All the Things We Do in the Dark

by Saundra Mitchell

  (Why does she say nothing? I went to Amber’s without her. I got inked without her; I have new ink and she doesn’t even ask what I got; she doesn’t care. She’s not jealousangrypossessiveanything.)

  Instead, she asks, How did you get there?

  Caught a ride with Hailey. Did you wait for me? I ask.

  Obviously.

  I thought you were busy.

  Guess you don’t get paid for thinking.

  I stop short. The cold presses down, the clouds a low silver ceiling that promises more snow, soon. The river whispers; the trees shush it, and a storm slowly grows in my head. Not curiosity; accusation. I can’t tell if I’m angry or upset as I thumb back, Seriously, are you mad at me?

  I’m not mad! omfg!

  I take a sharp half breath, then sit on a fallen tree. Cold presses through my coat, through my pants, uncomfortable but present.

  The last thing I need is to get in a fight with my best friend and accidentally walk into the river. It would become a tragedy of lies: people talking about how I never seemed depressed, they all missed the warning signs, my mother shocked and broken because she didn’t see it coming.

  (Supposition and exposition and embroidery all over again. Did you hear about the girl with the scar? Yeah, she offed herself. I guess she never got over it. Should we do something? Let’s do candles and a GoFundMe for suicide stuff or . . . the other thing. You know, the other thing.)

  It’s been a really long day, I start, then hesitate. On Syd’s side, she just sees •••.

  •••, she non-replies.

  I don’t understand why we’re fighting. I don’t understand why I’m apologizing. I sit, poised to reply, and my arms protest. Both sides, the layers of T-shirt and sweater and coat bunch up, grinding knots into my new ink. The sting burns deeper, and I realize I already know what to do with this screwed-up situation. Since I can’t fix it and everything I say makes it worse, well . . .

  THINGS I CAN’T.

  That’s what I file it under. I delete my unsent wibbling, then shove my phone in my pocket. For a minute, I sit there and breathe. It’s me and the vapor of my breath hanging in the air. The dark creeps up fast, rolling off the river like smoke. It chases me from the log and into ascent, through the thick trees, up the steep hill.

  It would have been hard to climb this on a summer’s day.

  On a wintery autumn’s evening, each hidden root and crevice are part of the monster under the bed, grasping at your ankles and catching your toes until you jump to the safety of your pillows and sheets.

  A bright hot pain spikes through my ankle. I twist; I fall.

  Snow plumes around me. Sinking into my gloves, the wet chill climbs faster than I did. Even though I shove myself up and keep moving, it reaches my skin before I’m halfway to the road above. The trees crowd over me like they’re watching a fight. In a way, I guess they are. Ava versus Nature, Ava versus Herself.

  I berate myself as I struggle for another six inches, a foot. I’m the stupidest. I should have followedthehighwaycalledanUbertextedmymomgrabbedadifferenttree—

  It’s not a tree; it’s a log, bare of snow.

  It looks like a good handhold, but it cracks when I grab it. The sound whips over my head, echoing into the coming night. Dank wood crashes into me. Flailing, falling, I taste iron, blood—

  Am I bleeding? Did I hit the ground?

  The log rolls past me, a few more heavy thumps before it comes to rest. Out of reflex, I drag a hand down my face. Snow grinds into my skin like glass, but no red bleeds onto my gloves. The blood—I imagined it? Hallucinated it?

  Awkward, I struggle to sit up. And when I do, I see her face. Her grey, shattered face.

  And her naked body, stuffed into the other half of the tree.

  THIS IS WHERE I MAKE A DECISION AND YOU’RE going to think, Oh, because.

  And this time, you’ll be right. But you’ll be wrong, too. So many things flow into and swirl around because that there’s no way to separate the elements afterward.

  I sit in the snow, staring at this girl for hours or maybe seconds. Her body isn’t like a TV corpse, smooth and beautiful.

  V-shaped gouges on her chest reveal jelly layers of pink and grey and yellow; her body splays in a chaotic sprawl.

