Not Our House, revision #1

Nighttime wanderings, and we ended up in a house that wasn’t ours.

My eyes were on her all night, this girl named Kat I had met the other day. She had short, dark hair and a ring in her lip, circling the lower left. She smiled a lot, curling her mouth in a slight, knowing way. Her fingers were long and slender, and she danced them along flat surfaces when she thought, shaking a silver bracelet on her left wrist. I’d heard her telling Eric that she’d been wearing it since she was a kid.

Eric, he suggested the house. He knew the Roebucks were out of town because he cut their grass when he wasn’t telemarketing. (That’s what Eric did—he made phone calls from his couch. Dropped out of school to do it because it paid a lot and he could live at home. “Gotta find myself, Harrison,” as he’d told me.) We were in his neighborhood and we were stoned out of our minds—“we” being Eric, Kat, Jamie, and myself. Jamie was the girl with Eric, and she knew Kat somehow from somewhere—I think from college—but I hadn’t been listening during introductions.

Dead quiet, this house. We crept around to the back, quieter than mice, than crickets without wings, quieter than the house. Jamie tripped and we had to stop and breathe hard and deep to keep from laughing out loud, and we stood there for a while because everything was funny, and Jamie nearly falling into a hydrangea bush was almost too much.

Eric shushed us, placed a finger to his lips in a grand gesture before shaking his head. I had to squint my eyes to see everyone clearly.

“Okay, okay,” Kat said. “Shh, yes, okay. Stop making that face, Eric!”

Jamie kicked at the hydrangea. “Piece of shit bush.”

“Don’t do that,” Eric said. He shifted the backpack slung over his shoulder, checked to make sure everything was still inside.

I kicked the bush. “Yeah, fuck Bush.” Kat snorted, held her delicate fingers to her mouth.

“Seriously, let’s go,” Eric said, motioning toward the gate. We followed, and I couldn’t get the Scooby-Doo theme song out of my head.

“What are you smiling about?” Kat said.

I paused, looked around. “Jinkies. Like, wow, Scoob.”

Jamie turned around. “Be quiet,” she said. She seemed nervous. I nodded and waved her on.

Finally at the back door after creeping onto the deck and making a game of dodging birdfeeders in the yard. Eric grabbed the key, though I couldn’t see from where, and he thanked the “security of suburbia,” which meant nothing at all.

Then we were in the door and in the house and standing silently because no one knew what to do. We stood in the kitchen, and I could see everything well. That puzzled me because it was night. But then I saw the light coming from below the microwave, a bright, insistent yellow, and that made sense, because people always left those stove-top lights on. My family always had, at least. The place was clean. Spotless, even. The curtains and the placemats matched, or were of a similar style: little red apples and green stems along some artsy brown background with swirls and splotches of color. Very fall, very autumn, very appropriate. The kitchen had an island and tiled floor. I took my shoes off to feel the cold of the tile, and the others followed suit.

“You sure no one’s here, Eric?” Jamie whispered. She hugged her arms around her waist.

“Of course. They’re gone until Tuesday.” Eric gave her a little hug and kissed her forehead. “Let’s find the TV, shall we? Ed mentioned a couple weeks ago that they’d got a new TV, a plasma. Bastard buys a new TV and only pays me twenty-five to cut his grass. It’s in here.” We followed toward the family room, peering here and there along the way. I opened a door in the kitchen.

“The pantry!” The others turned and looked at me. “I found the mother lode. This pantry is huge.” It was one of those closet pantries, the kind that rested under the stairs and sloped down where the steps sat above it. I flicked on the light switch, was greeted by far too much food.

Eric scratched his head, paused and ran his fingers through his curly hair a few times, savoring the feeling, I guess, like I was doing with my toes on the tile, scrunching them up and relaxing them, shifting my feet and finding new cold spots to stand on. “I’m not hungry yet,” he said.

“Me either,” Jamie said. She grabbed Eric’s hand. “Let’s not eat their food, okay? I want to watch TV.”

I glanced at Kat. She was staring at the pantry as if willing the food to come to life and dance around the room in some bizarre recreation of Beauty and the Beast. She stepped into the pantry and grabbed a small Tupperware container of cookies. “Cookies?” I said. “Good call.”

She gave me a small smile before continuing her examination of the container. She held it lightly, lifting the lid with delicate precision like she was opening a box of grenades. Grenades you could eat. And that wouldn’t kill you. I thought of cookies exploding all over the kitchen.

