The Picture in the Box by Madison Collins

Jess pulled her car into the driveway of her new house. She got out of the car, but Carlie was just waking up from her nap on the long drive.

“I’ll be out in a sec!” Carlie tried yelling at her older sister Jess from inside the car, but the other didn’t seem to hear. Jess had already gone into the house, she got out of the car and walked right in through the opened front door.

Carlie was walking around the empty house Jess just bought. Jess seemed a little off or unsure about something for some reason, Carlie didn’t know why but she didn’t think much of it at the time. They hadn't talked to one another yet since they walked into the house. Carlie assumed Jess was just trying to adapt to everything before she got too comfortable. The home smelled like a new book with dust going up the nose with every inhalation. This house had been empty for a few months ever since the couple that lived here both died in the living room not many months apart from each other, but Jess didn’t care, she has her own house and that’s all she was thinking about.

Carlie went up to the guest bedroom, on the right side of the hallway, directly across from the master bedroom, and just sat on the unsheeted mattress, dust and fuzz flying up as she plopped down. She wondered why Jess hadn't even looked at her, and if she did, it looked like she was looking right through her as if she was transparent, just blank stares. Carlie was walking down the steps when one stair creaked and Jess looked startled in the direction Carlie was standing, but she looked away, not saying a word. Jess started unpacking the decorations for the living room and placing them on the T.V. stand just in front of the staircase. “Hey, wanna play hide and seek?” asked Carlie. “Ok,” said Jess with a long sigh looking down at a box full of pillowcases and throw blankets, just loud enough that Carlie heard it.

She went to hide under the unused bed in the guest bedroom. She stayed there for about five minutes before she realized she didn’t hear Jess looking around, in fact, she didn't hear her at all, so she went back downstairs to see what Jess was doing but she was just sitting on the couch on her phone texting someone. Carlie groaned and sat next to her looking disappointed. Jess turned, frightened, and stared at the cushion of the couch where Carlie was sitting. Carlie put her hand on Jess’s shoulder, concerned, and Jess pulled back wide-eyed and panicked in her breath. She got up, almost stumbling over her own feet, and left with her keys in her hand. She slammed the door behind her and quickly got into her car while Carlie sat there still on the couch, confused and scared. She wondered what she did wrong.

Carlie didn't know what to do, so after a few minutes of sitting and trying to reflect on something she might've said or done that could’ve been a mistake, she decided to go through one of the unopened boxes that were full of empty picture frames and photo albums. Carlie ended up finding her old phone inside her favorite phone case she thought she had lost. She turned it on and it said the date above the clock, “June 26, 2019,” but she couldn’t remember her six-digit password to unlock her phone. There was a familiar face peeking from the bottom of the box, under all the picture frames that she saw from the corner of her eye, it was her 3rd-grade school picture she had just taken last year, and she picked it up carefully and read the letters at the bottom, “Carlie Wicker, October 27, 2010 - June 2, 2019.”