  She’s twisted like a Barbie doll at the waist. Her top half points forward, baring her face, her chest, those Vs. It takes me a minute to realize that they’re stab wounds. Her bottom half faces down. Somehow both her breasts and her butt are exposed at the same time.

  (she has a tattoo)

  Human people, alive people, they don’t make that shape.

  (she has a tattoo, a symbol, I know it—astrology, Aquarius, I think)

  With toes dug into the ground and her arms—god, where are her arms? I can’t find her arms—and her everything, she looks like she’s been tossed carelessly into a box.

  Purple outlines the cheek that rests against the ground. Lips swollen, eyelids swollen. She’s a reflection in a fun house mirror, pulled from the glass.

  I don’t know where the smell of blood is coming from; I don’t want to. Rising on my knees, I slap at my pockets. Phone, phone, I have a phone. Where’s my phone; I lost my phone, where is my phone?!

  Afraid, I don’t look away from her. If I blink and she disappears, I’m losing my mind. If I blink and she doesn’t, then I’ve disturbed an unmarked grave. On a hill. In a wood. By a river. Where I didn’t belong. Where maybe I am not alone.

  I mutter, and my words fog the air with each breath, each pocket slap. “Come on, come on, come on.”

  I bite the fingers of my gloves, then pull them off. I have to find my phone, have to call the police and call my mom and call the police and . . . finally. My pocket has a hole in it; my phone slipped into the shell of my coat. When I finally fish it out, my coat’s lining tears with a sickening rip.

  The girl doesn’t stare at me. Not because her eyes aren’t open; they are. But there’s a bloody black line where the whites should be; I can’t make out her iris or pupils. This makes her silence a special kind of still, unnerving and ominous. All those things people say at a funeral (she looks so peaceful, she looks just like she’s asleep) aren’t true. Not here. She’s

  (been violated)

  miserably empty. She’s

  (cut deep but no scar, she’s never going to have a scar, a scar is something that healed)

  dead.

  Just dead.

  Fumbling to dial—anger, humiliation, fear—and god, I know what comes next. When I push that panic button, when I call 911, the sirens will come.

  Men, probably men, with heavy shoes and heavy belts will tower over the spectacle. Looking past this girl’s body, the young cop will key the mic on his shoulder and say, “Yeah, dispatch, we’ve got remains down here. Caucasian female, late teens, early twenties.”

  Around and around her body they’ll circle, ravens looking for scraps. They won’t touch her. Neither will the detectives, although they might poke her with the end of a pen to see if there’s anything under her. They might chat. Heat ghosts will trail off their cups of coffee; they’ll talk about the weather. As though she isn’t right there beneath them.

  The pop and whine of a flash will fill the scene. A strobe light for a murder rave, zooming in on her bare skin and her wounds and her vulnerability—the camera never blinks.

  Here comes the coroner; she’ll touch. She’ll get a couple guys to help her roll the body. On her count—one, two three—onto a flattened gurney, into a black body bag.

  That won’t be the end.

  That’s not the end—because there’s always a what happens next when bodies are violatedabusedassaultedmolested. In the medical examiner’s office, this girl probably won’t be shoved into stirrups (like I was), but they will take samples.

  S A M P L E S, from her mouth, from her vagina, from her anus . . . If the coroner finds any saddle-shaped bruises, bite marks!—swabs for those, too. More pictures and an audio guide narrated
by a woman with a scalpel.

  She’ll take this girl apart, she’ll open her skin, she’ll open her head, her chest, she’ll dig out everything that was ever her and weigh it.

  The pictures could end up on the internet (people like crime scene photos).

  Her body would belong to everyone and not her, forever and ever, amen.

  And all this will happen, whether they find the person who did this or not.

  It will probably be not.

  (Mine was not. He’s still out there, that curly-haired man. . . .)

  So the cops, the coroner, they’ll do all that to her. They will empty her out for . . . nothing.

  My stomach clenches, and that sour spring of spit rises in my throat. I hold my phone in dead hands, my thumbs frozen over the screen. Nine-one-one refuses to form beneath my touch. I open my Favorites and look at my mom’s avatar. She wears a pink feather boa and a silver crown; it’s a picture from her birthday last year. All I have to do is touch her to summon her.

