All the Things We Do in the Dark

by Saundra Mitchell

  She springs up, and we collide again. She laughs, rubbing her hands down my arms, then spins away. There’s a roof, but the walls only go halfway up. The rest is open: to the wind, to the sky, to the stars. The tower sways beneath our feet, and I catch one of the beams, just in case.

  “Oh, wow,” Hailey murmurs.

  I press next to her; I look out with her. Suddenly, there’s nothing but a glittered sky and treetops for miles around. They ripple and wave, so dense it seems like we should be able to walk across them. So solid it feels like we made it to the other side, to another universe, to another dimension.

  Trying to orient myself, I look back where I think we left the car. It’s gone. Everything’s gone. The world is wiped away. This tower, these two bodies, that’s all that exists in this world right now.

  (three three there are three bodies)

  I put my hand down on top of Hailey’s, on purpose. Everything cold flies away when she turns her hand beneath mine. Our fingers tangle; our heat expands. We say nothing as we look into infinity, because infinity looks back into us.

  The wind blows.

  WHEN I ROLL IN, MOM CALLS OUT, “AVA?”

  I’m not sure who else it would be. To be fair, though, I don’t feel like my usual me. I feel light. Not trudgey or slow. This bubbly, erratic version of myself closes the door and falls back against it. She calls back to Mom, “Sorry, ma’am, this is Joe Robber, Esquire. I’m here for your TV and MacBook.”

  My mother snorts from the kitchen. “You’re too late, Joe Robber. In fact, you were supposed to be home half an hour ago.”

  “Sorry,” I say, not really.

  “There’s potpie in the microwave.”

  Leftovers from a pitch-in at work, I guess. There’s no way Mom made a potpie between the time she got home and the time I did. Scratch that—there’s no way Mom made a potpie, full stop.

  Peeling out of my coat and gloves, I let them slump on the bench by the door and go to explore.

  In the kitchen, Mom stands over the island. Her dinner sits in front of her, and she picks at it as she reads something on her phone. When I pass, I see the flash of pages. Something on her library app, probably a romance novel. I’m guessing it concerns a tempestuous Scottish laird and a fiery English orphan (who turns out to be nobility).

  Mom loves history, too, just in her own way.

  “Did you have fun with . . . Hailey?” she asks. She abandons her phone, watching me and blindly pulling a plate from the cabinet.

  “Yes.”

  Mom frowns. It’s not dismay; she just expected more. Details, an explanation, embroidery. She’s probably trying to place Hailey—where does she exist in my past, in my circle? Swinging open the microwave door, Mom finally asks, “Is that Matthew Cho’s daughter?”

  A power surge pops inside me. I haven’t made her up. She exists when I’m not thinking about her; she has a history, a past, a life, a family. For one halogen moment, I’m reminded why my mom knows Matthew Cho, but I drown that thought with my own, new light. I’m too bright, too brand-new with a sudden surge of energy; I blot out everything. I say, “Yeah. She’s doing strength training downtown, and I went to watch.”

  (After I went down to the riverside.

  After I chased the boy.

  Before the drive, before flying, before the other world.)

  “Strength training?” What Mom doesn’t say is, Since when do you care about strength training? And why would you want to watch it?

  With a wave of my hand, I dismiss her furrowed brow. “Yeah, it’s for endurance. She’s really good at it.” (I assume. I mean, she didn’t drop anything.)

  (Well, she did. But it was on purpose.)

  “Huh,” she says. “I didn’t know you two were close.”

  Oh, we were close, Mom. We were so close on the top of the fire tower. We were one huddled shape, hands laced together, trying to figure out which way was Canada and which way was the car. We were so close that my lips ached, because her lips were parted and gleaming with Carmex. Camphor and cedar and new storm wind; I drank in her traces in the towering dark.

  I shrug. “We eat lunch together.”

  My mom nods and returns to her book. “Next time, text me if you’re going to be this late. I don’t really like you coming in after dark.”

  Next time.

  Not only does Hailey exist in the bigger world, at home with parents, she exists in the future. In my future. I’m so dizzy, it takes two tries to get my plate into the microwave. I play the buttons like a harpsichord, then take a turn on my heel. Frictionless, I spin.

