12. STEVIE #2
I throw my hands up, looking over in Lo’s direction to make sure she’s okay and still breathing. “Dude, what the fuck?”
Sean shrugs. “I saw an opportunity.”
“You guys scared the shit out of me,” Lo says, putting her hand to her chest. “Oh my god. I thought that was about to legitimately trigger a panic attack. That’s the scariest thing I’ve ever heard.” She laughs, the color slowly returning to her face.
“Not cool,” I emphasize. I know Lo is too nice to bitch them out for that even though they deserve it.
“Sorry, that was mostly meant for Stevie—didn’t mean to scare you, too,” Sean says and I flip him off.
“Yeah, you’re honestly really cool,” Tanner says.
He says it like a little brother who has just met his older sibling’s friend.
I’m glad both he and his brother are starting to take the hint that Lo is off-limits, even to their little schoolboy brains.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if part of that has to do with Andrew saying something to them; none of us have ever been particularly good at keeping secrets from each other.
“I’ll take it,” Lo says, sounding very much like the older sibling’s friend who thinks anyone under the age of twenty-one might as well be an infant. I smile a little bit.
“It’s been kind of fun hanging out with someone new. We never really get to work with anyone outside of the three of us,” Sean says.
“Oh, yeah?” Lo glances over at me.
“We don’t usually engage with the talent, you know how it is,” I reply, mostly joking.
“Of course.” Lo smiles.
“But you can come investigate with us whenever,” Sean says. “You’re, like, really cool.”
“Yeah, this has been kind of sick,” Tanner agrees. “Stevie’s never been this nice to us before.”
I toss a fry at him. “Shut up,” I say, hoping my mock-annoyance will overshadow my embarrassment at getting called out like that.
“Thanks, guys,” Lo says, and I can tell she really means it. Her face softens as she shyly looks down at what’s left of the food in front of her.
There’s something about Lo’s soft smile and the warm, slightly dimmed light in the room that makes my heart ache.
I can’t take a picture, but I want to. The best alternative I can come up with is staring at her, committing every single detail to memory—the way she’s leaning her head on her palm, one of her knees lifted up onto her chair, her hair pushed behind her ears.
A noise from across the house pulls me away. We all jump at the same time, turning to look at where it might’ve come from.
“What was that?” Andrew asks.
“Did you guys leave a window open or something when you were setting up?” I ask, thinking through possible options—a camera fell because it wasn’t put up properly, the wind blew something over.
“I didn’t open any in the first place,” Andrew says. The twins shake their heads to confirm they didn’t either.
Another sudden sound—the same thump from the same part of the house—makes all of us jump.
“What the fuck?” Sean whispers.
I look at Sean and Tanner. “Are you fucking with us again?” But when the boys shake their heads, just as startled as we are, I know they’re telling the truth. “Are the cameras working?” I ask, my stomach at my feet. Lo has gone completely pale all over again.
“We can check,” Andrew says. The thumping from the other room keeps going as he pulls out his laptop from his bag.
My immediate instinct is that we shouldn’t be here. I’m not easily scared, but I don’t fuck with an unexplained sound that seems almost like it’s from a human. Every cell in my body wants to run.
But instead, I grip my thighs to keep myself grounded and take deep, intentional breaths.
Andrew starts up his laptop, the whole process taking what seems like a hundred years.
His hands are shaking so much that he keeps pressing all the wrong keys.
After three attempts at inputting his password, he closes his eyes and inhales before trying again.
His hands are still shaking, but they’re level enough that he’s finally able to get it right this time.
I cautiously stand up and walk behind him to see what’s on his screen. I know we could just walk to the other room to see it, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Whatever is going on in that room is loud . Almost to the point that it seems like something living is in there.
Lo and the twins join me, and everyone pushed together to look over Andrew’s shoulder.
We normally don’t look at live footage, but we also never have an excuse to check the cameras before.
Even when we’ve filmed at abandoned hospitals and schools, we can always tell when a sound is just an animal or a creak from the building being old.
“Okay,” Andrew says under his breath, as if he’s bracing himself. His cursor hovers over the program we use to record and store our live footage.
Despite my historic impatience, even I can’t bring myself to click on it for him. I’m stuck between wanting to know—desperate for some kind of explanation that makes us all laugh—and not wanting to be haunted forever by whatever the answer is.