“Chocolate chip. We’ll save these for later,” Kat said. She stood very close to me, in the cramped space of the pantry, close enough that I could smell her. She smelled good, and I wondered if that was weird, that I noticed. “After you,” I said, motioning to the adjacent family room.

“Thanks,” she said, stepping out. “I’m—” She spread her arms wide and stretched, yawned, shook her head, smiled at me, “—sleepy,” and we joined the others.

Crowded on the couch, the four of us, watching infomercials in high definition and marveling at the glorious uselessness of the products they advertised. Eric was passing around a bottle of vodka, just a small one, enough to keep us buzzing along. There was more in his backpack, and some more weed in there somewhere. Then it was, “Billy Mays, here!” and I didn’t know what he was advertising because all I could think about was how close Kat was and how warm her body felt.

I looked at her through the corner of my eye, saw her fingers twisting and turning in her lap. She seemed engrossed in whatever Billy Mays was saying, but I thought I saw her turn her head ever so slightly to get a look at me. It could have been the flashing television light. I was getting tired of infomercials, although Eric seemed to love watching them, and Jamie loved anything he loved.

Kat turned to me, snapped me out of my thoughts. “I’m hungry,” she said.

“I’m not,” Jamie said, before leaning close to Eric to whisper in his ear. Or maybe she was kissing it. I raised my eyebrows at Kat, who at this point looked like she wanted to go. That was good. I wanted to go. I shrugged. Kat took the cookies off the coffee table and headed out of the room.

“Hey, wait a sec,” I said.

“I’m going upstairs,” she called back.

“Don’t turn any lights on,” Eric said. His arm was around Jamie’s shoulder, and he gave me a thumbs-up. “You kids have fun.” He grinned and pulled Jamie closer. I grabbed the bottle of vodka off the table. The current ad was for The Greatest Vacuum Cleaner In History, if the spokesperson was to be believed. I wondered if Eric would try to order one.

Kat waited for me at the foot of the stairs. I paused, stood next to her, thought of something to say. She took my hand and led us up, and I was conscious of how warm her hand felt, how small it was. At the top, she pulled me into a room and closed the door.

Kat threw herself on the bed and sighed, a heavy, contented sigh, lying on her back and staring at the ceiling. The room was dark, but not too dark. A nightlight was plugged into the wall, casting shadows all around. Kat reached over and turned on the lamp next to the bed. There was apple wallpaper near the ceiling, a strip that ran around the room. This family had some sort of apple or autumnal fetish.

“I hope these are good,” Kat said. She opened the container as I sat on the edge of the bed, thinking very quietly in the back of my head that perhaps Eric was right and we shouldn’t be turning lights on in the house, because weren’t the owners supposed to be out of town? Of course, a lot of houses had those light timers, but who really used those anymore. A lot of houses? I shook my head, tried to clear my thoughts. I remembered the vodka and took a swig.

“Here,” Kat said. “One for you, one for me.” She leaned back on the pillows and took a bite. The pillows had fruit designs on them. Probably apples.

“Why are we even eating these up here?” I asked.

Kat rolled her eyes. “Do you want to be downstairs when Eric and Jamie start going at it? I don’t think so.” She wiped at crumbs on her shirt.

I nodded. “Good call.” I still sat near the edge of the bed. I wanted to lie down next to her, but that would be weird. Wouldn’t it? She seemed to sense my hesitation, and she smiled.

“Lay down next to me,” she said, patting the bed. She turned to her side to look at me, and as she shifted the Tupperware fell off the bed. “Oh, shit,” she said. “The lid was off.” She leaned over to grab it, her chest hanging off the bed. “Hey, Harrison, grab my legs.” She giggled. “I can’t reach them, they fell under the bed. No, wait, under the side table.”

I grabbed her legs at her calves. “Ow, don’t squeeze so hard.”

“Oh, sorry.” I loosened my grip. Her legs were strong, toned. I could tell even through her jeans. I imagined taking the jeans off, sliding them down her athletic legs, those runner or soccer player or lifeguard or something legs. I shook my head, glanced at the vodka and sighed.

“S’okay. Help me up, I got ‘em.” I pulled her back onto the bed and toward me. She turned around onto her back, positioned so that she was looking directly at me, so that I was leaning over her. “You’re cute,” she said. There was a pause as our eyes locked. I noticed that her eyes were blue like mine, only more so, and that her left ear had three piercings while her right ear had only one, just one silver stud.

Then her face froze up, and her eyes widened, and her breath came fast and labored. I backed off toward the edge of the bed, looking down and around. Had I been sitting on her? “Kat, are you—?”

