“I know.” He shrugged. “People think I’m joking about a lot of stuff.”
Something about the way he said it made my chest ache.
“From now on, I’ll take you seriously,” I promised.
“I mean, not, like…too seriously, right?”
“No,” I laughed. “Not too seriously.”
“Smile, you two!” my mom yelled.
And we both smiled so hard our cheeks hurt.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
sully
THIS HOUSE WAS STUCK in time, a capsule of sorts. My room at Maple Street hadn’t changed much since I was a teen. A red plaid comforter covered my bed, same as usual, and the shelves above it still held books with frayed pages and trophies that didn’t mean anything now. This room remained a snapshot of a Midwestern middle-class teenager, frozen for nearly a decade.
When I’d packed for college, I brought only the essentials and left everything else behind. There hadn’t been a reason to bring more than I needed, not when campus had been less than an hour from home. And I’d never really come back for it.
Sighing, I eyed the empty box sitting atop my bed, knowing I needed to fill it.
After carrying Ellie’s luggage to the top of the stairs, I gave her some space to unpack, first going into the basement to check on the status of the utilities. Last night, I’d woken in the midst of a restless sleep, thinking about Eleanor living in this old house all by herself, and how a million things could go wrong. Those thoughts festered inside me until I gave in, dragged myself out to my kitchen table, and opened my laptop to spend the rest of the early morning hours doing extensive research via YouTube videos,learning how to check every questionable utility in Maple Street’s century-old basement.
It probably wasn’t necessary. Everything appeared to be fine. But at least I’d be able to sleep tonight.
Now, unfortunately, I had to tackle my room.
Resigned, I sat on the ground and began pulling shit out from under my bed. It was one of the things my mom had asked of me—to clear all this out. And fuck, there was a lot of it. I yanked on the first thing I saw—an orange shoebox—and froze when it popped out from under the mattress.
It was overflowing with pictures.
Pictures of Ellie and me.
And the notes we used to pass back and forth in Culinary, when we gave up on learning how to fold a napkin into a swan.
There were ticket stubs of movies I’d taken her to, includingThe Hobbit.
And letters she sent me during her freshman year of college, when I’d still been in high school.
My throat tightened while something stomped on my chest. If I didn’t know better, I might have called Blake, asked my cardiologist brother what the number one heart attack symptom was and if maybe it was the sensation of the Hulk smashing your most vital organ.
I started to shove the entire box back under the bed when a knock sounded at the door.
Ellie opened it before I could figure out how to get my throat to work, and I turned, hoping my body blocked the box from view.
“Hey, I have snacks,” Ellie said, her voice oddly tentative. “Baby and I were hungry, so I made some popcorn and cut up some apples with peanut butter.”
Baby and I were hungry.
Those words immobilized me, filled me with emotions I didn’t think I’d ever recover from.
“Are you okay?” Ellie asked, and I figured it wasbecause I’d forgotten how to function as a human, but then she added, “You have the big light on.”
That shook me out of it. “Yeah, I was—” I waved my hand toward the switch because now that she mentioned it, I hated how bright it was. Ellie immediately flicked the overhead light off, reaching instead for the lamp on my dresser right inside the door. “Thanks. I was testing all the bulbs in the house. Making sure I didn’t need to replace any for you.”
“Oh. Thank you.” Ellie set a small bowl of popcorn on the dresser, right next to the lamp and a stack of some kind of collector cards. “But I do know how to change light bulbs.”
