Page 70 of Shake the Habit

“I don’t know if you rememberHamlet,” Caleb commented, and Marc said that he did not, and he wasn’t going to stand around discussing senior year English Lit class. He opened the door to his truck and a bunch of junk spilled out, which interested Sir a lot. My cousin made sure that the dog was out of the way and then roared off.

“Personally, I’m not sure what you meant aboutHamlet, but Marc was always really good at English. He definitely understood that reference,” I said.

“Queen Gertrude said that another character protested too much and revealed the truth by mistake,” Caleb explained. “Want to place a bet on whether Marc and Taygen will reunite? I say yes.”

“I don’t remember Shakespeare, but I do remember the thing about a fool and her money being parted. No, I will not take that bet,” I answered, and pointed at the house. “What’s happening in there?”

“Come look,” he invited, and I wasn’t thrilled about doing that but he held my hand and Sir stuck close enough to my legs that I had trouble walking. Those things made it more palatable.

My cousin Dasia’s crew had been hard at work on the heating and cooling in the previous week, and demo had happened in the kitchen and a few walls where plumbing needed to be replaced. They’d done a lot but it had only served to make the house look more desolate and scarier. I had been saying that it made me anxious to be inside this place and that I didn’t like it, but I put a different name to my feeling as we walked through the empty, dark rooms. It was fear.

“What do you think?”

“They’ve made good progress,” I said. “Marc has everyone moving along well.”

“Yeah.” Caleb frowned, though, as he looked around. “They’ll paint and redo the floors.”

“That will make a big difference.”

“Maybe it needs new windows. Maybe I should take down some walls and make it more open.”

“I thought you just wanted it more habitable,” I said. “But you might appreciate those changes when you move back in.”

“What? When I move back in?” he asked, echoing my words. He dropped my hand and stared.

“I just assumed that you would want to,” I said. “Don’t you want to?”

“Uh, sure, I should live…hell. No, I don’t want to do that.” He looked at me. “Do you want me out of the house on Signal Mountain?”

“What? No! I don’t want you to go, not at all,” I said, and I decided that this was the perfect time to hug him. I felt him relax when I did, sighing out some tension. “I’m totally happy, just the way things are.”

“Just the way things are,” he echoed again, and I nodded.

“I think everything is perfect. I really, really don’t want you to live here,” I said.

“You don’t like this place.”

“Well,” I started, and paused. I picked up my head to look at him. “Well, no. I don’t, but it’s not because of the thing that happened with the moth tickling me, or whatever that was.” Because the more I’d thought about it, the more doubts I’d had that there had been any kind of insect there. “It’s because this house feels so sad to me, because I keep thinking about all the bad things that happened to you.”

“I never got hurt,” he said.

“You did, even if she never actually used the switch that she made you cut. Your mother hurt you by being—”

There was a noise upstairs, like metal cans falling and then rolling. Sir started to bark and I froze, staring at the staircase and waiting for something to descend.

“No one’s up there,” Caleb told me. “It was only a pile of materials falling over.”

“I want to go,” I said. “Right now.” I was already moving toward the door, pulling him along and with Sir at my side. I didn’t stop on the porch, either, but went straight to my car.

“I need to go see what fell,” he said. “I’ll clean it up.”

“No,” I told him. “Seriously, don’t you feel it? Marc doesn’t like being in there, either. And the other day, the framers ran outside because they were scared. They said they heard voices, and even if the mice are gone, Sir is nervous.”

For the first time in a while, Caleb put his knuckles back up to his mouth. “It will be better when the renovations are done. It’ll be better painted.”

“It’s more than how it looks. I thought I was just being, you know, kind of fanciful or just foolish. But I don’t think it’s that, and I’m not putting a name to anything but I don’t want to be here.”

We stood looking at each other and Sir wiggled in between us. I waited for Caleb to tell me that yeah, I was acting fanciful and foolish, just like a child.

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