Found

Sundays are for secrets. Some families spend Sundays together. We scatter to our private bedrooms, searching for truth on our own. I walk past Jacob’s room. His door is open, his eyes blurrily fixed on the plaid wallpaper. I wonder for a moment what I would see if I could swap places with him. Would I see our sister?

That curiosity pushes me to my own room, my island of calm in a house that is normally buzzing. I drop into my beanbag chair and lift the loose floorboard at the foot my bed. I poke inside the dark cubbyhole, pushing aside a candle and a swatch of fur in search of my notebook.

I open to a clean page and rest my fingers on the surface. The paper is warm velvet beneath my skin. I nestle back, closing my eyes, prepared for a marathon. Instead the images come immediately. Our whole family, all sixteen of us, gathered around an empty chair.

“Come back,” father demands.

The rest of us pick up the chant, our voices rising to the sky.

The chair begins to shake, in the center of our cluster, rattling against the wooden floor. It picks up pace, jumping in place faster and faster until the nails burst free, splinters flying out from the ruined furniture.

The bits rain down, falling onto arms raised over heads and the open space in our midst.

My eyes shake under my closed lids, trying to zoom in to see the new pattern on the floor. I let myself drift up, float over the family until I can see the shapes scattered below.

I read the floor. Jacob won’t let me. I make out the words as I hear my door creak open.

My eyelids lift, revealing my brother in the hall.

“It’s time for you to join her,” he says.