Free The Night Sister by Jennifer McMahon

the painted wooden sign he’d put up in front of the tower, angled to catch the eye of drivers on Route 6:
Come See the Famous Tower of London.
    Piper and Amy stepped over the remains of the sign, which had been knocked over years ago and lay in rotting pieces amid clumps of grass, mullein, and chicory, strewn with cigarette butts and fast-food wrappers thrown out the windows of passing cars. Then they paused just outside the tower.
    Amy and her friends were not supposed to go inside. Her grandma said it was dangerous, with its crumbling walls and sagging floors.
    “It’s a death trap,” Grandma Charlotte had said over and over, voice rusty, breath sour. “You steer clear of it,” she warned, giving an uncharacteristic shake of the finger to emphasize just how serious she was. “One of these days, someone’s going to fall straight through the floor and end up in hell.”
    Grandma Charlotte took care of Amy when Amy’s mom, Rose, wasn’t around (which, as far as Piper could tell, was pretty much all the time—she’d never laid eyes on Rose, not once in the whole year she’d known Amy). Amy said that her mom had mental problems. And she drank. Grandma Charlotte explained once, “My poor Rose was never the same after we lost Sylvie. She blamed herself. Never got over it. Some people are made stronger by loss. Others are broken by it.”
    Sylvie was Amy’s aunt, her mom’s older sister, and she had run away when she was eighteen. Went off to California to be a movie star—that’s what Amy said. She packed a suitcase and left a note in her typewriter, saying goodbye and that she’d be in touch soon. They never heard from her again. Amy’s middle name was Sylvia, after her long-missing aunt.
    Piper felt kind of bad for Grandma Charlotte—an old woman left alone to raise a wild kid like Amy. Her husband, Clarence, had died not long after the motel went out of business, back before Amy was even born. Grandma Charlotte said he’d died of a broken heart, which Piper figured meant a heart attack.
    Grandma Charlotte was thin, her sallow skin sagged, and her hair had gone white. She had two long silver hairs coming off her chin, and Piper longed to pluck them. The house was always a wreck (despite the fact that Grandma Charlotte never seemed to stop tidying), and sometimes they’d catch her just staring out the kitchen window down the driveway, a lost and vacant look on her face.
    “What’s she doing?” Piper asked.
    “I dunno,” Amy said. “Looking for my mom or Sylvie, maybe. Or for motel guests? I think she still half expects that old bell wired from the office to the main house to ring, even though it’s been broken for a zillion years.”
    Sometimes Amy’s grandma got confused and called Amy “Sylvie.” Piper heard her do it once in a while.
    “Come here, Sylvie, and let me braid your hair.”
    “I’m Amy, Grandma,” she’d say, sounding uncomfortable and impatient. “Sylvie’s gone.”
    “So she is,” Grandma Charlotte would say, running her gnarled fingers through Amy’s golden-blond hair. “She was my good girl. So are you.”
    Now Amy pulled Piper through the arched doorway and into the cool shade of the tower. Piper held her breath, waiting for the walls to collapse around her. Inside, it was dark and smelled like damp cement, rotten leaves, and something acrid and spoiled. The wooden planks covering the floor were spongy beneath their feet. There were no windows on the first level, and the only light came from the narrow doorway.
    Years’ worth of dry leaves crunched beneath their feet. Piper could also make out a Milky Way wrapper, and a crushed Budweiser can. Far off, she could hear the sound of Amy’s radio playing up at the pool; the music drifted down like fog, the song unidentifiable.
    “Do you really want to know what it was like?” Amy asked, her face nearly lost in the cool shadows of the tower. “Kissing Jason?”
    “Yeah,” Piper said, her palm sweaty as Amy held it