We Haunt This House

II: Chapter Twenty-Six

She clicks.

It's done. She shuts her laptop quickly. "I don't want us to look at this for a bit. We'll try to enjoy what peace we have before."

Someone laughs. What sort of peace are we supposed to have? I don't know. Clearly, the silence is speaking louder than the words.

"Let's have the rest of our ice cream," Felipe says, moving to take it out of the freezer. When he hands out the bars, I start to eat mine, but I don't really taste or enjoy it. It's cold. Shocking. Wonderful, yet cruel. I can't remember the last time I had ice cream it's been that long. 

"It's kinda funny, how solemn we look eating dessert," Dee says.

I see a few smiles, but they fade. "I want to know what's happening online," I say.

"Probably nothing," Hattie says. "It'll be a miracle if more than a few people watch this at all."

"Can we check?" I ask.

"Please, let's just finish our ice cream," Lina says. Aka, she doesn't want to see it.

I focus on the creaminess of it. The cold. The miracle that it exists in a world where so much sucks. Hattie's phone pings. "Sorry, I forgot to put it on silent." But before she turns it down, there's pings coming in so fast, I didn't know it was possible.

I look at her, and raise my eyebrows. She sighs, but doesn't move yet. Waiting for someone else to look interested.

Well, we all look interested, but the fear is getting in the way of some of it.

"Maybe we shouldn't have done this," Dee suggests.

"Too late now," Dwayne mutters, sounding angry. He wouldn't get in the video earlier, and I don't blame him. Through that, he could possibly be exposing his own family. Then his phone rings.

"Hey, Mamá," he says. I watch as his face goes serious, and he looks at us disappointedly. Then his teeth grit together. "Yeah, Mamá, we got it under control. We know what we're doing. No, you don't have to worry about us." Silence, then nervous laughter. "No, we're not planning anything."

I hear her talking rapidly on the other side of the phone. Something about being careful and him not listening and asking when he'll be home because she wants another family dinner.

"Once I'm home I'll do the dishes for a month."

Someone snorts, and immediately she hears.

"Sorry, you just called right after we all posted, and now we're having ice cream."

"Ice cream?" I hear her yell.

Dwayne flinches. "Yeah, sorry, Mamá."

"Oh, don't give me that. You're not sorry." She's really mad now, and I feel bad for Dwayne. Then softer, she asks a question I can't make out.

"No." Silence. "I love you, Mamá." His face breaks for a second. "Tell everyone else I miss them too. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'll be back home soon." He removes the phone from his ear slowly, like it hurts to do so. The magnetism it had to him breaks, and his hand hands down until he slowly puts his phone in his pocket.

"You could go home," Lina suggests. "Not that we don't want you here, but I know you don't wanna be here either."

"No, I won't. I'm in on this with you guys."

"You don't have to," I say. "I know you don't want to."

"Stop plagiarizing Lina," he says. "You know I'd do anything for you guys."

Part of me worries about that. I don't say anything as I lick the stick of my ice cream clean. As the others finish, we fall into this quiet that is tense like static. One touch and you'd be shocked.

"We should check it," Hattie says.

"Yeah," Dee agrees."

When Hattie turns over her phone, I see the flood of notifications. As she unlocks it and scrolls, her face is shocked, eye wide.

I pull up the video on my phone without having to search for her name. It's already made it to the trending page. It's been twenty minutes and we've already gotten over 100,000 views. Part of me is happy, and the other part is terrified. I scroll down to the comments.

Already with thousands of likes, there's comments claiming it's fake. Others saying it's real. One random dude claiming he went to school with us. Random people debating who is the cutest, and others saying they went to this haunted house and forever were traumatized. Some are calling for a livestream immediately. More are guessing where we're hiding. One person comments how we did it in one shot, and if we don't have a future as actors, we should go into filmmaking. Or vlogging.

Like if you think it's fake.

Like if you think it's real.

Like if you knew these guys before YouTube.

Like if you think they should go into film.

"Do we have a fandom?" Felipe asks.

Part of me wants this to stop this, but I shouldn't. It's working. People seem to like us. No one has left any hate comments that I can see, but it's possibly just filtered out. Replies are amassing under comments about it being faked or not. People are arguing and sending back big paragraphs about evidence. Someone's quoting the Bible. I exit out of it before I let myself get in too deep. An odd sense of dread has taken root from the inside out.

Hattie sets her phone down, and I watch her do it. She raises her eyebrows at me, like she's surprised I can stand it.

Tomorrow, things are going to be different.

Tomorrow, we're going to change everything