  Just once. Before my mother can look up from her iPhone and catch me.

  I can’t (don’t want to) explain that much exuberance. It’s mine. It’s all mine, a secret tattooed nowhere but my heart.

  MY BODY HAS A COMPLICATED STING.

  As always, I turn the shower up too hot, so hot that I huddle at one end of the tub and risk scalding as I turn it down to bearable.

  When I duck under the spray, I gasp. It’s still shockingly hot but in a good way. I like the bite of heat on the back of my neck. The way water gathers in my hair, then pulls it to a point. Rivers spill down my spine and split across my breasts.

  I have washcloths, right there in the little closet inside the bathroom. Pale peach, matching the bath sheets and hand towels. But I never wash with a rag, never. The rasp feels clinical, chemical—I hate it; I don’t use one. Even the word, I hate the word. “Rag,” so hard and brassy and braying.

  Instead, I lather the soap in my hands to wash my face and neck. Skin on skin, quick swirls, a splash of scalding water. Then the rest of me, I scrub with the bar itself.

  Turning my back to the water, I wash with curved fingers and disappear into my head. My thoughts are a slide show.

  Abstract: the ripple of Hailey’s knuckles inside her black, fingerless gloves. The window, rolled down enough to give up her hair to the elements. Her smile, perfectly crooked with her little vampire teeth exposed.

  She’s funny and strange; she wants to fly. She drives with strangers in the dark.

  My hands drift on soap currents, shaping the weight of my breasts, straying between my soft thighs. The little ache there throbs, but I pass by. Instead, I turn beneath the water and let molten fire spill across my sensitive skin.

  Because I have to, I wash my hair quickly, then cut the water. Soaking wet, I scrub my head with a towel. I give my skin a cursory swipe, then wrap peach terry cloth around my body. When I walk across the hallway to my bedroom, I’m quick. I leave only footprints behind, and I lock my bedroom door.

  The right water is hard to find. I gave up a while ago. I don’t like my fingers because I concentrate too hard and rub too hard and get nowhere. But the magic of an allowance, the existence of Visa gift cards, and the open road of the internet mean I don’t have to use my hands.

  Turning out my light, I slide into bed, still wrapped in the towel.

  Then I dig between the mattress and box spring until I find my familiar friend. Mine is boring compared to some of the crazy things that come up on Amazon when you type vibrator into the search engine. There are no beads or pearls or colors or natural replications here; it’s just a slim white tube with a twist base on it.

  It’s quiet, like prayer; even quieter beneath my covers and towel. Only on the outside, the shaft pressed against flesh and bone, its tip infiltrates dark curls and parts lips to find my clitoris. When I find the spot, my feet twist and curve. One heel digs into the mattress like an anchor.

  My body is strange and ordinary; it races with sensation but waits for my brain. And my brain is just plain strange. I don’t do this and think about people. I never have. Instead, I try to convince my mind to wander. To find images and shapes and impressions, pleasant but unformed. My thoughts turn to water, swirling in currents and coming in waves. Sometimes—not tonight—but sometimes, I read. Fanfic and history books and dystopian novels; not usually, almost never, stuff about sex. It’s just stuff. It
makes my mind forget what my body is doing so my body can do its wonderful thing.

  Because there’s danger in there. I can’t concentrate on the thing or I frustrate myself. It doesn’t happen; it’s all kindling, no fire. It grinds my teeth, and do you know how hard it is to fall asleep when you’re mad at your own flesh?

  So I can’t concentrate, but I can’t let my mind go lazy, go blank. Alone, in the dark, yearning and wanting, my brain decides it needs to think about something. It plucks out memories I don’t want to have.

  (something that feels good in the summer)

  My brain kicks open the box just to watch the bloodbath.

  People freaking joke about good-touch/bad-touch, and it’s not funny. Good-touch dissolves into old hands-dirty hands-bad hands everywhere; rancid air I’ve already breathed; hot, swollen summer moments I never want back.

  When the bloodbath happens, my spine coils like steel line. My jaw sets hard; my heel digs in harder. I open my eyes wide, staring at my ceiling as if I could burn through it with a gaze. And I talk. Low and furious—out loud.

