waited.
She took shallow breaths, perfectly still, watching and wishing she had picked a better position to freeze into. After a few minutes, her legs started to feel numb under her, and Carlton was so close that she could smell the light, pleasant scent of his shampoo. “That’s nice,” she whispered.
“Thanks,” Carlton said, knowing immediately what she was referring to. “It comes in Ocean Breeze and Tropical Paradise. I prefer Ocean Breeze, but it dries the scalp.”
“Hush!” John hissed.
Charlie wasn’t sure why she was so worried. It was just a night guard, and at the worst they would be asked to leave, maybe yelled at a little. She had an overblown aversion to getting in trouble.
The bobbing light came closer. Charlie was acutely aware of her body, holding every muscle motionless. Suddenly she could make out a thin figure leaning in from the great room outside. He shone his light in a long beam down the hallway, sweeping it up and down the walls. He’s got us, Charlie thought, but inexplicably he turned and went, apparently satisfied.
They waited another few minutes, but there was nothing. He was gone. They all moved slowly out of their crouched positions, stretching limbs that had gone to sleep. Carlton shook one foot vigorously until he could stand on it. Charlie looked down at Jessica, who was still hunched over, as if frozen in time.
“Jessica, are you okay?” she whispered.
Jessica looked up, smiling.
“You won’t believe this.”
She was pointing at the wall, and Charlie leaned over to see. There, etched in the worn brick, were clumsy letters, almost illegible in a child’s handiwork:
Carlton smells like feet.
“You have to be kidding me,” John whispered in awe, turning to face the wall and placing both hands against it. “I recognize these bricks.” He laughed. “These are the same bricks!” His smile faded. “They didn’t tear it down; they built around it.”
“Tt’s still here!” Jessica unsuccessfully tried to keep her voice down. “There has to be a way in,” she added, her eyes wide with an almost childish excitement.
Charlie shone the flashlight up and down the hallway, playing the light off each wall, but there was no break, no door.
“There was a back door to Freddy’s,” John said. “Marla wrote that right next to the back door, right?” “Why didn’t they just knock it down?” Charlie pondered.
“Does this hallway just lead nowhere?” Jessica said, puzzled.
“Tt’s the story of my life,” Carlton said lightly.
“Wait ...” Charlie ran her fingers along the edge of a shelf, peering through the odds and ends crammed onto it. The wall behind it looked different; it was metal, not brick. “Right here.” She stepped back and looked at the others. “Help me move it.”
John and Jessica pressed against one side in a unified effort, and she and Carlton pulled on the other. It was immensely heavy, laden with cleaning supplies and large buckets of nails and tools, but it slid farther down the hall almost easily, without incident.
Jessica stepped back, breathing hard. “John, give me the big light again.” He handed it over, and she turned it back on, aiming where the shelf had stood. “This is it,” she said.
It was metal and rusting, spattered with paint, a stark contrast to the walls around it. There was only a hole where the handle had been; someone must have removed it so the shelf could lie flush against the door.
Silently Charlie handed the flashlight back to John, and he held it above her head so she could see. She slipped around the others and tried to squeeze her fingers into the hole where the doorknob once was, trying to pull it open to no avail.
“Tt’s not going to open,” she said. John was behind her, peering over her shoulder.
“Just a second.” He squeezed himself into the space beside her and knelt carefully. “I don’t think it’s locked or anything,” he said. “I think it’s just rusty. Look at it.”
The door extended all the way to the floor, its bottom ragged and unfinished. The hinges were on the other side, and the edges were caked in rust. It looked as though it had not been opened in years. John and Charlie pulled on it together, and it moved a fraction of an inch.
“Yay!” Jessica exclaimed, almost shouting, then covered her mouth. “Sorry,” she said in a whisper. “Containing my excitement.”
They took turns pulling on it, leaning over one another, the metal scraping their fingers. The door held for a long moment, and then it came loose under their weight, swinging open slowly with an unearthly screech. Charlie looked nervously over her shoulder, but the guard did not appear. The door opened only about a foot wide, and they went one by one, until all four were through.
Inside, the air changed, and they all stopped short. Ahead of them was a dark hallway, familiar to them all.