  I want her. I want my mom to make everything better. That’s her job, right? She’s supposed to make everything better.

  And I don’t know why I believe that. I know the truth.

  I wear the proof on my face—evidence that she can’t make everything better.

  Being real with you—I don’t think she can make anything better.

  When Syd’s mom encourages her to go to school dances that she doesn’t want to go to, my mother says, “Let’s get a Redbox and make popcorn.”

  Pep rallies and extracurriculars? How about an avocado mask and a spa night instead? My mom never pushes. She stands sentinel and lets me lock myself away. She builds a pleasant tower, and cuts my hair so it doesn’t grow long enough to fall to the ground. Does she do it because I want it? Because she needs it?

  She must have known all along.

  Every time I leave my cage, something terrible happens. Sometimes it’s the worst thing; sometimes it’s just a bad thing.

  Sometimes it’s a body in the woods.

  Sitting there in the woods, full of fear that wraps around my heart and lungs, I realize two things.

  I am alone.

  I have always been alone.

  And I alone know what happens next, to this girl. How much more she has to endure. How much less she’ll become. How public they’ll make her flesh.

  What do I do?

  What am I going to do?

  ONE need not be a chamber to be haunted,

  One need not be a house;

  The brain has corridors surpassing

  Material place.

  —EMILY DICKINSON,

  Part Four: Time and Eternity; LXIX

  I GO HOME; I TAKE A SHOWER.

  After, when I’m scalded red and there’s no hot water left, I put on underwear, a cami, a T-shirt, and the sweat suit I kept from freshman gym. It’s dark green, with an Aroostook North Woodman

  (Go, Fightin’ Lumberjacks!)

  embroidered on the hoodie. Then a hat: a knit hat that holds the humidity in my hair.

  At my desk, I use a stapler to fix the lining of my coat. If we ever had needles and thread, I don’t know where to find them. We’re not handy like that, my mom and me. When the stitching pops on her favorite comforter, Mom takes it to the cleaner. They wash it, repair it, package it up nice and neat.

  So I use a stapler. It does the trick. After that, homework. Mom comes in while I’m reading about the Antonine Plague. Yes, I beat her home. Beat her by a mile.

  Up the hill, onto the main road, I booked it, and it was maybe fifteen, twenty more minutes?

  My mother calls me down to dinner, and I leave the stapler and coat on my desk. The insides of my arms burn, my new tattoos like brands beneath my sleeves. I hold Things I Can’t against my waist, clutching the stair rail with Things I Can.

  “How was school?” Mom asks, unpacking a stack of lo mein and General Tso’s from Mrs. Lin’s. The spicy sweetness of the General Tso’s is like a spike up my nose. Usually, I love it, but right now it’s too much. I put it aside and sniff the other cartons until I find plain, steamed rice. “It was school, you know.”

  “Mm,” Mom says, distracted. She turns around, three halting loops before she finds what she lost: the fork that was already sitting on the table, next to her lo mein. “Homework?”

  Tucking myself into a chair, I pop the top of the steamed rice and dose it with soy sauce. “Almost done.”

  Everything is normal. So normal. She sits down, then pops back up to get a paper towel to use as a napkin. She spills her dinner onto a plate. Unashamed that she never learned to use chopsticks, she digs into her plate with a fork and gusto.

  Her eyes rise, skimming my face. She’s conversational. She says, “It’s supposed to snow again tonight.”

  I know. I don’t say that because when do I ever look at the weather? Except tonight, on my phone—after the shower, before the stapler. Snow and snow, huge accumulations.

  There will be a fresh, new white blanket on the ground in the morning. It will be pristine and untouched. It will cover up all the dark things left on the ground, splayed on the earth. All will be tucked in tight, temperatures below freezing—

  “I thought I saw your car off the side of the road,” I say. “On the way to school.”

  “Oh, honey,” Mom says. Her voice is warm; it melts her and softens her expression. She reaches over and rubs my shoulder. “I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me.”

  “It’s everybody else I worry about,” I say.

