“I know, Dad. You don’t have to remind me.”
Dad grunts. “I do it because I love you, kid.”
Dad clicks off and I type “Cedarville” into Google. I don’t know why I didn’t do this before. Caught up in the prospect of leaving everything behind, I didn’t even consider what hellhole I could be walking into.
“What are you doing now?” Sammy asks.
“Fact-checking.” I sigh. “Dude, isn’t it weird we’re in the middle of a city and have such shitty cell service?”
Sammy shrugs as a grin grows across his face.
“Hey,” he says, nodding over his shoulder. “Let’s check it out.”
I follow his line of sight to the corner house, its chipping white paint flaking over red wood. A ripped curtain waves at us through the busted bay window.
“You lunatic! No WAY am I going in there!”
“But it’s an empty house. Like the ones Dad used to design.”
“Those were brand-new homes. This is an abandoned one filled with other people’s trash.”
“Exactly why we should check it out! It’ll be like exploring. Come on! I just want to see what it’s like inside! Aren’t you even a little curious? You can probably take some really cool pictures.”
In theory, I should set a good example as the big sister and tell him no, that it’s too dangerous. But I am hella curious. Who lived here before? And why did they leave everything behind? What was the rush?
My breath catches as I stare at the boarded-up door.
Probably thousands of bedbugs in there. . . .
Sammy measures my reaction. “As soon as we’re out, I promise, we’ll burn our clothes.”
I nod. “Plus, hot showers and full-body scans.”
“Done deal!”
Sammy ties Bud to a broken mailbox at the property line. We wade through the hip-deep weeds, bees and gnats fighting over their territory. Closer to the porch I stumble, tripping over a hidden step.
“Careful,” I warn Sammy as we climb up, already having second thoughts but no way I’d let him go in without me. A little reefer would’ve made this adventure a bit more manageable. Sammy peers into the broken window as I scan the neighboring houses. There is an eerie silence when you live on an empty block. It’s not a cabin-in-the-woods type of feeling. More . . . unsettling because you know there should be people nearby. You can almost sense a shadow of their presence. But there’s no one. We’re isolated.
The door is nothing more than an old piece of plywood, warped and weatherworn. Sammy shoves it with his shoulder. It huffs a breath and creaks open. The broken windows allow just enough light to shine into a living room, painted in volcanic ash. Or that’s how thick the gray dust seems to be.
“Whoa,” Sammy whispers. “It’s like they just left . . . everything.”
We split apart, navigating around cast-aside furniture, crumbling paint chips, broken dishes, ripped lampshades, a two-legged table, empty bookcases, and an old wooden TV, its screen smashed in.
“Dude, this is way cool,” I say.
Pulling out my phone, I angle and take the perfect shot. No one has seen these types of TVs in decades.
On the staircase leading to the second floor, every step has piles of random junk blocking the path upstairs—holey shoes, a mattress, rotting stuffed animals, and tires.
Sammy tests a locked door near the stairs. I rub the chill off my arms as we walk deeper in.
This place seems . . . familiar.
In the middle of the living room, a red sofa is cocked on its side, half-burnt, covered in mold.
FACT: Bedbugs lay eggs along the cracks and crevices of your sofa.
“Sammy, don’t touch anything!” I shout.
Sammy jumps in his skin. “Ah! I’m not! Geez.”
“Are you sniffling? Is it your allergies? We should go.”
Sammy steps over some broken floorboards to check out a fallen mirror. “Dude, would you relax? This place is awesome!”
Something crunches under my foot. Crackers. A dusting of fresh ones. I follow their trail into the next room. Bright sunshine explodes from the open kitchen into a narrow dining room with a brick fireplace. In the corner is a green sleeping bag, aged and covered in dust.
Sammy creeps behind me.
“Squatters,” I mumble, inspecting an open can of soup with the tip of my sneaker.
“What does that mean?”
“Someone, like a homeless person, was living here,” I explain. “Sort of like camping out in a house that’s not theirs.”
“Someone was living in here . . . like this? Why?”
I shrug. “If you got nowhere else to go, why not take shelter in an empty house?”
Sammy gazes around. “Hey, this place kinda reminds me of our house.”
There is charred wood in the hearth of the blackened fireplace, the dusty mantel carved with intricate flowers and some sort of family crest.
I snap a shot, testing a few filters before a creak above our heads makes my neck snap.
“What was that?” Sammy gasps.
Footsteps. Quiet ones, coming from upstairs. Someone’s in the house! The sleeping bag, the open cans . . . shit, I should have known.
I push Sammy behind me, scanning the room for a weapon. A bat, rock, a glass bottle I could break, anything. Sammy clutches the back of my shirt.
Another crunch, a foot on broken glass. Much closer this time. Heart surging, I take another step back, hiding us behind the kitchen wall. Broken chairs and scrap metal barricade the back door. With no clear path to the front door, we’ll never make it out before whoever it is reaches the bottom of those steps.
“Mari,” Sammy whimpers, and I bring a finger to my lips, pointing to the broken kitchen window. I could push him through, give him a chance to run for help. Sammy shakes his head, but I silently insist. He pleads again as I drape my hoodie over the broken glass to keep it from cutting him. And just as I’m ready to hoist him up, Piper rounds the corner.
“SHIT!” I cough out. “Piper!”
“You said a bad word,” Piper shouts, pointing.
“What the fuck were you thinking, playing upstairs!”
“I wasn’t upstai—”
“Dude, you’re ten,” Sammy laughs. “Back in my day, I threw a few curse words around without a second thought.”
Piper narrows her eyes. “You shouldn’t curse. Grandma says people who curse are stupid.”
Sammy rolls his eyes. “Whatever.”
“That wasn’t funny, Piper! You scared the crap out of us,” I snap.
“Yeah,” Sammy adds. “And why don’t you make noise when you walk like a regular human instead of creeping around like a cat?”
“I thought you were allergic to cats?” she shoots back.
“Ha, she got you there,” I chuckle. “But really, what are you doing here?”
Piper struggles to come up with something but instead puffs her cheeks. “You shouldn’t be in here.”
“Oh, did your grandma tell you that?”
Piper’s face falls, the wind knocked out of her. She toggles from Sammy to me, then back, eyes flooding with tears, before running out the front door. Sammy tilts his head back with a whistle.
“Dude, that was savage.”