“Ts this ... ?” Jessica whispered, not taking her eyes from the dark expanse.
It’s here, Charlie thought. She held out her hand for the flashlight, and John handed it to her wordlessly. She shone the light ahead of them, sweeping the walls. They were covered in children’s drawings, crayon on yellowing, curling paper. She started forward, and the others followed, feet shuffling on old tile.
It seemed to take forever to traverse the hall, or perhaps it was just that they were moving slowly, with methodical, deliberate steps. Eventually the hallway opened up into a larger expanse—the dining room. It was just as they remembered it, completely preserved. The flashlight beam bounced off a thousand little things reflective, glittered, or topped with foil ribbon.
The tables were still in place, covered in their silver-and-white checked cloths; the chairs were pulled up to them haphazardly, some tables with too many and others with too few. It looked as though the room had been abandoned in the middle of the lunch hour: Everyone had gotten up expecting to return, but never did. They walked in cautiously, breathing cold, stale air that had been trapped inside for a decade. The whole restaurant gave off a sense of abandonment—no one was coming back. There was a small merry-go-round barely visible in the distant comer, with four child-size ponies still at rest from their last song. In an instant, Charlie froze in place, as did the others.
There they were. Eyes stared back from the dark, large and lifeless. An illogical panic pulsed through her; time held still. No one spoke; no one breathed, as though a predatory animal was stalking them. But as the moments passed, the fear waned, until she was back again, as a child, and with old friends, separated from one another for far too long. Charlie walked toward the eyes in a straight line. Behind her the others were motionless; hers were the only footsteps. As Charlie walked, she touched the cold back of an old party chair without looking at it, guiding it out of her path. She took one final step, and the eyes in the dark became clear. It was them. Charlie smiled.
“Hi,” she whispered, too soft for the others to hear.
Before her stood three animatronic animals: a bear, a rabbit, and a chicken, all standing as tall as adults, maybe taller. Their bodies were segmented like artists’ models, each limb made of distinct, squarish pieces, separate at the joints. They belonged to the restaurant, or maybe the restaurant belonged to them, and there had been a time when everyone knew them by name. There was Bonnie, the rabbit. His fur was a bright blue, his squared-off muzzle held a permanent smile, and his wide and chipped pink eyes were thick-lidded, giving him a perpetually worn-out expression. His ears stuck up straight, crinkling over at the top, and his large feet splayed out for balance. He held a red bass guitar, blue paws poised to play, and around his neck was a bow tie that matched the instrument’s fiery color.
Chica the Chicken was more bulky and had an apprehensive look, thick black eyebrows arching over her purple eyes and her beak slightly open, revealing teeth, as she held out a cupcake on a platter. The cupcake itself was somewhat disturbing, with eyes set into its pink frosting and teeth hanging out over the cake, a single candle sticking out the top.
“T always expected the cupcake to jump off the plate.” Carlton gave a half laugh and cautiously stepped up to Charlie’s side. “They seem taller than I remember,” he added in a whisper.
“That’s because you never got this close as a kid.” Charlie smiled, at ease, and stepped closer.
“You were busy hiding under tables,” Jessica said from behind them, still some distance away.
Chica wore a bib around her neck with the words LET’S EAT! set out in purple and yellow against a confetti-covered background. A tuft of feathers stuck up in the middle of her head. Standing between Bonnie and Chica was Freddy Fazbear himself, namesake of the restaurant. He was the most genial looking of the three, seeming at ease where he was. A robust, if lean, brown bear, he smiled down at the audience, holding a microphone in one paw, sporting a black bow tie and top hat. The only incongruity in his features was the color of his eyes, a bright blue that surely no bear had ever had before him. His mouth hung open, and his eyes were partially closed, as though he had been frozen in song.
Carlton drew closer to the stage until his knees pressed against the rim of it. “Hey, Freddy,” he whispered. “Long time no see.”
He reached out and grabbed at the microphone, wiggling it to see if he could get it loose.
“Don’t!” Charlie blurted, looking up into Freddy’s fixed gaze as though making sure he hadn’t noticed.
