“The access panel to the attic,” Leigh said. “I never noticed it before. We didn’t search it.”
Callie stepped back, tilting to look up at the world’s tiniest tray ceiling. The panel was less than two feet square. Because her entire knowledge of attics came from horror movies and Jane Eyre, she asked, “Shouldn’t there be stairs?”
“No, you idiot. Give me a boost so I can get up there.”
Callie moved without thinking, crouching down, lacing together her hands.
Leigh put her foot in the basket. The sole of her boot was scratchy against Callie’s palms. Leigh’s hand went to Callie’s shoulder. She tested her weight.
Fire roiled through Callie’s neck and shoulders. Her teeth clamped down. She had started to shake even before Leigh had shifted her full weight into Callie’s hands.
Leigh said, “You can’t lift me, can you?”
“I can do it.”
“No, you can’t.” Leigh returned her foot to the floor. “I know your arm is numb because you keep rubbing it. You can barely turn your head. Help me slide over those mattresses. We can make a pile and—”
“Get hepatitis?” Callie finished. “Leigh, you can’t touch those mattresses. They’re covered in cum and—”
“What else am I going to do?”
Callie knew what had to come next. “I’ll go up.”
“I won’t let you—”
“Just fucking lift me, okay?”
Leigh didn’t hesitate nearly long enough for Callie’s liking. She had forgotten how cut-throat the old Leigh could get. Her sister bent her knees, offered her hands as a step. This was how Leigh got when she was determined to do something. Not even guilt could stop her from making one more horrible mistake.
And Callie knew instinctively that whatever she found in that attic would be a horrible mistake.
She knelt to place the phone flat on the floor. The flashlight was a spot on the ceiling. She didn’t let herself think about how many times she had stepped her foot into a fifteen-year-old boy’s hands, then been raised up into the air like a ballerina on a music box. The trust it took to perform the maneuver was part training, part lunacy.
It was also twenty years ago. Now, just lifting her foot meant Callie had to maintain her balance by holding on to the wall and grabbing Leigh’s shoulder. The lift was far from graceful. Callie kicked out her free leg, bracing her sneaker against the wall so she didn’t topple over. The effect was to make her look like a fly caught in a web.
Callie could not tilt back far enough to see what was right above her. She raised her hands over her head and located the panel by feel. She pressed her palms into the center, but the damn thing was either painted shut or so old that it had melded into the trim. Callie banged her fist into the wood hard enough that it gonged down into each and every millimeter of her spine. She squeezed her eyes shut against the sharp cramps of misfiring nerves and pounded until the wood cracked down the center.
Dirt and grime and chunks of insulation rained down on her face. She used her fingers to wipe grit out of her eyes and nose. The beam of light from the phone had opened like an umbrella into the attic.
Leigh lifted her higher. Callie saw that the panel hadn’t been painted shut. Nails jutted into the air. They were shiny in the rays of the flashlight. She told her sister, “These look new.”
“Come down,” Leigh said. She wasn’t even winded from the effort of holding Callie’s full weight. “I can pull myself up and—”
Callie stepped onto her shoulder. She poked her head into the attic like a meerkat. The smell was rancid, but not from meth. Squirrels or rats or both had set up nests in the narrow attic space. Callie couldn’t tell if any of them were still in residence.
What she did know was that the ceiling was too low for her to stand. Callie guessed there was about three feet of space between the rafters that held up the roof and the joists that the ceiling was nailed to . The slope of the roof narrowed down to less than a foot at the outside walls of the house.
“Stay on the joists,” Leigh said. “Otherwise you’ll fall through the ceiling.”
As if Callie hadn’t watched Tom Hanks in The Money Pit dozens of times.
She folded back the broken access panel, forcing the nails to flatten down with it. Leigh helped from below, but Callie’s arms shook as she raised herself up high enough to bend at the waist. She managed to cram the rest of her body into the attic by caterpillaring on her belly as Leigh pistoned her hands around Callie’s legs.