Calla
I'll miss the Troll the most.
I’ll miss Mack, of course, and the crows on my fire escape, and the way the pavement smells after it rains, and the Christmas boat parade, and I'll even miss living above a bar.
But for now, its the troll centered in my view-finder.
I press the button.
Click.
"I can’t believe you still take so many pics of this guy," Mack says, a tendril of long hair wrapped around her finger as she tries to stick it back up into her bun.
I lower my camera. "Why?"
“Because he’s made from stone. He never changes.”
"Things change around him,” I say, as I adjust my angle. “Light changes, people change, shadows and rain
change. So on and so forth, MacKinzie Jean.”
"Don’t full-name me.”
“Don’t question my love for this troll.”
I look back through the viewfinder.
My beloved is eighteen feet tall, made of concrete, and lives under a bridge.
He's also holding a Volkswagen Beetle.
I press the shutter.
Click.
“You love this thing more than you do me,” Mack complains. “You’ve literally got a tear in your eye. You haven't cried over me even once.”
“Well, to be fair, he’s never talked me into any bad life choices.”
It's early enough that we have him mostly to ourselves. A couple of tourists climb around his enormous hand while a little boy tries to scale the Volkswagen. His mother is attempting to both photograph him and prevent his death.
I wait until they're out of my frame.
Click.
“And I have?” Mack demands in outrage.
I stare at her.
"The rooftop."
"You got some incredible pictures."
"Portland."
"We agreed never to discuss Portland."
"The boat."
"They seemed trustworthy!"
"You didn't know their names."
"But did we die?"
"We slept in my car in Tacoma."
"That was an adventure."
"You pierced my belly button."
"And it looked hot."
"You watched one YouTube video."
"It was very thorough."
"It got infected."
"Barely."
"There is no barely infected."
"You kept it."
I pause. "That's not the point."
She waits for another attempt.
"We cut micro-bangs," I say.
Her face changes.
"Okay. That was a mistake."
We both laugh, but only because they’ve had three years to grow out.
"Okay." Mack steps in front of me and throws both arms wide. "Now take one of me. You’ll want it when you're sitting alone in your creepy funeral mansion wondering what your hot bestie is doing in Seattle."
"My creepy funeral mansion?"
"I don't know what else to call it."
"My house."
"There's a funeral home in it."
"Under it."
Mack poses in front of the Troll, one hip cocked, black boots planted wide. She’s wearing a long flowered skirt, a faded concert T-shirt knotted at her waist, and approximately fourteen bracelets. Her unruly hair is piled on top of her head.
I lift my camera. "Do something normal."
She flips me off.
Click.
She comes over to look at the screen, leaning against my shoulder.
"Oh, that's good."
"I know."
I sling the camera strap over my shoulder and look back at the Troll.
For four years, he's been five minutes from my front door.
I've probably taken a hundred pictures of this stupid concrete face.
This is the last one. I feel a pang in my heart region.
I turn away because now isn't the time to get emotional.
"Okay. I need coffee to feel human."
Mack watches me for half a second too long.
"Coffee," she agrees.
We start toward the shop.
The morning is gray, but that's hardly worth mentioning in Seattle. The pavement is perpetually wet, and cars hiss through the intersections. Someone rolls past us on a bicycle with his pant legs tucked into his socks. A dog waits outside a bakery, staring through the window at the pies. A long string of drool drips to the sidewalk.
I lift the camera.
Click.
Mack doesn't even break stride.
"You know," she says, "they have slobbery dogs in Astoria.”
"But they’re Astorian...not Seattle dogs lusting after pies."
"I'm pretty sure they're the same. Dogs are dogs."
“You can’t know that.”
“Neither can you.”
"I grew up there."
"You grew up in a funeral home. Your childhood cannot be admitted as evidence."
There it is.
I smile.
People used to think that was weird.
Not people. Kids.
Middle school kids, mostly, which is an important distinction because middle school kids are generally assholes.
Finn and I were the twins who lived with dead people.
Never mind that we didn't actually live with dead people.
Technically.
