1. Calliope
Calliope
“Where are you, Hadley.” The words come out more whine than rhythm. “And I’m so sorry.” I draw the y out just so and carry it into, “I cannot sleep, I cannot dream tonight.”
Oh, Tommy, you’d be proud of how well I nailed that.
Just in time for the call to abruptly end. Rude.
I try Hadley’s number again. “Mailbox is full for—”
I end the call this time.
Frowning, I glare at my phone screen before setting it down. “May as well do my job,” I mutter, even though my job tonight has been pretzels and pity.
I scan the feeds. Egyptian gallery, empty. Mesopotamia, empty. Sphinx hall—
I lean in.
The camera in the Sphinx hall has a hot spot in the lower left corner. A blur of pale, like someone leaned just out of frame. Gone by the time I blink.
Old building. Old wiring. Old cameras.
That’s what I tell myself.
I reach for the salt I keep on my desk and toss it over my shoulder for luck.
This is why I need Hadley to talk to me through my rotations. “But no.” Now I whine in my natural soprano. “She had to go and take a fancy job and ditch me.”
She didn’t ditch you.
“Feels like it.” I scan the security feeds and snatch up my bag of BBQ pretzels and shovel too many little sticks in my mouth.
“Where are you,” I sing one more time, spitting pretzel dust all over the desk. I wipe it away along with the pity party I’ve been throwing for myself the last few months.
As I’m swallowing my overstuffed mouthful, my phone rings. I jerk. Pretzel dust everywhere. My hand is on the phone before my brain catches up. Hope rises and falls with the flood of adrenaline on my tongue.
I know it isn’t Hadley, but I can’t squash the hope I feel every time the phone rings that maybe, just maybe it is her finally calling me back. She hasn’t called me back in the months since she left, not once.
I answer on the third ring.
“She didn’t pick up again, did she,” Calypso says without an ounce of emotion. I’d say apathetic but that’s not really true is it? Apathy requires the acknowledgment of emotion. Or I like to think. Calypso just doesn’t have time for feelings.
Yet she started calling me at the same time every night, the exact night Hadley didn’t pick up that first call.
Fucking twin telepathy.
“No.” I roll up the bag of pretzels, setting my precious snack aside. “You’re early,” I say around a yawn, arching my back. “Rotation isn’t for another half hour.”
“Some of us enjoy our Saturday nights, Callie. Plural. Concurrent.” Heels clack on her end. Somewhere outside. Somewhere with a life. “Sometimes they end early.”
Some of us have a sphinx and a salt shaker. By choice. I swore men off three years ago and the world hasn’t given me one reason to reconsider.
“Ah, situationship one or two? I cannot remember.” Hadley may be on some super-secret excavation where she can’t possibly call me back. Ever. But Calypso makes up for it with her shenanigan stories. “Tell me everything.”
I love them almost as much as I love ancient mythology.
“Let me in first,” she counters for the first time, well, ever.
I pause. Because I really shouldn’t. However my boss Mr. Dagon unironically dropped a pass off for my sister just days ago. Well he had his assistant drop it off.
I think he reviews the security tapes on day shift and watches me talk to her through my rotations.
He’s weird like that. Also a little creepy.
“I told you about the pass one time.”
“All I needed, little sister, now let me in.” She is older than me by thirteen minutes, thirteen. A knock echoes back to me through the phone.
“That’s creepy.”
She does it again. Then hangs up.
Rolling my eyes, which she can’t even see, I push out of my chair and gather my things for my walkthrough. Flashlight, taser, and salt.
Don’t ever question the salt.
Grabbing my keys, I walk into the quiet halls of the Penn Museum. Listen, I love my job, and I have it because my dickhead boss felt bad for me. I interviewed for a curator position that ended up going to his friend.
I clocked that shit so fast he gave me a job to keep me quiet.
I’m never quiet for long.
I get to the east entrance and find my sister smooshing her face to the glass. I hit the keypad, unlock the door, and let her in. Because listening to jangling keys echo is creepy as fuck.
“Code black, bitch. You left me on the curb.”
Code black. I haven’t heard that since we were twelve. Mom’s word for the worst-case scenario. Lost in a parking lot, separated at the mall, the one of us who needed the other now.
I almost smile. Almost.
She saunters in, yes saunters because my sister doesn’t just casually stroll, high heels thrown over her shoulder and wearing those little dance-shoe slippers.
“In a parking garage?” I relock the doors while keeping an eye on her.
“You need to watch more true crime.”
“You need to watch less.”
She snorts before whistling and spinning in a circle.
“This place is crazy.”
“Come on we will do a full sweep, toward the classroom, sister.”
