Hilltop House

Cora, Fourteen

When her mother found her, Cora was asleep in her closet. She'd taken out anything that had been inside it and pulled a pillow and blanket in, pressed up against the walls as small as possible, a mouse in its nest, and there, in only her underwear, fallen deeply into dreams.

"Oh my God, Cora!" the woman had cried, waking her daughter. "I couldn't find you! I thought maybe--" but she'd stopped when realizing the girl was too tired to comprehend.

So her mother left her there, and Cora drifted back into her wandering illusions, a somewhat darker turn in the corridors and stairwells of the mansion she roamed. She woke off and on throughout the night and into the next day, in the manner of those who are feverish or on sleep-inducing medication, never quite sure of the reality of her surroundings. Because the walls felt close around her, tightening against her body on all sides, so that she had very little room to twist and turn, so that her organs felt squeezed and her limbs impossible to move. Whether the straight-jacket-pressure was real or not, she couldn't tell, and she wasn't cognizant enough to push against it. Her inability to move began to feel nightmarish to the point of driving her mad when, all at once, she fully woke.

The closet itself was the same size it'd always been, though she was lying against the back of it, on her side, stomach and right hand pressed against the wall, her face so close that her mouth touched the plaster.

Shivering, Cora moved away, sat up, fully opened the ajar closet door to allow in the weak midday sunlight. She felt . . . gross. As if she needed to take a shower. And why was she practically naked? Where were her pajamas? What had even happened last night? It wasn't as if she'd been drinking or taken any medicine that might've caused tiredness or confusion. But she did feel sick, as if she hadn't gotten any sleep even though by the look of her room it was well into the day.

Cora rose, shaking a little, wondered if her chills were from the cold, her waxing illness, or something else--maybe even a mix of all of them. She stepped across the warm floor and picked up Grandma Luce's rainbow afghan off the desk chair, where she'd tossed it after the previous day's lounging. Once wrapped in its warmth, she felt less exposed. She hadn't been uncomfortable in her room before, not really--she'd always been appreciative of and intrigued by the way it seemed to adapt to please her. Nothing exactly had changed about it; the air felt the same, a soft coolness to it, the crisp smell of nothing at all--and the very walls and floor were glad for her presence, accepting of her, pleased. And yet, as she stood there, wondering at the weird artwork she'd penned around the window and along the stretch of wall leading to the crease, the corner, which she'd inked her drawings and poems up and down, Cora shuddered inadvertently. What had possessed her to ruin the paint like that?

Well, hadn't she wanted to doodle on something other than paper? And hadn't the walls seemed to, somehow, take to it?

Oh, why was she even thinking about that? Suddenly, in spite of its ambience, the room felt stifling. Cora needed to breathe properly, and she couldn't exactly do it there.

She left to use the restroom and brush her teeth, then went into the kitchen, where she reheated a mug of coffee from the pot her mother had left behind and took it into the living room. Cora sat on the sofa and blew gently over the top of the mug, watching the steam curl off the now-too-hot liquid. It'd snowed after she'd come in last night. Everything was covered in a thin, white blanket. The street hadn't been coated, though; it was still drivable, and Cora noticed Brian's white truck was gone from its normal place in the driveway. Maybe he'd had to work, too, like her mother, in spite of it being the day after Thanksgiving. Old people and drivers needed taking care of, she supposed.

Brian! He'd . . . Cora flushed with warmth. She glanced about the room. The house might have felt some kind of way about her actions, about what Brian had said to her last night, but it couldn't read her thoughts. She could sit and remember all she wanted, and there was no reason to fear its annoyance.

Those idiots had gone into the basement, and nothing had happened, and then they'd wanted to keep looking around and she'd kicked them out. It hadn't been very nice of her to shame Brian into coming inside, but she'd been so mad--was still mad--at what he was doing to himself. He'd stayed behind, stood on the porch, and what had he said?

"I really care what you think about me. I don't want you to hate me."

And she'd replied something like, "I don't hate you. I just don't want you to throw yourself away. You're my friend, I think. I want you to do something with your life, not end up in jail."

Then he'd taken hold of her hand, hadn't he? And just kind of stood there, holding it, lightly pushed his thumbs into her palm, and even now, sitting on her couch and looking down at her empty hand, something tumbled inside of her, remembering how she'd been able to hear his breathing, the melty-ness of his eyes, the awareness that had come over her, the unexpected words he'd spoken next:

"I'm hoping . . . we're more than friends."

She hadn't known what to say because her heart had been beating too wildly, her thoughts whirling, but the house had made some sort of noise, a rumbling she'd felt beneath her feet, and she'd known Brian couldn't stay on the porch. So she'd told him to go, that she'd message or call . . .

Cora sat up abruptly, her coffee sloshing onto her lap. Swearing, the girl stood and plopped the mug onto a magazine on the table, then brushed whatever liquid she could off her blanket and went back into her bedroom, looking for her phone. She'd entirely forgotten Brian when she'd come in last night. She'd gone into the house and known it was dissatisfied, felt its discontent at her actions, and she'd gone straight to her room like a punished child. How she'd ended up in the closet was unclear, but she had a sense that she'd thrown herself onto her bed, drifted off, and in a half-awake state undressed and moved. Thinking back on it, she'd felt chilled and achy; surely she'd run a fever.

Whatever had happened, she was dismayed to see that Brian had called once and texted several times. Surely he'd ended up figuring Cora wasn't interested, that he'd made everything awkward and she just hadn't known how to let him down easy; his messages indicated as much. Oh, she felt guilty for forgetting him, leaving him insecure about what he'd said to her, especially when she was fairly certain she returned his feelings. She had to respond. She knew she should respond. But something held her back. After staring at the screen so that it blurred before her eyes, Cora slowly lowered the phone. What could she tell him, when she was here in her room? Whatever message she tapped out would seem somehow disingenuous, even if she told the truth. Was she really able to offer him anything, right now? She was sick, and her mother was talking about moving again, and then there was . . .

Sighing, stepping to the wall of her room, Cora scrutinized the color, the plaster, knowing it was more than just what her eyes saw. The floorboards warmed beneath her feet, and something in the girl warmed with them, contending with an odd unease that stirred within her. She touched her forefinger to the wall and traced an invisible line to the corner nearest the bedroom door. Breathing unevenly, Cora brushed the tip of her finger up and down the crease, sensed some indescribable reaction to her caress, and leaned her cheek against the wall in response. "I'm sorry." Her voice was soft, her words spoken to something she couldn't define or understand. She knew only that she'd somehow upset whatever it was that surrounded her here, whatever it was that had been communicating in its own way with her. "I won't bring anyone in, ever again." And she crouched slowly to the floor, pressing her fingers into the corner and stroking the wall all the way down, to where it met the baseboard. She lay there, afghan in a rainbow swirl around her, playing at the lines in the boards and the bumpy pits in the plaster and the small crack between the wall and the baseboard, and how many minutes passed like that, she didn't know.