When Ghosts Call Us Home by Katya de Becerra

Author:Katya de Becerra [Becerra, Katya De]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Page Street Publishing
Published: 2023-08-26T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Three

We leave my room to procure dinner from the kitchen. We don’t need to articulate it, but neither of us feels like socializing, so we go back to my room and have dinner together, just the two of us, sitting on my bed, huddled under the blankets, fully clothed. If Arthur notices how freakishly cold my room is compared to the rest of Cashore, he doesn’t say so. He’s calmed down a little since his earlier outburst, but there’s still a darkness in his eyes.

He shoots glances into the corner where the wardrobe makes a corridor against the wall. Arthur’s nervousness is contagious, and soon I join him, looking for something in that darkness, too. We consume our chicken anticucho skewers and sweet potato fries to the relentless soundtrack of the ocean gale slamming repeatedly against the house. Cashore groans and moans, but its integrity holds.

“Something happened while you were filming the balcony scene,” Arthur says as a statement, not a question. “You seem different.”

“Something did happen,” I admit. I wonder how much to tell him, how to steer this conversation without endangering my progress on the Path. I don’t want to have my latest Sign erased from my head. But I want to share something meaningful with Arthur, this desire overriding my cautiousness. “Let’s just say, I had a shift of perspective.”

“That’s when you’ve received your Second Sign—during the filming,” he says. He shifts on his side of the bed, and gravity beckons me to slide closer to him. “I wonder if my father did too, or if he’s further on than he lets on.”

“I bet this whole house is on the Path. Ivor, Raina …” I say, the calm in my voice not reflective of the turmoil inside.

“No, not them. Just him,” Arthur says.

I wait for him to share more. He looks like he wants to, fingers gently tapping against the bed. Our dinner is finished, and Arthur could’ve left by now. And yet, here he is, perfectly behaved, yet stiff with tension. I wonder what it might look like to the crew, to Erasmus, this thing I have with Arthur, where he spends time in my room, in my bed. But also, do I care? We’re not doing anything, just talking. If someone watched the surveillance footage and got scandalized, I’m sure we’d have heard from them by now.

“I didn’t know until today, not for sure,” Arthur says. “But I …

was looking for something in his room and came across his notes.”

“You went snooping?” I shake my head in mock judgment. I can’t say it didn’t occur to me to invade Erasmus’s private space and look for anything incriminating, but what if I got caught? Would he kick me out from his movie set? Besides, I didn’t really have a good reason before. The director may be suspicious, but so is everyone else currently trapped with me in this house.

“I needed to know what we’re really doing here,” Arthur says.

“Are you saying we’re not really reenacting scenes

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