Carlton pulled his hand back like he had touched something hot. “Sorry.”
“Come on,” John said, cracking a smile. “Don’t you want to see the rest of the place?”
They spread out across the room, peering into comers and carefully trying doors, acting as though everything might be breakable to the touch. John went over to the small carousel, and Carlton disappeared into the dark arcade off the main room.
“T remember it being a lot brighter and noisier in here.” Carlton smiled as though at home again, running his hands over the aging knobs and flat plastic buttons. “I wonder if my high scores are still in there,” he muttered to himself.
To the left of the stage was a small hallway. Half hoping no one would notice where she had gone, Charlie started down it silently as the others occupied themselves with their own curiosities. At the end of the short, plain corridor was her father’s office. It had been Charlie’s favorite place in the restaurant. She liked to play with her friends in the main area, but she loved the singular privilege of coming back here when her father was doing paperwork. She paused outside the closed door, her hand poised over the knob, remembering. Most of the room was filled with his desk, his filing cabinets, and small boxes of uninteresting parts. In one corner was a smaller filing cabinet, painted a salmon color that Charlie had always insisted was pink. That had been Charlie’s. The bottom drawer held toys and crayons, and the top had what she liked to call “my paperwork.” It was mostly coloring books and drawings, but occasionally she would go over to her father’s desk and try to copy down whatever he was writing in a childish, crayoned hand. Charlie tried the door, but it was locked. Better this way, she thought. The office was personal, and she did not really want it opened tonight.
She headed back into the main dining room and found John looking pensively at the merry-go-round. He eyed her with curiosity but did not ask where she had gone.
“T used to love this thing.” Charlie smiled, approaching warmly. Yet now the painted figures seemed odd and lifeless to her.
John made a face, as though he knew what she was thinking.
“Not the same,” he said. He rubbed his hand over the top of a polished pony as though to scratch it behind the ear. “Just not the same,” he repeated, removing his hand and gazing elsewhere. Charlie glanced over to see where the others were—in the arcade, she could see Jessica and Carlton wandering among the games.
The consoles stood still and unlit like massive tombstones, their screens blank. “I never liked playing the games,” Jessica said, smiling. “They moved too fast, and just when I’d start to figure out what to do, I’d die and it would be someone else’s turn.” She wiggled a joystick that squeaked from neglect.
“They were rigged anyway,” Carlton said with a wink.
“When’s the last time you played one of these?” Jessica asked, peering closely into one of the screens to see what image was burned into it from too many years of use. Carlton was busy rocking a pinball machine back and forth, trying to get a ball to come loose.
“Uh, there’s a pizza place I visit sometimes.” He set the table back on four legs carefully and glanced at Jessica. “But it’s no Freddy’s,” he added.
John was roaming through the dining room again amid the tables, flicking the stars and spirals hanging overhead. He plucked a red party hat from the table, stretched the rubber band hanging loosely from its base, and snapped it around his head, red-and-white tassels hanging down over his face.
“Oh, let’s check out the kitchen,” he said. Charlie followed as he bounded off toward it.
Although the kitchen had been off-limits to her friends, she’d spent a lot of time there, so much so that the chefs chased her out by name, or at least by the name they heard her father call her: Charlotte. John overheard someone calling her Charlotte one day when they were in kindergarten and persisted in teasing her with it constantly. He could always get a rise out of her with that. It wasn’t that Charlie didn’t like her full name, but Charlie was who she was to the world. Her father called her Charlotte, and it was like a secret between them, something no one else was allowed to share. The day she left Hurricane for good, the day they said good-bye, John had hesitated.
“Bye, Charlie,” he said. In their cards, letters, and phone calls, he had never called her Charlotte again. She never asked why, and he never told her.
The kitchen was still fully stocked with pots and pans, but it held little interest for Charlie in the midst of her memories. She headed back out into the open space of the dining room, and John followed. At the same time, Jessica and Carlton stumbled out of the arcade, tripping into each other as they crossed the thresholds between rooms in the dark.
“Anything interesting?” John asked.
“Uh, a gum wrapper, thirty cents, and Jessica, so no, not really,” Carlton said. Jessica playfully gave him a punch in the shoulder.
