“Maybe we should go back.”
“Are you kidding? We got this far. Aren’t you even a little bit curious?”
I could tell he was.
“Let me just turn my car around first,” I said.
“Why?”
“Haven’t you been paying attention to all those horror movies? If there’s a demon back there waiting to eat us, we’ll need to get away fast. Do you really want to take the time to make a U-turn?”
“How often have you been in situations like this?”
“Well, never. But I’ve thought about them a lot.”
After I had the car situated, Enzo and I started down the path. The woods around us were quiet except for our footsteps and the papery sound of dry leaves rubbing against each other.
Enzo and I didn’t talk much while we walked. He smoked a cigarette and glanced back every few feet, as if he wanted to make sure the car was still there. In all the time we’d spent looking for Lizzie, I’d never noticed how out of place he seemed in the woods. Enzo lived his life in dark rooms, making art that only he understood. The camping trip must have been Lizzie’s idea. Was she the one who got the fire going and set up the tent? Enzo could sculpt and draw and write music, but I couldn’t imagine him using his hands to drive a stake into the ground. He wouldn’t know what berries you shouldn’t eat or how to use the sun to figure out where you were. I wondered if he even knew how to use a compass.
There was a time when I thought Lizzie was the same way, that she wouldn’t have survived a weekend without a hair dryer. But Lizzie had changed. Or maybe I just never understood who she really was. Maybe a person could be equally comfortable out in the woods and at the top of a cheerleading pyramid. Just like Emily could be as comfortable playing a classical piece on the piano as she was swaying in the audience at sweaty rock concert. I used to think there were so many rules about how people could be. Maybe I was wrong.
Enzo and I reached a clearing and stopped short. It was like something from my imagination had come to life.
The farmhouse had seen better days, but it was still standing. It was possibly in better shape than some of the houses in downtown Griffin Mills. The paint was mostly gone, but the clapboard siding was intact. Same with the windows. I only saw two that were broken, both on the second floor. The steeply pitched roof was covered in moss, and a lot of shingles were missing, but it wasn’t sagging.
A sea of tall weeds separated us from the house. I could see where there had once been a path leading to the front porch, and I started in that direction. I couldn’t wait to get inside. It was like getting a second chance to explore the Griffin Mansion. This time, I wasn’t letting the opportunity pass.
“Wait,” Enzo said. “The whole place will probably collapse if we go inside.”
“Old houses were built with solid materials,” I told him.
“I hardly count you as an architectural expert, Hawthorn. This place has probably been here for a hundred years.”
“No way.” I pointed toward the front door. “There’s a porch light. It can’t be that old if they had a generator out here.”
“Well, what if there’s someone in there?” Enzo asked.
“That’s sort of the point. What if Lizzie is in there? She’s been gone for almost two months now. She must have found some kind of shelter. Maybe a cave or old mine or something. Why not an abandoned house?”
Enzo frowned and looked at the house more thoughtfully.
“I’m going in,” I told him. “You can wait out here if you want.”
This time when I started through the weeds, Enzo followed.
I tested my weight on the first two porch steps before climbing up them. They creaked, but the wood didn’t give. I stopped and waited for Enzo to catch up.
My heart pounded, and my fingertips tingled with anticipation.
“Are you scared?” he asked, dropping his voice to a whisper as he joined me on the porch.
“I feel alive.”
When we walked through the door, anything could happen. Anything at all. Maybe we would find Lizzie sleeping in an upstairs bedroom like a werewolf Goldilocks. Maybe this was the secret hideout of some serial killer, and my life was about to turn into a scene from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Maybe we would find skeletons of a family who’d mysteriously died there. Or maybe we wouldn’t find anything at all. It didn’t matter. The important thing was that, unlike my daydreams, the house was real. I could reach out and touch it. It had a story to tell that I didn’t know the ending to. And no matter what happened when I went inside, I would always have that one perfect moment standing on the threshold when anything was possible.