Our family owns Price Funeral Home, and yes, the funeral home is attached to our house, and yes, sometimes there are dead people downstairs.
It’s not like we’re roommates but try explaining that distinction when you're thirteen.
Mack bumps her shoulder into mine.
"So you're really going back.”
"No, Mack. I've packed all my possessions into boxes as an elaborate prank."
"That's what I thought."
She shoves her hands into the pockets of her skirt.
"You’re leaving me for a janky old funeral home."
"It's not janky, but yes."
"Where your father embalms people."
"Yes."
"While you sleep upstairs."
"He generally doesn't embalm people while I'm sleeping."
"There's an elevator for bodies."
"It's a service elevator."
"For bodies."
"And other things."
"What other things?"
I think about it.
"Supplies."
"Body supplies?"
"God, you’re impossible.”
She grins.
Mack has heard every story.
The viewing rooms. Dad's prep room. The service passage. The time Finn locked me in an empty casket when we were ten and I retaliated by talking him into jumping into a freshly dug grave two weeks later… and I didn’t pull him out for an hour.
She’s heard about Mom's art studio. The cliffs. The cove. The cemetery.
She knows Price Funeral Home as well as anyone who's never stepped foot inside it possibly can.
Which means, naturally, she's obsessed with it.
"I am coming to visit," she says. “Soon.”
"You've been saying that for four years."
"You wouldn't let me."
"I invited you last Christmas."
"It was Christmas. I have a mother."
"Bring her."
"My mother is not sleeping in a funeral home."
"Why not? Mine does.”
Mack lasts perhaps three seconds before she starts laughing.
I do too.
And for a little while, walking through wet Seattle with Mack beside me and my camera bouncing against my hip, it doesn't feel like I'm leaving.
It feels like any other morning.
Maybe that's the dangerous thing about last times.
Most of them don't have the decency to feel like one.
The coffee shop is already busy when we get there.
The bell above the door gives its familiar halfhearted jangle, and the smell hits me immediately—espresso, steamed milk, cinnamon, and the slightly frenzied energy of damp people late for work.
Behind the counter, Ricky looks up.
There are men who look like they should work in coffee shops.
Ricky isn't one of them.
He's six-four at least, built like a stone wall with a shaved head, a beard halfway down his chest with Viking beads woven into it, and tattoos covering both arms all the way to his knuckles.
A tiny pink flower is currently tucked behind his ear.
I point at it, lifting an eyebrow.
He doesn't blink.
"The five-year-old at table six gave it to me."
"It really brings out your eyes."
"Fuck off, Price."
I'll miss Ricky, too.
He abandons the espresso machine long enough to come around the counter and wrap me in a hug that lifts my feet completely off the floor.
"Jesus, Ricky."
"Last one."
"I need ribs."
"You have plenty."
He sets me down.
Mack ducks behind the counter and ties on an apron.
"She's emotional," she tells him.
"I am not. She is."
"She said goodbye to the Troll."
Ricky looks at me.
"I took a picture."
Ricky grins. “Of course you did. Your check's in the office, Red. Be right back."
He disappears through the narrow doorway beside the pastry case before I can argue.
I stand still for a moment in my coffee shop.
Except it isn't anymore.
My apron isn't hanging on the hook in back. My name isn't on this week's schedule. Someone else will open tomorrow morning and decide that the grinder is possessed. Someone else will know that Mr. Patterson wants his coffee dangerously hot and that the woman who orders the lavender latte every morning at ten will send it back if there's the slightest bit too much foam.
Life has already filled in the space where I used to be.
I don't know why that surprises me. I’ve been surrounded by death my entire life. I know firsthand that life goes on.
It always does.
Ricky comes back with an envelope and holds it out.
"Here you go."
I take it.
My last paycheck.
"Thanks."
"If you need anything, call me."
Something about the near-fatherly-way he says it makes my throat tighten.
"I will."
He pulls me into another hug, considerably gentler this time.
"Take care of yourself, kid."
"You too."
He lets me go.
Behind him, Mack is making something. She snaps a lid onto a paper cup, writes on it with a marker, walks around the counter and shoves it into my hand.