“Oh, have we all forgotten?” Jessica gave an evil smile, pointing to another hallway on the opposite side of the dining room. She headed toward it swiftly before anyone could answer, and they followed her, The hallway was long and narrow, and the farther they went, the less the flashlight seemed to illuminate. At last the passage opened out into a small room for private parties, set up with its own tables and chairs. As they entered, there was a collective hush. There in front of them was a small stage, the curtain drawn. A sign was strung across the front. OUT OF ORDER, it read in neat, handwritten letters. They stood still for a minute, then Jessica went up to it and poked the sign.
“Pirate’s Cove,” she said. “Ten years later and it’s still out of order.”
Don’t touch it, Charlie thought.
“T had one birthday back here,” John said. “It was out of order then, too.” He took hold of the edge of the curtain and rubbed the glittered fabric between his fingers.
No, Charlie wanted to say again, but stopped. You’re being silly, she chided herself.
“Do you think he’s still back there?” Jessica said playfully, threatening to make the reveal with one giant swing on the curtain.
“I’m sure he is.” John gave a false smile, seeming uncomfortable for the first time.
Yes, he’s still there, Charlie thought. She stepped back cautiously, suddenly becoming aware of the drawings and posters surrounding them like spiders on the wall. Charlie’s flashlight carefully inched from picture to picture, all depicting different variations of the same character: a large and energetic pirate fox with a patch over one eye and a hook for a hand, usually swinging in to deliver a pizza to hungry children.
“This is the room where you were the one hiding under tables,” Jessica said to Charlie, trying to laugh. “But you’re a big girl now, right?” Jessica climbed up on the stage unsteadily, almost losing her footing. John reached out a hand to steady her as she righted herself. She giggled nervously, looking down at the others as though for guidance, than grabbed hold of the tasseled edge of the fabric. She waved her other hand in front of her face as dust fell from the cloth.
“Maybe this isn’t a good idea?” She laughed, but there was an edge to her voice, like she really meant it, and she looked down at the stage for a moment, as though poised to climb back down. Still, she didn’t move, taking the edge of the curtain again.
“Wait,” John said. “Can you hear that?”
They were all dead quiet, and in the silence Charlie could hear them all breathing. John’s breaths were deliberate and calm, Jessica’s quick and nervous. As she thought about it, her own breathing began to feel odd, like she had forgotten how to do it.
“T don’t hear anything,” she said.
“Me neither,” Jessica echoed. “What is it?”
“Music. It’s coming from—” He gestured back the way they had come.
“From the stage?” Charlie cocked her head to the side. “I don’t hear it.”
“Tt’s like a music box,” he said. Charlie and Jessica listened carefully, but their blank expressions didn’t change. “It stopped, I guess.” John returned his gaze forward.
“Maybe it was an ice cream truck,” Jessica whispered.
“Hey, that wouldn’t be so bad right now.” John appreciated the levity.
Jessica turned her attention back to the curtain, but John began to hum a tune to himself. “It reminded me of something,” he mumbled.
“Okay, here I go!” Jessica announced. She did not move. Charlie found her eyes drawn to Jessica’s hand on the curtain, her pink, manicured nails pale against the dark, glittery fabric. It was almost like the hushed moment in a theater crowd, when the lights went dark but the curtain had not yet risen. They were all still, all anticipating, but they were not watching a play, no longer playing a game. All the mirth had gone out of Jessica’s face; her cheekbones stood out stark in the shadows, and her eyes looked grim as though the simple thing she was about to do might be of terrible consequence. As Jessica hesitated, Charlie realized her hand hurt; she was making a fist so tight her nails dug into her flesh, but she could not force her grip to loosen.
A crash sounded from back the way they came, a cascading, clanging noise ringing out and filling the whole space. John and Charlie froze, meeting each other’s eyes in sudden panic. Jessica dropped the curtain and leaped off the stage, bumping into Charlie and knocking the light out of her hands.
“Where’s the way out?!” she exclaimed, and John came over to help. They hurriedly searched the walls, and Charlie chased the light beam spiraling across the floor. Just as they were all back to their feet, Carlton came trotting in.
