Chapter 14 Collins #2
“So accidental decapitation, falling through a floor in an abandoned church, and seeing ghosts is all fine, but you draw the line at spiderwebs?”
I clicked my tongue. “Pretty much. C’mon, B,” I said. “I think you’ll actually like what’s up there.”
“Please tell me it’s not Larry’s head,” Brady whined.
“You are so dramatic. No, Larry’s entire body is safely interred in the Sweetwater Peak mausoleum.
He’s fine.” The first part of that was true, but I guess I didn’t know if Larry was currently okay.
I looked around for any sight of him but came up short.
I looked back at Brady and pointed toward the hole in the pantry ceiling. “Up you go.”
Brady muttered something I couldn’t make out as he started his climb—probably curses at me. I couldn’t fight my smile, so I took advantage of the fact that he was turned away from me and allowed a grin to stretch across my face.
Once half of his body was through to the attic, I started my climb, too. Brady coughed and sputtered a few times above me. “You were right about the spiderwebs, holy hell.”
“Thank you for taking one for the team,” I said.
“I can’t see shit up here,” Brady said. “It’s pitch dark.”
“That’s kind of the point of a darkroom,” I said when I reached the top of the stair ladder.
I pushed myself all the way into the room and started feeling for the small switch I knew was nearby.
I found it after a few aimless jabs in its general direction and pushed on it.
A soft red light glowed throughout the room.
Thank god my connection to the fuse box was still intact.
The red light didn’t improve visibility right away, but after our eyes adjusted, it would be better.
“This is your darkroom?” Brady asked.
I crawled over to where I could see him sitting. The attic wasn’t tall enough for either of us to stand up all the way.
“It was, yeah,” I said. “And everything seems to be just how I left it.” I looked around. “Thank you, Larry,” I said—even though I couldn’t feel him around and didn’t know if he could hear me.
“Is he, um, here with us?”
“Not that I can tell,” I said. “But he deserves a thank-you anyway.”
“Is he the reason you haven’t been nailed for trespassing?” Brady asked. I detected a hint of sarcasm in his tone. “How did you get this whole setup up here without anyone knowing about it?”
“It took a few months,” I said. “And I had to steal most of the equipment, too.”
“Oh.” Brady’s sarcasm was fully shining now. “Trespassing and robbery. Lovely.”
“Sorry you hired a criminal.” I bumped his shoulder with mine. “I grew out of the stealing thing, at least.” Mostly, anyway. “So you don’t have to worry about that.”
“Comforting.”
“I thought so.” I nodded. “I wanted a place of my own—that no one knew about—where I could practice doing what I loved without anyone watching.”
“Besides Larry,” Brady said.
“Exactly.” I reached back behind us to where there were a bunch of folded posterboards against the wall. I felt for the one that had duct tape on the corners. It took a second, but I got it and carefully brought it over our heads and set it on the floor in front of us.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Open it,” I said—mostly because I didn’t know if I could bring myself to do it, and I really didn’t want a repeat of the suitcase stare-down situation from this morning with an audience. I pulled out my phone and turned the flashlight on.
Brady reached for one of the duct tape corners and slowly flipped my makeshift folder open. The top picture was the one he was already familiar with: the portrait of Wilder Wilkes. I had forgotten what it looked like—how sunny Wilder’s smile was.
“Is this all of them?” he said, looking at me. We were close—touching. I could feel the warmth of his body against mine.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Can I?”
“Knock yourself out.” Brady carefully flipped the portrait of Wilder like the page of a book to reveal the next one. It was Cleo, the owner of the bar. She was sitting cross-legged on top of the bar, and her elbow was resting on a bottle of whiskey.
“And her mom is in this?” Brady asked.
“Yup,” I said. “Joann is right here.” I pointed to a spot on the bar.
I looked at Brady, who was squinting. “It’s kind of blurry there,” he said.
“That’s her,” I said. “They all show up somehow. In this one, it’s pretty easy to pick out if you know what you’re looking for, but sometimes it’s impossible—even for me.”
Brady flipped to the next one: Boone. “You said his animals are in this one?”
“Yeah,” I said. “They’re all very attached to him.” I ran my fingers lightly over the lines in Boone’s face. There were a lot less of them in this picture than there were now.
“The animals…They don’t talk, though, right? Like even in death?”
