Even on the Darkest Night

by Allie Martin

  “It’s okay, Dad. You can’t keep cancelling on your patients. I totally get it.” I put the most genuine smile on my face but have no clue how it comes off. I hope he doesn’t see through me. But saying I don't want you to stay because I’m sneaking out to go to a concert and you're too good of a parent for me to get away with it probably won’t get me far either.

  “Okay, but listen to your mother, and no hot tubbing. Keep an eye on your heart rate. Make sure you set your phone. I’ll call in the morning to remind you to take your medication. Do you have your pill box?” Dad talks as I lightly push his chest toward the cab, my body bent a little and arms completely outstretched, as if I were getting a truck out of a snowbank.

  “Dad...” I say. “Go. Seriously.”

  Dad opens the cab door, getting in. “Evan?” he calls after me, and my eyebrows go up.

  “Yeah?”

  “I love you,” he says in a way that brings me closer to snapping than anything else ever does. Dad says he loves me like it’s the last time he’ll ever say it. I feel the words float from him in a protective force field, wrapping me up and squeezing tighter and tighter. I can’t stand to hear him say it like that, and I still can’t say it back. If I say it, it might come true, so I always answer the same way.

  “It’s my glue,” I say automatically. I told him once under a heavy dose of morphine that his love was like the glue that held my heart together, and as long as he loved me, I'd be okay. It's dumb, but it stuck.

  Nat links her arm through mine. Dad lets go of my hand, worry touches his features. He glances at Mom, and I see him changing his mind, forcing me to close the cab door on him, smacking the window. I mouth, “I’m fine” before he drives away, but my stomach rolls around as he drives away.

  “Hey space cadet, you coming?” Mom tries to be funny, but like her parenting skills, she’s not a natural. Nat and I follow her into the stuccoed franchise hotel that screams middle class trying to pass off as rich. She checks us in and hands me my small wheeled suitcase.

  “You’ll meet us for dinner,” she says. I don’t want to hang out with her and her beef-cake boyfriend. “It wasn’t a question, Evan. We’ll be having dinner in the restaurant at five. After that we’ll be going to a ballet at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Dance. I trust the two of you will be fine. A relaxing night in the hotel with that nature show...”

  “Supernatural, Mom.” My heart beats a little faster now that we’re talking about tonight. “And yeah, a lazy night.”

  A sinister grin cracks Nat’s face as she quickly glances up at the fancy faux-chandelier above us, and my mind is flooded with images of our night in Philly. Of those tickets that I’m sure Nat had to threaten people to get ahold of. I’m glad Mom has the worst Mom instincts in the history of Moms. I elbow Nat and clear my throat.

  “Totally lazy,” she adds.

  Mom shifts her gaze between us, her Botox eyebrows not betraying the thoughts that play behind her eyes. For a second, I think she’s onto us, but she settles into a satisfied smile. “Good. We’ll meet at five then, and don’t be late, we need to leave for the ballet at about six. I’m going to go get a massage; it's been a long day.” She spins and clacks away on her high heels, wheeling her designer suitcase along behind her as if she were the most important person in the universe.

  Nat chuckles. “I love your Mom, Jordans, but man is she dense. I thought we were busted.”

  I look over to my friend, her larger than life eyes are full of mischief. Mom totally should have picked up on her guilty expression. Mom’s not dumb; she’s selfish. There’s a big difference, but both can make you oblivious.

  “Me too.” We make our way to the elevator at the end of the hall.

  “You think she’ll catch on at dinner?” Nat leans forward and presses the up button, her eyebrows furrowed in thought.

  “Nat, this is my mom we’re talking about...Just start talking about her, and you’ll be fine.”

  The elevator dings, and I flatten my palm to my chest. My other hand grips tighter to the handle of my suitcase.

  “I can’t believe we’re sneaking out,” I say as the doors slide open, and I feel like freedom pours through me with thoughts of a parentless night in the city.

  Nat groans, shifting her suitcase from hand to hand.

  “I can’t believe we have to wait three more whole hours to ditch this place! Lemming Garden, EJ. Lemming-frickin-garden.”

  I squeal as we enter the elevator and immediately grab for her bag. I’m almost frenzied now that we’re alone. “Let me see them.”

  Nat reaches into her bag for the two long tickets stamped with a logo that says, The Aftershock. She wiggles her eyebrows, and I feel like I could kiss her. I have so many expectations that are tied to these tickets, yet at the same time I have no idea. Anything could happen. This must be what freedom feels like—high hopes and deep mysteries.