  All the other drivers in the world, all the other best friends in the world, all the other pretty Hufflepuffs in the world—

  Mom swishes her fork through her noodles. “It’s all right, Ava. It happens every year.”

  It just feels strange and hollow to hear that, because it’s true. It happens every year.

  Things happen every year.

  Important things.

  Something important happened. Today. In the woods. It’s still happening.

  And my mother can’t even tell.

  I FORGOT TO CLOSE MY CURTAINS BEFORE I WENT TO bed.

  When I wake up at 3:32 a.m., I roll over to see snow falling beyond the dark glass. It comes down in fluffy, cotton ball puffs. They’re too fat to swirl, but the wind shifts them as they fall. An angle to the left, an angle to the right, they flicker like pixels.

  On the bedside table, my phone vibrates, its facedown screen suddenly glowing. That was what woke me up, had to be.

  I don’t want to unfold and stretch an arm outside the covers. I’m lying in the perfect position. I’m so exquisitely comfortable, I feel like an ancient queen arrayed for beauty and power. I have those moments, sometimes. Where I’m so possessed in my body that I almost feel like a god. It never lasts more than a moment.

  The phone vibrates again. Now I reach for it.

  I was a bitch before.

  I’m ovulating and I have a big-ass cyst and it hurts.

  Anyway yeah. hmu if you want a ride in the morning.

  Syd’s voice is in my head now. I let it press at the tender spots, the ones she left earlier with jabs and claws and confusion. There’s still an ache there, but the spot that wants everything to be normal and okay is bigger. It wraps around her words and turns them into an apology, one that I accept.

  NBD, I tell her. No big deal. A lie like her apology: forgiveness that isn’t but is. It’s snowing again and I’m out of the way.

  So? she says. It’s a statement with a question mark.

  Okay, see you in . . . I look at the clock on my phone. Ugh, 3 hours.

  kk.

  Now silence, for so long the screen dims. From the corner of my eye, I see motion. It’s just snow, I’m sure of it, but I look just in case. And there, in my window is her face.

  Her face.

  She shouldn’t be up this high. My bedroom sits at the top of a long staircase. The house is old; the stairs are steep. There’s no trellis or porch or tree to climb; she shouldn’t be up
this high. Panic constricts my heart. It beats in a strange, too-long pattern that almost feels like holding my breath.

  Suggestions of her eyes, her lips, they flicker in the glass. She looks in but past me. Like she’s waiting for something in the distance, just beyond my bed. When she digs all five fingers into her hair, I count the rings she wears: one, two, three. They’re pale and cheap; so is her jean jacket.

  I know (I know, I know) that she (herbody) isn’t here. That was bare, and I pulled the log back up to cover her. I made sure she was covered, she was safe. With raw hands, I pushed snow up against all the cracks and crevices, a mortar to seal her in. It’s not just cold outside. It’s frigid, and this fat, wet snow will keep her.

  She’s safe.

  She’s with me.

  Her gaze travels from the middle distance to fall on me. She’s an impressionist painting; I can’t make out her details. But I do see her smile. It’s crooked and knowing. It only reaches one eye. It speaks to me directly.

  We have a secret, don’t we?

  IN THE MORNING, SYD SHOWS UP in her stepfather’s Jeep Grand Cherokee. The thing is huge inside—black, with black leather seats, satellite radio, and a back-up camera. Straining to open the passenger door, she explains before I even ask. “He thought it would be safer.”

  It feels it. High off the ground, headlamps bright as searchlights, broad. Sturdy. And even though I quietly judge people in SUVs, I hope that this monster is safer.

  Overnight, we got another eight inches. Even where they’re plowed, the roads are mushy and indistinct. I like the way they seem carved out of the earth, but I don’t like the way they build secret ice beneath the snow. Where’s the Black Ice? A game nobody wants to play.

  Pulling on my seat belt, I tell her, “He’s turning out to be a nice guy, huh?”

  “I reserve the right to withhold judgment,” she says.

  Fair enough. Skip isn’t her first stepfather. He’s not even her second. Maybe he’s still in that honeymoon phase, showing off for his new wife. Look how great I am, check out this manly, manly provider routine!