The Attic Find: A Book That Promised to Read My Skin

The dust on the porch railing stuck to the back of Lila’s hand when she watched her parents’ dented Honda putter down the dirt road, kicking up plumes of summer dust that hung in the humid coastal air long after the car vanished around the bend. For three days, that had been the most exciting thing to happen at Grandma’s cottage: the arrival and departure of her parents, who’d dropped her off with a duffel of clothes, her beat-up sketchbook, a bag of sour gummy worms, and a distracted kiss on the forehead before speeding off to handle the chaos of selling their Ohio house and moving to a new state she’d only seen on a map. Eight weeks, her mom had said, like that was a vacation, not a prison sentence for a 16-year-old who’d just had to quit her summer art intensive at the local college because they “couldn’t afford two rents at once.”

The cottage was exactly as she remembered it from last summer, which was exactly as she remembered it from every summer before that: slanted ceilings that made her 5’8” frame hunch if she stood too close to the eaves, floors that creaked so loud she was convinced they’d wake the neighbors (if there were any; the closest house was 3 miles down a winding dirt road), a kitchen that smelled permanently of lavender sachets and old pine, and a living room TV that only picked up three channels, one of which was static 90% of the time. She’d already explored every inch of the first floor, cataloged every tidal pool within a 2-mile walk of the house, drawn 17 sketches of the seagulls that stole her granola bars if she left the screen door open for more than 10 seconds, and read every YA fantasy novel she’d packed twice. She was so bored she’d spent an hour yesterday rearranging the junk drawer in the kitchen, sorting the rubber bands by size and the mismatched batteries by charge, and she’d almost cried when she found out the only Wi-Fi in the house was in the kitchen, and it only worked between 7 and 9 p.m., when Grandma sat down to watch her murder mystery shows.

It was 10 a.m. on her fourth day there, the air thick with salt and the smell of Grandma’s blueberry muffins baking in the oven, when she decided the only thing left to explore was the attic. Grandma had mentioned it the night before, offhand, while they were eating dinner: “Plenty of old junk up there if you’re bored. Your grandfather’s old model airplanes, my old wedding dresses, boxes of his books. Just be careful of the loose board by the dormer window, it’ll give way if you step on it too hard.”

The attic stairs were tucked behind a door in the hallway that Lila had never noticed before, hidden behind a stack of wool blankets. They creaked so loud under her sneakers she was sure the whole house would shake, and by the time she pulled the door open at the top, she was covered in a fine layer of dust that made her sneeze three times in a row. The space was bigger than she expected, slanted ceilings capped by a single dormer window that looked out over the Atlantic, the sun slanting through it in a thick golden beam that made the dust motes dancing in the air look like tiny floating stars. It smelled like cedar, old wool, and faint pipe tobacco, the ghost of Grandpa Joe, who’d died 10 years earlier but still felt present in every corner of the cottage: his old pipe rack on the side table, his flannel shirts hanging on hooks by the door, a stack of his favorite mystery novels on a rickety wooden shelf.

Boxes were stacked floor to ceiling, labeled in Grandma’s loopy cursive: *Joe’s College Stuff, 1958*, *Martha’s Wedding Dress*, *Lila’s Baby Photos*, *Old Magazines, Don’t Throw Away*. She’d come up looking for old art supplies, maybe a stack of Grandma’s old watercolors, anything to pass the time until the Wi-Fi turned on at 7. She started with the box labeled *Old Magazines*, pulling out a stack of *National Geographic* from the 1960s, their covers faded, the pages thick and soft. She flipped through one, stopping at

The photo was dated *August 1962*, the ink faded to a soft brown at the edges, the sea turtle in the kelp forest rendered in fuzzy black-and-white grain, the white spots on its shell arranged in the exact same messy, uneven pattern Lila had been trying to replicate in her sketchbook for three straight weeks. She ran a calloused finger over the page, frowning. The magazine was a stack of old *National Geographics* she’d dug out of the box labeled *Old Magazines, Don’t Throw Away*, their covers crinkled, their pages soft as cloth from decades of sitting in the dark attic. She’d already flipped through half the stack, halfheartedly tracing photos of 1960s surfers and coral reefs, half hoping to find a reference for the wave textures she’d been struggling to draw for her art school application portfolio, half bored enough to dissect the ads for vintage Coca-Cola and tube socks.

She tossed the magazine back into the cardboard box and shifted to the next one, a *Life* from 1971, its cover featuring a man in a red flannel shirt holding a wooden model airplane, his grin crinkling the corners of his eyes so familiar Lila paused mid-sneeze. It was Grandpa Joe, no doubt about it, his hair a little darker and fuller than the black-and-white photo of him on the cottage mantel, but that same lopsided smile was there, the one he’d always given her when he snuck her extra chocolate chip cookies before dinner, the one that made Grandma pretend to scold him while she passed Lila an extra cookie under the table. She flipped through the magazine, half expecting to find a photo of Grandma in a bell-bottom jeans, but instead a crinkled polaroid fluttered out, the edges soft and faded, the colors bleached to pastels by time. It was Grandpa’s hand, palm up, the lines of his lifeline and wisdom line drawn over the photo in silver marker, a tiny doodle of a sunflower in the corner. Scrawled underneath in Grandma’s loopy cursive: *Joe’s palm, 1975, the day he asked me to marry him. I said yes before he even finished the question.*

Lila held the polaroid up to the dormer window, the golden summer sun slanting through the glass, making the silver marker glint. She’d never seen a photo of Grandpa’s hand before, never thought to wonder if his lifeline had a little hook at the end like hers did. She was about to tuck the polaroid back into the magazine when her hand brushed something hard and smooth under the stack of old *Life* and *National Geographic* at the bottom of the box. It was a small wooden chest, carved with little waves and seashells along the edges, the wood worn soft by years of being handled. She pried the lid open, expecting more old photos or Grandpa’s old model airplane parts, but instead the first thing she saw was a thick leather-bound book, its cover deep brown, the leather worn soft and frayed at the edges, the corners scuffed as if it had been carried around in a jacket pocket for decades. There was no title on the cover, no author name, only a sketch done in faded silver ink: a left palm, the lines drawn with careful, precise strokes, and next to it a tiny, lopsided smiley face, its eyes two small dots, its mouth curved into a half-moon, like someone had doodled it in the margin of a notebook.

She ran a finger over the silver ink, frowning. The book smelled like old paper, cedar, and a faint hint of the pine sol Grandma used to clean the floors, mixed with something else, something sharp and clean, like the linseed oil Grandpa used to keep his paintbrushes soft. She flipped it open, the pages soft and thick, the edges yellowed, some of them smudged with faint blue and green paint stains, like someone had set a wet paintbrush down on them by accident. The first page was covered in Grandpa’s slanted, messy cursive, the ink faded to dark gray after 40 years: > Your skin is a storybook. You just haven’t learned to read it yet.

Lila snorted so loud a cloud of dust poofed up from the pages. Cheesy. That was the only word for it. Cheesier than the *Twilig