Shades of Darkness

by A. R. Kahler

  Nearly an hour passed before I was finally satisfied and done. Then came the last item: my artist’s statement.

  I was no creative writer. The four-paragraph essay on my project had been one of the hardest parts (and thus the one I saved until yesterday), but it detailed why I’d been drawn to the Tarot, what the cards meant to me, what I hoped the audience would gain. It was hard not to feel like the entire project was masturbatory in some way, but then again, I guess that’s kind of art.

  I didn’t leave right away, though. Not for a while. The more I looked at the paintings, the more exposed I felt. Kids walked through and some glanced at what I’d done. Some lingered. I wanted to stand in front of them, hide the paintings from view, keep them from discussing it with their friends. It was the part of being an artist I hated the most—inviting judgment for something most people wouldn’t be comfortable sharing themselves. This was a deeper part of me than my skin or makeup or clothes; this was my core. But it was also just paint on paper, and I needed to keep that in mind, especially when I got my faculty critique.

  You are not the art you create. You are the life lived outside of it.

  Thankfully, those who lingered were few; for the most part, my classmates kept their eyes averted as they headed toward whatever studio they would be spending the next few hours in. I wanted to give them all candy for playing coy, just as I wanted to jump up and down and tell them to look.

  Man, being an artist brought out a lot of crazy.

  Before I could get too self-conscious, I turned down the hall and headed to the painting studio. Chris might not be done with his work and I might not have been ready for more ice cream, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to bug him. I needed someone to distract me from what I’d just done.

  I hummed to myself as I trudged up the stairs to the second-floor studio, feeling lighter by the second and also strangely heavy. I was finished with my thesis. Islington would teach me no more. From here on out it was smooth sailing. Just a few more months of class and then finals and then I’d be done. Graduated. Soon I’d hear back from colleges and the rest of my life would kick into gear. The idea ripped my heart in two just as much as it excited me. My thesis was the turning point. Everything at Islington had been building up to this one showcase. Now, everything was building up to the end. It felt like I should do something big to celebrate, like there should have been fireworks the moment I’d hung up my statement. But no, just a stupid song in my head and the lingering notion that I still had a folklore essay to write by Wednesday.

  The joys of being trained to feel there was always work to be done. This place was turning me into Sisyphus—the rock just never reached the top of that damned hill. That’s why I had to find the minor victories and celebrations.

  I was just turning the corner to the studio when I heard the scream. My heart thudded to a halt and my legs kicked into gear. I ran around the corner to find Helen kneeling outside of the studio with her phone shaking in one hand and coffee from a shattered mug forming a halo around her.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. I skidded beside her and put my hand on the studio door, but she yanked it away.

  “Don’t go in there. Just don’t.”

  She focused back on her phone, her words barely discernible through the tears clawing their way to the surface.

  “Yes, the arts building at Islington,” she said. “There’s been another suicide.”

  I gasped. No, no. Chris was supposed to be in there. I fell to my knees, bits of ceramics digging numbly through my jeans.

  “You should go,” Helen said. “Before the cops get here. They’d want to question you.”

  “Who?” I asked. I couldn’t get Chris’s face out of my mind. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t have.

  Helen’s answer was a stake to the heart.

  “Jane.”

  I felt like a sleepwalker when Helen finally convinced me to leave. This has nothing to do with you, she repeated. It felt like a lie, even if she didn’t know it. I didn’t want to leave her there. She was shaking and couldn’t stop the tears in her eyes and she kept looking at the door like she wanted to break in and double-check on Jane or run away and never look back. I wanted to feel like I was doing something when it was clear there was nothing to do; I wanted to make her feel safe. Or something. But she finally told me if I didn’t leave she’d fail me, and I knew she was joking and I knew she was just trying to keep me protected from whatever godawful truth rested beyond that black door, but I forced myself to my feet and left, down the back stairs and out the back entrance. Before the cops or my mind could catch up to me.

  Once outside, I squeezed my eyes shut and tilted my head back to face the coming snow. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. Most of all, I wanted to wake up. I wanted it to be a bad dream and when it was over I’d start the day again and everything would be okay. But I wasn’t waking up. There wasn’t anything to wake up from. I wasn’t stuck in a nightmare, I was living one, the one I’d been trying so hard to escape. Death will follow you.

  I couldn’t tell if those words were Munin’s, or mine. It wasn’t until my feet began to go numb that I realized I needed to move. Escape. I just had nowhere to run. I’d already gone as far as I thought I could.

  My feet led me to the woods, down one of the side paths that was covered in snow and only traversed by a handful of footprints. I didn’t register the cold as my feet sank into the snow, as the woods closed around me and wrapped me in silence. My head was still screaming. My thoughts burned. Jane had killed herself. Death was following, but I swore that this time, I had nothing to do with it.

  This isn’t happening, I whispered on repeat, maybe inside my head, maybe out loud. I was too lost to actually know or care. Jane’s apparition was everywhere I turned, her words whispering through the branches. Jane, Jane, happy bubbly Jane. She wouldn’t have killed herself. She couldn’t have. It didn’t make sense.

