Carswell thought it was strange how there was a new car smell but no designated smell for a new house. It was almost as though no one suspected it to have one.

His did. It smelled like bleach, chemicals from a recent cleaning, but the bitter lemon barely covered up the other scents. Forest and cigarettes and salt and a flowery, motherly perfume. Diapers and baby powder and wet fur, like from a pet of some sort. Most of all it smelled like a home. That was something Carswell's old house never smelled like, a home. He was sure it had at one point. But as he grew his parents got new jobs, jobs that kept them away night after night. Not wanting to be alone in the already too-big house, he found himself lingering at friend's homes and staying down by the lake with Cinder.

"It smells weird in here."

"Think of the devil," Carswell muttered to himself. He threw on his bag and jogged up the stairs. His parents had already promised him the attic bedroom; that was the one thing he wanted. The one condition he had for letting them rip him away from his old friends, old house, old neighborhood, old life.

Rhode Island was a small state, to be sure, only an hour across at most by car. But this was completely different from the small, rural town he was used to. His high school would be in Providence. Carswell's usual class of twenty would turn into one of over two hundred. Just in his grade.

"Aw, you were thinking of me?" Cinder teased, quickly overtaking him on the stairs and turning around to face him as she ran. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I am pretty unforgettable, aren't I?"

He made an uncommitted sound in his throat. The stairs seemed to last for an infinity before him, though in reality it only took them a few minutes to climb up.

The attic room, as he had been forewarned, was the smallest in the house. The unregistered fourth story. From between slits in the blinds was where the late afternoon light came through, the only thing illuminating the room. Dust hung in the air almost hesitantly, though it wasn't as much as he had expected because of the maid's recent visit.

An empty mattress rested against the wall in the corner. Downstairs, he could hear his mother ordering about the movers. Carswell knew they would be hard-pressed to bring up his bed frame; maybe he'd just sell it.

He pulled the mattress down. It hit the floor with a loud thump, making his dad yell out his surprise below.

"Anger issues much?" Said Cinder, sarcastically. She leaned against the wall where the mattress had been.

"What? No, it just fell like that." Carswell defended himself halfheartedly. He looked around the bare room, comparing it to his old one. There, dark blue walls freshly painted. Smelled of sweat and Cinder's perfume. Here, black walls that were fading to gray and the smell of roses from the overgrown garden below. He hated roses.

It was all too much, and much too empty. Carswell ran from the room, leaving Cinder behind as he clomped down the stairs.

His father was gone, presumably getting pizza for the night's dinner. His mother was "helping" the movers by showing where to put each box.

Carswell kissed her cheek. "I'm going out," he told her. Then, to the movers, "Just leave my boxes at the bottom of the stairs, if you want. And you don't have to bother with a bed frame. It's a long walk. So...Thanks."

His mom was the slightest bit peeved, "You don't have to thank them, it's their job."

"That's exactly why I should thank them." He grabbed an apple from the stash in the car that he had slowly been depleting on the drive down and dodged the men and women carrying boxes. Just to annoy her, he made sure to say thank you to them all.

Carswell's housing complex was much nicer than his older neighborhood, that he had to admit. Where he used to live seemed-and was-the kind of place where kids would run and play in the morning and teens would do drugs and graffiti during the night. Here, with rows of somehow passive aggressive gardens separating each yard, it was almost the place where no one did anything at all. As though it just...was.

Only two or three miles out of this neighborhood, the neatly rowed houses were replaced with concrete, abandoned buildings, each with "out of business" signs somewhere near. Entire malls and outlet stores, gone. Closed.

Everything here was dead.

A few cars drove past, their whirs mingling with the buzz of electrical wires. It seemed like an apocalyptic setting. How hard it was to imagine that, somewhere, Kate and Danny were playing videogames in the old tree fort, probably having already forgotten about their crazy, ex-best friend.

No. Crazy was too nice a word. Something one could say affectionately, with an added punch to the shoulder or ruffle of hair. Insane, deranged, demented, those. Those were true.

Mental. Unhinged. Non compos mentis.

He threw his apple at a garbage bin, already filled with trash bags. It bounced off the side almost snottily. Really, dude? It seemed to say, That's the best you've got?

Insane was a good word for it.

Angrily, Carswell stormed over to the bottle and dumped it in the can. He still had the feeling that it had won the whole encounter.

Next to the dumpster he was surprised to find an open door, leading into the old store. He looked behind him to make sure no one else was watching, of course no one was, and stepped to go inside.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

The voice came from a small blond haired girl sitting on the slanted roof above him. The girl grinned and jumped off, not so much as flinching when her feet pounded the ground. "The structure isn't stable enough to go inside."

Carswell folded his arms stubbornly. "But it's stable enough to sit on?"

The girl shrugged, "For me it is. I'm light."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Carswell wasn't a heavy-set person. In fact, with his eating schedule so messed up from spending time in the hospital and stress, he was skinnier than ever. Paler, too-usually his skin was tan because of all the time he spent outside, but now it was an almost translucent white. In fact, everything about Carswell seemed faded now. His brown hair, shaggy and greatly in need of a trim. His blue eyes. Dull, dull, lifeless. He pulled on his sleeve self-consciously.

When the other didn't answer, Carswell smushed a dead cigarette in front of him with the toe of his shoe. "Can you tell me your name, at least?"

"You don't know me?"

"What's that supposed to mean? Are you some sort of celebrity around here or something?

"No...it's just...it doesn't matter, really."

"Of course it matters. Why wouldn't it matter?"

"Because I'll be gone soon anyways."