"For the road."
I look at the cup. She’d written: Come back to me, Corpse Girl. And had drawn a crude skull.
I look at her. “Aww, you love me.”
"Hush.”
I take a sip.
Perfect. Of course it is. She knows exactly how I drink it.
"Thank you."
"Yeah."
Neither of us says anything.
Because this is not goodbye.
She's coming to Oregon. At some point.
I'm coming back to Seattle. Someday.
We'll text constantly. She'll call. I'll call. We have Facetime. There will be visits and weekends and concerts and all the things we've been doing for four years.
Nothing important is changing.
Mack reaches out and catches my hand. Her bracelets slide down her wrist.
For once, she doesn't make a joke.
"I love you, Calla Elizabeth Price."
Damn her.
My eyes fill up, and burn, and break rank to spill down my cheeks. She pulls me into her.
"Don’t full-name me," I say to her neck and she smells like vanilla, and coconuts, and last night’s club. “I love you, too.”
I hold on a little longer than I mean to.
Then she releases me and immediately points toward the door.
"Go. Before I become emotionally available."
"God forbid."
"Text me."
"Bye, Mack."
"This is not good bye," she says indignantly.
I push open the door.
"No," I tell her. "It's not goodbye."
The bell jingles behind me.
I step onto the wet sidewalk with my camera over one shoulder, my last paycheck in my bag, and Mack's coffee warming my hand.
I turn toward home.
Cheeto is waiting for me at the top of the stairs. He hops down three steps to meet me and then head-butts me in the knee, like the little menance that he is.
"Well, hello to you too."
He answers with a rusty little mrrrow and winds himself around my ankles while I try to unlock the apartment door without spilling my coffee. Some splatters on my knee, and some splatters on Cheeto's head. It doesn't detract from his looks in any way, shape, or form.
Cheeto is beautiful in the way a scarred up old jungle cat is beautiful.
He's missing a chunk of his left ear, his fur grows in six different directions, and one of his bottom teeth sticks out when his mouth is closed.
He's perfect.
"You know we're not leaving you, right?"
He yells at me.
"I'll take that as a no."
I push the door open.
Cheeto trots inside ahead of me, tail straight up, apparently satisfied that I've returned from hunting in the wilderness.
The apartment looks terrible.
There are boxes everywhere. Boxes against the walls. Boxes on the kitchen table. Boxes stacked beside the couch. A precarious tower of boxes blocks half the front window.
"Finn?"
Nothing.
I set my coffee on the counter.
"Finn!"
Still nothing.
I hear music before I see him.
The bass is faint but unmistakable when I pass his bedroom. His door is open, and he's sitting cross-legged on the floor with his back to me, earbuds in, surrounded by books and records.
I lean against the doorframe.
Nothing.
I wave.
Nothing.
I pick up a balled sock from the floor and throw it at his head.
He jerks around.
"What the fuck?"
"Hello, brother."
He pulls one earbud out and looks at the sock beside him.
"Was that clean?"
"I don’t know. Was it? It was from your floor.”
"Calla."
I take another sip of coffee.
"How long have you been packing?"
"Since seven."
I look at the clock.
It's after ten.
"You didn't come home last night," he says, annoyed.
"I stayed at Mack's. I texted you."
Cheeto appears in the doorway and makes directly for Finn.
"Traitor," I tell him.
Finn reaches down automatically.
Cheeto pushes his head into Finn's palm. That's how it always goes.
I'm the one who rescued him.
Over three years ago, behind the coffee shop, skinny enough that I could count every rib beneath filthy orange fur. He'd been living underneath the dumpster and surviving on whatever Ricky put out for him after closing.
I brought him home in a cardboard box.
Finn said we absolutely weren't keeping him.
Then Cheeto climbed onto Finn's chest that first night and fell asleep.
That was the end of the discussion.
Finn scratches beneath his chin.
"Did you get your check?"
"Yep."
"Mack?"
"Working."
"Tragic."
"She says goodbye."
"She has my number."
"That's exactly what I told her."
He puts the earbud back in.