  It didn’t make sense. But in my head, it was trying to piece itself together, and I couldn’t live with how the image was shaping itself.

  I stopped in a small clearing maybe ten feet wide, the snow deep and the trees circling me tall and black and bare. Everything out here was white and gray and black. Frozen. Static. Save for the flickers of Jane’s ghost at the corners of my imagination.

  Save for the raven that squawked from his branch high above.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” I yelled. “Jane was innocent! She had nothing to do with any of this!”

  The raven just puffed its wings and looked at me with its onyx eye.

  Death will follow you. Until you face what you’ve done.

  “Kaira?” Footsteps from behind me. The bird cawed and flew away. I turned and nearly broke down on the spot. Chris. The brief flash from before, the seconds I thought he had killed himself, pierced through my mind and through my heart like a bullet.

  “What are you doing here?” Chris asked.

  I opened my mouth to answer. A sob came out instead. He was at my side in an instant.

  “It’s okay,” he said, wrapping his arms around me. He held me close and let me sob onto his shoulder. I couldn’t speak. I could barely hold myself up. I wanted to be strong. I wanted not to show him this—the side of me he could never see, the weakness, the fear. I wanted more than anything else to sink into the earth and vanish. Chris’s arms prevented that. He was the anchor holding me to this world.

  Finally, with a furious wrench of self-loathing, I stopped the tears and forced myself upright and took a step back.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. There was probably more rage in that statement than he deserved, but my anger needed to go somewhere, and my hatred for my own shortcomings was already at its peak.

  He noticed. His eyebrows furrowed and he leaned back a tiny amount.

  “I saw you run into the woods,” he said. “And I saw ambulances and police cars by the art building. I thought . . . I don’t know. I just knew I had to follow you.”

  I
took a deep breath. He’s not your enemy, Kaira. He’s trying to be your friend.

  My frustration, though, wasn’t with him. It was with me. It was for just how relieved I was to see him standing there. Chris was still alive, and for some reason, that meant more than I could understand.

  “What did you hear?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I just got off the phone with my parents and was going to the studio when I saw you leaving. Here I am.”

  My next words were lifeless, twin spent bullets dropping to the ground.

  “Jane’s dead.”

  He didn’t answer at first. He stared at me like maybe I was making some twisted joke, like maybe Jane was about to jump from the trees and yell gotcha! But nothing moved save for the snow drifting down through the branches. Everything was silent. Silent and stark and dead.

  “What do you mean she’s dead?” he finally asked. “She was just at brunch. She said she was going to the studio to get started without me. She said we were going to race to finish our paintings and . . .”

  “I mean she’s dead,” I replied, cutting him off. I didn’t want to hear about their plans—I didn’t want to start comprehending all the things she would never actually do. Anguish turned to anger in a heartbeat, a flare so hot it burned like venom. “What about that don’t you understand?”

  “Jesus Kaira. Why the hell are you acting like this? I’m just trying to figure out what happened.”

  I hated him for how calm he was about this, like he could take the world ending with ease. And I hated how much I couldn’t mirror him. Not again. Not again.

  “I don’t know,” I said, my words growing more frantic by the second, because in the back of my mind I heard Brad whisper over and over that I’d brought this on myself. “I finished my thesis and walked to the studio and Helen was outside saying I shouldn’t go in, because someone committed suicide, and then she said it was Jane and why would she—?” Tears welled up and I choked, tried to find the rest of my words.

  “Kaira,” he said softly.

  He reached out and took my hand, his skin sending sparks through my veins. I jerked back and fell flat on my ass in the snow. He reached down to help me stand but I backed up.

  “No, no, I’m fine.” I pushed myself to my feet and kept space between us. “Just . . . don’t touch me. Not right now.”

  “I’m . . .” He paused and looked at me. Really looked at me, as if he was trying to see past the bullshit and fear. Whatever he found, he didn’t let it show. Or maybe, like me, what he saw was enough to make him stop trying to look deeper. “I’m sorry.”

  He sounded hurt. He sounded like he truly meant it. And every time I blinked I saw Brad’s eyes, staring at me. I saw the blood covering the snow, and I knew I couldn’t let myself be his comfort. I couldn’t be anyone’s comfort. For their own safety.

  I looked away. Everything twisted inside of me. Jane is dead. Jane is dead. Jane is dead.

  And Brad’s voice, thick and bloody and ricocheting: It’s all your fault.

  I trained my words to go flat, emotionless, wrapped my heart in snow to keep the fire from bursting through me.

  “I need to be alone,” I said

  “I don’t think you do. I think you need someone to help you.”

  The fire broke free, the rage of everything I’d been trying to hold in. All the hatred I had for myself, all aimed at him.

  “What the hell do you know about what I do and do not need?” I yelled. “Why the hell are you even talking to me, Chris? You haven’t said a goddamn word all year and now you’re trying to be my friend? Right when all this shit’s going down? I don’t have time for this. I don’t have room for this. So why don’t you just fuck off and go back to being a stranger?”

