All the Things We Do in the Dark

by Saundra Mitchell

Shocked, I slam on the brakes. No control at all anymore; the car fishtails. The tires whine; the belt bites my shoulder. Oh god oh god oh god I’m going to hit her, a tree, a boulder, the guardrail, oh god! My head whips forward, then back. The car shudders to a stop.

  Twice I fumble before I get the car into park. Three times before I get the doors open, and I lower the window because I can’t remember if the car locks automatically when somebody gets out. I can’t remember any of these things because I don’t drive. I don’t go out by myself. I don’t go out at night. I don’t do any of these things, ever, ever.

  The seat belt releases with a pop, and I fall out of the car. My legs don’t believe in weight right now. God, was that her? Was that someone else?! Did I hit her? Did I kill her? My keys shake out of my hands. I step on them to get to the front of the car. What did I do? What have I done?! Do it. Look. Look, Ava.

  I do. I look over the hood. I look to where Jane isn’t. She’s gone.

  And now I don’t know if she was ever there.

  WITH MY MOM’S EMERGENCY FLASHLIGHT IN HAND, I descend into the trees.

  I keep my phone on in my other hand, following my map to get to her. Jane rests somewhere between two staggered, walking loops. She’s the X that marks the spot. The perverse treasure at the end of a midnight rainbow. She was in my bed and a vision in the road, and now I have to check on her. I promised. I swore.

  After the skid-out on the road, I’m more careful. I choose each step so I fall less; a brave sort of stupidity overtakes me. Hannibal couldn’t do it; Napoleon couldn’t do it; Hitler couldn’t do it. But I’m going to invade Russia in the winter, and I’m going to succeed. The trick is lowered expectations and a pathological level of self-delusion.

  (Probably the other guys had that, too.)

  I’ve been in these woods so much lately, they almost feel welcoming. Winter is quiet. Not many birds call and answer. Few rabbits, possibly only the sad domesticated ones who got dumped after Easter was over and haven’t figured out that they stand out against the snow.

  And listen, okay, I know this is a bad idea. I know this is

  (crazy)

  potentially dangerous, but

  I also equally know that Jane woke me up. She might not be alone. There are two of us living who know where she is, and one of us might hurt her again. Who might feel like she belongs to him. And she doesn’t. She does. Not.

  She belongs to herself. Only herself. Somebody ignored that, somebody used her up, split her skin with something sharp (a knife, was it a knife?), and tossed her away. He doesn’t get to have another piece.

  He doesn’t get to keep anything but memories

  (and I would cut those out of his brain with a paring knife if I could; he makes my hands tremble with terrible, bloody potential).

  No one else gets to hurt her. No one else—

  Someone else is here. Again! I stop. I snap my teeth closed. I squint and sharpen my ears. There are little ticks and shifts in the snow. When I focus, I hear the river. Both the water that rushes and the ice that crackles at the banks.

  Footsteps.

  There are footsteps. Heavy. Human. Even when deer glide through the dark, they’re light on their feet. Owls are a glimmer and a whisper, no louder than the beat of a moth’s wings in flight. People stomp and tromp and curse when they get tangled in the snow-covered thicket.

  I turn. I see a spark in the night. Small, probably a cell phone flashlight. The cold encases me like a shell, but inside, I flow like magma. I am fire and heat. I’m a flaming sword. It must be him.

  It has to be, because who else would it be? Here, in these woods, in this spot, in the hour when Jane called to me and told me she was cold? And why? Why? Because she’s exposed. Because he’s back, exposing her.

  My mouth goes sour, and my bones harden. I take a moment to watch. To plot. There must be some way to sneak up on him, to take him down. I didn’t bring a weapon, but I brought my mind. I have a flashlight, heavy with a lithium battery. And I have a brain that whispers, Run, at the same time it urges, Get him.

  I battle myself, and it seems almost possible that I will stand there until dawn, undecided. Until I hear a thing. Until I hear the thing.

  The shutter snap on a cell phone.

  Small lightning flashes with it.

  He’s taking her picture! The monster.

  I roar and run toward him. Startled, he cries out. When he scrambles this time, he falls.