She shudders before falling into step beside me, my flashlight shining the way forward.
“Date went well?”
“Awful.” She shakes her head. “Great dick, terrible personality. An artist.”
“Ah, you talk about them.” I smirk. “Amazing in bed, often big dicks, broke as fuck.”
“He literally asked me for a fiver after.” The rage rolls off her. “I left mid-zipper.”
“Good call.”
We fall into an odd silence. One we’ve had all our lives. It’s strange having a twin. Small talk is excruciating. It makes me irrationally angry.
So this small talk feels out of place like she’s gearing up for something. I side-eye her. As per usual, she’s annoyingly beautiful.
We are both just barely five foot two. My hair is long, wavy, and dark. I could never bear to cut it. She buzzed her hair off a handful of years ago in rehab.
Our features are similar. Dark eyes, almost like they’re haunted.
Then the differences. Where I’m more of a muscular build, she’s a lean build. But I have a little extra curve with my extra ten pounds on her.
We wear our differences. Calypso in her tight black dress and me in my androgynous black security uniform.
“Stop that,” she scolds me. “I can tell you’re comparing yourself to me.”
“Can’t help it.” I shine my flashlight into the courtyard before we swing around to the auditorium.
“You can, you just choose not to,” she says and her words sound colder than she means them. The intention beneath them is softer. I always know.
I blow a raspberry at her.
“So,” she says. And here it is. The buildup. The ask. The reason she showed up at the museum at the witching hour. “Does anything come to life?”
I squint at her. I cannot tell if it’s a deflection because she knows I clocked the ask. Or because she really wants to know.
Her painted red lips smile at me in challenge.
Fuck, I have to accept now. There is no other choice.
“Stairs,” I grumble, opening the door to the second floor. “No.”
Her laughter echoes in the stairwell.
I sigh because I get it. The laughter. But she doesn’t have to laugh so loud. It’s dramatic. Well and truly dramatic.
“Must you?”
“Yeah.” She snorts. “All your life, Callie. I just don’t get it. Have you ever lived on planet earth?”
Well, now that one stings. This is why she is my sister and not my best friend.
“Yes.” I stomp to the second floor without her.
“Listen, I’m sorry. It’s just,” she sighs when I continue to ignore her existence. I stopped feeding her need to poke me a long time ago. “Callie, wait.”
I swing my flashlight into the classrooms, then the dining hall while stomping through the hall toward the café.
That’s when it shoots out of me. Soda bottle. Mentos. The whole thing.
I mean, it was coming really. Calling Calypso was fine until she showed up and I had to talk to her face-to-face.
I’m still mad at her. I just didn’t realize how mad at her I was until she showed up. Acting like the distance I built between us didn’t exist for a very particular reason.
“Why do you have to make fun of me?” I shrug my shoulders, my arms coming up and the flashlight dancing off the walls.
The tears come even though I attempt to blink them away.
“Every time I see any of you. You. Mom and Dad.” Something climbs up my throat and parks itself there.
Mom. Dad. Calypso. All of them get lodged in my throat and I can’t finish what I wanted to say. My mouth opens. Nothing.
Which really pisses me off.
“Callie.” Her jaw works. She looks at the ceiling like the answer’s written up there. It isn’t. “I’m fucking all this up.”
I want to ask what, but I can’t. Hell, I can’t even talk. So I keep walking around the main floor of the museum, shining my flashlight in the nooks and crannies. Making sure no little kid somehow chose today to sleep in the museum.
Like my sister, to see if anything comes alive.
That fucking movie.
Her footsteps catch up. Then slow. Then stop just behind me, close enough I can smell her perfume. The same one she’s worn since she was sixteen.
Either I talk, which will start a cascade of tears, or I hold it in and try to swallow it whole.
I choose the latter. Let her talk.
“I know this is going to sound fucked up but Hadley taking that job has been the best thing that could have happened to me.” I turn around, shining the flashlight in her face and growl.
The fuck did she say?
“I know it’s the worst thing for you.” She rolls her eyes. “But hear me out, okay?”
I remove the flashlight from her eyes as I walk toward the main entrance.
Sighing because of my well-deserved silent treatment, she continues. “Not having you in my life felt like I lost a limb and I’m sorry I fucked up our relationship.”
I hate that my first instinct is to believe her.
I hate it.
Because she sounds exactly like me.
“You remained friends with him.” Ah, there I go opening my damn mouth. See, I knew I couldn’t stay quiet. At least anger is better than fear while doing my walkthrough. “Him!” I shout.
She winces. “Yeah.” She looks at her feet.
“Are you still friends with him?” I ask because this is why I cut her out of my life.