Chapter 14 #2
It was quiet and still until a server emerged from a restroom, tucking her shirt into her pants. My heart sped, thinking we
were about to be told that this was for employees only, but she just looked embarrassed.
“Sorry,” she mumbled as she passed, jogging down the iron staircase.
“Christ,” Seb whispered. “How come I feel like a criminal?”
“If you have to ask . . .”
“You’re hilarious, Malone. Come on, let’s see what’s up here.”
Beyond the restroom stood a few doors. The first two were clearly labeled room a and room b, and when we poked inside them, we found the banquet rooms. Nothing but stacks of chairs and tables, a small stage. We flipped
on the lights and raced around the rooms to check the corners for anything suspicious, and found . . . nothing.
No wobbly boards.
No mismatched paint.
No elaborately carved secret panels.
Just a dry-erase board and some corporate packets leftover from a team-building meeting.
Seb made a beeline for the door at the far end of the landing.
It had to be Mabel’s old office; it was the last room left.
Only, it wasn’t locked—a shipping carton of bar napkins was keeping it from closing completely.
And when Seb pushed the door open and moved the carton out of the way, we were able to flip on a single overhead light and look around.
An old wooden desk and a filing cabinet. A metal-framed single bed without linens. A fireplace.
“Mabel’s office?” Seb said, glancing at a stack of boxes lined up against the wall—more bar napkins.
The furniture looked old, but it could’ve been brought in to make it feel more 1920s, to stage it for the brewery’s discontinued
ghost tour. Still, Seb and I quickly checked as many corners in the room as we could find—in the fireplace, the desk, and
the very corners of the room itself.
Nothing.
“Why would Mabel have an office up here if her business was on the first floor?” I wondered. “The rest of the building was
a hotel back then.”
“The brewery could’ve just picked a random room up here and called it Mabel’s.”
Disappointment settled inside my chest. We only had a few more minutes before midnight. Maybe the rest of the Wags were having
better luck in the basement.
Seb must’ve been thinking similar disappointed thoughts, because he sighed heavily and let his head loll backward as he stared
up at the ceiling. Then his head tilted in curiosity. “Paige . . .”
I glanced at the ceiling. A few feet away from the overhead light was an access panel with a single piece of twine hanging
down and two words stenciled.
Roof Access.
Before I could even open my mouth to speak, Seb was pulling the piece of twine. After a couple of tugs, the panel dropped and a wooden ladder unfolded from the ceiling. We stood at the bottom of the folding ladder and peered upward, into darkness.
Seb shook the ladder, testing. “Seems solid. I’ll go first.”
“Wait . . . oh, okay,” I said as I stared at his butt ascending. He made it to the top, and his sneakers disappeared. A moment
later, a string of curses floated back down the ladder. It was followed by some pounding noises and a grunt, and finally,
the squeal of metal.
The light changed. Night air rushed down the ladder. “Roof hatch!” Seb called to me. “Come on!”
Blowing out a breath, I headed up the rickety ladder, following Seb’s instructions—“Watch that third step!” And before I knew
it, he was lifting me onto the roof of the building, where an iron hatch stood open to the stars.
“Holy shit,” I said.
“Right?”
You could see half of Haven Beach from this vantage point. The higgledy-piggledy rooftops of downtown jutted around us. And
farther away, the harbor was a sea of golden lights, with streets crisscrossing in every direction and red taillights streaking.
It was magical.
But we didn’t have time to admire the view.
A cool night breeze ruffled Seb’s hair and chilled my bare legs as he got out his phone and turned on the flashlight function to take a better look around.
The roof itself was expansive and black as pitch, but it looked stable enough.
We definitely weren’t the first people since Mabel’s time to be up here, as there were several modern structures—commercial HVAC units, satellite dish.
We walked around them to check the literal corners of the building, where a low brick wall circled the entire roof.
Being up here at the top of the brewery, no one would describe these corners as “deep,” but I guess we were both just propelled by desperation at that point.
We had to step over some mechanical equipment to reach the last corner on the front of the building. The low wall forming
the corner showed nothing unusual—no loose bricks, no suspicious mortar.
“Fuck,” Seb said, sighing. “Not sure what else we can do up here, so I guess that’s it for us. I’ll text Benny.”
“It can’t be it. We just aren’t looking hard enough. Have a little faith—I mean, back when we were kids and were losing hope
in finding the treasure, wasn’t it you who always said you’d never stop believing in it? That you had enough faith in it for
all of us? Where’s that faith now?”