  This time, I gain on him. This time, I’m everything I wasn’t before. Swift. Sure. The frozen lash of brush against my face spurs me forward while he struggles.

  As I reach him, he staggers to his feet. Tall. Taller than me. I grab for him and catch his hood. It falls; it jerks him back like a choke chain.

  Pale hair, silky curls. Dark brows, a flash of dusky lips, and pale skin. I see him but don’t see him. The moon remembers; the snow. He’s made of snow and shadows.

  He twists in my snare. Writhing and snarling, he jerks against my grasp. My shoulder burns from the force.

  No. He doesn’t get away. Not this time.

  I swing the flashlight with my free hand. It just bounces off his coat-padded shoulder. It shifts me off balance.

  With a fierce tug, he yanks free. Again, he falls. Into the brambles. He howls; it hurts.

  (good)

  I grab for the hood again. Just out of my reach. My gloved fingers skate the canvas of his coat. When they skitter off, I catch the hem. Trying to twist it in my fist, I fail. It’s too narrow. Too slick.

  Lurching away from me, he stutters out, “B-b-back off!”

  “I’m calling the police,” I bray.

  When I reach for him again, he slaps my hands away. Even as he drags up the ravine, he swings an arm behind him. It’s wild, unfocused. Like the head of a mace, just spinning and spinning, hoping to hit something.

  Instead, I catch his wrist.

  The force jerks him off his feet; me too. He sprawls on his back, and I go down. Gravity drags him toward the river. For a second, the sky is the ground, and the ground is just formless, falling space. His cell phone bursts into light when it hits the snow.

  Suddenly, fear exists again. I don’t want to fall. I don’t want to end up in the icy Aroostook in the dark. I let go. I slide to a stop, and I’m aware.

  The ground beneath me exists again, too. It’s hard. I’m cold. My head rests against a rock. My stupid, brave, fearless brain whispers, You could have died; you almost died.

  And in that moment of my hesitation, the boy regains his feet and runs.

  Flailing to sit up, I scream after him, “I know what you did! I see her, and I know what you did!”

  And then blinking light.

  From his cell phone,

  where it sits just in front of me

  in the snow.

  NOW MAYBE YOU’RE WONDERING, IS AVA HAVING A breakdown?

  No, I tell you, referring to myself in the third person, Ava is not having a breakdown. Maybe a breakthrough.

  Jane woke me up. She called me to her because she knew I’d catch him there. Since we have this terrible thing in common, we are bound together, she and I. There is a power that flows between us, and I have to use it for good. For once, for good.

  Disappointment tinges everything I taste. Just a bitter dust, imperceptible to the eye. If I’d been stronger, maybe I would have caught him.

  In retrospect, though, so what if I had? Even if I had held on to him, what would have happened then? He was taller, bigger—we fell to the river’s edge.

  I had no plan.

  Clock him with the flashlight again? Hope he goes down like they do in the movies? Hope I had the strength to drag him all the way into town? Or hope he didn’t wake up before the police whom I didn’t want to call showed up?

  It doesn’t matter. I will catch him.

  I just wasn’t supposed to catch him yet.

  The cold clings to my skin, even after a second shower. My alarm will ring soon. Time for school. Time
to greet the day. His phone lies heavy in my hand. I sit on the side of my bed and stare down at it. Well, actually, I’m staring at a grid of dots.

  His password is a shape. And just beyond that digital portcullis, there’s everything. I know he has pictures of her from tonight. There are probably more. Somebody like that, who goes back to the grave for another memento, he has others. It wasn’t enough to

  (destroy)

  hurt her and hide her and keep his sick memories of her. She is dead and he wants to keep using her. He keeps using her, and this phone is evidence.

  I could take it to the police, now. There’s enough to hand it over, take my hands off the wheel, and let it just go.

  But it’s time for school.

  I need makeup today. That slide down the ravine left a bruise on my cheek that I don’t want to explain. Hopefully, it won’t get darker.

  “YEAH,” I SAY TO SYD, LEANING OVER HER IN THE cafeteria. “I found it, and I figured you might be able to crack it.”

