We Own the Night

by Ashley Poston

  “Well, it could be worse.” I pull my cardigan sleeves down over my hands nervously, unable to forget that moment in the record store, his hands over mine. And on the living room couch at LD’s house, our lips so close they almost touched. I wish I could forget. Then my heart wouldn’t be beating so fast.

  “I could’ve fried my hair off,” he agrees, and motions to my cardigan. “That’s . . . cute.”

  I tug my sleeves down harder. Is that a compliment? “I—ah—it matches.”

  “I’d take ducks over this.” He points to his own hideously yellow button-down and tugs at his collar. “Yellow can’t look good on anyone. Yellow and pink? Christ I’ll never get a dance at this rate.”

  “You just don’t have the flare to pull my ducks off,” I say before I can stop myself, and then bite the inside of my cheek.

  His grin widens. “Is that a challenge?”

  “Wouldn’t want the golden boy to look silly.”

  His eyes flicker with annoyance, but it doesn't reach his mouth. He must be practiced in keeping grins steady. “You of all people know I’m not golden all the time.”

  “Only when people are around,” I mock whisper. “Don’t want to ruin your image.”

  “Oh no, that would be scandalous,” he mock whispers back. “Besides, you’re just scared I’ll rock it better than you.”

  “Am not!”

  “Are too.”

  “Am not. Stop putting words in my mouth.”

  “Are too. Then give me that cardigan.”

  My rebuke turns cold in my mouth. My cardigan? I swallow. “Um . . . you’ll . . . you’ll stretch it out.”

  “You’re just afraid my big, broad shoulders’ll make that cardigan killer,” he rebukes, grinning. “C’mon, North. Just a minute.”

  I hesitate, but then I slip it off, one arm and then the other. The cool air clings to my skin. I wait a moment, then another, for people to start staring—but no one notices. No one even cares. I offer it to him. “Don’t ruin it—I know where you live!”

  He feigns hurt. “Never!” He shrugs it on, making sure to unroll his button-down at the sleeves. The cardigan stretches too tightly over his arms, showing every shirt wrinkle and toned arm muscle. Mostly muscles. I didn’t realize he was so toned—I mean I knew. Hello, he plays football, but still. How have I missed those? Or him, for that matter. When did he start looking so . . .

  He’s not sexy, he’s Billie, I chide myself, quickly looking away.

  He pops his collar and strikes a Superman pose. “See? I rock it.” He flexes his biceps, and makes a quacking sound. Because, you know, the ducks. “Quack-quack.”

  I purse my lips together to keep myself from laughing. “Okay, okay, hand it over.”

  “What, I don’t rock it?” he asks, striking another pose.

  “Umm . . .”

  “Give me an ‘S’!” He forms the letters with his arms in huge, overdramatic displays. “Give me a ‘U’.”

  I bite the inside of my cheek, trying not to laugh. “Bless, I’d hate to be you right now.”

  “Give me a ‘C’!”

  “Seriously, people are starting to stare. And it’s not from your hair.”

  “Give me a ‘K’!” He points one arm high, the other at a ninety-degree angle, and splays one leg out so he makes the letter.

  “Missed your calling as a cheerleader, didn’t you?”

  “What does that spell? ‘SUUUUUUCK IT!” Then he flips me the bird.

  I feign hurt, and playfully punch him in the shoulder. He catches my fist and drags me in close. He smells like aftershave and the Perez auto shop, somehow not at all bad. He’s bending toward me; so close I can see the pores on his face—not that they’re bad pores. Just human pores. Nice pores. And the scar on his bottom lip from where he ran into a mailbox with his bicycle in third grade. He was trying to do a trick where he surfed on the handlebars. I remember because he was looking at me while doing it.

  I wonder what it feels like, and trace my thumb along it. His breath hitches.

  Mine does, too.

  His lips are so close, dry and soft. Is he leaning in? I think he is. I think I am, too. I wonder what the scar feels like with my lips against it. Will I even be able to notice, the hairline slice that travels from his bottom lip to the middle of his chin? Or will—

  The band’s violinist screeches into the first song, and I quickly come to my senses.

