Things That Fall by Mere Joyce

Author:Mere Joyce
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult Fiction / Coming of Age
Publisher: Cormorant Books Inc.
Published: 2019-09-20T16:00:00+00:00

Hailey

FIRST THE SHED, NOW the attic. Fuck. We can’t even bring the dogs with us this time, so if a bat starts swooping around hell-bent on giving us rabies, we’re screwed. No one else seems to care about our well-being, and I’ve already acted enough like a chicken. I won’t complain again. But I’m not happy with the arrangement. Blood, guts, and all kinds of sick I can handle. Critters, on the other hand, need to stay well out of my way.

I’ve never been into the attic at the cottage. I didn’t even realize there was an attic to enter. I guess if I had ever stopped to think about it, the existence of an attic would seem plausible. But until today, it never occurred to me a ladder was folded up atop a hatch in one of the spare bedroom’s closets.

Stepping up the ladder rungs is a careful process, the wood rough and weak beneath my touch. Forrester, Thomas, and Eli have already gone up, each of us ascending one at a time in case the thin ladder can’t hold the weight of two bodies. As my sights pull away from the bedroom and move up into the attic, I expect darkness. Instead, I’m relieved to find a bright, open room.

The attic covers only half the width of the entire cottage, and there are large windows on either side of the slanted ceiling to let in the full strength of the remaining daylight. While the space is not massive, it is cleaner than I imagined. The windows are nice, too. They make me think of the telescope my mother has in the study at home. I’m surprised she never brought the instrument here. We’ve spent many nights watching the stars together — one of the very few interests we share — and this would have been an excellent place for gazing.

“Why do you have skis up here, anyway?” Thomas is asking when I climb up onto the attic floor. “Wouldn’t you keep those in town with you?”

“These ones are for cross-country skiing,” Forrester says. “We didn’t go all that often, but sometimes we’d spend an afternoon in the woods. Dad kept all the winter stuff up here.”

The skis rest against the back wall, along with pairs of snowshoes and several winter jackets hung up on hooks. I spot fishing gear, too, and one of those classic wooden sleds for tobogganing.

“Did you come up here in the winter often?” Kayla asks, crawling up behind me. “I don’t remember many winter visits.”

“Sometimes. Depended on the year, on what conditions were like. Last winter we didn’t come up here at all. Dad wasn’t too well. My mom … she liked this place in winter, actually. She thought it was romantic. After she left, we didn’t come up as much.”

“Have you talked to her in the last week?” I ask, my words measured. “Does she know what’s been happening?”

“We talked a couple of nights ago.” Forrester shrugs, turning away from us and heading over to the sporting equipment.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.