  The phone lies on the table in front of her, and she studies it like she’s defusing a bomb. Probably I shouldn’t even think bomb in school. I don’t need to get arrested over a bad choice of words.

  Around us, people move in their conversations and don’t even notice us. I’m not sure why I expect something different. We’re just two people looking at a phone. There are mirrors of us everywhere, spread out with Starbucks cups and the remains of stale school donuts.

  Still, I expect (fear? anticipate?) notice, so I sit down with Syd, pressing close to her. “What do you think?”

  Syd holds it level to her gaze, tipping it slightly to one side, then the other. “It’s pretty messed up.”

  “I know,” I say. “I found it outside.”

  I don’t know why I feel like I have to justify that. I found a lost phone. I found a thing. It’s just a thing I found. The longer she holds it, the edgier I get. The thing is, Syd is a genius at stuff like this. Forget your password, lose your log-in, whatever. She can figure it out.

  But I don’t know what she might see this time if she gets past the lockscreen. I don’t want to pull her in. And it feels wrong to ask her for a favor when, one, I’m not going to tell her the truth about why I need it and two, when we’re so weird right now.

  “I’m just going to take it to Lost and Found,” I say, reaching for it.

  She fends me off with her shoulder. “Ah-ah, I’m working here.”

  My hands twitch. I sew my mouth closed. I don’t want her to be suspicious. Just like I don’t want all these people, milling in the breakfast remains of the cafeteria, looking my way. Why are they all looking my way? I wish I’d left my coat in my locker. It’s so hot in here. I’m sweating beneath my sweater.

  “Ava, hey,” Hailey says, right behind me.

  Syd and I both turn to look at her. My smile is uneasy but real. The beginning of last night rises up, prickling on my skin. Hailey’s hand on mine, flying in the dark, looking at a new kingdom together. Syd doesn’t know about that. And Syd’s expression doesn’t change.

  “Hey,” I say. I’m not sure if I drew it out. Did I sound pervy? Does she know what’s fluttering inside me, not just in my heart but down in my belly? Can she tell that I went places with her in my mind? “What’s up?”

  Resting her hip against the table, she returns my smile. “I was going to ask you that.”

  My gaze flicks to the phone. “Oh, uh . . .”

  “She found it.” Syd provides my voice but not my inflection. She’s flat and informative, and more than a little dismissive. “We’re trying to figure out whose it is.”

  “Oooh, maybe I can help.”

  Hailey slides onto the bench beside me. Sandwiched between them, I’m unbearably hot. I really should have left my coat in the locker (and kept the phone to myself).

  “Can I see?” Hailey asks. She holds out her hand in front of me. It’s so close, I smell her perfume. It’s warm on her pulse. It seems to waft into the air with every heartbeat. It’s a silver-dark cloud that swirls around my head.

  Syd drops the phone into Hailey’s palm. “Knock yourself out.”

  “Did you do the trig extra credit?” Hailey’s talking to Syd, because I’m taking calc. “I couldn’t figure out number three.”

  “Yeah, me either.” Still flat, Syd’s voice carries an edge. The lack of emotion bristles through her consonants and crushes her vowels.

  I think Hailey notices. No. That’s stupid. Hailey obviously notices. It’s like a neon sign flashing over Syd’s head. But Hailey keeps her smile on; she stays light—she floats on her cloud. She produces a bag from her backpack and unzips it. The scent of her perfume grows stronger as she rummages in it, and I sit in a tense and intoxicated place.

  There’s no reason for Syd to hate Hailey. At least, no reason I know. And until recently, I would have felt confident thinking that. Thinking I knew everything about Syd and what’s in her head and her heart.

  Maybe later, I’ll ask her. Maybe later, I’ll ask for a ride home and pay for pizza and make her spill her guts.

  Hailey twists the lid off a pot of loose powder. Dipping a fat scarlet brush into it, she says, “Learned this from my dad. Let’s see if it works.”

  With a tap, she leaves some of the powder in the pot and then turns to the phone. Dusting it gently, she twirls and twists, her touch so delicate that I’m not even sure the brush touches the screen. But slowly, surely, a faint translucent haze covers the glass. And when she puts the brush aside, we lean in.