I couldn’t stifle my giggle. “No,” I said. “The laws of nature still apply.” Brady flipped the pages again and again—a new face appearing each time, and he’d ask me who was in the picture with them, and I’d show him where they were at if I knew, all the way until the last photo.
Clarke.
“Who’s with her?” he asked.
I sighed. “Earnest. He’s…been around us for years.”
“Is he related to you guys?”
“No, he’s not, but he is family in his own way. He’s in Toades. This room is his favorite.”
“And that’s you in the vanity mirror—your reflection I mean—taking the picture?”
“Good eye,” I said. You could only see my hand and a sliver of my camera. “Earnest is here.” I pointed to the open music console, and the vinyl record that was inside. The record had the slightest warp to it that wasn’t there in real life.
“Can Clarke see him, too?” Brady asked. I didn’t really know how to answer that. As far as I knew, neither of us had ever told anyone about what we could do, outside of our parents. I had already broken that rule.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Brady said after my silence. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “Really. I’m just trying to respect how I think she would answer in this situation.” I looked down at the sixteen-year-old version of my twin sister. I wasn’t mad at this version of her. “I think she’d be okay with me telling you that she can see him, too.”
“Are you two okay?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“It’s just…on Sunday, after you saw her, things seemed kind of…off. And she hasn’t come by since last week. And you’ve been a little…” Brady trailed off.
“Thought better of reminding me how grumpy I’ve been, huh?”
I watched him cringe a little. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I sighed. “You’re very observant, you know.”
“I’m trying to keep up with you.”
“Clarke and I had a fight on Sunday. To me, it felt like it came out of nowhere, but it seems like it was bubbling under her skin for a while. It was a bad one. I walked out.”
“What was it about?”
“Family stuff,” I sighed.
“That’s tough,” Brady said.
I looked around at my makeshift darkroom, which looked as if it had been frozen in time. It was another reminder that Sweetwater Peak was always waiting for me no matter what.
But then I thought about how I would’ve felt if this house had been leveled when Brady and I got here—if it was all gone.
After all, a developer wouldn’t stop at Toades.
Every place in this town that someone loved would be in danger.
And I was shocked by the anger that rose up inside me at the thought—how much I did not want that to happen, how ready I felt to defend this place after spending my life trying to escape it.
Change was inevitable, but change at the hands of a developer who didn’t care about anything but a payday was not how I wanted to see this town go.
I didn’t want that to happen.
I couldn’t let it.
I wrapped my arms around myself. When did it get so cold up here? Within a few seconds, Brady unzipped his fleece jacket and put it around my shoulders.
“Oh,” I said dumbly. “Thank you.”
“Anytime,” Brady responded.
The sides of our bodies were still touching.
I looked up to find him already looking down at me.
Suddenly, it didn’t just feel like there was a temperature drop in the room.
It felt like we’d been raised to an elevation that made my lungs scream for air.
For a girl who grew up underneath the highest peak in Wyoming, that had to be pretty damn high. It felt smaller up here, too.
The way Brady looked wrapped in the dark red of the room made me lean closer to him, and I could’ve sworn he got closer to me. That annoying thing in my chest started to bang at my rib cage—desperately trying to get out.
Brady tucked my hair behind my ear, and I wanted to lean into the warmth of his hand. He got closer again, leaning toward me. I was a breath away from letting my eyelids flutter shut.
Welcome home, Collins. I almost didn’t hear it. The voice was so quiet and thin. My spine went ramrod straight.
“Larry?” I said, looking around. I stood up quickly, rising fast enough that when my head hit the ceiling with a resounding thwack, the momentum sent me right back down.
“Fuck, Collins.” I felt his hand on my back and I wrapped my arms around the back of my head. “That sounded bad.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and let out a whimper as I rocked back and forth—trying to move the pain out.
“What can I do?” Brady asked.
“I’m good,” I said through clenched teeth. “I heard something. I think I heard him.”
“That’s great, really,” Brady said. “But I’m more concerned about getting some ice on your head and making sure you’re not concussed.”
“I’m not concussed,” I mumbled.
“Better safe than sorry,” Brady said. “We can come back, but I think for now, it’s time to go home.”
My head was ringing, and when I finally looked at Brady, I couldn’t be sure that there weren’t two of him. Defeated, I nodded, and we started making our way out of the attic.