“Get in the car,” Nick said. He said it like there wasn't any possibility that she wouldn't.
But Mira thought of that Bible story line: “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Mira wasn't budging.
“You can't stay home alone for three whole days,” Nick said.
“Sure, I can. Watch me,” Mira responded. Now was his turn to convince her to change her mind.
But Nick was tired and simply said, “Fine, suit yourself,” and drove off. So much for his role as responsible older brother. Mira didn't need him. She told herself she would be fine.
It was exciting, at first, to be at home alone. Mira ordered pizza and sweated to 70s music. She watched her mother's adult-themed movies and read her sister's smutty novels and then perused her brother's dorky teenage love letters. She found her dad's questionably inappropriate emails to female co-workers (he had printed them out!) and raided his not-so-secret stash of tooth cracking hard candy. She preferred the butterscotch to the red hot.
And there was the silence. And then the not so silence. As if she wasn't alone. As if she was in the presence of something living. And it wasn't just the neighbor's fat black cat who periodically came over to drink water out of a bowl they put on the porch. Sirius would sometimes sit on her sister Corrine’s lap as if he owned it. Corrine was studying to be a veterinarian, so she indulged him.
Her brother, Nick, mostly avoided studying. Had Corrine been the one charged with watching Mira, Mira wouldn't be alone/not alone in the house. In fact, Corrine probably would have prepared an itinerary that would have included ridiculous items like "bonding time" and "sharing secrets.” Corrine would, of course, have left time for an elaborate lunch, and she would have prepared something so earnestly that Mira wouldn't even have hated her for her lack of spontaneity. Or, at least, the Corrine Mira used to know would have done this, but Corrine had changed since Jon's death. Nick, on the other hand, had always been hands off, now even more so. His last report card had been straight Ds.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” their father had demanded while pressing a chubby finger to his forehead.
“I passed,” Nick had said, not looking up from the handheld video game he was holding.
“Do Ds even count for credit?” their mother wondered. She was the kind of woman who read a charity's financial report before she donated. She liked tangible results.
“You're the one who insisted on college,” Nick countered, feet propped up on the table in front of the couch where he had planted himself. On this point, Nick was right.
Mira's thoughts of Nick were interrupted by a loud banging, or was it a thumping?
Tap, tap, tap.
Maybe it was Nick playing a joke.
Mira texted: “Nick, where are you?”
“Headed to the lake. You?”
“I'm in the house,” Mira texted. “But it feels like I'm not alone.”
“Oooh, spooky,” Nick wrote.
“I'M SERIOUS.”
“Look, I’m not there. What do you want me to do?”
“Come home!” Mira wrote. Just then, Mira’s cell phone went dead, which was weird because it had been at 86 percent battery life a second ago.
Mira tried to turn the phone back on, but the screen remained blank and lifeless. Next, the power went out. Mira debated what to do.
Mira thought there was a flashlight in that one catch-all drawer in the kitchen, the one with rubber bands, birthday candles, paper clips, and condiment packets. She felt for the flashlight in the dark. She found it, but, of course, the batteries were dead. She never realized before how dark it could get out here at night. Because normally the house did not exist in such an all-encompassing darkness. There were computers, phones, and microwave clocks to hold back the void. But now there was nothing. Nothing but Mira and the thing. While she pondered the blackness, Mira heard the noise again–tap, tap, tap– and tried to pinpoint its origins. Upstairs, she thought, and then with sudden clarity, she knew exactly where: Jon’s old room.
It had been two years since their brother Jon had died, and now they went for long periods of time without mentioning him. It was almost like he never existed. But Jon's death marked the start of so many things, none of them good. It was the beginning of both Nick's academic failure and Corrine's retreat from family life. Meanwhile Mira fled her actual family and immersed herself in online origins on Ancestry.com. Everything was about Jon, and yet no one mentioned him.
Mira felt two impulses warring within her. On the one hand was the desire for safety. On the other was the desire for closure.
Curiosity won, and Mira entered Jon’s room. As she did so, the door slammed shut, and objects flew every which way. Books, posters, stuffed animals. Then her previously dead cell phone roared back to life. Out of habit, and because she didn't know what else to do, Mira checked her notifications. There were 15 missed calls. She texted Nick: “I’m trapped in Jon's room.”
“Mira, get out!” he wrote.
Mira heard the lines from the Bible story about Lazarus again, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Jon’s room felt dark, as dark as death, but even that darkness had its own kind of appeal. And it called to her, just as Nick called to her. On the one hand, there was life. On the other hand, death. Both of them called to her. Reaching out for her with tentacle-like hands.
Mira knew only one thing with certainty—that she would spend the evening in the presence of one of her brothers. She just didn’t know yet which brother it would be.
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