Conversation over.
I smile.
Then I head toward my room.
And stop.
"No."
Finn doesn't hear me.
"Finn."
Nothing.
I turn around, march back to his doorway, and pull the earbud from his ear.
He looks up at me.
"What?"
"You labeled my boxes."
"Yes."
"I told you to leave my stuff alone.”
"No, you told me not to pack your stuff."
"That is the same thing, Finn.”
"I didn't pack anything."
He points toward my bedroom.
"I just re-labeled what you already packed."
I stare at him.
"Why?"
"Because your labels were useless."
"My labels were perfectly adequate."
"All of them said Miscellaneous."
"They contain miscellaneous stuff.”
"That doesn't tell us anything."
"It tells us exactly what's in the box."
I walk away before he can make his case.
"You should be thanking me!" he calls after me.
My room is mostly dismantled.
The walls look naked without my photographs. Pale rectangles mark the places where they've hung for
years. My desk is almost empty. Half my clothes are gone from the closet.
And everywhere I look, there is Finn.
Finn's handwriting.
CALLA — WINTER CLOTHING
CALLA — CAMERA EQUIPMENT / ACCESSORIES — FRAGILE
CALLA — BOOKS / PHOTOGRAPHY
I pick up another box.
CALLA — PERSONAL / MEMORABILIA
I laugh despite myself.
My room feels strange this empty. It feels smaller.
I sit on the edge of my bed.
This is the bed I'm leaving behind. The desk. The stupid closet door that has never closed properly. The window that sticks in winter.
Four years.
I came here at nineteen with two suitcases, a camera, and Finn.
Now I'm leaving with mountains of boxes, three suitcases, four cameras, Finn, and an old orange alley cat.
Funny how that happens.
There's still one thing on my nightstand.
A photograph. I pick it up.
The three of us are smashed together in the frame, sweaty and grinning beneath concert lights.
Mack is throwing a peace sign.
I'm sticking out my tongue.
Finn is in the middle, looking significantly more composed than either of us, which is misleading because I distinctly remember him being drunk enough that night to lose one of his shoes.
I run my thumb across the edge of the frame.
God, that was a good night.
I wrap it in one of my T-shirts and tuck it carefully into the box marked PERSONAL / MEMORABILIA.
Fine. That label can stay.
I start on the nightstand.
Hair ties. Lip balm. Two dead camera batteries I've apparently been preserving for future generations.
A receipt from a Thai restaurant. Three quarters.
A button.
I throw the button away.
Then take it back out of the trash because I remember where it came from.
Mack's coat.
New Year's Eve.
She'd lost the button sometime around midnight and accused Finn of stealing it, which made absolutely no sense, even at the time.
Keep.
I drop it into the box.
I reach beneath the bed and drag out another box.
This one is already packed.
And labeled, naturally.
CALLA — NOTEBOOKS / PRINTS / MISC.
I narrow my eyes at the last word.
Interesting.
So miscellaneous is a category when Finn uses it.
I turn toward the closet for my remaining shoes.
When I turn back, Cheeto is sitting in the box.
Right on top of my notebooks.
His enormous orange body has somehow arranged itself perfectly among four years of photographs, sketchbooks, and miscellaneous things Finn considers worthy of preservation.
"Cheeto."
He blinks at me.
"Those are mine."
Another blink.
"You're crushing them."
He begins washing his paw.
I reach for him.
Then stop.
Because the light from the window is falling across him. Because one ear is crooked. Because his orange fur looks almost gold against the cardboard. Because he is sitting beneath Finn's painstaking label like he belongs in the inventory.
I reach for my camera instead.
Cheeto watches me lift it.
"Don't move."
He moves. He looks directly at me.
Click.
I check the image.
A battered orange cat sitting among my notebooks and photographs beneath a label identifying everything in the box.
I smile.
One thing here doesn't match the others.
I lower the camera.
"Okay. Out."
He settles deeper.
"Cheeto."
Nothing.
"You are not being packed."
His eyes close.
I sigh.
"Finn!"
The music stops in the other room.
"What?"
