Gravity, a young adult paranormal romance (10 page)

"Are we burying our enemies?" I
asked.

"Ha, you are just so funny." He
chucked the box at me and I caught it with both hands. "We're
finally going to conquer the storage room." 

Claire had been relentlessly bugging
Hugh for months, ever since our May yard sale, to clean out the
room full of junk across from my bedroom. Claire's plan was to
donate most of the stained stuffed animals and ill-advised fad
footwear to the local thrift store, and turn the room into her own
personal exercise haven. A little pile of weights and a yoga mat
waited in the corner of the main basement room, for the day when
the treadmill would finally be uncovered.

Hugh grabbed a stack of broken down
moving boxes he had brought in from the shed. With me in front, we
headed down the basement stairs. I flipped on the light switch in
the storage room. There was hardly any room for us to stand inside,
but we managed to squeeze in.

My grandparents, Claire's parents,
died in a car crash two years ago. When that happened, much of
their belongings came to us. Corinne had picked through what she
wanted, and then left it to my mom to dispose of the rest. Claire
had a hard time parting with much of it, and there was a lot to
part with. My grandparents had been wealthy, and Grandma Eleanor
collected antiques on the verge of hoarding.

Much of it had ended up going to
auction. But a third of the delicate china and lacey linens sat
here, collecting dust. I knew part of the reason Claire wanted us
to take care of it was so that she wouldn't have to go through the
emotional work of deciding what to give
away.  

Hugh was busy putting together one of
the boxes and setting it on top of an unsightly, chipped end
table.

"Where do we start?" I asked him. He
looked as overwhelmed as I did.

"Wherever you want," he said. "Just
start. I want to get it done today. Considering how you and I
operate, if we quit in the middle, it'll never get finished." I
knew he was right about that.  

 
We set to work,
digging through boxes and bags, and taking out garbage and
donations to the main room. The charity pile began to grow, and
after an hour had passed, we could move more freely in the storage
room little by little. Like my room, there were no windows inside,
and it was musty. Puffs of dust whirled up like spirits whenever we
moved a box.

"Good lord, there's carpeting," Hugh
remarked when he discovered a swatch of blue on the floor. "I had
no idea." We looked at each other and laughed. It felt good since
we hadn't done it in so long.    

A rack of old clothing was crushed
against the back wall. Hanging on rusty wire hangers was a baby
blue tuxedo that I assumed had belonged to my grandpa, and a few
sweaters with shoulder pads and color vomit that moths had
nibbled.

"Everything on that rack can go," Hugh
advised me. "In case you can't tell."

He helped me navigate the wheeled time
machine out into the hall. I pulled a sticky cobweb off of my
palm.

"I'm glad we have a van coming to pick
this up. Otherwise we'd never get it out of here," he said,
surveying the little mountain of junk that had
accumulated.

"Do you think everything will fit?" I
asked. It was an awful lot of our crap.

"We'll make it fit," he said
determinedly.  

Taking the rack out made a significant
dent in the room, a full free corner. Nearby, I found some loose
photographs in a box, of Claire and Corinne as kids. They are
fraternal twins, but in the pictures, they were dressed in matching
outfits. I watched them grow older as I flipped through the photos,
morphing into their current personalities.

Claire looked fashionable for the time
with a perm and short jean jackets, while Corinne's hair was flat
and practical, held in place with barrettes. As I flipped through
them, I smiled. I could totally see them fighting tooth and nail
over the bathroom mirror.

A musty old file lay at the bottom of
the box. "Eleanor's Medical Records" someone had scribbled in black
on the surface. I picked it up, fascinated by my find.

"Take a look at this," I said, lifting
the cover. Hugh snatched it out of my hands almost immediately,
before I got a chance to look at the yellowing papers inside.
 

"Claire would want this," he said
distractedly.

"Okay. But can I just look at it
before you take it to her?" I pleaded.

"You wouldn't be interested in grimy
old papers," he said. He had already tucked the file underneath his
arm.

"Are you kidding?" I asked. "You know
me. I would definitely be interested in grimy old
papers."

"Looking at it would be a little
disrespectful, don't you think, kiddo? You know the kind of medical
tests old people have to have. I'm sure there's nothing
fascinating."

He put the file in going upstairs box
next to him. The subject was closed.

My mind raced with reasons why he
would be so eager to cover up whatever was in the file. I wondered
if I really was just being rude by wanting to look at it, but I
didn't see the harm when Eleanor was my own grandmother. She had
always enjoyed fairly good health as far as I knew, no cancer or
diabetes, and her death had obviously been an accident. Still, I
tried to put it out of my mind.    

We finished the storage room in a few
hours. The space was almost totally clear, save for some tubs of
Christmas decorations in the corner, an old TV and DVD player we
had rigged up, and the treadmill. Finally I had the heart to put
most of my old stuffed animals and dolls in the charity pile,
although a few of them now sat on my dresser.

Later on, I sat down to finish
homework in my room. The light rain had been replaced by a full on
storm outside, and I could feel the rumbles of thunder underneath
my socks. Not wanting to think about school while I was home, I had
put off my homework until the last minute. I hated the fact that
the weekend was almost up. Time raced when I was out of classrooms
and echoing hallways. At least I had someone to talk to in Theo.
 

I tapped my pencil on my Geometry
worksheet. I was struggling with math already, not much, but I
could imagine how it would be soon. I hated it because it made me
feel stupid, even though I wasn't. I filled in the holes in the
letters of "surface area formulas" with pencil.
  

