“Well, I didn’t.”
I shake my head. “Sorry, I think I’m tired. I haven’t been sleeping well. The damn walls are always creaking or sighing.”
Margot watches me. Her mouth opens, but it’s like she decides against whatever she planned to say, because she shifts her weight back and reaches for her book.
It’s a clear end of conversation.
And as much as I want to be hurt by the withdrawal, as much as I want to push, Margot isn’t the one who created the divide between us. She spent months stretching her hand out to me. I can’t be surprised she’s finally pulled it back. Now we’re strangers sharing a bathroom.
The only one to blame is me.
“You should get some sleep, too. It’s late,” I say.
“Pot and kettle,” she says. “I can hear you chattering at all hours through the vents.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Thin walls, Jo. I can hear you.”
Unease rushes like cool saline through my limbs. Even the volume on my laptop shouldn’t be loud enough to filter through the walls or vents.
“Go to bed, Margot.”
Margot snorts. “Thanks, Mom.” With that, she’s cracking thebook back open. Her eyes don’t move, though; she’s staring at the pages, jaw clenched.
I turn back to the hall. The light from our rooms stripes the bookshelves of the landing in yellow.
Before my eyes start to play tricks on me, I duck back into my room and pull a change of clothes from the bottom dresser drawer. I keep my gaze locked on the ground until I’m safely inside the bathroom.
Margot’s door is shut when I exit the bathroom with a cloud of fog, and her lights are out. The house sits in a thick, heavy silence, and I swear each footstep creaks louder than usual.
My bedroom may be on the creepy side, with wallpaper that should have died with the last century, but the warmth of the floor lamp in the corner is like a safety blanket.
Until the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
On the dresser, the wrinkled page of lyrics sits beside my pen. The page and pen I had left on the bed.
The four steps from the door to the dresser feel like ten miles. Atop the faded wood, the first verse and pre-chorus have been filled in.
In every quiet room I hear echoes of you
And search for phantoms in vain
I’ve no clue how to breathe again
How to let the sun return after the rain
And I’ve built these walls so high
With bloody hands, brick by brick
Forgetting that up above, all along,
there’s been a sky
Half the words and handwriting aren’t mine. Slanted, unsteady chicken scratch that doesn’t match Margot’s pristine scrawl. Harper, though, had notoriously horrible handwriting.
The sharp, hot pain I put so much effort into keeping at bay slams into my chest, a tidal wave against a sandbag. I snatch the paper off the dresser and rip it to shreds, not looking at it until it’s in twenty pieces, the ink indecipherable.
