Page 26 of The Staircase in the Woods

“Bummed? About what?”

“Laur being at Matty’s beck and call.”

Owen stumbled over his denial as it tumbled out of him. “What? Wha? That’s—that’s not a thing, man. She’s not—it’s not like that. The fuck, Ham.”

Hamish shrugged, handed back the Snapple. “We all know you have a thing for her.”

“I do not have a ‘thing’ for her. We’re friends.”

“Friends.”

“Just friends.”

“Uh-huh. Sure. That’s why you two were making out last Christmas—”

“Drinks. There were drinks. We were drunk. People do stupid shit when they’re drunk.” Owen frowned over the Snapple bottle as he finished it off. It was true. They had gotten drunk at Nick’s house and wandered out past their shitty aboveground pool and into the maze of overgrown roses Nick’s mom had once preened over year after year before she ran out on the family. That’s when Laur smashed her mouth against Owen’s and pushed her tongue in his mouth, and it was both his first kiss and the best moment in his life, so far. And yet, he also told himself, it was a fluke. Just a weird stupid moment in time.

A weird stupidamazingmoment in time.

“People do the stupid shitthey have always wanted to dowhen they’re drunk, man, c’mon.”

“You headbutted a tree last time you were drunk.”

Ham laughed. “Oh, haha, yeah, I did. Hey! That tree had it coming. Trees have had ittoo goodfortoo long,man.”

That got a laugh out of Owen, too. Hamish reallyhadheadbutted a tree. One night he’d gotten hammered on some unholy combination of Goldschläger and Jäger. Usually Hamish was nothing but love and laughs when he was lit, but that night he got surly—less the usual Phish vibe and suddenly, inexplicably, more Rage Against the Machine. Hamish took out his rage not on a machine but on an old oaktree in Nick’s backyard. Needless to say, the oak was untroubled by Ham’s head, but the tree gave Ham’s head a pretty good dent. His face ended up a streaky mask of blood. Later, Hamish blew it off, made it seem like he was trying to be funny, but Lauren said it meant Hamish had “a core of anger somewhere deep down.”

The ghost of that injury could still be seen on Hamish’s forehead—faint but yellow, like an old piss stain on pants.

“We’rejustfriends,” Owen said again, when they were done cackling.

“Just friends,” Hamish reiterated, as if to add,Yeah, sure.

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“So you don’t care if she fucks Matty.”

“She’s not going—I mean, she’s free to if she wants. Matty’s my friend, she’s my friend, I don’t really see them having a real relationship, and it’s not like they’recompatiblein any real way, but okay, sure, whatever.”

Hamish shook his head, scratching at the patchy scrub of muttonchops that had inspired Nick to call him Hobo Wolverine. “Okay, if you say so, I’m not gonna harsh your b—”

Up above, a voice rang out. Lauren’s voice. To Owen’s ear, it contained both wonder and alarm.

“Guys!” she yelled down from the top of the trail. “You need to come and see what we found up here!”

16

The First Staircase

After the trail reached its peak and leveled out, it turned to the east, but dead ahead sat the staircase. The stairs and risers were pale and faded, like old bones. The paint, cracked and chipping. The wood, not soft, not rotten, but worn. The balusters—though Owen would not have had that name for them, not then—were twisted into spirals. The railing, too, screwed into a spiral at the end, like water going down a drain. The structure rose up out of nothing, and went to nothing. A staircase to nowhere.

Tall trees on either side of it cast mottled shadows on the pale staircase. The wind stirred debris on those stairs, an invisible broom sweeping them clean. It howled through the balusters, like someone whistling through stiff grass.

Owen shivered looking upon it. It felt wrong. Like it didn’t belong.

Matty came up to Owen, gave him a gentle elbow to the ribs. “You see this? This is nuts, right?”

“Yeah,” Owen said. He had to admit it felt good to be noticed by Matty. Like you were in his light, made brighter by it, less scared, less stupid. Matty never really belonged with the rest of them: They were kinda freaks and he was, well, not. Sure, they all pretended they were equals to him, but in the deepest parts of themselves they all had to know, right? That Matty was better? That he was above them, or at least that he was the first among them? The one, Owen thought, who mattered the most?Dear leader,he thought.

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