“Me,” Jessica said. “I’ll go.”
John cocked his head. “Really?”
“Really.” Jessica smiled. “Here’s my sense of adventure.”
“Okay,” Jenny said. “Good luck. You have five minutes.”
Jessica skipped quickly up the stone steps that led to the entrance of the church and kicked off her flip-flops so they wouldn’t suck and slap against the tile. It took both of her hands to open the giant wooden door and shut it behind her, and once inside, she waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Directly in front of her was the font of holy water, and beyond that were the doors that led to the cathedral proper. On either side of her were more closed doors that led to hallways, offices, more rooms—all good places to hide, for sure. The cathedral, though—that’s where Jessica wanted to go.
It was dark there, except over to her left where the red glass candles glowed in staggered rows. Jessica remembered the church smelling like blown-out matches and incense, but that night it didn’t smell like that. If anything, it smelled like Rosa: clean, comforting, and faintly like dust. Jessica padded down the center aisle, the tile ice cold under her bare feet, and turned down one of the rows.
She could’ve sat or reclined on the pew, but instead she shimmied beneath it so that she was flat on the floor. The wood of the bench was inches from her face, and just above the tip of her nose was a gray, penny-sized circle of chewed and flattened gum. She took a big breath in and then out and then waited.
It seemed like longer than five minutes before the front doors of the church opened. There were whispers, followed by a bright, loud laugh. Jessica heard everyone go off in different directions, some into the hallways that extended off that front room, others up stairs. The cathedral doors creaked open. Someone was heading over to the side, in the direction of the confession booth. At least a couple of people were coming down the center aisle. Eventually, Jessica saw a pair of beat-up black Adidas coming her way. They were John’s. She pushed back deeper under the pew, causing it to squeak. John stopped. He shuffled his feet and turned in a circle. He didn’t see Jessica, didn’t realize she was there. She could’ve reached out and touched him. She could’ve scraped her nail against his rubber sole. If she’d had a pin, she could’ve pricked the skin of his ankle with it.
“Jess,” John hissed, not down to where she was, but out to the whole room. “Jess, babe. Where are you?”
Jessica covered her mouth with her hand. How funny that John thought she would respond to him. He actually thought that she wanted him to find her, just like he thought she wanted him to wake her up in the middle of the night and force her out of bed, but he didn’t know how thrilled she was to be left alone in the cold dark. Now that she had that thrill, she wanted to hold on to it, coat it in sugar and chew on it.
John whispered a curse and then took off down the row toward the center aisle. Back at the door, he stopped and called out again. Jessica didn’t respond. She still had her hand over her mouth. Eventually, the doors opened, John’s footsteps faded, and the cathedral was quiet. Jessica exhaled and laughed to herself.
The quiet didn’t last very long. Little by little, the cathedral filled back up with sound. Pipes started to bang. The floorboards up in the organist’s loft creaked as if someone was slowly pacing back and forth across them. Voices rose up from other sections of the church, the sound seeping through the cracks of the stone. There were echoes and the click-clack of shoes against tile.
Jessica could explain away the creepy sounds. The banging noises could be from an old boiler. The groans could be from the centuries-old foundation continuing to settle. That or rats. What sounded like ghosts talking to each other was most likely wind or the voices of Jessica’s not-really friends being carried through the pipes.
Jessica had never been afraid of the dark, or silence, or weird night sounds, but back when Ana was alive, she’d pretend to be afraid of thunder just so she could pad down the hall to her big sister’s room. Ana had this habit of going to bed early, like at nine at night, but then she’d wake up a couple hours later and stay up until three or four in the morning. She once told Jessica she liked feeling that she had not just the whole house but the whole neighborhood to herself.
When Jessica had gone to Ana’s room during thunderstorms, Ana would usually be awake, wearing just her white underwear and a ratty old shirt. She’d be on her phone or painting her nails, sometimes both. She’d glance up from whatever it was she was doing, and even if Jessica was interrupting, she wouldn’t act put out. She’d ask if Jessica was scared because of the thunder and if she wanted to hang out for a little while. Jessica would nod. Her little girl’s heart would be beating so, so fast.
Usually, Jessica would pretend to fall asleep on Ana’s floor, just so she could stay in the room longer and listen to her sister do all the things she did. Ana would experiment with eyeliner, put on face masks, and flip through weeks-old magazines. Sometimes she’d go into the bathroom, open the window, and turn on the vent. Jessica would open her eyes just enough to watch her sister pull out a cigarette and a matchbox from behind a stack of mismatched towels in the cabinet. Ana would sit there on the edge of the sink, wearing hardly anything, staring into the night, blowing clouds of smoke out the window. The girls’ grandpa smoked, and the bitter smell always lingered on his breath, his hair, his hands, his clothes. Ana, though, always somehow smelled like her perfume, like linen.
John shouted Jessica’s name. He was far away now. Jessica could hear some of the other people, too, shouting and laughing up in the choir loft. Someone screamed, scared by something or nothing. Someone else laughed. John shouted Jessica’s name again. Then he barked it out, like he was angry, like he was through, like he didn’t want to play this stupid game anymore.
Jessica’s phone buzzed. She reached in her pocket to turn it off completely, and then continued to lie there, barefoot and with her ankles crossed. She interlaced her fingers on top of her stomach, listening.
She’d nearly fallen asleep when she heard the door to the cathedral open and footsteps come up the aisle. When she opened her eyes, she saw Peter Rojas’s scuffed-up off-white sneakers approach and then come to a stop. Then Peter sat on the pew, right above Jessica.
“What are you doing?” Jessica whispered.
“I found you,” Peter said. “I’m supposed to hide with you.”
“Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“I called in sick tonight.”
Jessica clucked, mildly impressed that Peter had it in him to lie about anything. “You called in sick for this?”
Peter didn’t reply, just shifted in his seat. Jessica waited. Peter didn’t move.
“Go away,” Jessica said. “Please.”
“I don’t think that’s how this game works.”