  My words hit him. Hard. Probably harder than if I had thrown a fist. But he barely flinched, and he didn’t look away.

  “I know you don’t mean that,” he said. “I know you’re hurt and you’re scared and I’m sorry for that. But I . . . I hope you don’t actually want me to leave.”

  “And what if I do?” I asked. I made sure to look him right in the eyes when I said it. He was used to happy, art school Kaira. He had no clue what the other years of my life had created. “I told you I’m not interested in dating. So why are you even here?”

  “Because I like you.”

  I deflated.

  It was so honest, and it sounded so pained. Like he, too, didn’t want this. Any of this. But especially not the affection.

  “I’ll go,” he said. “I know you need to be alone. I just hope you’ll come around again.”

  Then, without another word, he turned and left. The usual bounce was gone from his step; he walked with his head lowered and shoulders hunched.

  Chris vanished into the undergrowth and I watched him leave. I wanted to chase after him, to apologize. Because I didn’t want to hurt him, not when he was trying to protect me. But that was the problem—I was trying to protect him. And that meant he couldn’t be anywhere close.

  A shadow darted through the trees, and before I could act or scream it landed on my shoulder with a puff of cold air that smelled of static and the grave. I froze.

  The raven perched on my shoulder, its talons gently digging into my coat. I didn’t dare to move or breathe, didn’t dare turn my head—I could feel its eye trained on me. And I could see that its iris wasn’t black. It was as milky white as the moon. It didn’t move and it didn’t speak. It just stared at me, reminding me that he was always watching.

  “What the hell is going on?” I whispered.

  But Munin didn’t answer. The raven ruffled its feathers and flew off, cawing as loud as the secrets I thought I’d buried deep and dead.

  • • •

  I was jumped the moment I stepped inside my dorm.

  “Tell me it’s not true,” Elisa sobbed into my arms. “Tell me it’s not true.”

  I held her close and rubbed her back and tried not to feel like an imposter. Munin had never appeared like that, not so brazenly. I’m not going back, I wanted to scream. Instead, I focused on her. On Jane. On the event I still vehemently swore to myself I had nothing to do with.

  “What are they saying?” I asked.

  For some reason, I felt stronger here, holding Elisa up. She weighted me down to the present, made me focus on the definite things. It was always easier to be a hero for someone else. Being your own savior was the hard part.

  “They’re saying she killed herself,” Elisa sobbed. She barely got the words out. “She wouldn’t do that, Kaira. She wouldn’t kill herself. Not without saying something. Not without reaching out.”

  “I know. I know, it doesn’t make any sense.” Again, that small tell of a lie. It doesn’t make sense, and that’s why I feel responsible.

  “We just saw her. We sat with her at lunch and she was happy.”

  I bit my lip. I knew the words to say, but that didn’t make saying them any easier.

  “Sometimes it’s easy to hide behind smiles. Some people are really, really good at it.”

  “But why? Why would she do it? She wasn’t depressed. She was my friend, Kaira, and she never said anything about it.”

  “Secrets like that are hard to share,” I said. “Who knows how much stress she was under?”

  “I did. We told each other everything. Everything.”

  I sighed. “I know. And I don’t understand it either.”

  Elisa took a deep, sobbing breath and pulled back. Her eyes were reddened and haloed with smudged mascara. She looked like an angel in mourning.

  “What are we going to do now?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied, thinking of Munin perched on my shoulder. I’d never felt more honest in my life.

  • • •

  Our second school assembly was called that night. Right at sign-in, when we’d normally be sequestered to our dorms, we trudged out in the snow and back into the theatre we’d huddled in one week ago.

  I sat in the
back once more, Elisa on one side and Ethan and Oliver on the other. I spotted Chris up front, with some other boys from his dorm. He didn’t look my way. Not once. I hated admitting to myself how much it hurt. Why did you push him away?

  Why did you want him closer?

  Ms. Kenton took to the stage again. The place was already in transition for Elisa’s play, with gray platforms and chains and swathes of fabric. Our president looked like a shadow among the ruins of the set, a ghost.

  I didn’t listen to a word she said. I couldn’t focus on her, just the back of Chris’s head and the shadows leaking into the corners of the room like ravens through the trees. I picked out a few words—like “solidarity” and “mourning” and “support groups”—but there was no point listening to her talk about how suicide wasn’t the answer, that there were people here who loved us and wanted us to flourish and were always there to listen.

  “Are you okay?” Ethan whispered into my ear.

  I jolted to the side, nearly knocking into Elisa.

  I didn’t risk speaking, so I shrugged and nodded and kept my eyes on Ms. Kenton, who was now saying that please, everyone, life was precious. Let’s not forget that.

  Ethan took my hand as we left the theatre and wandered back through the thickening snow. I ignored the crows lined up on the streetlamps. I ignored Chris, who walked a little farther ahead of me. It felt like I was a character in a video game controlled by someone else. And I was perfectly okay with that. I didn’t want to be responsible. I didn’t want to be here.