The attic smelled like dust and forgotten things old wood, faded books, and the kind of secrets that creaked under your boots when you stepped in the wrong place. Astrid Deetz hated that she’d been assigned to clean it. “A bonding experience,” her stepmother had said. As if forced domestic labor could make a new town feel like home.

Astrid didn’t believe in homes anyway. Just temporary hauntings.

She dragged the vacuum cord behind her like a ghost tether, black boots thudding against the boards as she scanned the attic. Her hair was tied up, her black lipstick smudged. She looked like a gothic heroine in the wrong chapter. Or maybe the right one.

Because that was when she saw you.

Through the attic window, across the narrow stretch of dying trees and crooked fences you were there. Sitting in your own window, sketching something in a battered notebook, your feet propped up, your mouth slightly parted in focus. You were a painting in motion.

Astrid paused, one hand gripping the edge of an old trunk.

You looked up. Met her eyes.

She didn’t wave. Neither did you.

It was better that way.

Over the next few days, she made excuses to come back to the attic. “Cleaning,” she said. “Exploring,” she muttered. But really, it was you. The girl in the window. The one who wore mismatched socks and sang to herself when she thought no one could hear. You were strange in a way Astrid recognized strange like her. Like you didn’t fit into this town, either.

One day, you waved.

Astrid nearly fell off the trunk she was perched on.

Later that night, she sat on the attic floor with a flashlight and an old, dusty diary she’d found. She read by flickering light, pretending it was the ghosts keeping her company instead of loneliness. But her mind kept drifting to the shape of your smile. To whether or not you’d sing again tomorrow.

The next time she saw you, you held up a paper against your window: “Are you a ghost?”

Astrid smirked, grabbed a black Sharpie, and scrawled on a torn piece of notebook paper: “Depends who’s asking.”

You laughed. She saw it even from across the yard.

Eventually, you started showing up more leaning out your window, whispering into the wind. She whispered back. Silly things. Strange things. Real things.

And then, one evening, you climbed over your windowsill and dropped into her yard.

Astrid was in the attic again, pretending to organize old furniture, when you knocked on the dusty glass.

“I brought snacks,” you said, when she let you in. “Hope your ghosts don’t mind sharing.”

You explored the attic together after that found weird old photos, broken picture frames, books with notes in the margins. You asked her what she thought about death. She asked you if you believed in fate. Neither of you had good answers.

But when your hands brushed reaching for the same vinyl record, Astrid didn’t pull away.

She wasn’t used to liking someone like this so slowly, so stupidly. She was better at sarcasm, at walls, at pretending nothing mattered. But you weren’t like the people she’d known before. You were gentle without being dull. Brave in quiet ways.

One night, you sat together on the attic floor, legs crossed, eyes wide as you talked about ghosts and poetry and the way you both wanted more than this town could offer.

Astrid turned to you, breath catching in her throat.

“I think I’ve been haunting this attic waiting for someone like you.”

And this time, when she reached for your hand, you didn’t let go.