“I’m all about chasing impossible dreams, Paige, but this one’s going to need more time. Probably shouldn’t have run out here
tonight without thinking it all over first.”
“Thought you were all about big-risk, no-thinking situations. I can remember when you went around the middle school cafeteria
telling everyone that ‘don’t think’ was your personal motto.”
“Why in the world would you pay attention to any motto I’ve got?” he argued. “Hey, you can see the roof of Bean’s from here.
Come on, let me help you get back over this machinery . . .”
But I just wasn’t ready to give up.
“Hidden in deep corners,” I said, running my hand over the corner of the brick wall one more time.
A metal gutter hung on the outside. I wondered if the gutters were original to the building.
Water was deep. Water flowed through gutters .
. . Okay, sure, I was clutching at straws, but if I just carefully leaned over the wall and stretched my arm down, I might reach the gutter . . .
“What’re you doing?” Seb asked. “You’ll kill yourself. Come on, Paige . . .”
Just a little farther . . .
Without warning, my ankle weakened—the one I’d hurt in the cave. It . . . gave out.
Mortar crumbled under my fingers. One second, I was trying to balance myself, and the next, it felt like the entire building
was slipping away. Disoriented, I scrabbled for purchase and tried to pull myself up, but I continued sliding—until I suddenly
felt a steely hand clasp my arm.
My body jerked backward.
“Jesus, Paige!” Seb shouted in my face as I wobbled on my feet, still unsure if I was safe.
“I—I slipped . . .” I said, heart thudding as adrenaline caused my body to tremble.
He clasped my upper arms in a death grip, still holding on to his phone, its flashlight beaming in his eyes every time I drew
a breath. With an exasperated noise, he let go of me only long enough to shove the phone into his jacket pocket, breathing
raggedly as he stared down at me.
“You scared the shit out of me, Paige. Especially after the flooded cavern. I thought that was a fluke, but now I’m wondering.
Do you have a death wish?”
“M-me?” I stuttered. “That’s rich. I think I asked you that a hundred times after you abandoned the Wags.”
“I didn’t abandon anything. You kicked me out.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Then what did ‘you’re no longer welcome in the cave’ mean? Or ‘if I see your face again, I’ll smash it with a brick.’”
Had I said that? All I remembered was the feeling of betrayal.
“Paige?”
“I heard you. I just . . . have different memories.”
An ambulance siren bleated in the distance. Seb’s hands still clutched my arms.
“Why did you keep my letter?”
I blinked up at his face. “What?”
“The letter I sent from boot camp . . . the one with the photo. You kept it. I know because I saw it in your dresser drawer
when I was crashing in your room.”
Several emotions rolled through me in succession. I felt insulted and resentful that he was baldly admitting to going through
my things, even though it wasn’t a surprise. And I was embarrassed that I’d kept the letter all this time and felt defensive.
“Why did you send me a letter? You didn’t send one to Benny or Jazmine. Why me?”
The expression on Seb’s face was so unguarded, so open . . . something inside me that was wavering under strain finally snapped.
I didn’t wait for his answer. I gave him my honesty instead.
“I kept your letter because you were my best friend,” I said. “Even before Jaz, it was you and me. When we were kids, you
were my entire world. But then you went away like everyone else—my mom, my dad, Nana. So I guess . . . I was mourning you,
Seb. And maybe that takes longer than I thought it would.”
When I dared to look at his face, I found pain and hurt there, along with a raw tenderness I hadn’t seen in a long time.
“I’m still here, Paige,” he whispered. “That’s the difference. They’re gone, but I’m not. I’m still here . . .”
Night air whipped across us. Here in the half dark of the rooftop, circled by downtown’s lights below, I could make out the
sharp planes of his face. He looked like he’d stepped out of an early-nineteenth-century painting, a windswept romantic poet
on a moor, brooding and serious and epically handsome.
I was spellbound, unable to take my eyes off him but utterly lost for words. It didn’t help that I was still a little shaky,
still breathing heavy after nearly falling to my death.
So why did I feel so safe?
So calm?
So willing to do it again?
When he spoke, Seb’s voice was so rough and low, I almost didn’t hear him.
“Paige . . . ?” he said.
“Yes?”
“I . . .”
“Yes . . . ?”
“Fuck it,” he whispered to himself, eyes fixed on mine. “Paige. Listen to me for a minute, okay? Don’t think.”
“What?” I whispered back.