Cora rubbed her arm uncomfortably. She wasn't so sure about this bedroom, or really about this house. It was so . . . small. And so dated. That avocado colored rug in the living room? Ew. Her mother had said they'd tear that up, thank God, but what about that kitchen? It looked like it'd last been touched fifty years ago. She just hoped the plumbing worked so she could take a shower; the drive had lasted forever.

At least she wouldn't have to live here too long; one more year of school, and she was gone. She'd be far off on her own, no matter how much her mother begged her to stay nearby. It wasn't as if the woman deserved much say in her life, anymore, anyway, not after the way she'd uprooted Cora from everything she knew and dragged her halfway across the country—senior year, too! And just when she'd gotten close enough to Ben to hope for something more. It'd only taken her two years to get up the courage to tell him how she'd felt, Cora reflected, and just when he'd started to express interest in her, this had happened.

Whatever.

Her mother suddenly entered the bedroom, saying nothing, just plopping down a box reading "Cora's shit" in black permanent marker across the haphazardly duct-taped top. The woman met her daughter's eyes, rolled her own as she pointed at the label, and managed to scold Cora for her language without saying a word before she wafted out the door.

Cora sighed and dropped to her knees, then picked at the duct tape until she pulled up a corner enough to peel it back. The tape predictably split, and the girl growled in frustration as she continued to get the stuff off in string-cheese-like strips, too lazy and stubborn to look for scissors. Eventually, she managed to pool her rage and strength enough to just rip the box flap open, revealing an odd assortment of paraphernalia, a black menagerie of pieces of Cora's life. Death and black metal band posters, a collection of locks and keys—some pairs, some not—she'd collected from antique and thrift stores, a music box from her mother that she'd actually liked, altered Polaroid photos of the sort-of-friends she'd left behind, a huge black stuffed llama Ben had won for her at the Fourth of July carnival, the stack of poetry journals she'd been keeping and updating religiously since middle school . . . There was some comfort in unpacking such items, and yet there was definite sadness, too.

Well, her mother had always hated her dark attire and vibe; now, Cora had every reason to continue dressing the way she felt inside—broken and confused.

Truthfully, though, she felt neither of those things, but how was her mother to know that?

The bedroom, her new bedroom, had a big window which, thank God, faced a privacy wall that blocked it from the freeway; otherwise, it would've let in way too much sun. It was standard enough, though—four walls, wood floors, defunct ceiling fan, closet that was really too small to be called such. Cora stood and, leaving the box and its memories momentarily behind, went to examine the closet. It had one of those ugly slatted doors with a glass knob for a handle, and it opened outward at a strange angle, as if whoever had planned it hadn't accounted for the fact that the bedroom door was right next to it and that the two could never be opened at the same time. Poor design. Shaking her head, Cora went back to her box o' stuff and continued unpacking things that had seemed important when she'd packed them but that now felt rather juvenile and meaningless. The five-day road trip had somewhat killed the person she'd been before making it.

About halfway through unpacking, the girl paused, huffed, and started throwing everything back in, shoving the haphazard box into the closet and shutting it. Stupid. All of it was stupid.

The furniture came later that afternoon, and while it was being set up, Cora ventured outdoors in order to give the street a look. It was a sad thing, dead ended, her new house up on a strange hill above the others, at the very end of them all. There were only about five other houses, and most were to the right of hers (her left as she stood on the lawn looking out) because the privacy wall cut all along the other side and around the back of the strange hill. Of those other houses, most were small, like hers, and were rather unkempt, indicating they were either uninhabited or inhabited by people too disinterested or incapacitated to care for them. Then there were two houses that were too big and new for their own good; no doubt they'd been thrown up without foresight and whoever had bought them now resented such a poor investment but was unable to sell for enough to recoup losses.

In any case, whoever lived in those places, none of them were out and about. Cora felt a slight intrigue, wondered if any of those inhabitants were weirdos, people hiding things. Well, everyone hid things. But she could see someone in one of these houses totally hiding a kidnapped person in their basement. One house in particular, about three down from where she stood, looked smaller and a bit more run down than her own, but clearly someone lived in it; there was a beat-up, rusty white truck in the driveway, full trash cans at the curb waiting for pickup. Cora noticed none of the other houses had their cans at the curb, so either those people were off on the day or the others were. She guessed the former was the truth.

The other houses were nicer, though none were particularly nice. They were fully aware, it seemed, that their street was a back-alley frequented only by residents or accidental turns, and so none of them put out much as far as appearance. That was the sort of street it was. Definitely something dreary about the whole set up.

Cora meandered around to her backyard, a small, sad triangle of grass and dandelion weeds truncated by the privacy wall, but it did push back into some woodsy little area. She approached the trees, tried to tell how far back they went, but was distracted by a tingly sensation on the back of her neck, the one that told her someone was watching . . . Turning slowly, the girl faced the back of the house, its concrete patio and semi-rotted painted wood steps leading up to the back door, and she saw nothing at first, just the stone facade and a distinct lack of shrubbery or flowerbeds, things normally under the windows and along the walls of houses. But then Cora looked left, saw the shadowy image of her mother looking out at her, and quickly left the back yard to return to the front.

She hated how anyone they met told Cora she was the copy of her mother. The two of them looked nothing alike. So they both had deep almost-black hair, and they both had a particular shape to their annoyingly cute noses, a sort of tip down at the corners near the nose and a tip slightly up at the corners above the cheeks. And maybe they both had rather oval faces, but beyond that, they little resembled one another. Cora's eyes, foremost, couldn't be any less like her mother's; the woman's were close and doe-ish, while the girl's were more wide-set and angular. Cora was also fair to her mother's tan and thin to her mother's curves. She had literally no figure to speak of and was perfectly happy covering it in layers of dark band t-shirts and black skirts and fishnets and chunky shoes. She was perfectly fine with her nose ring and plugs, even if they were fake (who need know?). And she was perfectly fine trying to be exactly what her mother least wanted her to be—hard, cold, and dark. Especially now, after this stupid move.