“T knocked over a bunch of pots in the kitchen!” he exclaimed, an apology amid the panic.
“T thought you were with us,” Charlie said.
“T wanted to see if there was any food left,” Carlton said, not making it clear if he’d found anything or not.
“Seriously?” John laughed.
“That guard might have heard,” Jessica said anxiously. “We have to get out of here.”
They started for the door, and Jessica started running. The rest took off after her, picking up speed as they reached the hallway until they were racing as though something were behind them.
“Run, run!” John called out, and they all burst into giggles, the panic feigned but the urgency real.
They squeezed back through the door one by one and pushed it shut with the same painful squeal, Carlton and John leaning on it until it sealed. They all took hold of the shelf, hefting it back into place and replacing the tools so that it appeared undisturbed.
“Look good?” Jessica said, and John tugged her arm, guiding her away.
They made their way quickly but carefully back the way they came using only Carlton’s penlight, back through the empty hallways and the open atrium to the parking lot. The guard’s light did not appear again.
“Little anticlimactic,” Carlton said with disappointment, checking back one more time in hopes they were being chased.
“Are you kidding?” Charlie said as she went to her car, already pulling the keys free from her pocket. She felt as though something locked deep inside her had been disturbed, and she was not sure if that was a good thing or not.
“That was fun!” John exclaimed, and Jessica laughed.
“That was terrifying!” she cried.
“Tt can be both,” Carlton said, grinning widely. Charlie began to laugh, and John joined in. “What?” Jessica said. Charlie shook her head, still laughing a little.
“It’s just ... we’re all exactly the same as we were. I mean, we’re totally different and older and everything. But we’re the same. You and Carlton sound exactly like you did when we were six.”
“Right,” Jessica said, rolling her eyes again, but John nodded.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “And so does Jessica, she just doesn’t like to admit it.” He glanced back at the mall. “Is everybody sure that guard didn’t see us?”
“We can outrun him now,” Carlton said reasonably, his hand resting on the car.
“T guess,” John said, but he did not sound convinced.
“You haven’t changed, either, you know,” Jessica said with a certain satisfaction. “Stop looking for problems where there aren’t any.”
“Still,” John said, glancing back again. “We should get out of here. I don’t want to push our luck.”
“See you all tomorrow, then?” Jessica said as they parted ways. Carlton gave a little wave over his shoulder.
Charlie’s heart sank a little as Jessica settled herself into the passenger seat, tidily buckling herself in. She had not been looking forward to this. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Jessica, just that being alone with her was uncomfortable. She still wasn’t much more than a stranger. Yet Charlie was still exhilarated from the night’s adventure, and the lingering adrenaline gave her a new confidence. She smiled at Jessica. After tonight, they suddenly had something very much in common.
“Do you know which way the motel is?” she asked, and Jessica nodded and reached for the purse down at her feet. It was small and black with a long strap, and on the drive to the construction site Charlie had already seen her remove a lip gloss, a mirror, a pack of breath mints, a sewing kit, and a tiny hairbrush. Now she pulled out a small notebook and pen. Charlie smiled.
“Sorry, how much stuff do you have in that thing?” she asked, and Jessica looked at her with a grin.
“The secrets of The Purse must not be disclosed,” she said playfully, and they both laughed. Jessica started reading Charlie the directions, and Charlie obeyed, turning left and right without paying much attention to her surroundings.
Jessica had already checked in, so they went straight to their room, a small beige box of a room with two double beds covered in shiny brown spreads. Charlie set her bags on the bed closest to the door, and Jessica went to the window,
“As you can see, I splurged on the room with the view,” she said and flung the curtains open dramatically to reveal two Dumpsters and a dried-out hedge. “I want to have my wedding here.”
“Right,” Charlie said, amused. Jessica’s prim demeanor and fashion- model looks made it easy to forget that she was smart as well. As a child she remembered being slightly intimidated every time they got together to play before realizing after the first few minutes how much she liked Jessica. She wondered if it was hard for Jessica to make friends, looking the way she did, but it wasn’t the kind of thing you could really ask someone.