  I jerk away, remembering my bare arms, and hug myself over my forearms to cover them up. “It still looks stupid,” I say, wishing I had a better insult. “The cardigan.”

  He leans back on his heels and rubs the back of his neck. He looks . . . disheartened. “Yeah. I guess I—”

  “¡MIS AMIGOS!” LD cries, and slings her arms around both of our shoulders. The tension between us melts like butter in a frying pan. Bless LD. Just bless her. “Sorry, Billie, but Iggy promised me the first dance! Ready to hoe with my down?”

  “You dance?” Billie asks.

  I shrug. “I never promised I’d—wait, my cardigan!”

  LD grabs me by the hand before I can get it back and jerks me toward the gazebo greens, where a few other townspeople are already dancing, forming into large circle as they link arms and begin to kick their feet. The boot-scoot-and-boogie. Kill me now.

  Al, the lead singer of the Steadfast Guys (seriously, their band name), throws the crowd into a fast Alan Jackson song.

  Country.

  Please, please kill me now.

  Helplessly, I glance back to Grams, but she’s no help. To my utter disbelief she’s squeezing Billie’s biceps with an innocent sort of flirtatiousness that I thought was beneath women over the age of fifty. But Grams can flirt with the best of them, and she makes poor Billie blush all the way to his ears.

  A grin tugs at the edges of my lips. Grams never cheated on Papa, but like hell she didn’t give the other boys hell.

  “Who’re you smiling at?” LD asks, although by the twinkle in her eyes she already knows. “Jealous Grams is getting more action than you?”

  “What? No—I mean, I’m not—Billie isn’t—Billie’s going away. Then it’ll just be me and you.”

  She raises my hand over my head and spins me around without missing a beat. “Then you’ll leave on a jet plane, too.”

  “Or you’ll leave.”

  “Or, in a spectacular plot twist, we’ll both leave. Wouldn’t that be nice? Leave the Loverboy to his Heathers.” She juts her chin behind me, and I look before I can tell myself not to.

  Micah and Heather dance cheek to cheek. Her manicured fingers twine in his oil-stained ones.

  Before I can feel my stomach begin to drop—because it’s going to drop, it must just be taking longer than usual—LD jerks me into another spin. “Don’t you dare,” she hisses.

  “Don’t I dare to do what?”

  “Don’t you dare think of leaving me, Hosanio!” She lets go of my hand and flings her arm up to her forehead in the most terrible display of dramatic woe I’ve ever seen. “How dare you leave me for the maid! What do you think I am? Disposable? My heart, Hosanio! My heart is broken!”

  One of Heather’s friends and her boyfriend slowly inch away from us. In fact, everyone does. But I know exactly what she’s quoting—the terrible telenovela Micah’s mother watched when she babysat us. Hosanio was the maid who later became the heiress of a rich oil company in northern Texas. Then she died and was resurrected without her memories, and then found out she was the princess of—

  You know what? It doesn’t matter.

  “But my love,” I reply with equal fervor, “I cannot stop my heart from beating where it goes!”

  “You know not where your heart is!”

  “It is there, among the rose gardens!” I point in some vague direction, down Main Street, toward the abandoned sunflower maze. And I falter. Remembering the cool night after the Barn, how quiet Steadfast looked, how dark and cozy, an all-encompassing world. And how much darkness and wonder surrounded
it.

  “Do I not smell sweet enough for you, Hosanio? Is my nectar not that of your wants?” LD cries, but I barely register him. “Hosanio?”

  I snap back to my senses. “What? Sorry, I . . .”

  “Looks like Hosanio lost interest in you after all!” shouts Billie.

  Al, the lead singer, drops the music low and begins to sway to his microphone. Danny on the bass thumps out a slow, melodic beat. “Guys grab your gals; this is ‘Free’ . . .”

  Billie drops into an exaggerated bow and offers up his hand, “Perhaps she needs a new dance partner.”

  LD crosses her arms over her chest. “Hmph! Well, Linnetta doesn’t want beautiful Hosanio anyway! The hunky man-boy can take her!” Before I can stop LD, she slinks off through the dancing crowd, pulling out her cell phone as she goes.