"Come get your son."
"He's your cat."
"He stopped being my cat the first time he slept on your chest."
"That's not how ownership works."
"Tell him that."
Finn appears in my doorway a few seconds later.
He looks at Cheeto.
Then at me.
Then at the box.
"Did you put him in there?"
"Yes, Finn. I carefully arranged the cat on top of my belongings so I could summon you."
"You've done stranger things."
Finn bends down and lifts Cheeto.
Cheeto immediately goes limp in his arms.
Completely boneless.
Finn holds him against his chest.
The traitor starts purring.
I point.
"See?"
Finn looks down at him.
"He has good taste."
"He loves you more.”
Cheeto closes his eyes.
Finn scratches behind his damaged ear.
For a second, I just look at them.
My brother.
Our ridiculous cat.
My mostly empty bedroom.
Something about the combination catches at me, filling my chest with a heaviness I can't quite name.
So I do what I always do when emotions begin to overwhelm me.
I lift the camera.
Finn notices.
"No. My hair is standing straight up."
Click.
"Calla."
"Too late."
He shifts Cheeto into one arm and grabs for the camera.
I step backward, laughing.
"Delete it."
"Never."
He comes toward me.
I dart around the bed.
Cheeto, still draped over Finn's arm, looks deeply inconvenienced by both of us.
For a few seconds we're eighteen again. Or twelve. Or six.
Finn chases me.
I laugh.
Neither of us thinks about tomorrow.
And then he stops.
"You're impossible."
"You love me."
He turns toward the door.
Cheeto peers over his shoulder at me.
"Hey, Finn."
He looks back.
I don't know what I was going to say.
Maybe nothing.
Maybe something stupid like Are we doing the right thing?
Instead, I nod toward the box.
"You used miscellaneous."
He looks at the label.
Then at me.
"That's different."
"How?"
"I know what's miscellaneous."
I throw a dirty, balled-up sock at him.
This time, he catches it.
By ten p.m., the apartment doesn't belong to us anymore.
It belongs to boxes.
The couch is still here, but there are no blankets thrown over the back. The bookshelves are empty. The kitchen cabinets are bare except for two coffee mugs Finn left out for the morning. Everything is completely empty, completely devoid of personality, and honestly, a little bit sad.
Cheeto is highly suspicious.
He's been prowling from room to room for the past hour, inspecting everything we've done and occasionally yelling about it.
I don't blame him. I don't like it either.
Eventually, the pent-up energy gets to me, and I climb out the window onto the fire escape with a bag of peanuts.
The city is damp and cool.
It rained sometime after dark, and everything below me shines. Headlights reflect across wet pavement.
Music thumps faintly from the Alley Cat downstairs, bass traveling through brick and metal and into the soles of my feet.
For four years, this has been my view.
It’s not a particularly beautiful one.
The alley.
A slice of street.
The roof of the building next door.
A tangle of power lines.
Fire escapes and dumpsters and windows stacked above other windows.
I love it anyway.
I sit on the top step and shake the bag.
"Okay, I’m here!”
Nothing.
I shake it again, louder this time.
"You guys."
A black shape drops onto the railing across from me.
Then another.
I smile.
"There you are."
The first crow hops closer.
She’s the boldest one. Wollstonecraft. Wollsy.
There's a tiny white mark beneath her left wing that I only see when she flies, and she has absolutely no sense of personal boundaries.
I toss her a peanut.
She catches it, drops to the landing and attacks it.
Another lands on the roof across the alley. Jane.
Then another. Charlotte.
Then Dante. Four tonight.
I look for the fifth.
"Where's Edgar?"
"Please tell me you didn't actually name one Edgar."
I look over my shoulder.
Finn is climbing through the window.
"Of course I did."
"That's embarrassing."
Finn sits beside me.
He's changed into sweatpants and an old UW sweatshirt, his hair still damp from the shower. He smells like my expensive Le Labo soap. I choose not to prosecute.
He holds out his hand.
I give him a peanut.
He tosses it.
Wollsy immediately takes it. Finn leans his forearms on his knees, and looks out over the alley.