  “Stop it.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Not that.”

  And I banish it. I banish him. Because this is my body, and he’s not invited. My heart beats thready and uneven. It takes a little while (a long time) to get my mind clean and unfocused again.

  Sometimes here I give up. Too much trouble. Too hard to let go . . .

  Sometimes it he won’t go away, and I stop, and I hold so very still under my sheets. I try not to breathe hard. I hide from my past by making myself small in my own bed.

  If my thoughts do blur again, I concentrate but don’t concentrate. Yes, that color; yes, that sudden thread of a thought that feels like a kiss. Yes, that phantom hand that belongs to no one, but someone safe and good—that imaginary touch can go on. I urge it; I encourage it.

  If things veer dark, I force them back to light. Close. So close, and everything goes broad and dark as the universe around me. Everything in me collapses, a dying star that becomes a pinpoint before exploding in one spectacular corona. My steel spine arches; my teeth cut my lips. I touch the live wire, and then I let go.

  Afterward, sometimes, I’m relaxed enough to just be. My thoughts flow in safe, lazy rivers, and I think about everything, anything. Sometimes history. Sometimes shower thoughts, like Isn’t it crazy that the brain named itself?

  But tonight, on this particular night, I think about how I got here, breathing fast and body jellied beneath my sheets. I flew, down a dark road; I flew with her. For a moment, I’m cured. And then, in a moment, I’m no longer alone.

  Jane lies beside me; the ghost of her weight fills the pillow beside me. I roll onto my side and curl up, tight, tight, tight. I hold pleasure and happiness and joy inside. I knot them in with my body. Tense again but like a hug.

  “See,” Jane murmurs in the dark, glowing like the winter moon. “You’re fine.”

  “I’m fine,” I agree.

  Her lips barely moving, she says, “I am not.”

  I nod, still holding myself tight. “But I’ll take care of you.”

  Suddenly, Jane smiles.

  “IT’S COLD,” SHE SAYS.

  I scrub a hand over my face, sitting up in my empty bed. I didn’t dream the voice; it didn’t wake me up, either. A burn in my throat, the frozen stiffness of my breath in my nose—that’s what woke me. Colonies of ice spread beneath my skin, and I swear I can see my breath in the air.

  Jane’s call pierces, plunging into my flesh. It puts hooks into me. It pricks and bites, dragging me up to stare into the darkness. There’s an urgency in my head, in my hands. I throw off my covers, but I still have to untangle the towel around me. The humidity inside it escapes, and I shiver.

  Jane’s calling. From the dark. From the cold. And I feel that thin sliver bisecting my heart. Her grave seems lonely, but it’s not. Someone else was there. She said she wasn’t fine, and she’s not. Someone put her there.

  What if they’re back? What if they take her? What if they touch her? What if, what if, what if—?

  Stop. Focus. Sweatshirt, I need a sweatshirt. In the bottom drawer; sweatpants, too. Maybe I should pull on my only pair of long johns first? Yes. Do that.

  (this is not absurd. i am not crazy.)

  (i promised to take care of her.)

  Socks—boot socks. Nice and thick, scratching at the place where I missed shaving on my ankle.

  I don’t think; it’s a gift, this connection. I don’t consider the voice. Right now, I just dress—because I need to dress. Done.

  Downstairs. I drag on my coat, and I reach into the pockets. No gloves. Are they in Hailey’s car? I know I had them on at the fire tower because our skin was so close and so far away. Why would I take them off in the car? A forget-me-not? An excuse for another ride?

  I’m disappointed in myself when I find my gloves sitting on the floor under the coat hooks. I’m not secretly clever, it turns out. Just clumsy/messy/careless. Gloves on, and then I cram a hat on my head. Beneath the knit, I feel the trace of moisture—my hair, not quite dry.

  The spare keys to my mom’s car hang by the door. On a hook shaped like a crooked finger, actually. My dad’s idea of a joke, but it always scared me.