Jessica flopped down on the bed, lying across it to face Charlie. “So tell me about you,” she said confidentially, mocking a talk-show host or someone’s nosy mother.
Charlie shrugged awkwardly, put on the spot. “What does that mean?” she said.
Jessica laughed. “I don’t know! What an awful thing to ask, right? I mean, how do you answer that? Um, how about school? Any cute boys?”
Charlie lay down across the bed, mimicking Jessica’s position. “Cute boys? What are we, twelve?”
“Well?” Jessica said impatiently.
“T don’t know,” she said. “Not really.” Her class was too small. She had known most of the people in it since she moved in with Aunt Jen, and dating anyone, liking them “like that,” seemed forced and altogether unappealing. She told Jessica as much. “Most of the girls, if they want to date, they date older guys,” she said.
“And you don’t have an older guy?” Jessica teased. “Nah,” Charlie said. “I figured I’d wait around for our batch to grow
”
up.
“Right!” Jessica burst out laughing before quickly thinking of something to share. “Last year there was this guy, Donnie,” she said. “I was gaga for him, like, really. He was so sweet to everyone. He wore all black all the time, and he had this black curly hair so thick all I could think about when I sat behind him was burying my face in it. I was so distracted I ended up with an A minus in trig. He was super artistic, a poet, and he carried around one of those black leather notebooks, and he was always scribbling something in it, but he would never show anybody.” She sighed dreamily. “I figured if I could get him to show me his poetry, I would really come to know his soul, you know?”
“So did he ever?” Charlie said.
“Oh yeah,” she said, nodding emphatically. “I asked him out finally, you know, ’cause he was shy and he was never gonna ask me, and we went to the movies and made out a little, and then we went and hung out on the roof of his apartment building and I told him all about how I want to study ancient civilizations and go on archaeological digs and stuff. And he showed me his poems.”
“And did you come to know his soul?” Charlie said, excited to be included in girl talk, something she felt like she’d never really gotten to participate in before. Charlie nodded eagerly. But not too eagerly. She calmed herself as Jessica scooted forward on the bed to whisper.
“The poems were awful. I didn’t know it was possible to be both melodramatic and boring at the same time. I mean, like, just reading them made me embarrassed for him.” She covered her face in her hands. Charlie laughed.
“What did you do?”
“What could I do? I told him it wasn’t gonna work out and went home.”
“Wait, right after you read his poetry?”
“T still had the notebook in my hand.”
“Oh no, Jessica, that’s awful! You must have broken his heart!”
“T know! I felt so bad, but it was like the words just came out of my mouth. I couldn’t stop myself.”
“Did he ever speak to you again?”
“Oh yeah, he’s perfectly nice. But now he takes statistics and economics and wears sweater vests.”
“You broke him!” Charlie threw a pillow at Jessica, who sat up and caught it.
“T know! He’ll probably be a millionaire stockbroker instead of a starving artist, and it’s all my fault.” She grinned. “Come on, he’lI thank me someday.”
Charlie shook her head. “Do you really want to be an archaeologist?”
“Yeah,” Jessica said.
“Huh,” said Charlie. “Sorry, I thought—” She shook her head. “Sorry, that is really cool.”
“You thought I’d want to do something in fashion,” Jessica said.
“Well, yeah.”
“Tt’s okay,” Jessica said. “I did, too. I mean, I do, I love fashion, but there’s only so much to it, you know? I think it’s amazing to think about how people lived a thousand years ago, or two thousand, or ten. They were just like us, but so different. I like to imagine living in other times, other places, wonder who I would have been. Anyway, what about you?”
Charlie rolled over onto her back, looking up at the ceiling. The tiles were made of loose, stained Styrofoam, and the one above her head was askew. I hope there aren’t any bugs up in there, she thought.
“T don’t know,” she said slowly. “I think it’s really cool that you know who you want to be, but I have just never had that kind of a plan.”
“Well, it’s not like you have to figure it out now,” Jessica said.
“Maybe,” Charlie said. “But I don’t know, you know what you want to do, John’s known since he could hold a pencil that he wanted to be a writer and he’s already getting published, even Carlton—I don’t know what he has planned, but you can just see that there’s a scheme brewing behind all his kidding around. But I just don’t have that kind of direction.”
