CHAPTER 3
One more day with Katrina didn't sound so bad until Katrina brought up watching movies. It was three in the afternoon and Chelsea's head was falling to her shoulder. She had to snap herself awake and look around the room to see where she was. Reggie was in her lap and Katrina was next to her on the couch completely wrapped up in the last scene of The Notebook. Chelsea didn't get the movie. She wasn't quite into chick flicks as much as action movies. All the more to just sleep.
Katrina nudged Chelsea awake and Reggie jumped off of her lap. Chelsea rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands and looked around. The credits were rolling on the screen.
"Is there any movie you won't fall asleep to?" Katrina asked clearly annoyed.
"…Sleepy Hollow."
"Isn't that scary, like Tim Burden stuff?"
"Burton, Tim Burton." Chelsea wasn't much for correcting people but sometimes people needed to be. "It's Johnny Depp."
Katrina rolled her eyes, "Oh cool! Help me find it." Katrina got up from the couch and walked over to the stack of DVD's her family would keep under the mantle on the side of the fireplace. It took a second but Chelsea got up too and, like a teenage Frankenstein, sleepwalked over to her. Chelsea leaned against the mantle as Katrina knelt down and fished through all the DVD's stacked on the floor. By the ruckus she was making, it didn't seem as if she cared for alphabetical stacked order. As Chelsea began to doze she found her mind going back to the night before. She almost wanted to tell Katrina that she saw her brother the night before but wasn't in the mood to have Katrina throwing a fit which is what Chelsea guessed Katrina would do with that information. Chelsea looked at Katrina through sagging eyelids. Katrina didn't even look like her supposed brother. He had thick, dark hair and she was a redhead like her dad. He was tall from what it seemed and for as long as Chelsea has known Katrina, Katrina has always been just under average when it came to height. And even the way they acted. Katrina was always the center of attention, if not the try-state area, and if she wasn't she would always fix that. Her brother, almost hidden to the world. But then again maybe she shouldn't compare the two. In the back of her head, Chelsea had the idea that there was a good chance Katrina wasn't exaggerating about her brother. At least she didn't think so now. All that screaming was making her think her brother had mental problems. Katrina never shouted from the bathroom in the middle of the night, but her brother did. Well, then again, Katrina does get pissed about her period.
Chelsea didn't know why she was so wrapped up in Katrina's brother. Maybe it was because he was a mystery. She lived in a cookie-cutter town with cookie-cutter neighbors. She had never really met anyone who was mentally disturbed. Not that she had actually met him.
Then it hit her. How stupid she was. If he had seen her peeking out of Katrina's room god knows what he might have done? Beat the life out of her? Screamed until her ears bled? Shudder.
He couldn't have done nothing to be considered a freak by his own flesh and blood sister. Though there were things that resulted in Chelsea and Katrina not quite meshing, Katrina was always understanding of most things. Even in school, she never picked on the gay kids, but then again she never really picked on anyone. That's why Chelsea was able to get along with her in the first place. There have been a few people at school over the years who she should have punched, told off or even screwed over, but she never did. She was kind. What could her brother have done to make her hate him so much? Enough to never even mention him until a week ago and crap like he was 'insane' and 'a freak'. He must have done something really bad.
"I think I found it…" Katrina said, "Nope, that's Mr. Bean."
Chelsea chuckled a bit and leaned away from the mantle. All that thinking woke her up a bit. Then she widened her eyes. The mantle. There were dozens of family pictures on it. Chelsea, very nonchalantly now, began to peruse the Crane family's photography collection.
Chelsea went from left to right scanning the different pictures. There were a lot of hiking trips to Mt. Rushmore and skiing trips in Colorado but no brother. Chelsea looked again but from right to left this time, she tried to not forget any that were pushed more towards the back, she even adjusted a few frames to see what pictures were in them.
"Got it!" Katrina said looking up to Chelsea who was still looking over the photos. "What's up?" Katrina said standing with the Sleepy Hollow DVD.
