Thanatophobia

Cam and I assumed the position of lounging in my hideous, yellow bedroom for the first hour of the party, tossing a pillow back and forth across the room while talking about becoming seniors. It was surreal; we were actually almost done with high school. It was making me sad, as these were the things Meghan liked to dream about when we weren't partying. She got good grades early on so she would be able to graduate top of the class, go on to attend an ivy league school, and travel up to mars. She was amazing with science and wanted to go into space ever since she was a kid, convinced that she would find evidence of life out there.

I shook my head, not hearing what Cam was even saying. "What did you say?" I asked.

He threw the pillow and I caught it, not throwing it back but hugging it to my chest. "I was saying that I'm kind of bored. Don't you have a third floor? We should hang out up there."

I liked the idea. After all, there was nothing to do in this ugly room, anyway. "Prepare yourself," I warned him, standing up and unlatching the door. "I can't garauntee there won't be people up there, making out."

"Let's take our chances," he suggested. I already told him the story of the first party since I'd been here, when that couple barged into my room to have sex. Unlike me, he thought it was hilarious.

We treaded up the stairs, singing loudly to the song "Tongue Tied" by Grouplove, which was blasting downstairs. To my surprise, there was no one up there, and as soon as we closed the door, the music downstairs was muffled enough that it was almost peaceful.

The main room of the third floor was the upper living room, with a white leather couch and glass tables and white carpeting. There were modern paintings all over the walls and unlit lamps everywhere. I led Cam into the next room, which was almost pitch black because of the heavy satin curtains over the single window on the far wall. I flicked on the light and jumped, nearly screaming, and bumped into Cam. The walls were covered with animal heads- a giant moose, a couple of deer, wolves, bears, you name it.

I giggled. "Talk about tacky," I laughed.

"Is there a fetish your brother isn't telling anyone about?" Cam wondered as we passed through the next door, turning off the light on the way out. I didn't think that my brother was the one that picked the decorating for this house; it probably came with all the furniture in it already.

The next room was just as dark, with another covered window but also a tiny skylight that let in the smallest bit of light. It was a little sitting room, complete with a tea set on the coffee table, overstuffed chairs and couches, and intricate carvings on the door frames. I turned on the light and sat in front of the teaset.

"Would you like some tea, Daaahling?" I asked in a terrible, drawn out, nasal English accent.

He sat on the loveseat next to me and picked up a teacup. "Pinky up," he instructed, demonstrating while pretending to sip his imaginary tea. I smiled and poured myself a fake cup, also.

"Back straight, shoulders squared," I told him, which is what I had been taught in the ettiquette classes that Sheri had signed me up for every year up until high school. "Cross your ankles, not your legs. Be polite! BE DAINTY!"

I lifted my intricately painted, porcelaine teacup to my lips, about to take a fake sip, when I saw the hairy black spider crawling around inside it.

I screamed and hurled the teacup across the room, smashing it against the wall and watching the fuzzy black dot of a spider scurry up the wall. "Oops!" I remarked, pulling Cam to his feet and hurrying out into the next room.

"Ugh, I feel like it's crawling on me!" I wailed, brushing my face with my hands and shaking out my hair.

"It's not," Cam laughed.

"I know, but it feels like it!" I replied. I stopped in the middle of the room, which was bright with moonlight. It was empty, aside from a few boxes and a wardrobe in the corner. Cam gave me a mischievous look.

"Ready to go to Narnia?" He dramatically lifted up the thin, white sheet over the wardobe and opened the creaking door.

I lifted an eybrow, not moving an inch. "Fuck Narnia," I said, crossing my arms. "There's probably more spiders in there."

"Suit yourself!" he called, already delving into the giant wardrobe. I stayed rooted in my spot, convinced it wouldn't take long for him to see that there was nothing there.

"Are there Black Widows in New Jersey?" I asked cautiously.

"I don't know," he muttered from inside. "Hey, can you pull the sheet off of this thing? Just take the whole thing off."