  There’s a pattern in the powder. Faint but there. Right over the portcullis: a G-shaped ghost that beckons.

  Exhaling softly, I say, “You’re a genius.”

  Abruptly, Syd stands. Her bag swings and thumps against my back. Her earrings jingle and her nails tick on the table as she steps out of the bench. She feels like stone: a statue set to motion. Everything about her is angular, including the cut of her eyes. “I forgot. I gotta talk to Mr. Burkhart before class.”

  Syd walks away, right in the middle of me saying, “Okay, see you later.”

  “Wow.”

  Offended, Hailey watches Syd’s retreat. A thin shell of ice crackles around her, impossible to ignore.

  “I don’t know what that’s about,” I say. I turn back to Hailey, apologetic for something I didn’t even do. “She’s been in her own head lately.”

  With a shrug, Hailey forces a smile. “It’s okay.” She packs away her powder, with a lying smile. “I butted in. Anyway, I have English in the dungeon, so I should probably head that way.”

  I don’t know what to do. I don’t know the right words to make her stay, and I can’t fix what Syd did.

  Fumbling around, I manage to stand up the same time Hailey does. It feels like desperation and I’m afraid it sounds like it, too, but I say, “I’ll walk with you!”

  The lie slips from her smile.

  AS WE WALK DOWN THE HALL, OUR FINGERS FLICKER and tease.

  They don’t link; instead, they stroke. We talk about the weather, the forecast—more snow, so much snow, a million tons of snow—as if our hands aren’t stretching and reaching for something more between us.

  A little realization springs up between those touches. Her knuckles skim mine, deliberate. My forefinger

  (no bigger than the agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman)

  curls and kisses the pad of hers. Our elaborate dance is subtle. It has no feathers. It has no display. It’s murmurings under covers and whispers in shadows.

  It’s for us, alone, because maybe Hailey knows, but I’m discovering. I’ve had crushes on people before—oblique longings over impossible boys and girls, over smooth stars androgynously male and female. But.

  But no one I could touch. No one who could touch me.

  (Are you thinking, Ohhh, because . . . ? Because no. And yes. Everything can’t be about that, but everything is touched by that.

  But also, other things—other other things. Syd got her period in fifth grade; I d
idn’t get mine until freshman year. Her first crush-kiss-ginity flew away in middle school; as I recall, at Tenesta Jordan’s thirteenth birthday party.

  I didn’t go to parties or sleepovers or anywhere to meet people but school (and a lot of people at school know, or think they know, what happened because we were going to school together when it happened, and it sets me apart and makes me damaged in their minds, their tiny little minds), and besides which, at school there are too many people around all the time. Too much close, too much loud.

  And maybe I could find a group of new kids who didn’t know all that, but don’t forget, I have a huge scar running down the side of my face. When new people see me for the first time, they’re shocked/disgusted/revolted, which makes me feel so, so, so very pretty and inclined to flirt, you know?

  Never mind the conversation that follows: What happened to you—?

  It’s all a big circle, isn’t it? A snake swallowing its tail. A Möbius strip of why Ava is seventeen and currently losing her mind over four fingers curled against four fingers, in the dank hallway of the school’s basement.)

  Bravery and madness and because it’s my right arm, which falls under Things I Can, I turn my hand, and slip it into Hailey’s. Contact. Heat. When her fingers close around mine, sensation sizzles all the way to my toes. It burns like a sparkler, bright hot and inevitable.

  Her palm is soft; her fingertips rough. I wonder about her elbows, about her knees. I wonder about her surprises and the weight of her lips.

  There’s plenty of room around us, but she presses close to me. Squeezing my hand, she steals a look in my direction, and I blush. I warm with a smile, and I don’t let go. I might imagine a gold glow around her, summer lights on her skin, but I don’t think so. I believe she is actually luminous, there at my side.

  “Do you want to go flying tonight?” I murmur.

  Her hand tightens around mine again. We are close and small, hidden away from everything together. For a moment, we are everything. A dark seed. All matter in the universe. The moment before the big bang.

  She says, “I can’t tonight. Tomorrow?” and kick-starts the creation of all things.