dining room tables and a few disassembled luggage carts.
“Oh hell no.” Mallory steps past me and into the empty room. “My whole life I was told there were ghosts or murderers—satanists, at least—living up here. And it’s just an attic?”
“I never heard about the satanists,” I say.
She turns around and looks at me. “Really? Hmm. Well, it doesn’t matter, obviously. Our entire childhood was a sham because look . . .” She swipes an arm around the room. In the distance I can make out something: chairs, maybe an old bed frame. We walk around the perimeter of the room, touching the walls and bending over when something glints in the moonlight. In one corner Mallory finds an old sleeping bag and an empty bottle of Boone’s Farm wine. She holds it up and says, “Satanists.”
When we get back to the door, Mallory stops and says, “Well, this was a huge disappointment.”
I’m looking around the room; even in the hotel’s heyday, I can’t imagine they used this to store anything exceptionally valuable. Maybe a few televisions, some minirefrigerators. So while it’s disappointing to know that all the rumors were never true, I can’t get past one thing.
“Why the sign?” I ask.
“Because they knew this day would come and they wanted to ruin our childhood,” Mallory says.
“Okay, but besides that. Why in the hell would they put up a sign like that if it’s empty?”
Mallory thinks for a second. “Right! Why not put up a sign that says EMPLOYEES ONLY?”
“Or nothing. No sign. Then who even cares about going through that door?”
She shakes her head angrily. “Screw this. I’m getting my memory.”
She walks over to the door, carefully sliding her fingers underneath the edges of the sign. It’s made of sheet metal and, on better days, would be impossible to remove from the door. But now the screws are brown with rust, and she pulls it off with little effort.
She holds it up victorious. As if we’d just solved one of life’s greatest mysteries—found Bigfoot. When she gives me the sign, the metal is weightless and cool in my hand. It’s just a sign, something an eighteen-year-old shouldn’t find captivating. But as I turn it over, I’m not sure I’ve ever missed our friendship more.
CHAPTER SIX
I want to rush down the stairs, refusing to let the excitement of the adventure drain out of the night. But Mallory moves without urgency, so I slow myself, trying to put my feet in the tracks she leaves in the dust, the rectangular sign getting warm in my hand.
“Well, we’re officially felons,” I say.
“Or heroes,” she says, her voice filled with an excited manic energy. “Speaking of that . . . Jake. He looked . . . rough.”
It takes a floor before I answer her. The silence is heavy, choking me. Calling Jake rough is gracious. I swallow once and say, “They’re naming a bridge after him.”
She stops, holding her cell phone up so I can see her face. “What? Which one?”
“River Road. Down near Highway Ten.”
When Jake came home, my dad said he was a little off. Off. It implied that he could be fixed by flipping a switch, that with time, he’d be back on. The old Jake again. So I covered up for him, every day and no matter what. People ask and I tell them he’s doing well. I tell them about the bridge and getting to meet the president. About the medals, even though I found them in the garbage can a few weeks after he came home. He didn’t have an answer for that, of course, so I put them in my room, under my bed, next to old video games and a forgotten baseball card collection. But he isn’t getting better. He sits there all day with that backpack, rarely talking or changing clothes. He’s a constant presence that’s not really there.
“The Jake Bennett Bridge,” Mallory says. “That’s impressive. Seriously. I know a few guys who would give their left nut to have a bridge named after them.”
I mumble a “yeah,” and Mallory gives me a puzzled look. I don’t want to let the air out of our accomplishment, but I can’t properly explain my feelings about the bridge. At least not without giving away everything. I hit the sign with my knuckle lightly.
“This is pretty badass,” I say.
She raises her eyebrows and nods, leading us down the rest of the stairs until we reach the lobby. As soon as we are off the stairs, a white light