“I can’t. Breathe,” she said. Her face was red and her lips were curled in a grimace, and all I could think was that her smile curled like that, except no, not like that, not pulled back to show all her teeth, straight teeth, pretty teeth.

“Kat? Kat, look at me. Sit up, here, sit up.” I tried to pull her to a sitting position, lean her against the pillows. Her breaths came faster and shorter and her face was red, really red now, and I could have sworn that it was swelling and inflating like a balloon, a red balloon with short dark hair and a lip piercing, though for some reason it wasn’t popping even with a piece of metal puncturing its skin. Her fingers twitched and her hands opened and closed like she had no control of them, and then her arms started to shake, and I saw the bracelet on her arm, shiny and silver, a flat metal rectangle engraved with words connecting the silver strands, and suddenly I realized what it was. I thrust her arm close to my eyes and read the metal tab, and my heart beat faster, too fast: An allergen bracelet. Kat was allergic to peanuts, to fucking peanuts, and she was the worst kind of allergic there was. Was there something in the cookies? Wouldn’t she have known?

I jumped off the bed and backed against the wall, holding my hand to my mouth as my mind raced around. Kat groaned from atop the bed and her face was swollen and red and her neck was splotched with color and her eyes

(blue like mine)

were shaking in their sockets. “Hang on a sec, Kat, just hang on a sec.” I bolted for the door, threw it open and yelled for Eric.

No answer. I raced down the stairs. “Eric, sonofabitch, Eric, answer me!”

“What, Harrison, Jesus Christ keep your voice down, what?” He met me in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs, wearing his boxers. He saw the light from the open room upstairs. “Why is there a light on? No one is here, man, we can’t have fucking lights on!”

“Eric, something’s wrong with Kat, I think she’s having an allergic reaction to something. She’s got a bracelet on and it says she’s allergic to peanuts, to goddamn peanuts and now she’s red and her face is swollen and I don’t think she can breathe, Eric, she can’t fucking breathe.”

“Oh,” Eric whispered, then ran upstairs.

“Eric,” I called. “What do we do? We can’t call the police from here, this isn’t our house, we broke into this place and we’re fucking high and—”

“Harrison?” It was Jamie. “What’s going on? What’s wrong with Kat?” She was only wearing a shirt. The light from the now-muted TV played odd blue shadows on her across the hall.

I stopped halfway up the stairs. “She’s having a reaction to something, I think it’s peanuts. We were eating cookies from the pantry and I guess she didn’t know what was in them and now she’s having a seizure or something and—”

“What? Harrison, she’s really allergic to those, they could kill her.” Jamie ran toward the stairs. I ignored her, ran into the room.

Eric had Kat straddled and was pressing on her chest, putting his ear by her mouth, pressing on her chest. I used to know CPR, years ago in the eighth grade. Took a course because—there was no reason, someone was offering it for free and I took the course because I could. My friend’s mom, that’s who was teaching it, my best friend’s mom, she was a certified nurse or something like that, and she was teaching CPR for free. CPR, I didn’t know how to do CPR. I froze at the door, watching Eric press and listen and breathe.

Jamie, crying behind me. “Eric, is she okay?”

“Call 911,” Eric said. “I don’t think so. Call 911. I don’t have my phone. Harrison, where’s your fucking phone?”

“Eric, we can’t do that, we have to get her out of here.” Jamie tried to interrupt me but I cut her off, talking louder. “This isn’t our house. They can’t come here and find us here, Eric. It’s not our house. We broke in here, Eric.”

“Fuck you, Harrison,” Jamie said. She ran downstairs.

Eric was pushing harder and faster on Kat’s chest. Her arms were loose, her hands still. “Eric,” I said. “Eric, we can’t. We have to get her back to my place, or your place, anywhere but here, Eric. Can’t you see that?” I shook my head and took a breath, closed my eyes and opened them. “Eric, is she okay?”

“Shut up, Harrison, I don’t know if she’s okay, okay?” He breathed into her mouth again. “I can’t tell.” He was talking to himself. “I can’t tell.”

Jamie, downstairs somewhere, crying into her phone. Did she even know our address? Eric, pushing and listening and breathing. Kat was still. God, she was still.

The lamp was bright in the corner of the room. I sat in the doorway and leaned the back of my head against the frame, quiet, my hands shaking and my heart pounding. Eric sat back from Kat. He was breathing hard, and he ran a shaking hand through his hair. He turned and looked at me. His eyes were red and hollow. The house was silent but for the sound of crying, the sound of breathing, the sound of stillness.