We clambered out of the car, our legs wobbly and necks stiff, relieved to be on solid ground. Tam chased after you as you wandered, but the rest of us stood in front of the car, staring up at the house.
“I didn’t realize it was going to be this big,” Wally said, a little intimidated.
Bear had told us it belonged to his parents, or his grandparents, or something. Some old family relic. While Wally was the one who had prepared our proposal for the project, Daniel the one to persuade Professor Johansson to help us push it through the department for approval, and Francis the one who had applied for loans and access to all the maps we’d need, the whole idea to get away from Madison in the first place to work on the project had been Bear’s. It had come up sometime during the last semester, once we found out we’d been approved. Originally, Tam and Daniel had planned to stay on campus and teach over the summer to make a little extra money, and Francis and Romi were going to travel. I was considering a short internship abroad, in London. Then in the fall, we’d all meet back up and begin our project.
But the closer we got to graduation, the more nervous Bear had grown. He hated it when any of us left, for any length of time. As if even a temporary separation would threaten the group—or cause us to forget him, perhaps. I don’t know why he always worried so much. Francis once told me it was because Bear thought he wasn’t as good as the rest of us—he worked a little slower, had fewer articles accepted for publication, and was always broke. He was at the University of Wisconsin on a combination of small scholarships and mostly loans, I’d heard once. None of us ever made him feel bad about any of those things—we loved him the same as we loved every one of us. We were happy to chip in a little more so he could join us at restaurants or traveling exhibits. But still, he always worried. So, when faced with the possibility of nearly all of us leaving for an entire summer, he became almost hysterical. He cooked up a plan to start on our project in earnest, right after graduation, rather than waiting until fall. He brought up the idea of running off to this remote house to work until we’d emerged victorious, like the scholar cartographers of old used to do. Taken with how romantic the idea seemed, and how excited we were for the Dreamer’s Atlas, it didn’t take much convincing. It would be like an academic retreat, free of distractions and excuses.
He’d told us it was a normal-sized place for the area, but if that was true, every house in the area was an absolute mansion. We continued to stare, bemused. Two stories, six bedrooms, an attic, a basement, and acres of land. It creaked in the wind, and curtains fluttered from an open window overhead, beckoning.
Finally, Wally raised his camera and took a picture of it, then jokingly whispered, “Ghosts show up on film.”
It was true, though. The day before, I’d been packing the last of my things before I had to be back on campus for the graduation ceremony. I came across the photos we’d taken a year ago, at Bear’s birthday party. We’d gone to an old-time speakeasy, with fake lanterns for lights and an ancient, clacking cash register where the bartender rang everyone up and then served them their drinks in teacups, the way they’d used to. That night, we’d all gotten even more drunk than we’d just done at the graduation party. So drunk, hardly anyone could remember most of the festivities. All we had were Wally’s photos, in which we were all grinning maniacally, eyes wide and dreamy. Except for mine. I’m smiling like the rest of them, but my eyes don’t look happy. They look nervous. Guilty.
But I hadn’t kissed Francis that night, in the end. I stopped myself just in time. Blamed it on the wine. And Francis had drunk so much, he was still tipsy even the next morning. He spent the whole day in the bathroom, and when he emerged at last at dusk to eat the plain soup Romi had made him, he looked like he didn’t remember anything at all from the entire week.
I ended up tearing the photos up instead of packing them. I had almost wrecked everything—this was my second chance. I felt so relieved, so light and free, that I finally drank again at the graduation party. It was the first time I’d truly enjoyed myself in a long time.
“Ah, come on,” Tam said, appearing behind us then, carrying you. “It’s the perfect kind of place to work on a project about the history of maps. And the windows are big and bright, and there’s that back deck that looks out over a little wooded area . . .” She smiled as she pointed. “Just imagine all of us out there sitting around a small fire in the pit, reminiscing about Wisconsin or talking about our Dreamer’s Atlas, and letting Nell look at the stars.”