Down World by Rebecca Phelps (beach read TXT) 📗

name, it turned out, was indeed Christy and not Kirsty—was the only one who was nice to me. We had started sitting together at lunch, and using our free period to study in the east stairwell. She was smart and talkative, and a gifted singer who would sometimes belt out her math answers to the tune of a Broadway melody. A whiz at social media, she had a YouTube channel that had reached ten thousand followers—all strangers—by the time she was twelve. Soon, these study sessions were the only thing getting me through the day.

The rest of the time, I was usually alone. Sometimes it would get to me. I started to feel like I was the ghost. I worried that I was going insane, that I would end up like my mother after a bad day of missing Robbie, cleaning the kitchen on her knees, furiously scrubbing at imaginary stains.

Piper hadn’t come back like Brady said she would. And before I went to the police, I knew there was one more question I had to ask him.

Brady’s car was parked in front of a large redbrick apartment building. It didn’t take much to find him, since the old-fashioned White Pages at the bottom of our kitchen utility drawer told me there was only one Picelli in town.

I rode my bike up to the end of the street, which I had never been down before. It wasn’t an ugly building, but being set as it was at a slight distance from all the other apartments, down near the end of the road, with only a service station and a car wash across the street to provide a view, it struck me as a deeply depressing place to live.

I parked my bike and walked up to the entryway, my heart beating faster as I went inside. I was suddenly kicking myself for coming here, for this whole stupid plan. But I knew I had to give Brady a chance before I went to Piper’s parents.

Picelli. There it was in the building directory. I rolled my neck a bit and let out an exhale, and then I pushed the little button next to his name. The door buzzed immediately and I went upstairs.

The man who opened the door to Brady’s apartment was about thirty-five years old. He looked vaguely like Brady—same wavy dark hair—but I couldn’t figure out their relationship. He was much too young to be his father, seemed too old to be a brother.

“I’m his cousin,” he said when he saw me staring.

“Oh.” I offered a weak smile.

The cousin went back to the couch, where he had been playing a video game. “He’s in his room,” he called out over his shoulder. He gave a slight nod of his head towards a closed door near the kitchen, and then forgot I existed.

It was a small place. There only seemed to be two bedrooms—the one Brady was apparently in and another one across the hall. Glancing into the slightly open door of the other room, I saw an unmade bed and a bunch of clothes on the floor. A poster for some sort of band was on the wall. I didn’t recognize the band—a bunch of guys wearing black. That must be the cousin’s room, I figured. So if Brady’s in there and his cousin’s in here . . . where did Brady’s parents sleep?

I knocked on the door with as much confidence as I could muster.

“Yeah,” I heard Brady reply. It was clear he thought it was his cousin knocking, but I couldn’t find my voice to tell him otherwise. I nudged the door open instead and poked my head in, only to find Brady on his bed, reading a book with no shirt on.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I stammered.

“Oh jeez,” he said, getting up and looking for a shirt to put on. “Hold on.”

“I’m sorry, I would have called. I didn’t know, um, the number.”

“Let me just . . . hold on.”

I didn’t know where to look, so I stared at the floor while he put on a sweatshirt. The awkwardness of it made us both start to laugh.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. His tone wasn’t cruel, just curious.

“I needed to ask you something.”

“Yeah, sure. Okay.” He looked out the window, from which the whirring of the car wash filled the room with constant sound. “Do you want to sit down?” He pushed some clothes off a wooden chair by a desk and offered it to me. My eyes wandered to the unmade bed as I crossed the room, then darted away again.

“I used to smoke,” Brady said, out of nowhere, as he sat on the edge of that bed. “Stupid habit, don’t start. I mean that.”

“Okay.”

“It was just something to try to look cool, you know? My friends would come over and sit where you are, and I’d smoke and blow it out this window.”

I nodded, letting him talk. It was nice to hear his voice.

“When you walked in, my first thought was to reach for a pack.” He laughed again. “But I don’t smoke anymore.”

“When did you stop?”

“Um, probably about two years ago. My dad, he has a bad lung. Lifelong smoker. So . . . stupid habit.”

“Where is your dad?” I asked, although I knew it was none of my business.

“Up north. He’s been working on a salmon boat since December. He’ll be back next month.”

“Oh.” I struggled for something else to say. “You live with your cousin?”

“Jack. Yeah. He’s a good guy. Works at the station across the street.”

It felt weirdly grown-up, discussing other people based on what they did for a living. Was this how adults talked?

I had a million more things I wanted to know about Brady’s life, but I didn’t want to pry too much. Mostly I wondered where Brady’s mom was. Somehow I knew, however, that that was a question I shouldn’t ask.

“Did you tell anyone?” he asked now, before I could speak.

“Tell anyone?”

“That I took you