Geekerella (Starfield #1)(20)

“Whaaa…,” I murmur, and wince when she shines a flashlight into my face.

Hard rain pounds against the window as zigzags of lightning flash across the sky. I squint at the clock, but it’s completely dark. The storm must’ve knocked out power. The howl of the wind almost drowns out her words—almost—but Catherine would never allow something to be louder than she is.

“Get up!” she roars, barely giving me a chance to take in her hair in fat foam rollers and her ridiculous silk bathrobe before she yanks me out of bed by the arm. I rub the sleep from my eyes and stumble after her, her nails digging into my forearm until she lets me go at the end of the hallway.

“What’s wrong?”

She jabs her pink-polished claw upward. I blink sleepily. A dark stain is spreading across the ceiling. My heart sinks. A leak. In the attic. “I thought I told you to fix it last time!”

Down the hall, the twins peek out of their bedroom. Great. Now we have an audience.

“Can’t you do anything right?” she fumes, folding her arms over her chest, where her bathrobe has a few wet splotches. It must be leaking into her room or else she wouldn’t have bothered waking me up.

“I did,” I mutter. It’s not like it matters. Isn’t she selling the house anyway? “The wind must’ve knocked the shingles loose again—”

“Apparently you didn’t.” She glares at me as I shift from one foot to the other. “Well?”

I glance over at her, confused.

She jabs her finger toward the ceiling again. “Get up there and fix it!”

I blanch. “Now?”

“Before it gets worse!” she cries, and hands me a flashlight. “First your attitude this evening and now this. Honestly, Danielle, you’re lucky I am being this forgiving.”

Half of me wants to tell her it’s absolutely bonkers for me to go searching for a leak in the middle of the night during a storm. And I have work early tomorrow morning—they don’t.

“Now, you are going to crawl up there and stop the leak. And I think you should pay for the damages, don’t you? I can’t very well sell a house like this.”

My mouth falls open. “That makes no sense! This could have happened to any house—it’s a freaking thunderstorm!”

“Oh? And did the thunderstorm forget to repair the leak the first time?”

I clamp my mouth shut. How the hell do you argue with crazy?

“That’s what I thought,” Catherine replies, and then turns on her heels swiftly and stalks back to her room. “Go back to bed, girls. Danielle is taking care of it.”

The twins look at each other and close the door. Sighing, I reach for the string and pull down the stairs until the dark mouth of the attic yawns open above me. I shine the flashlight into the darkness to banish the ghosts and climb up.

Even though I’ve lived in this house my whole life, the attic feels forbidden. My entire childhood home feels like a stranger now, just like the Federation Prince felt after being rescued from the Nox. Familiar, but foreign. No longer how I remembered. No more tabletop games in the living room. No more swords and shields above the mantel. When Dad married Catherine he boxed it all away, and when Dad died she donated everything. Erased the last bit of history that belonged to me. Or tried to. You can’t erase a house, or the stories in the walls.

But Catherine found a way around that, I guess. You can sell it instead.

The attic is hot, dark, and damp. There’s definitely a leak somewhere. But there’s also a surprising amount of clutter, which, on second thought, makes total sense. It’s just like Catherine to be a secret pack rat—“perfect” house below, all her broken-down junk stuffed up here out of sight.

I shine the light across the plastic bins that are stacked to the gabled ceiling as a clap of thunder rattles the house. I jump, my heart ballooning in my throat. The rain is pounding so hard, it sounds as if water is seeping in everywhere. How in the world am I supposed to find a leak in a downpour?

I crawl across the plywood floorboards, quietly scooting aside cardboard boxes labeled WINTER CLOTHES and BABY TOYS, searching for wet areas. The wood gets damper the farther I crawl.

This is ridiculous. Look at me—creeping through an attic in the middle of the night searching for a leak. I’m not sure how I’m going to stop it if I do find one. Maybe just shout at it until it does something. Works for Catherine.

A shadowy box pushed into the corner catches my eye. The glint of an iron hinge. I shine my flashlight on it. A trunk. No—no, not just any trunk. I remember this trunk. From a long time ago. A faded memory, old.

I crawl up and put the end of the flashlight in my mouth and dig my fingernails under the lock. My hands are shaking. The lock pops open, unnaturally loud against the rain pelting the roof. Another roll of thunder vibrates the rafters as I push up the lid, the flashlight illuminating a beautiful blue jacket.

I remember the fabric before I even touch it. I remember how it feels, and how it rustled when Dad walked, trailing like a cape. Dad’s Federation Prince cosplay. I pull on the jacket, unveiling it inch by inch as though I’m easing it back into existence.

Slowly, half afraid it’ll turn to dust, I slip it on.

The coat’s too big, of course. The buttons need to be resewn, the tassels rethreaded. I turn my nose into the collar, inhale. It still smells like him too, mixed with the starch he used on the coattails.