Morosely plodding around the side to the front, noticing the movers momentarily paused in their moving to work some legs off a couch they couldn't get through the front door, Cora pulled at the long sleeve of her mesh shirt to detach it from a bracelet it'd caught on. She was busy fussing with the thing when she noticed another living soul those few houses down, exiting the particularly rundown one, heading to the white pickup truck. He wasn't particularly tall or particularly attractive, from what she could see where she stood, but something about him possessed her for a brief moment, and she stood still on her hilltop and forgot about her sleeve.

Whoever he was, he was surely close in age to or a bit older than she was, longish dark blond hair, jeans and boots and a flannel tied around his waist, a tank exposing his relatively well-formed shoulders, and Cora found herself watching him with a sort of weird fascination. Why, she couldn't say; hadn't she seen a ton of and a lot better looking guys than him? Ben was fifty times better looking, she thought, though she couldn't clearly see this boy's face.

When he reached the driver's side door of the rusty truck, he suddenly did that thing where he looked up and caught Cora watching, and a sudden mortification overcame her. But she wasn't one to run away, no matter her discomfort—she was used to making others feel uncertain and wasn't going to show her own uncertainty, especially to some boy she didn't even know. So she continued to stand there, continued to look at him, and she thought she saw, even from her distance, a sort of smirk on his face. How she saw that and not really his actual features was unclear, but he continued into his truck, started the engine, and pulled away before Cora decided to actually move again.

So maybe there was at least one interesting thing about all of this.

"Well, hello there, neighbor!"

Cora was caught entirely off-guard by a yelp of sorts from her left. The house nearest their own, at the bottom of the hill on which she stood, had produced an elderly woman, who was hobbling down her driveway with a walker. She was frail and hunched over, her white hair wispy but still somehow better styled than Cora's own, and she was smiling hugely.

Cora liked old people. She'd always gotten along with them. So she descended her perch and approached the woman, stopping to pick up the newspaper that had been tossed onto her lawn and handing it to the woman as she reached her.

"Oh thank you!" the woman remarked, genuinely grateful. She stuck the newspaper into a sort of pocket basket hanging from the side of her walker, which seemed to contain about fifty other items, blinked her moist little eyes at Cora, and asked, "And what's your name?"

"Cora. Corinne, actually, but I never felt much connection to Corinne."

"Understandable," the woman remarked. "I was Eunice but always went by Niecey. Still do, when I'm not just 'the old lady.'"

"Have you lived here a long time?"

"Forever, it seems. It's nice to have someone young here, finally."

Cora narrowed her eyes slightly. "He looked young," she said after a moment, nodding her head toward the house where there was no longer a white pick-up.

Niecey wrinkled her nose up into its sea of wrinkles. "Oh, well, I suppose the boy is. But he's not particularly friendly."

Smiling, Cora crossed her arms. "What about everyone else on this street?"

The sun suddenly, unexpectedly edged beyond a cloud, highlighting the filmy white shirt on the old woman's curved back and the various metal bits of jewelry on Cora's arms and neck. The girl abruptly remembered that she'd been trying to extricate her sleeve from something it'd caught on and began to examine it again.

"Quiet, really, all of us. Most of us older. As you can tell, the street's a calm one." Niecey reached out a hand and touched one of Cora's rings, startling the girl. "That's a pretty one!"

"Oh, thanks. It's a poison ring. See?" With no small amount of pride, Cora popped the little coffin-shaped jewel open on its tiny hinge, revealing a secret compartment beneath. "The idea was ladies a long time ago could carry a dose of poison in it, just in case."

Niecey winked at Cora. "That's right, dear. You never know."

Cora laughed somewhat awkwardly. She hadn't thought the woman would appreciate the oddity and was curious and pleased that she did. That made two interesting things on this street.

The girl may have said more, but her mother called to her--something about placement of furniture--and she turned to the house to start back.

"Fourteen years," the old lady behind her added bluntly.

Cora turned back to her. "Excuse me?"

"No one's been in it--your house--for fourteen years."

"Oh. All right." The girl just shrugged, not sure what to say, why that mattered, whether she cared. "See you later," she added, returning Niecey's smile with a flat grin of her own and walking a little quicker toward her hilltop house, not wanting to continue a conversation that was over, even if the woman was decent.

Approaching the house from the front, Cora got a better glimpse of it than she had just driving up, when her vision had been hindered by the car and the luggage stuffed into it. The building really wasn't anything special. Just a one-story stone house, two smaller windows to the left, one large window to the right, a porch big enough for the old swing on it. But the way it sat there, like it was presiding over the others, and the way the privacy wall and trees beyond gave it a gloomy, dramatic backdrop--there was something almost unsettling about it. As if the dated little thing had evaded demolition only by some supernatural means and was proud and presumptuous up there in all its unassuming blandness. As absolutely unremarkable as the house was, it'd been sitting there with its empty belly for at least fourteen years. Cora found herself wondering what went on in an empty house. Day in, day out, light and dark transitioning seamlessly, continuously from one to another, dust motes the only things moving in the empty space between walls and floor and ceiling. What happened in that vacuum?

The house had been empty, the old woman had said. But had it been, really? Was anything ever actually empty? Cora liked the question, and she liked the potential answers.

Fourteen years of emptiness.

All right. That was three interesting things so far.