  Billie’s still bowed to me, waiting for me to take his outstretched hand. “I mean, you don’t have to dance with me.”

  My mouth goes dry. What’s wrong with me? Of course I don’t care if I dance with Billie. I just hate dancing, that’s my hesitation. I hate dancing, and I hate the way he’s looking at me. I’m not . . . I don’t . . .

  “I hate this song,” I mumble, taking his hand anyway. It’s Eddy’s guitar that makes me do it, or the lyrics of the song. It isn’t because . . . it’s not because . . .

  He takes off my cardigan and puts it over my shoulders again. “Just one,” he says.

  I let him fold his fingers into mine, and pull me close. His other hand finds the small of my back, and we begin rocking back and forth. All around us, girls press their faces against their partner’s chest, closing their eyes, spinning slowly like planets rotating in their own orbit. We’re so close, I can feel the heat radiating from him, so tall and broad. And impossibly golden.

  I don’t like Billie. I can’t like Billie. I don’t want to feel for him what I feel for Micah. I don’t want it to hurt me more. Because it’ll hurt worse this time. But we’re dancing so slowly, and the music is so mellow and beautiful—even though I hate country—I don’t mind the song anymore.

  He dips his head and whispers, “You’re a fine dancer.”

  “It’s the cardigan,” I reply.

  “No ducking way.”

  “Oh, stop it.” Then, after a moment, I add, “You’re quackin’ me up.”

  His eyes widen in surprise. “Using fowl language now, are we?”

  “Yeah, I think it’s catching. I might have to go see a ducktor because of you.”

  His smile broadens—impossibly so—as he leans in a little closer. “Nah, I think we’re birds of a feather.”

  My steps falter as I remember Dark, and our phone conversations. The midnights we spent word playing like this. And all of a sudden I miss him—Dark—and I wonder what I’m doing here dancing with a boy who’ll go off and forget me in a month.

  I drop my hand from his.

  “Did I say something wrong?” he asks worriedly. “I’m sorry, let’s forget about it. It was really corny and—”

  “Why are you doing this?” I glance around. Heather and her friends are staring at us, including Micah. She bends her head to whisper to Christine, and my heart begins to quicken. “You don’t have to be this nice to me.”

  “Nice to you?” This time he sounds hurt. “North, I’m not trying to be nice to you.”

  “No, you are, and it’s okay. But you don’t have to. We’re friends either way.”

  “Except you want me to forget about it.”

  “Because it was corny! Not because—”

  I drop his hands and back away. No, I don’t want this again. It still stings, like there’s a crevice inside of me that keeps gaping open every time I look at Micah. And I’m afraid I’ll split open if I let myself try.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t—” Turning back toward Grans, my anchor, I push through the slow-dancing crowd to the fringes. Half-abandoned apple-bobbing booths and sunflower seed stands line the edges of the square, interspersed with people just looking to look.

  I make my way around the square. Grams isn’t here. Maybe she’s over on the other side, giving Loraine hell again. But she isn’t.

  My heart jumps into my throat, and sticks there, suffocating. LD is sitting at her parent’s sunflower booth, holding her cell phone up with her shoulder. The glow of the cell phone makes her smile look soft and demure. Her eyes flicker up from her nails when she notices me coming over, and she quickly hangs up.

  “Iggy, what’s up? What’s wrong?”

  “Grams—have you seen her?”

  “I thought she was over by the apple-bobbing booth again . . .”

  “I checked. She isn’t.” My fingers begin to shake.

  She grabs me gently by the arm. My eyes find hers, and it gives me a little courage. A little hope. She doesn’t bother to honey her voice as she says, “We’ll find her. I promise.”

  I try not to let my voice waver, but I fail so hard. “I'm an idiot.”

  “No, you're not. I’ll find my parents and we’ll start looking, okay?”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  When LD tells her parents, the festival grinds to a halt to look for her. I want to apologize profusely. I should’ve looked after her better. I should’ve kept an eye on her. A few times, Billie begins toward me, but then he always veers away. Finally, he comes up to me as I’m wringing my hands, following LD into the diner to see if she stumbled in there.

