I start to hear a scraping sound coming from the twins’ room at night. It’s a soft clawing noise, like they’re using their fingernails to scratch through the floor. I roll away from the wall and shut my eyes, but I can’t stop listening. I imagine miners pickaxing their way through a cave, archaeologists excavating ruins, explorers drilling through the earth’s crust and mantle and into the deepest core. * * * Some nights I don’t listen to the twins at all because I am tangled up in a net of remembering. I think about the stories Marcus and I used to tell each other in Charlestown. Real-Life Ghost Stories, we called them. Here’s one. On my first night in Mission Hill, I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom and when I looked up, an older girl was in the doorway. She was tan and wide. Pink jelly bracelets were stacked on her wrists. She smacked the toothbrush out of my hand. It clattered against the floor. White foam ran down my chin. I felt the bathroom shrinking.
