Not in love.
Not at all.
Never Never.
Charlie.
I stare at the way she signed off and read those words through a few more times.
Not in love.
Not at all.
Never Never.
Charlie
I flip the note over, hoping to see a date. There’s nothing to indicate when it was written. If this girl wrote me letters like this, then how could everything I just read in my notes about the current state of our relationship even be true? I’m obviously in love with her. Or at least I was in love with her.
What happened to us?
What happened to her?
I fold the letter up and put it back where I found it. The first place I go is to the address listed on the paper for Charlie’s house. If I don’t find her there, maybe I can get more information from her mother, or from anything I can find that we might have overlooked before.
The garage door is shut when I pull into her driveway. I can’t tell if anyone is home. The place is grungy. Someone’s trashcan sits sideways next to the curb, trash spilling out onto the street. A cat is pawing at the bag. When I step out of the car, the cat dashes down the street. I look around as I make my way to the front door. No one is around, the neighbor’s windows and doors are all shut tight. I knock several times, but no one answers.
I look around one last time before I turn the knob. Unlocked. I quietly push the door open.
In the letters we wrote to ourselves, we mention Charlie’s attic a few times, so that’s the first place I search for. Charlie’s attic. I’m meeting the attic before I meet the girl. One of the doors is open in the hallway. I walk in and find the bedroom empty. Two beds—this must be where Charlie and her sister sleep.
I walk to the closet and look up at the ceiling, finding the entrance to the attic. I push clothes aside, and a smell fills my nose. Her smell? Floral. It smells familiar, but that’s crazy, right? If I can’t remember her, I can’t possibly remember her smell. I use the closet shelves as stairs and make my way up.
The only light inside the attic comes from the window on the other side of the room. It’s enough to illuminate where I’m going, but not by much, so I pull out my phone and open the flashlight app.
I pause and stare down at the open app on my phone. How did I know that was there? I wish there were rhyme or reason to why we remember some things and not others. I try to find a common link in the memories but come up completely empty.
I have to hunch over because the ceiling is too low for me to stand upright. I continue across the attic, toward a makeshift sitting area on the far side of the room. There’s a pile of blankets lined with pillows.
She actually sleeps up here?
I shudder trying to imagine anyone willingly spending time in a place this isolated. She must be a loner.I have to bend over more to avoid hitting my head on the rafters. When I reach the area she’s made up for herself, I look around. There are stacks of books beside the pillows. Some of the books she uses as tables, topped with picture frames.
Dozens of books. I wonder if she’s read them all, or if she just needs them for comfort. Maybe she uses them as an escape from her real life. From the looks of this place, I don’t blame her.
I bend down and pick one up. The cover is dark, of a house and a girl, merging together as one. It’s creepy. I can’t imagine sitting up here alone, reading books like this in the dark.
I set the book down where I found it, and my attention falls on a cedar chest pushed up against the wall. It looks heavy and old, like maybe it’s something that’s been passed down in her family. I walk over to it and open the lid. Inside, there are several books, all with blank covers. I pick up the top one and open it.
January 7th-July 15th, 2011.
I flip through the pages and see that it’s a journal. In the box beneath this one, there are at least five more.
She must love to write.
I look around, lifting pillows and blankets, searching for something to put the journals in. If I want to find this girl, I need to know where she frequents. Places she might be, people she might know. Journals are the perfect way to find out that information.
I find an empty, worn backpack on the floor a few feet away, so I grab it and stuff all the journals inside. I begin pushing things aside, shaking out books, looking around for anything and everything that might help me. I find several letters in various places, a few stacks of pictures, random sticky notes. I take everything I can fit into the backpack and make my way back to the attic opening. I know there are also a few things in the bedroom at my own house, so I’ll go there next and sort through it all as fast as I can.
When I reach the opening, I drop the backpack through the attic hole first. It hits the ground with a loud thud and I flinch, knowing I should be quieter. I begin to descend the shelves one by one, trying to imagine Charlie making the journey up and down these makeshift stairs every night. Her life must be pretty bad if she escapes to the attic by choice. When I make it to the bottom, I grab the backpack and stand up straight. I pull it over my shoulder and start toward the door.
I freeze.
I’m not sure what to do, because the officer who tapped on my window earlier is now staring straight at me.
Is being inside my girlfriend’s house illegal?
A woman appears in the doorway behind the officer. Her eyes are frantic and they’re lined with mascara—like she just woke up. Her hair is wild, and even from several feet away, the scent of alcohol finds its way across the room.
“I told you he was up there!” she yells, pointing at me. “I warned him just this morning to stay off my property, and he’s back again!”
This morning?
Great. Wish I had informed myself of that fact in the letter.
“Silas,” the officer says. “You mind coming outside with me?”
I nod and proceed cautiously toward them. It doesn’t seem like I’ve done anything wrong, since he’s only asking me to speak with him. If I did anything wrong, he would have immediately read me my rights.
“He knows he’s not supposed to be here, Grant!” the woman yells, walking backward down the hall, toward the living room. “He knows this, but he keeps coming back! He’s just trying to get a rise out of me!”
This woman hates me. A lot. And not knowing why makes it hard not to just apologize for whatever the hell I did to her.
“Laura,” he says. “I’ll have a talk with Silas outside, but you need to calm down and move aside so that I can do that.”