For a while, neither of us says anything.
We don't have to.
That's one of the things I like best about having a twin.
Silence with most people eventually becomes something you have to fix.
With Finn, it's just silence…and it never needs filled.
I toss another peanut. Edgar steps out of the shadows.
“There you are,” I say as he picks up the nut and eyes me with glossy crow eyes. “Did you bring me
something?”
I can't help the hope in my voice. I’ve waited and waited for the moment when one of them brings me something shiny, as crows are rumored to do. And since Edgar is the sweetest of the bunch, I always figured
it would be him.
He steps backward, though, his claws empty, and eats his peanut.
I sigh. “It’s ok, Edgar. I still love you.”
Finn shakes his head but doesn’t tease me.
"They'll wonder where I went."
"They'll assume you're dead."
I look at him.
"Why would you say that?"
"Crows hold funerals."
"Finn."
"They do. When one dies, the others gather around the body."
"I am trying to have a tender goodbye."
"I'm giving you relevant information."
"You're ruining it."
"Actually, you'd probably appreciate their funeral practices. They're very efficient."
He looks at Wollsy. Wollsy looks at him.
Finn reaches into the pocket of his sweatshirt.
He pulls out a peanut.
I stare at him.
"You had another one?"
"You dropped it. Cheeto was playing with it inside.”
Then he holds it out to me.
My heart squeezes.
I take it, then hold the peanut out on my palm.
Wollsy watches me.
For a second, I think she won't come.
Then she hops closer.
Once.
Twice.
Her feet make tiny scratching sounds against the metal. She’s never taken one directly from my hand before. It would be almost fitting were she to do it on my last night here.
She hops a third time.
Then…
She snatches the peanut from my hand and launches herself into the air.
I exhale and watch her cross the alley.
Another crow follows.
Then another.
One by one, they disappear between the buildings.
We sit in silence for a moment.
I look at the windows across from us.
Some are dark. Some glow yellow. A woman moves through one carrying laundry. The guy who works the night shift turns his lights on, stirring. Somewhere below us, somebody laughs.
Tomorrow we'll wake up, load the last few things, wrestle Cheeto into his carrier, and drive away.
"Are you glad we're going?" I ask.
Finn doesn't answer immediately.
"Yeah,” he finally says. "I think I need home for a while."
Something in my chest softens.
"Me too."
He glances at me.
I rest my head against his shoulder.
He doesn't move away.
"I miss Mom."
"Yeah."
"I miss Dad."
"Yeah."
"I even miss the sea lions," Finn says.
I stare at him. "They sound like demons being murdered."
"I know."
"All night."
"I know."
“Do you think Mom will handle it all okay?” Finn’s voice is soft. Trepidant.
My heart slows. My cheeks drain. Because I do not know.
"Definitely," is what I say.
"Yeah.” Finn’s voice is even softer than before. “It’ll depend on the day.”
“Well, yes.” That’s nothing new, Finn.
He nods.
Neither of us says anything for a minute.
Below us, someone comes out the back door of the Alley Cat, laughing too loudly. The door bangs shut
behind them and their voice fades toward the street.
I pick at the label on the peanut bag.
Mom is Mom.
Some days she's bright and funny and paints until three in the morning because she forgot to look at the clock. She sends me photographs of flowers growing in the cemetery and texts Finn articles she thinks he'll like. She makes elaborate breakfasts for no reason and dances barefoot in the kitchen when Dad puts on old records.
On those days, she’s everything good and light and kind in the world.
On other days, everything is harder.
Sometimes she looks at Finn and me like we're still little enough to climb into her lap, and I can't tell whether she knows we're not or whether she simply wishes we were.
I understand that part.
Sometimes I wish we were, too.
Finn rubs his palms against his knees.
"She sounded good yesterday."
"She did."
"Really good."
"Finn."
He looks at me.
"She's okay."
It's different this time when I say it.
It’s not a promise, because I can't promise him that.
It's just the truth as I know it.
Mom is okay.
And if she isn't okay tomorrow, she might be okay the day after that.
We've learned not to ask for more certainty than that.