The last day of ninth grade captured
my wandering thoughts. Jenna and I had been talking about moving on
to sophomore year, sitting up front in Mr. Calhoun's class. He'd
given us the last two weeks basically off, merely making us
complete word find puzzles every day.  

"It's like rush week. And it's finally
over, and we survived," Jenna said, flaking orange polish off of
her tiny fingernails. "Despite the hazing. And look, we still even
have all our hair." She ran her hand lovingly through her springy,
perfect curls. My hair could never do that.

"I guess you could look at it that
way," I agreed. Mr. Calhoun handed out pamphlets about a job
seminar the school was holding in July. Jenna picked hers up and
read the summary on the back flap.  

"
Ever wonder what technology lies ahead? You can become
involved in your future starting now...
Like I would really want to rush right back up to Hawthorne
when I finally get out of here," Jenna scoffed, tossing it on her
desk. "No thanks. I wish I never had to see this place
again."

She crumpled the pamphlet up and aimed
for the garbage can sitting beside the door. She missed by a
fraction but didn't bother to retrieve her refuse.
 

"It's not that bad, is it?" I asked.
"I mean...most of the time."

"Are you kidding me?" Her nostrils
flared like she was on the verge of losing her temper. "This town
is a nightmare, even if it didn't try so hard to be." This from the
person who used to have the world's most optimistic
attitude.

I shifted uncomfortably at my desk.
The way she was acting was the beginning of the rift between us,
little cracks in the smooth façade of our friendship. I had tried
not to notice it, and I knew now that was a mistake. But back then
I thought denial was my best defense.
    

"Do you know what you want to be when
you grow up?" I asked her in my best teacher voice. I already knew
it would be something with animals. Jenna had been a vegan since
she knew what the word meant, and she was always pet sitting
whenever she had the opportunity because her parents' wouldn't
allow her to have animals in the house. She'd saved multiple mice
and turtles and kept them in secret shoeboxes behind the garage
over the years.   

Jenna smirked, the angry
attitude draining off her face. "
Veterinarian
." She sang out the
syllables. "Although at the rate my parents' money is going down
the drain, I think I'll have to take up a job dancing on top of a
bar to pay my way through veterinary school."

I frowned. I had always thought
Jenna's parents were pretty well off. Not popular-kid-rich exactly,
but definitely upper middle class. I had been amazed when she
forked over a hundred dollars for jeans.  

"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"I thought they had a bunch in savings, college fund,
everything."

She looked down at the floor. "They've
been having a lot of bad luck. Their stocks tanked a while back. I
know they've been dipping into their savings accounts. I keep
hearing them late at night screaming at each other when they think
I'm sleeping."

Maybe that was the reason she left. It
could be as valid as any motivation, I thought as I sat in my room
in the present, listening to the thunder. I wondered if her parents
still blamed me. The day after Jenna disappeared, her mother
grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.

"Why her? Why not you?" she had
shouted through her tears until my father pulled her off of
me.

My parents told me not to think about
it. She was just a scared mother. People say things they don't mean
when they're frightened, especially when it involves their
children. I couldn't just forget it, though. I still saw the
desperate look in her eyes, and I knew she would trade me for her
daughter without question.   

THUD.

I jumped. Something had pounded the
wall above my desk. I pushed my seat back and stood up.

THUD.

Maybe it was the water heater. I was
pretty sure it was on the other side of the wall. But it appeared
to be coming from high on the ceiling. I waited. For a few seconds,
it seemed like the sound stopped, but as soon as I thought that, it
came again.  

THUD.
 

I flinched. Speed-walking out of my
room, I stood up on the bottom step and yelled up to Claire. "Hey,
did you drop something in the kitchen?"

"No, why?"  

"I just heard a couple of loud
sounds."  

"It wasn't up here," she called.
"Maybe it was outside. It's still storming; it could have been
thunder or the deck chairs getting knocked around in the
wind."

Well, it could have, had it not been
right above my desk in the middle of our basement. I walked down to
the end of the hall, past my room and to the little alcove beyond.
But there wasn't much in the little space. The water heater I had
suspected before was totally silent, and the furnace wasn't even
on.

THUD.

I recoiled, hands clasping, teeth
clenching. I definitely wasn't imagining it. My mind filed through
the possibilities — pipes, the storm...maybe something else.
Something that made voices whisper behind doors, and lockers shut
and open. But that was stupid, that had been at school.

I slowly strode over to my
open doorway, and glued my eyes to the innocuous, plain wall. I
stood still, waiting for the sound again, but all was still. I
could hear the faint sound of the TV program upstairs, but whatever
caused the banging had finally stopped.
Like the whispering behind the door.
I shook my head. I didn't know if that made me more relieved
or apprehensive. Either my imagination was going bonkers, or
something more supernatural had started to affect me.
 

Chapter 8

Luckily, no one appeared to care about
my supposed staring problem last week. Even Lainey continued to
pretend I was nothing more than a bug beneath her stiletto. Which
meant I still wasn't important.

At lunch, I found Theo in the commons
as we both got in line. Everyone had lunch at Hawthorne during the
same time period, so there were two lunch counters, with people
snaking out behind them. Theo really hadn't made other friends at
school yet.

"How about you just come sit at my
table?" I offered, assuming the other girls wouldn't mind. There
were always a few free seats, I was sure we could make
room.

"Okay," Theo said, nodding. Tiny
sparkly flecks rained on her tray. We gathered our food and made
our way to our destination.     

"What are you doing?" Becky asked,
alarmed. Theo and I froze as we were setting our trays down. Becky
was normally so inviting, having rescued me the other day. I
couldn't imagine what I had done to bring on the change. She
beckoned for me to lean in so she could whisper to me, so I
did.