By her twentieth birthday, there are a few things Valarie Ricci knows for certain.
She knows that her waitressing job barely covers the costs of living out of a beat up old van. She knows she's stuck in the dead end hometown her high school friends...
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Driving up the street to Alice's house again was a strange experience. Valarie still found it as intimidating as she had when they were teenagers sneaking around, worried that Grace or Alice's dad would walk in on them during their old movie nights or notice that they were holding hands under the dinner table.
She could remember the excitement of those early days, sitting beside each other in the dark and silently praying, begging for Alice to look over at her; to reach out and touch her. To know if Alice's heart beat in time with her own.
Before she met Alice, Valarie hadn't even known that this part of town contained anything but pothole-riddled backroads and huge spreads of forest. The house's long, winding driveway could only be accessed via an obscured entrance at the end of a dark, barely-used laneway. Valarie had to half-lean out of her seat to reach the padlock outside the imposing iron gate guarding the driveway from any unwanted visitors.
"Is the code still your birthday?" she asked.
"No. One second." Alice pulled out her phone. "My dad changes it every few days now."
"Doesn't that get confusing?"
"Very. But, you know, ever since Grace... Can't really blame him."
Valarie thought about Theo searching the sky for imaginary drones. "Yeah..."
"Oh, here it is." She read out the code, and Valarie punched it into the padlock.
The iron bars slid open like a jail cell door, allowing them to drive through. It took just over a minute for them to even reach the house–if house was even the right word. It was more like a complex. The sprawling building was decorated by white brick, countless windows, and staggeringly high columns. The front lawn was manicured to perfection despite that barely anybody was allowed to see it and that winter would be coming in a matter of weeks. They were in the middle of a forest, and yet Valarie didn't spot a single stray leaf blowing across the front lawn. She couldn't see the massive pool and gardens that occupied the backyard, but she'd bet her life savings–all two hundred dollars of it–that the space was equally pristine.
They came to an idle at the end of the driveway as she shifted the van into park. Ithaca nuzzled her elbow, muscling his snout forward to place his chin on her arm rest. She absently played with his ears while keeping her eyes on Alice, waiting for her to make a move.
She didn't. For a long moment, Alice simply stared at her home like she'd never seen it before.
"You good?" Valarie asked once the silence had dragged on for too long.
"Do you wanna come in with me?" she said, too quickly.
"Uh..." The Bell family home had always left a strange impression in her head. The whole place seemed ghoulish, even before Grace disappeared. Nobody ever used the pool or the elevator or the extra kitchen. Everything was clean without ever being cleaned, as if the space existed in a stasis. And, of course, Valarie couldn't help but picture herself as some peasant storming the castle.
