I can only think of two reasons. It's either because I got really scared and thought something might have happened to somebody. Or it's because I just sprinted through the house like I was running away from a cheetah. One of those two options has to be the cause for my fiercely pounding heart. Okay, maybe it's both options altogether.

Now Syria and I are standing in front of a standing-on-a-chair-terrified-looking Norah. Trying to normalize my rapid breathing, I hear fast footsteps approaching us. Daisy and Eleanor enter the room, too.

„What the hell happened?!" says a panting Daisy.

„I just saw the biggest, hairiest, most disgusting spider that I've ever seen in the 21 years that I've been living on this planet," Norah replies in a trembling voice.

„Are you serious?" I scoff, my heart still pounding against my chest. „You really just screamed like somebody was burning you alive, over a freaking spider?!"

„I thought somebody died," Eleanor adds nonchalantly.

„Uhm, hello?! I almost did! You should have seen it, it was huge!" Norah tries to justify her reaction.

„Just come back down from that chair, you look stupid," I tell her. She considers for a few seconds before climbing down slowly, looking everywhere around her at the floor and shuddering of disgust now and then. That's when I finally take in where we are and realize that we're in a bedroom. There's a king size bed in the middle of the wall, with a dirty mattress only, no bed sheets whatsoever. Two nightstands, one on each side of the bed with a few items on it. Next to the bed, a small table with what seems to be an antique sewing machine. A large wardrobe on the opposite wall with exquisite carvings of forest animals. This piece of furniture must've been quite expensi- JESUS CHRIST, WHAT WAS THAT?! I turn abruptly to where I heard a creepy sound come from and see Syria behind me, standing in front of a beautiful white piano, her fingers placed on the keys.

"Holy shit, can you guys stop scaring me already?!"

Syria sends me an apologetic smile before continuing to play on an extremely mistuned piano. I ignore the weird chills that the sounds of the piano give me and walk toward the closest nightstand. There's a little alarm-clock and a book. It looks like an autobiography of a music composer. I open the drawer and find a small notebook and lots of single, crumpled paper sheets with scrawls and music notes. I pick some up to try to read it.

With his eyes, he tried drawing lines

All along her silhouette

To remember every detail

That he feared he might forget

They sound like song lyrics to me. I continue rummaging through the drawer only to find something I didn't expect at all. A gun.

"Girls," I say. I hear them approaching and one of them gasping.

"Woah, is it loaded?" Norah asks. I pick up the gun, carefully not to touch the trigger, and analyze it.

"I don't know, and I don't even know how to safely hold a gun so I'm just going to leave it here. No one touches it, okay? I heard, these things can be very autonomous with just one simple touch on the trigger," I try warning them. They nod before grabbing notes from the drawer to read them, too.

"I just don't get it," I hear Daisy, "Why would someone abandon their home like this, take a few things but leave a lot of other important things behind? "

"Maybe they just died when they were away, on a vacation or something. The stuff that was taken and damaged, was probably by intruders like us," Eleanor presumes. And her theory actually sounds very logical.

After discussing other hypotheses on the abandoned house, we continue to explore it for a few more minutes. The once white tiles of the bathroom are now full of dirt. Same goes to the shower floor and the cracked toilet. The mirror over the sink however, is still intact and clean. Kinda scary, if you compare it to the rest of the room. As I look at my clear reflection, I see Eleanor and Syria behind me, looking kind of bored. As if my own body read my thoughts, I feel my stomach growl.

"Should we go eat something?" I ask them.

"Yes!" they reply in unison. So we head downstairs to join the other girls. Earlier, I had run up the stairs so fast when I heard Norah screaming, that I didn't even notice how rotten and fragile the wooden staircase was. The squeaking noises are a clear sign that the stairs could easily crash at any second. So I descend carefully until we finally reach the living room, where Norah and Daisy are seated, reading a book together. I suggest them to go eat, to which they agree and the five of us head outside to our Van. We take our seats. Syria takes the driver's seat before turning the ignition. The vehicle doesn't start. She tries again. Nothing. After three more tries I grow worried. And I'm not the only one. Syria looks at Norah next to her, then at us in the backseats.

"I think we have a little problem," she says.

"Let me try it," Eleanor says before stepping outside and walking around the vehicle until she's standing next to the driver's door. Syria steps outside and lets Eleanor take her seat. She turns the ignition. Still nothing. She tries a few more times until she finally gives up.

"Well, shit." Daisy says.

"We're screwed." Eleanor says.

There's a short moment of silence before Norah speaks.

"Wait here," She gets out of the car and heads to the front of the car.