  “Ingrid, we’ll find her—” Billie begins.

  I turn a glare on her. “You were the last one to see her.”

  “She said she was going to stop by Loraine’s again. How was I supposed to know?”

  Biting my cheek, I jerk away from him. “Just stay out of my way.”

  LD comes back out, shaking her head. “Let’s hop in the car and make a round?” I nod, not trusting myself to talk, and follow her to her parent’s Prius.

  We search for the next hour. The weather grows windier. Flashes of white-hot light streak across the sky. Then it begins to drizzle. Grams could be anywhere. She’s out in this and she could be anywhere, completely out of her mind.

  Lost, scared—my heart’s in my throat. If I hadn’t gone off dancing, she wouldn’t have wandered off. If I hadn’t been so obsessed with—with me, I would’ve noticed something amiss. I’m sure I would've noticed something.

  “Where is she,” I murmur to myself, jostling my knees up and down nervously.

  LD rubs at the sleep in her eyes, and it smears her eyeliner. “I don’t know. We’ll find her, though.” But she's beginning to sound like a broken record. “She’s fine. She’s—”

  “I know!” I snap. “I just . . .”

  My phone begins to vibrate. I quickly reach into my back pocket to answer it. It’s Micah.

  “I have her,” he replies. I’ve never felt more relieved to hear his voice. I want to tell him thank you, that he’s my rock, that I’m not sure what I’d do without him, but he hangs up before I can say anything—anything at all. He doesn’t even wait for a thank-you.

  LD glances over at me. “Did they find her?”

  I nod, my stomach beginning to churn the wrong way. A crusty, vomity feeling rises up through my throat. “Pull over,” I say quickly.

  LD glances over at me. “What?”

  “Pull over!” I shout.

  The car squeals to a stop on the side of the road. I kick open the door and barrel out, but I only make it a few feet before everything in my stomach comes up. My body is shaking and I can’t stop. She could have died, my brain screams, she could have wandered out into the sunflower fields and died. She was lost, alone, didn’t know where she was—and it was all my fault. LD’s hand rubs circles on my back, telling me it’s okay, it’s totally okay.

  But it’s not okay.

  It’s not okay at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  When LD pulls up at the house, it looks like the entire town is there. Parked police cars line the lawn like a crime scene. Chief Gursenburg has his hands
on his hips, talking to Mrs. Perez inside. I hesitate, wishing I could stay in this car forever, but I have to get out at some point, I realize, especially now that we’ve pulled into the driveway and they’re looking at me. The police I can handle, but the stony look chiseled onto Micah’s face makes me want to die. He waits on the porch steps for me, twirling his class ring on his finger, and all I can think is, Well, he hasn’t given it to Heather yet, so that’s a good thing.

  I can see Grams through the window, rocking back and forth in her favorite recliner with a blanket wrapped around her. She’s nodding to whatever Micah’s mom is telling her. Mrs. Perez has a pinched, unreadable expression on her face only reserved for when she’s trying to control her anger.

  “C’mon, we’ll go in together,” LD says, and we get out of the car.

  Micah stands to greet us.

  “Thanks,” I murmur. My eyes are burning from the tears, but I can’t cry. I’m so mad at myself for everything.

  “She was lost,” Micah says, putting his hands into his slacks. His yellow tie is loose, hanging limp around his neck. The way he looks at me makes me feel like I’m a criminal. “Said she didn’t know where she was. Why didn’t you have an eye on her?”

  “And where were you, buddy?” LD cuts in. “Why didn’t you look after her?”

  “Because it’s not—”

  “Not your responsibility?” she finishes for him, and Micah’s face goes slack. I don’t want to hear this fight right now. I try to say as much but LD beats me to it. “So, let me get this straight: you’re allowed to go and live your life and do what you want to do, but Iggy can’t? And then you have the nerve to point your finger at her when you’re just as much to blame?”

  Micah purses his lips, but then he says what I don’t want him to. He says it because he’s angry, because she’s right. I know Micah enough to know he doesn’t mean it, but the words slip out of his mouth anyway, and they sting like hornets against my chest. “She’s not my grandma.”