“There’s your house,” Josh whispered.
I snapped out of my daze and felt a skipping in my heart as we finally turned the corner, about to face the full view of my house. I remembered how incandescent it had been last time, how light had poured out from every window. But this time all the lights were off; suddenly, my feet didn’t hurt anymore.
From a distance, I could see my old climbing tree. It looked smaller than I remembered, but my memories of scaling that tree had transformed it into a redwood in my mind. I could make out the rim of branches that were lowest to the ground — the ones that I used to sit on when I first learned how to climb. That tree was the source of many memories for me, and they were all good ones, even the one where I had fallen.
It had been in that same spot years before I was in any spot at all, oblivious to all that transpired around it or who it had affected, and it would probably remain there after I was gone if it was left alone. As my mind traced the steps of causality backward, I realized that I wouldn’t be back here this night if that tree hadn’t grown, and I was briefly in awe of how all events were like that.
As we got closer, I could see that the grass in the yard now reached half the height of the chain link fence that encircled it — I couldn’t even guess when it had last been mowed. One of the window shutters had partially broken loose and was awkwardly rocking back and forth in the breeze. Overall the house just looked dirty, as if a thin film of grime and grease had coated the whole building, despite whatever rain there had been. It had never even occurred to me that a whole house could get filthy. I was sad to see my old home in such a state of disrepair. Why would my mom care if we bothered the new owners if they cared so little about where they lived? And then I realized:
There were no new owners.
The house was abandoned, though it looked simply forsaken. It dawned on me how much work my mother must have put into the maintenance of the house if this is what it looked like when no one bothered; it was like seeing an old friend who had become terminally ill, and it broke my heart. I couldn’t help but wonder why my mom would lie to me about our house having new occupants — maybe she just didn’t want me to see it like this.
Despite how sad it made me, I realized that this vacancy was actually a good thing. Since there was no one to take care of the house, there was no one to stop us from looking for my cat. It would be so much easier to look around for Boxes if we didn’t have to worry about being spotted by the new family. This meant that we could probably make it out of there faster, which was our top priority. Josh interrupted my thoughts as we walked through the gate and up to the house itself.
“Your old house sucks, dude!” Josh yelled as quietly as he could.
“Shut up, Josh! Even like this it’s probably still more fun than your house.”
“Hey man—”
“Okay, okay. I think Boxes is probably under the house. One of us has to go under and look, but the other should stay next to the opening in case he comes running out.”
For a moment, I kicked myself for not bringing an electric can-opener from Josh’s house, forgetting that there would have been no electricity to power it here.
“Are you serious? There’s no way I’m going under there. It’s your cat, man. You do it.”
That should have settled the question of who went in after Boxes, but I wasn’t going to forfeit so quickly; any chance I had of not crawling under the house was worth taking.
“Look, I’ll game you for it, unless you’re too scared…” I said holding my fist over my upturned palm.
“Fine, but we go on ‘shoot,’ not on three. It’s ‘rock, paper, scissors, shoot,’ not ‘one, two, three.’”
“I know how to play the game, Josh. You’re the one who always messes up. And it’s two out of three.”
We each balled one hand into a fist and held it over our palms. I began the count, and on each word we thrust our hands downward in a stabbing motion until they collided with our palms.
“Rock, paper, scissors, SHOOT!”
I brought my hand down maintaining the fist and held it there. Josh’s hands clapped on his final throw. His paper beat my rock.
We began again.
“Rock, paper, scissors, SHOOT!”
I guessed that Josh would count on me throwing rock again, and I almost did. At the last second, I changed my mind and laid my hands together flatly. I looked at Josh. He was pointing two fingers at me as if to signal the number two. He had guessed what I’d do or had just gotten lucky — either way, his scissors beat my paper.
I lost.
It was obvious that Josh wanted to gloat, but he restrained himself; he wasn’t happy that anyone had to go under this house. I wiggled loose the panel that my mom would always move when she had to crawl after Boxes. I had removed it myself only once, but that had been a long time ago — I pushed it in hard and then twisted it a little before pulling it out and resting it against the side of the house. My mom only had to crawl underneath the house a handful of times since the can-opener trick usually worked; but when she had to do it, she hated it, especially that final time. As I looked into the darkness of the crawlspace, I had a greater appreciation for why that was.
Before we moved, my mother said that it was actually better that Boxes ran under here, despite how hard it could be to get him out. It was less dangerous than him jumping over the fence and running around the neighborhood. All that was true, but I was still dreading going into the crawlspace.
I turned back toward Josh and smirked.
“Best five out of seven?”
He laughed and told me to watch my head on the way in.
I grabbed the flashlight and the walkie and began to crawl into the opening. Upon setting my hand on the ground underneath the house, I realized that I was about to ruin my favorite shirt. The ground of the crawlspace was nothing more than damp dirt, which would create a problem for the white shirt I was wearing. My mom had gotten it for me at a souvenir shop when we visited my grandparents the previous year. It had an iguana wearing sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt, lying in a beach chair and sipping a drink out of a glass with a straw. Beneath the lizard in big, green letters, it said “IGUANA ‘NOTHER FLY TAI!” I had no idea what this meant, but after about ten minutes of nagging, my mom paid to have the design ironed onto a shirt my size. My mind started turning; there would be no way for me to come out of this exploration without being filthy, and I would have to explain the state of my clothes to Josh’s parents. This complicated things; I turned back toward Josh.
“Hey, I can’t be the one who goes under, man. It’ll ruin my shirt, and your parents will know we were outside.”
Josh stood there with a slightly amused but quizzical look on his face. Finally, he answered, “Wait, you’re serious? Dude, look at your shirt.”
I looked down and saw that it already advertised my activities with thick skids of soil that streaked up and down and across it. I felt slightly foolish. We had just walked through the woods, I had fallen in a hole, but I still pictured my shirt in mint condition. I played it off as if it was a joke and turned back toward the opening. As I moved the upper half of my body into the crawlspace, my concerns turned to other things as a powerful smell overtook me.
It smelled like death.
I turned on my walkie. Josh, are you there?
This is Macho Man, come back.
Josh, cut it out. There’s something wrong down here.