"Open the hood," she shouts. Syria searches for the button to open the hood and when she finally finds it, she does as Norah said. Norah pushes the hood open until I can't see her behind it. I get out of the car and walk towards her. While she's holding the hood open with both arms, she looks down at the engine. Since when does she know about mechanics?

"So?" I ask after a few minutes of no action from her. She sighs before shaking her head and talking.

"I have no idea what I'm doing."

Really? I swear, this girl...

"Okay, let's call a tow truck then," I tell her while groping the pockets of my hoodie only to realize I left my phone in the Van. Norah takes her phone out of her jeans and dials the number of the towing company. She holds the phone next to her ear for a while, waiting for someone to pick up. A few seconds pass.

"No one picks up," she says. I tell her to wait a few more seconds. After a while she gives up and calls them again. Eleanor, Syria and Daisy appear next to us, asking what we're doing. I tell them that we're calling a tow truck. I turn to Norah and she shakes her head. Nobody is picking up. She places her phone down and sighs.

"What now?" she asks us.

Everyone seems to be thinking for a while. I look at the house next to us. What if...?

"What if we spent the night in the house?" I blurt out, "We could try calling them again tomorrow."

All of them look at me with wide eyes. Not a good idea?

"Sounds exciting, actually. I'm in," Syria says.

"Can't we just sleep in the Van?" Daisy asks.

"If we can't turn on the engine, it's going to be pretty difficult to warm up the Van. And it gets cold on the roof, for us. In the house, though, we could light a fire," Eleanor informs us.

"Exactly," I agree. I look at Norah, who hasn't said anything yet, "What do you think, Norah?"

"NO FUCKING WAY!" Norah says shaking her head violently.

"C'mon it won't be that bad. It looks quite cozy inside," Syria tells her.

"But have you seen these gigantic disgusting-looking spiders?! There is no way I'm sleeping there, nope, nuh-uh," Norah says stubbornly.

"It's not like the spider's gonna eat you Norah... They don't like the taste of gay people" I try to joke. I get a blank look from her, telling me that my attempted joke wasn't funny at all. Well, at least I tried, right?

"Do you prefer sleeping here outside in the cold? Alone?" Syria asks challengingly.

Norah's concerned look changes to an even more terrified look.

"Oh my god, RATS! I'm sure there are rats inside, too!"

Is she for real? I exchange glimpses with the other girls. Just like me, they also seem to be fed up with Norah's overreaction. I shake my head in direction of the back of the van, signaling that we should go get our things. The others get my message and follow me, ignoring Norah's whines behind us.

"Giiirls! Please, I don't wanna die!"

She will end up, accepting the idea of sleeping here eventually, right? She has to, there is no other option. And she has to face her fears. It's for her own good! That's what I tell myself, that way I won't feel bad, seeing how genuinely scared she seems to be.

____

"Do you think sand is called sand because it's between the sea and land?"

I turn my head and look at Syria, thinking about what she just said.

"Damn," I say fascinated, "that makes so much sense."

We were currently lying on the mattress that we brought from the camper and placed on the floor of the living room, near the fire place. It's dark already and Eleanor and Daisy are asleep on the couch and the armchair. Norah, Syria and I are still awake, talking about everything and nothing.

"And do you think leaves on a tree are called leaves because they leave the tree?" I say now.

"How do you guys come up with these things?" Norah says.

Syria chuckles while I just shrug, "We smoked so much weed back in the days, that we're permanently high now."

Now it's Norah's turn to chuckle.

"The good old days. We were so rebellious. How did we even graduate?" she says.

"I have no idea," I say. And then we stay silent for a while. It's not the uncomfortable kind of silence but the kind where you let the realization sink in of how grateful you are for being friends with these humans lying next to you and how lucky you are with how everything has turned out in your life. The kind of silence where you just enjoy the company.

"Remember when we were spending a week in Spain and there was that night where we stayed at the apartment and played drinking games until we got drunk and then we decided to walk to the beach at 3 AM and when we got there we took our clothes off and went skinny dipping?" Syria says, interrupting my deep thoughts.

"That week was amazing", I say recalling the fun, good times I had with my girls.

"And then we wanted to walk back to the apartment and your clumsy ass fell over your own feet and started bleeding like crazy on your big toe," Norah recalls.

I laugh. "Yea, I didn't want to wear my shoes because my feet were full of sand. Bad Idea, though..."

The two laugh quietly, remembering my whines of that night. Then the silence comes back. The only sounds I hear are the relaxing sounds of the crackling fire and the sounds of the crickets outside. Eventually, I feel tiredness taking over my body, feeling my eyes flutter shut and sleep take me to the universe of unconsciousness.