The Barn

The highlight of Drew's summers was sleeping in the barn. Every July, his family would venture westward, crossing the country by car until they reached Grandpa Muller's farm in southern Kansas. Drew would clutch the tattered road map in the back seat—his dad would call him "The Navigator”—and would check off each state with a waxy crayon upon crossing its border. Each state line was a countdown.

The entire Muller clan would converge on the family farm. It was tradition; once a year, after their lives faded back to normalcy, the heat of summertime would draw them back together. Generations would mingle, throwing horseshoes across the former cornfields and laughing until the sunlight turned to starlight.

But Drew loved the barn. He and his cousins would sleep in the loft—high above the stalls that once housed livestock—and tell ghost stories until they fell asleep.

* * *

“Do you think the barn is haunted?” he pondered aloud one year. He was 11.

“Haunted?” Cousin Bobby scoffed. “By what? The ghost of a horse?”

“I mean, the Headless Horseman did have a horse to ride,” his cousin Jenny said.

The boys stared. “Who?” they asked in unison.

Jenny took a breath. “The Headless Horseman. You know, from Sleepy Hollow? It’s a book.”

The boys began to laugh. Jenny, with her short hair and oversized glasses, looked the part of a TV nerd; her insistence on carrying a book with her like a security blanket only solidified that image.

“You can learn a lot from books, guys,” Jenny protested quietly.

The boys laughed harder. She felt dejected.

“Anyway,” Bobby said, “have you heard about the man from Nantucket?”

Jenny scooted across the loft and curled up in the corner, book and flashlight in tow.

* * *

When asked to describe the barn back home, Drew found himself unable to gather the words.

“Big. No, old. Dusty. Creaky.”

But he always settled on “Magical.”

The barn was Drew’s first taste of freedom, of independence. He and his cousins could talk about anything and everything—all without the fear of eavesdropping adults. They could play silly games, like Truth or Dare, and laugh as loudly as they wanted without repercussions.

The barn was liberating.

* * *

When Drew was 13, Bobby would sneak girls into the barn. Bobby was 16 and girl crazy, awkwardly pubescent with a strong jawline and sinewy arms, like a deflated scarecrow. Drew didn’t understand. Jenny, 14, thought her cousin was disgusting.

“Give it a rest, Robert,” she said. Her hair was longer now, but her glasses were thicker. “Where do you find these girls? The penny candy store in town?”

“Shut it, Jenny. Take Drew and the kids for a walk or something.”

Drew and his younger cousins begrudgingly followed Jenny down the ladder, onto the ground, and out the barn door.

“That wasn’t cool, Bobby,” Drew said upon his return to the barn.

The younger cousins had fallen asleep within the cornfields, and Jenny and Drew had woken them gently to bring them back to the comfort of the barn loft.

“You don’t get it,” Bobby said.

“That’s the third girl this week,” Jenny hissed. “You’re going to get yourself into trouble.”

Bobby smiled coyly. “This girl was such a good kisser.”

“Ew,” Jenny said. “Ew ew ew.”

* * *

By 16, Drew felt like an unwelcome guest in the barn—an interruption to Bobby’s raging hormones. The previous summer had been more disappointing than a splinter. Now, his fourteenth summer was beginning to look like the summer before. It was like he had an old injury that had become inflamed out of the blue.

The magic of the barn had started to fade.

“Do you think the barn will ever be haunted?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” Bobby asked, his arm around his girlfriend-of-the-moment.

Drew stood up and looked out the barn window. “Like, will we haunt this barn one day? Or will our memories?”

“I bet Bobby’s girlfriends will haunt this place,” Jenny said. “And they’ll be stuck here until it falls down.”

Everyone laughed—even the younger cousins, who were now old enough to understand crushes and Bobby’s playboy ways.

“Hopefully they don’t burn this place to the ground because I broke their hearts,” Bobby said with a chuckle.

“Hopefully,” Drew said.

He looked across the horizon. The sun was inching up over the fields, casting an orange glow over the land. It looked like fire.