Then, when we finally got to the house, it turned out that my mother had packed the house key in a box on the moving truck that wasn’t coming till the morning. Zoe eventually got us in by squeezing through a cat door we found after stumbling around the porch in the dark looking for doors or windows that had been left unlocked.
Usually, I’m not into stuff about the universe speaking to you and all that, but sometimes when things happen in a certain way, it makes you think about why and what it means. You understand, right? If we’d all been dying to get into that house, wouldn’t someone have remembered to take the key? Wouldn’t one of us have remembered the trick to opening Zoe’s handcuffs?
4
It doesn’t bother me that my parents made me take the attic bedroom, even though it’s pretty obvious from the rope ladder that before we got here the “attic bedroom” was actually just the “attic,” the place people put things they wanted to forget but felt weird throwing away. What does bother me is that they think I’m stupid enough to believe that I got it because I’m the oldest and that it’s some great privilege to sleep in a room where the ceiling slopes so badly it feels like an airplane. I may be a nuddy, but I’m not completely clueless. I’m the one sleeping in the attic because Zoe’s too scared and Jeanine’s too Jeanine.
On my way to the bathroom in the dark that first night, I missed the bottom two rungs of the ladder and landed hard on the hallway floor.
“Tris?”
It was Jeanine. I felt my way along the hall to her door. She was in bed reading The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, a flashlight balanced on her shoulder and Paws, her bear, tucked under her arm like he was reading too.
“Don’t you have that book memorized by now?”
“It makes me feel better. And I can’t sleep.”
“Yeah, me too. The attic’s got this really bad smell, and it’s coming from this one spot on the wall right next to my bed.”
“Your wall smells?”
“I don’t think it’s the wall itself. I think it’s something dead trapped inside the wall.”
“Uch. That’s so disgusting. What made you even think that?”
“Probably the sound of all the not-dead mice running around in there.”
“Ew!” She shivered.
“Hey, how long do you think it takes a dead mouse to stop stinking? I mean, eventually it has to run out of stink, right?”
“I guess it depends how long he’s been there.”
“Something tells me Mom and Dad aren’t going to let me call Iris and ask her how long the attic has stunk of dead mouse.”
“You can stay here if you want.” Jeanine scooched over and shined the flashlight on the space she’d just made in the bed.
“Oh, okay. Thanks. One sec.”
When I got back from the bathroom, I climbed into bed next to Jeanine. Then I just lay there listening to her breathe. She makes this tiny whistle when she inhales because she’s got a little asthma, or severe reactive airway disease if you ask her. Anyway, I guess I’d kind of been missing it up in the attic all by myself. Don’t get me wrong. I love not having to share a bedroom anymore, but I’d slept with that whistle my whole life or at least as long as I could remember, and now, even though it was gone, I couldn’t get myself to stop listening for it.
I must have gotten bored just listening though because I found myself reading over her shoulder. “What’s this about anyway?”
“What?”
“The Wolves of Willoughby Chase?”
She turned the flashlight around so it was shining right in my face. “You really want to know?”
I covered my eyes. “Yeah.”
“Yeah? Yeah like ‘whatever’?”
“No, yeah like yeah. I want to know what makes you read it over and over. Also, this part where the wolves attack the train actually seems good, you know, for a book.”
“It is. So good,” she said, shining the flashlight back on the book. “So you really want to know?”
“Are you kidding me? How many times are you going to make me say it?”
“Okay, okay.” She turned off the flashlight. “So, it’s about these girls. And they’re left alone with this woman, who is supposed to take care of them while one girl’s parents go on a trip. Anyway, the woman turns out to be evil and wants to steal the parents’ money, and she locks the girls up in this horrible orphanage. Oh, and then there’s a shipwreck and everyone thinks the parents are dead, but they’re not and—”
“Wait, what about the other girl’s parents? Where are they?”
“Oh, right, those parents are actually dead, and the aunt is super old and is getting really sick while the girls are locked up and starved and tortured in the orphanage.”
“This is the book you love so much you’ve read it like a million times? It’s like a horror movie.”
“I guess it is kind of like one terrible thing after another, but then the girls fight back and eventually they save the old woman, and everything turns out okay. But it’s the horrible stuff that really sucks you in.”
Neither of us said anything for a pretty long time after that, and I actually thought maybe Jeanine had fallen asleep, but then she whispered, “Do you think we’ll get to go back if it’s really bad?”
“Home?”
“Yeah. You know, like if we show that we’re trying, really trying, but we’re still not happy here.” Her voice was all shaky now, not at all like it had been when she was telling me about the book. “Do you think they’ll