  The dark, almost rusted metal seems to thrust out from the wall. I always expected it to start moving, tearing, unwrapping the walls of my house, to make a space big enough to escape. Fingers belong to hands. Hands belong to bodies, and bodies—

  (She’s cold.)

  Here’s the thing. I don’t drive. I don’t mean I can’t. I took Driver’s Ed and then an extra Driver’s Ed outside of school and went out with my parents on errands.

  Dad tried to hide his annoyance when I didn’t do exactly what I was supposed to at the moment he thought I should do it. Mom, on the other hand, gasped. Brake too hard, gasp. Turn too fast, gasp. Try to parallel park, gasp gasp gasp.

  “Sorry,” she’d say. “You’re doing fine.”

  Gasp.

  So I just . . . never got my license. Mom didn’t push the issue, and Dad had moved to Mount Desert by then.

  But I can drive.

  Holding the door to the garage open a few inches, I press myself through it like I’m sausage. So slowly, I lean against the door to close it. Silent; I need it to latch in silence.

  When it’s closed, I creep along the length of Mom’s car to the actual garage door. If I push the button, the opener will grind to life, and that thing plays like an orchestra of the damned.

  I rise on my toes to release the hook at the top. Then I carefully, slowly, slowly push the door open. It rolls smoothly, rattling just enough to make me nervous. Once it’s up and open, I still. Snow sweeps into the garage as I listen to my house. Listen for my mother. Winter is a scourge, the wind like biting chains. All I hear is the night, the wind, the creep and groan of settling snow.

  Into the car, key in slot, lights turned off. People in movies know how to pop the engine, just enough to throw it in neutral and roll from a garage in silence. For a second, I think I could try that.

  No, I can’t. I just put it in reverse and back out carefully. I try to stay in the tracks Mom left on the driveway. They’re already half full, and I panic when I lose traction for a second. The tires spin; the engine whines.

  Oh god, getting stuck in the snow, murdering the escape before it begins; that’s just not an option. I’m going to be in a legendary amount of trouble if I get caught. At the very least, I should get in trouble for what I do, not what I tried to do.

  Finally on the road, I turn on the headlights. From the corner of my eye, I see the dark maw of my garage, standing open. I’m just going to leave it. Leave the house vulnerable. Leave the door basically open, for anyone to just walk in while I’m gone. I’m—

  Going to run back up to the garage and pull the door down. It comes down hard, with a crash that cracks like thunder down the street. Now the adrenaline kicks in. I run back to the car and take off.
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br />   The seat belt locks on me when I skid to a stop at the first sign. It’s an iron band, fixing me in the seat. The bar’s down on this roller coaster now. I have no choice: I just have to ride.

  The streets are deserted. Salt trucks and plows are probably running somewhere—the road I’m on has a ghost layer of snow. No one drives past; no one tailgates me even though I’m doing at least ten miles under the limit. I have to do this, but I can’t believe I’m doing this. Tight shoulders translate to tight hands on the wheel.

  My breath hazes the air. I’m afraid to take my hands off ten and two, but the windshield is starting to fog over. When I turn onto the big road, my stomach tightens. There are people here, mostly zooming past in the other direction.

  The trucks make Mom’s little car rock in their wake. At this angle, the wind pushes, too. I feel it in the wheel; I have to fight against it to stay straight and true.

  The thing I was hiding from myself starts to show. Down here, down one of these curves, is the place.

  The headlights reflect off the snow but disappear into the asphalt. This doesn’t feel like flying at all. It’s tunneling, digging through the dark, hoping to sense the destination.

  All the stitches that hold me together from the inside fray. They dangle and trail; they twist together, tangling and knotting. They wrap a garrote around my heart and tighten it-tighten it-tighten it. I breathe, but I’m not getting air.

  Driving without a license. Going to see a dead girl in the middle of the night. What is wrong with me? What the— the headlights illuminate a body

  (a person)

  standing on the side of the road. Thumb out, hunched into her jean jacket.

  Jane.

  Out of her grave. Dressed. She’s not dressed for the weather, though. Her hands are bare; so’s her head. The wind pulls her hair in a storm around her face. When she looks up, her eyes aren’t blue or green or brown or hazel. They’re blotted out with a black stripe across the whites.