Finn nods.
Then he looks out over the alley.
"I’ve missed her."
Small and quiet.
Finn doesn't say things like that often.
I slide my arm through his and lean against him.
"Me too."
For a while, we're quiet.
I think about Mom's hands, always stained with paint or dirt.
Dad's ridiculous slippers.
The kitchen windows overlooking the water.
My bedroom.
Finn's room across the hall.
The smell of the house in the morning.
Coffee and oil paints and old wood and sea salt and funeral flowers and dew.
Home.
Whatever else it is, it’ll always be that.
"I think it'll be good," I say. "We'll swim. Hike. Annoy Dad."
"Assist Dad."
"No."
Finn smiles.
"You're going to medical school."
"For psychiatry."
"That’s after medical school."
"Details."
"Dad won't consider them details."
I groan.
Finn laughs.
He straightens, assuming Dad's voice.
"Calla, identify the brachial plexus."
"Stop."
"Calla, which cranial nerve—"
"I will push you off this fire escape."
He laughs.
Then, almost as an afterthought, he says, "I hope we get an interesting body."
I slowly turn my head.
Finn realizes what he's said.
"For Dad."
I keep staring.
"Professionally."
"You're making it worse."
"You know what I mean. Something unusual."
"Please stop hoping for fascinating corpses."
"I'm not hoping anyone dies."
"Just that if they do, they have the decency to die interestingly."
"Exactly."
I shake my head.
"Future museum curator, ladies and gentlemen."
He laughs.
And just like that, the heaviness loosens.
That's how it has always been with us.
Finn knows where the dark places are.
So do I.
We just don't live in them all the time.
It's after midnight when I finally crawl into bed.
Or try to.
There are no sheets.
I stand beside the bare mattress for several seconds before remembering that of course Finn packed them.
I find him in the hall.
"Where are my sheets?"
"Box seven."
"Where is box seven?"
"Living room. South wall. Second stack."
I find it exactly where he said it would be.
BEDDING — FIRST NIGHT / CALLA
I stare at the label.
First night.
Meaning these are the sheets I'm supposed to put on my bed when we get home. He's laundered them already.
I hadn't thought that far ahead. But Finn always does.
My heart clenches, and I'm annoyed with it.
Get a grip, Price.
Tomorrow night I'll sleep in my old bedroom.
I'll hear the ocean through the windows. And the sea lions.
I carry the box back toward my room.
Then stop.
Something taps against the window.
I turn.
Nothing.
I set the box down.
Another tiny sound.
Ting.
I cross the room and push open the window.
Cool air spills in.
"Guys? Wollsy?"
Nothing answers.
Obviously.
I climb onto the fire escape anyway.
The city is quieter now.
The Alley Cat has finally closed. The neon sign below is dark. Somewhere several blocks away, a siren rises and falls.
No crows. But I swear I hear a scratch.
"Edgar?"
I feel ridiculous.
I turn to go back inside.
Something catches the light.
I stop.
There's an object sitting on the railing.
Small. Round. Silver and red.
I step closer.
A bottle cap.
Rainier beer.
For a second, I just stare at it.
Then I laugh.
It's quiet and surprised and dangerously close to crying.
A gift on my last night.
I turn the bottle cap over in my fingers.
It's scratched and bent slightly along one edge.
It's completely worthless.
I love it.
I look up at the dark rooftops.
"Thank you," I whisper.
I slip the treasure into my pocket and look out over Seattle one last time.
The city that taught me I wasn't strange.
That gave me Mack.
That gave us Cheeto.
That gave Finn and me four years to become something other than the weird Price twins who lived in a
funeral home.
With a sigh, I climb back through the window and pull it closed behind me.
Then I carry my sheets into my bedroom.
Before I turn out the light, I set the Rainier cap on the empty nightstand.
Tomorrow, I'll pack it.
I know exactly which box it will go in.
Miscellaneous.
From the Estate
Recovered materials, private records, and curiosities from the episode
Recovered Artifacts
Objects recovered and documented in this Storyworld
(Click an artifact to examine)