"I guess..." I said skeptically, quickly whipping the sheet from the wardrobe and throwing it on the ground. I did a panicked little dance, shaking my arms and legs (I was convinced that a spider had landed on me, talk about paranoia!) and was glad Cam couldn't see me.

He didn't say a word, just climbed out of the wooden box with a perplexed look on his face.

"Help me push it," he ordered, placing his hands on side of the wardrobe.

"Help you what? Why?" I asked.

He shot me a look that said "just shut up and trust me" and I took my place next to him. We both pushed while Cam started explaining.

"There was no back to the wardrobe," he stated, "but I think there's something behind it. Not Narnia, but I think there's a door."

After a few minutes of pushing the heavy piece of furniture away, I saw that Cam was right. There was a hidden door. But why was it hidden?

Cam immediately turned the doorknob, which was unlocked, and revealed a flight of wooden stairs.

"Oh, hell no," I said, backing up. "This is just a horror movie waiting to happen."

Cam grabbed my hand, ignoring my protests, and started up the creaking stairs.

I continued rambling on. "Like, okay," I said frantically. "Obviously it was hidden for a reason, right? Maybe it's dangerous, like what if these stairs just cave in? What if there's a dead body up there? What if there's a murderer living in my house?"

Cam stopped me at the top of the stairs, putting his hands on my shoulders. "Well, if there's a murderer, we can't just sit here and wait for you to get murdered."

I rolled my eyes. "Can we just go back down? Please?"

He shook his head and gripped onto my hand again so I wouldn't run away, but let's be honest, I wasn't about to go anywhere alone in this creepy attic. The room had a low cieling with a bunch of furniture covered by white sheets so as to not get dusty. There were lots of windows, and luckily it was a night of clear skies so moonlight shone onto everything. Cam glanced at me, no noise around us except for the faint sound of the thrumming bass downstairs at the party.

"No one will hear us scream, Cam," I suggested, clutching onto his arm. He laughed.

"Is this your idea of fun?" I hissed, smacking his arm. "Do you want to die?"

"We're not going to die," he muttered. "Funny, you're not afraid to jump off a cliff but you're afraid of your own attic?"

I dropped his hand. "Would you stop pulling the suicide card?" I snapped.

Cam stared at his feet. "Shit, I'm sorry," he sighed. "Please don't take anything I say seriously. I'm an asshat."

I ran my fingers through my hair, starting to weave around the furniture cautiously. "You're not an asshat, I'm just mentally unstable."

He started to protest, but I stopped him, coming across a familiar looking piece of furniture. I clutched the dusty white fabric with both hands and slid it off quickly, letting it drop to the dusty ground. A piano.

"No way," Cam muttered. I sat at the bench, smiling up at him.

"I can't play," I admitted, lifting the mahogany cover and exposing 88 worn down keys, tapping them gently. "But I can pretend!"

Cam sat down on the bench next to me, mimicking every note I played. It turned into a game- a very out of tune, off key one, but a game nonetheless.

"We always had a piano in our house," I sighed. "Sheri wanted me to learn to play it, but I refused."

"Why?" Cam said, his fingers dancing on the keys.

I put my hands in my lap. "Because what my mother wants, my mother gets. I hated that, so I refused to give her what she wanted."

He shrugged. "I used to have one in my house. Phil sold it for drug money."

He put both hands on the keyboard, spreading his fingers out a complete octive and staring intently at the keys. He pressed down each key slowly, a broken chord in the left hand that slid smoothly into the right hand. With every chord he slid his hand to a new one, bridging into a series of harsh, eerily harmonic notes in the right hand that seemed to shatter those in the left hand. It was a paced, haunting song that consumed every inch of the darkened room; the way he played, how he hesitated every so often then picking up the tempo for a few measures before slowing it down again, going loud to soft, made it sound like each note was desperate to escape and be heard.

The song sounded familiar, something classical that I couldn't put my finger on. Then, Cam hit a note that was like hitting a light switch in my brain.

"Moonlight Sonata," I said with a smile on my face. I rested my head on his shoulder next to me and he stopped for a second.

"Am I boring you?" He sounded genuinely concerned.

I had to laugh. "Keep playing, asshat."