"Um…" Chelsea grabbed the closest photo to her from off the mantle. "I didn't know you went to Mt. Rushmore."
"Yeah me and my dad went hiking in the area and stopped to take the picture." She said taking the picture out of Chelsea's hands and putting it back on the mantle.
There. For a split second, Chelsea saw a picture. One she didn't see before. It was laying face down towards the back. The Rushmore picture was blocking it. Katrina just put the picture back where it was, covering the hidden frame from view.
"C'mon." Katrina said putting the DVD in and plopping back down onto the couch with Reggie jumping on top of her. Chelsea followed.
At first her mind was still on the photo perched, face-down, on the mantle, but when the Headless Horseman came out and killed a dude in a bad colonial wig, Chelsea was in Burton mode.
She was worried at first that Katrina would be totally repulsed by the film but damn could she get into Johnny Depp. In twenty minutes she believed she was Ichabod Crane's love interest, Katrina Van Tassel and they were already married because of the names. Katrina Crane, Chelsea had to admit it was a funny coincidence. Katrina even found it cute how Ichabod was afraid of spiders. Chelsea was glad they settled on a movie they both enjoyed. Even if Katrina would hold Reggie close to her and hide behind his pinkly stained fur at times. They were just at the scene where Ichabod is going to perform surgery on a woman.
"I will need to operate immediately." Ichabod says.
"Operate?" The man he is speaking to has a puzzled face. "She's dead."
Katrina cringed at the next scene but both her and Chelsea laughed when a bit of blood was humorously quirted into Ichabod's eye.
"His face!" Chelsea shouted. Even Reggie barked from the excitement. "This has got to be–" There was a loud sound. It came from the kitchen like the back door got slammed or the door to the basement. "What was that?"
Chelsea looked at Katrina, but Katrina was so wrapped up in the movie she just said, "It's nothing."
Chelsea shrugged it off and they kept watching.
The ending credits rolled and Katrina sat back on the couch with Reggie in her arms. "That was a great movie. Hey do you wanna give Reggie a bath?"
"Sure." Chelsea said. "I'll put the DVD away first."
"Kay." Katrina said, taking Reggie into the kitchen.
Chelsea took her time to get the DVD out of the player and then back into its case. She looked back into the kitchen from the living room and saw Katrina stepping outside through the kitchen door. Chelsea dropped the DVD back onto the stack of others and stepped over to the mantle. She went back to the pictures of Katrina and her dad at Mt. Rushmore and one by one looked behind each of them to find…nothing. She saw it before. She knew she did and now she was questioning if it was ever there. Was she looking behind the right pictures or was it behind the France pictures. No, it was Mt. Rushmore; the hiking trip. Katrina even talked about it. There was a frame face down and now it wasn't there. There was no other picture to be found.
Katrina couldn't have taken it, she was there the whole time. When did it vanish? During the movie, no, no way. There was only one other person in the house because Katrina's dad was gone. He could have taken it. No, not even that. They were in the room the whole time watching the movie. If he took it she would have seen out of the corner of her eye. It wasn't when she was dozing off during The Notebook because she didn't notice it yet.
"Chelsea!" Katrina called from the back yard. "Are you gonna help?!"
Chelsea looked over the mantle one last time before following her friend through the kitchen and out to the back yard.
It could have just been another picture of another skiing trip, but it's disappearing act told Chelsea that it probably wasn't.
Down in the basement, the Boo Radley of the Crane house placed a picture frame onto his desk next to his stereo. It was a photo in a small frame. A boy with light hair and a big smile holding a black kitten.
He looked at it for a serious moment. It was just him and the picture. But eventually the Boo Radley stepped over to his bed and crawled under the covers. He looked up towards the small basement window at the top of his back wall. It was the only beam of light that came into his room. He turned over away from the light and faced his desk and the picture again. He scrunched his nose before reaching out and snapping the frame face down onto his desk.
The Boo Radley put a couple of his fingers into his mouth and closed his eyes to sleep for his usual three hours. He was hungry and he had to get food. He would only when it was night and then he would escape the basement.
