Hilltop House

Cora, Nine

Cora was grumpy about the way things were going. She'd known Ben was going to show up, even told him when to arrive so as to make sure her mother wasn't there. She'd gotten herself all dressed up--tons of spiked and pinned jewelry, a short pink and black .skirt, tights and boots and a black turtleneck and makeup and hair, even some fishnet gloves and the poison ring she'd thrown into that self-playing music box and forgotten about for weeks. The whole time she got dressed, thoughts in the back of her mind conflicted with one another. Why was she putting in so much effort when she didn't really care about him anymore? Did she care about him? She must've, or she wouldn't have been dressing up so much, right? But he'd been rude, even if he'd said that he was sorry for being so pushy. What if he showed up with certain expectations? Well, she wouldn't be fulfilling them . . . would she? Ugh. She was so confused. He was Ben, after all. She had totally crushed on him for two years. It'd been pretty easy to let him go when she was sure she wouldn't see him again, but suddenly, she had no idea what to feel toward him beyond anxiety.

The moment he'd walked in the door, though, she recalled how magnetic he was, and she immediately put up her guard. She'd have to be careful until she figured out his intentions. It wasn't going to be easy, though--the more time she spent near Ben, the more weary she began to feel, both physically and emotionally. Her sarcastic rebuffs could work only for so long before he grew more insistent or lost interest, and she wasn't sure which, if either, she'd prefer him to do.

Going to Brian's hadn't necessarily been the best idea. She hadn't wanted to go, but something about her house had felt wrong. After spending so much time indoors, Cora had become increasingly aware that the building was, somehow, close to alive. It wasn't something she could explain, and it wasn't something she even wanted to explain for fear of sounding crazy, but it'd gone beyond the flickering lights and atmosphere of her room. The girl's perception had grown keener; she had become perfectly aware that something was spending the hours and days with her, in constant existence, intangible and yet layering itself between her reality and its own. And, also, that "something" was beginning to push into her sleeping hours. Cora had been dreaming recurring episodes of wandering halls, climbing accordion staircases, sliding along towering shelves of dusty books—every time she drifted off, the dreams became more vivid, and somehow, she knew that they were a reflection of her feelings about the inconspicuous house in which she lived. Even more curiously, she experienced a certain bizarre, inexplicable excitement when she woke from such dreams, a feeling akin to waking from the sort of dreams she'd used to have about Ben. Cora had a sense that she should be unsettled about all of it, but she wasn't. Not at all.

When the house had indicated its dislike of Ben, she'd known she had to get him out. Brian's text—the same one he sent every Saturday night in attempt to coax her over and which she always declined—had for once been a welcome relief, serving the dual purpose of removing Ben from potential harm as well as avoiding her mounting discomfort around him.

Now, there she was, a center of attention for having brought along the new boy, and with each passing moment, she became more irritated at how everyone around her was behaving. Ben was the life of the party, partly because he was a novelty, but mostly because that's the sort of person he was. Beyond being attractive, he was talkative and funny and cool in all his rocker paraphernalia, styled hair and black fingernails, tattoos and one long, dangling earring. He had that edge that girls especially seemed to like, and though Cora had herself liked him that way, she was beginning to feel as if he were somehow, suddenly . . . fake. Maybe it'd just been the time they'd spent apart. Maybe she'd changed. Maybe he'd changed. But no, he was acting the way she'd remembered him last--overly attentive, his arm around her waist or across her shoulders the whole time they were hanging out around Brian's bonfire. The few times she tried to wriggle free of him, he quickly found his way back to her. Cora began to feel as if he was staking his claim rather than showing any sort of affection, because he wasn't even talking to her most of the time; he was talking to everyone else.