I look next to me and see that Lo has her eyes half-closed, like we’re watching a scary movie.
When she sees that I’m looking at her, she ducks her head close to my shoulder and tucks her face in.
Despite my lifelong love for horror, I’ve never done a horror movie date with a girl; I’m imagining this is a similar experience.
And, admittedly, I’m not hating it.
Knowing that Lo is scared makes me feel less scared, like my instinct to protect her is stronger than any fear I might be experiencing.
“Open it, Andrew,” I say. I feel like we’ve been standing here forever, but the clock on Andrew’s computer has only ticked up by one more minute.
Andrew makes a half-whining sound in protest. Still, across the house, the thumping continues. Whatever is causing it is either oblivious to us talking about it or doesn’t care. “Okay. Okay . Fine.” Andrew shakes out his shoulders and then finally clicks onto the app.
At first, it seems like everything is fine. I can see us crowded over Andrew’s computer in one of the screens. There’s the empty kitchen, the empty living room, and the guest room. I don’t see anything that explains the sound we’re hearing.
Lo inhales sharply and grips my arm. “Oh my god,” she says.
“What? What are you looking at?” I ask, leaning in closer. Then, I see it.
In Lo’s room, there are at least fifteen books scattered on the floor. Andrew clicks on the window to make it larger, and everyone leans in closer to see.
With the larger screen, we can now clearly see books flying off the shelves. They’re coming off one by one—not in any particular rhythm and not with any specific order.
“Dude, what the fuck?” Tanner whispers.
I glance up at Lo’s bedroom door, wondering what the hell is waiting for us just down the hall.
“I hate that. Whatever is going on in there is just…” Lo says, shaking her head. “Absolutely not.”
“That’s like something straight out of Paranormal Activity.
That’s crazy,” Andrew says, voice full of awe.
He’s seemingly the only one of us who isn’t scared anymore.
Even the twins look uneasy, glancing between each other and then looking at the front door like they’re debating on running. “We should go take a look.”
“No, we shouldn’t,” I say quickly, even though I know he’s right. The whole point of doing this is to investigate, even if I can’t find a single logical explanation behind what I’m seeing.
“But it’s kind of…surreal, right? Like it doesn’t feel like it’s actually happening,” Andrew says. “I need to go see it for myself.”
I take a deep breath. Even though I don’t want to, I also don’t want to admit that I’m scared. If Andrew’s able to get his shit together and embrace that we’re actually doing some paranormal investigative work instead of faking it, I can too.
“Alright, yeah. Let’s go take a look,” I say. “It’s probably nothing, anyway.”
I head to the archway between the dining room and kitchen, and everyone follows behind.
As the five of us walk down the hall toward Lo’s bedroom, I tell myself over and over again that it really will be nothing.
I can’t think of an explanation as to why Lo’s books would be literally flying off the shelves, but I’m not about to immediately fall back on it being because of a ghost.
The sound doesn’t slow down at all, even as we approach the door to Lo’s room. It’s a steady rhythm—books flying from the shelves into the wall across the room and then falling to the floor.
“I don’t get why it keeps going after my books,” Lo whispers, as if that’ll make a difference in a paranormal being overhearing our conversation. Based on the stories I’d heard from my grandparents, it might as well know what Lo is thinking and feeling before she even knows.
From what I can tell, it’s annoying to her that her books keep getting victimized, it’s cute how strongly she feels about them. Even though I can’t see her well in the dark light of the house, I can imagine the scrunch of her nose and the downturn of her lips.
When we make it to the bedroom door, I know there’s no point in putting off the inevitable. I take a deep breath, close one of my eyes as if that’ll protect me from what’s inside, and then push the bedroom door open.
Predictably, there’s no one.
We look at the books on the floor and the empty gaps in the bookshelf. The books weren’t cleared one at a time, shelf-by-shelf; they were picked at random.
It’s quiet for a beat. None of us move, and no more books go flying.
After long enough, Lo sighs—more with annoyance than anything. “You are the worst ,” she mutters. She squats down and picks up the books from the floor. “Nothing but a nuisance the entire time I’ve lived here.”
“Are you shit talking the ghost right now?” Andrew asks.
“This isn’t the first time we’ve bickered,” Lo says.