“Tt really doesn’t matter,” Jessica said. “I don’t think most people know at our age. Plus, I might change my mind, or not get into college, or something. You never know what’s going to happen. Hey, I’m gonna get changed. I want to get some sleep.”
She went into the bathroom, and Charlie stayed where she was, gazing at the sorry-looking ceiling. She supposed it was becoming a defect, her earnest refusal to consider the past or future. Live in the present moment, her Aunt Jen said often, and Charlie had taken it to heart. Don’t dwell on the past; don’t worry about things that may never happen. In eighth grade she had taken a shop class, vaguely hoping the mechanical work might spark something of her father’s talent, might unleash some inherited passion lying latent within her, but it had not. She had made a clumsy-looking birdhouse for the backyard. She never took another shop class, and the birdhouse only attracted one squirrel who promptly knocked it down.
Jessica came out of the bathroom wearing pink striped pajamas, and Charlie went in to get ready for bed, changing and brushing her teeth hurriedly. When she came out again, Jessica was already under the covers with the light by her bed turned off. Charlie turned hers off, too, but the light from the parking lot still shone in from the window, somehow filtering past the Dumpsters.
Charlie stared up at the ceiling again, her hands behind her head.
“Do you know what’s going to happen tomorrow?” she asked.
“T don’t really know,” Jessica said. “I know it’s a ceremony at the school.”
“Yeah, I know that,” Charlie said. “Are we going to have to do anything? Like, do they want us to speak?”
“T don’t think so,” Jessica said. “Why, do you want to say something?”
“No, I was just wondering.”
“Do you ever think about him?” Jessica asked.
“Sometimes. I try not to,” Charlie said half-truthfully. She had sealed off the subject of Michael in her mind, locked him tight behind a mental wall she never touched. It wasn’t an effort to avoid the subject; in fact, it was an effort to think of him now. “What about you?” she asked Jessica.
“Not really,” she said. “It’s weird, right? Something happens, and it’s the worst thing you can ever imagine, and it’s just bummed into you at the time, like it’s going to go on forever. And then the years go by, and it’s just another thing that happened. Not like it’s not important, or terrible, but it’s in the past, just as much as everything else. You know?”
“T guess,” Charlie said. But she did know. “I just try not to think about those things.”
“Me too. You know I just went to a funeral last week?”
“T’m sorry,” Charlie said, sitting up. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Jessica said. “I barely even knew him; he was just an old relative who lived three states away. I think I met him once, but I hardly remember it. We mostly went for my mom’s sake. But it was at an old-fashioned funeral parlor, like in the movies, with an open coffin. And we all walked by the coffin, and when it was my turn I looked at him, and he could have been sleeping, you know? Just calm and restful, like people always say dead people look. There was nothing that I could have pointed out that made me think dead, if you asked me; every feature of his face looked the same as if he were alive. His skin was the same; his hair was the same as if he were alive. But he wasn’t alive, and I just knew it. I would have known it immediately, even if he wasn’t, you know, in a coffin.”
“T know what you mean. There is something about them when they’re ... »” Charlie said softly.
“Tt sounds stupid when I say it. But when I looked at him, he looked so alive, and yet I knew, just knew that he wasn’t. It made my skin crawl.”
“That’s the worst thing, isn’t it?” Charlie said. “Things that act alive but aren’t.”
“What?” Jessica said.
“T mean things that look alive but aren’t,” Charlie said quickly. “We should get some sleep,” she said. “Did you set the alarm?”
“Yes,” Jessica said. “Good night.”
“Night.”
Charlie knew sleep was still a long way off. She knew what Jessica meant, probably better than Jessica did. The artificial shine in eyes that followed you as you moved, just like a real person’s would. The slight lurch of realistic animals who did not move the way a living thing should. The occasional programming glitch that made a robot appear to have done something new, creative. Her childhood had been filled with them; she had grown up in the strange gap between life and not-life. It had been her world. It had been her father’s world. Charlie closed her eyes. What did that world do to him?