  In this second, I don’t care about anything else that’s ever happened to me as I run my fingers over the smooth, shiny black letters that say Admit One.

  Friday, April 19 • 3:25 PM

  Jordan

  “I got these tickets for you, Annie.” I fan the two tickets in her smooth dark features, while her arms fold in front of her chest. I fight to stay calm, to act as if this familiar situation isn’t hammering my heart into hamburger. These tickets, like so many other things in our relationship, are a bribe. A please don’t leave me again type bribe.

  “I can’t take the tickets. I wouldn’t feel right taking someone else.” Annie’s brown eyes shift to the door of my apartment, and I know who that someone else is.

  My heart is a moth on a windowsill, banging into the glass over and over, oblivious to the barrier between it and the outside world. All I want is freedom, to get to the light. Annie is that light.

  I hand her a small box before rubbing my hand up and down my face as if I could get rid of the sting behind my eyes with a little friction.

  “Is he here? You brought him with you to get your stuff?” I don’t want to say the words, but they slide out, pouring over my tongue and through my teeth like a waterfall of hate. She shifts the box of things on her hip. Pictures, books, toothpaste, necklaces... all things that will end up back here as if they were on a bungie. They’ll end up right back where they were along with her tear-streaked eyes and desperate 'I’m sorrys'.

  “Jordan, don’t be like that. You knew we were over. We’ve been fighting for months.” Annie tightens her arms around the box.

  Thump, thump, thump. The poor moth in my chest, willing to bash in its own skull to get to her.

  “You were fighting. Nothing changed with me. Nothing. I’m still the same guy I always was.” I throw out my hands, wishing with everything that she would smile at me again, melt for me again. I hope that she remembers how perfectly she fits inside my outstretched arms and steps inside.

  “That’s the problem,” she suddenly yells, and my arms drop. The moth bashes his head for the last time, falling dead to rot on the sun-baked ledge of my soul. “You haven’t changed! You live in this crappy apartment with your brother. You have no plans. No future. You didn't even apply for school. We graduate in a month. Where the hell is poetry going to get you in life? Wake up.”

  “Annie, don’t.” She should know better than anyone why I’m here. That my brother was my legal guardian until last week. Until I turned eighteen.

  “Someday you’ll have to talk about it, about why you’re so damn scared to grow up, but I’m not waiting for you anymore. We do this over and over. I’m not happy. I don’t love you. I leave you, and you win me back with your words. I get out, and you suck me back in. I can’t do it anymore." Tears fill her eyes, and she quickly wipes at them with the back of her hand. I reach for her, running my thumb over her wet knuckles, and she sighs. "Everyone we know is pumped for high school to be over, to move on, to get the hell out of here and start life. But you still write on bathroom walls, wasting your potential, only using it when I’ve ha
d it and you need me back. You refuse to grow up.”

  “You can’t leave me,” I mumble, and she yanks her hand away. “I love you.”

  “You say you love me in a hundred thousand ways, Jordie, but I don’t feel it. I’ve never felt it. I never feel you really mean it.” She slams her hand against my chest, and I grab her wrist.

  “What does that even mean?” Now I’m yelling, pressing her palm to my chest. “How do you not feel that?” My heart hits her hand with sharp jabs, and I hope it says I. love. you. I. love. you, but the longer she stands in front of me with tears rolling down her cheeks, jumping to their death from her chin, the louder I can hear what it’s really saying.

  Don't.

  leave.

  me.

  I.

  am.

  scared.

  to.

  be.

  a.

  lone.

  “The only thing you’ve ever loved is the words you use. Not the people you use them on.” Annie pulls her hand away, grabbing something from her back pocket. She places a lined piece of paper into my hand before walking out with my heart in hers. Again. That's always our trade.

  4:23 PM

  I crack my second beer, trying to fill the void that is Annie with anything other than emptiness, when my best friend Rick buzzes up. I hit the button to let him in and unlock the door before flopping back down on my brother’s vintage couch. Every time I shift, a fresh reel of memories plays behind my eyes. Sleeping on this couch after Dad went away...The first time I got any play from a girl was on this couch...Laying on top of Annie, feeling her warmth beneath me as I recited her my poetry against her skin...Movies, video games, wrestling, sex, coldness, sex, space, fighting, sex. Fighting, fighting, fighting.

  “You look pathetic,” Rick says as soon as he walks in the door, moving to the fridge to grab a beer.

  “You look like an asshole.” I snap my notebook shut and toss it across the room, the pages fluttering like the wings of a bird that can’t yet fly—frantic and unpracticed.

  Rick laughs as the fridge door slams. The bottle cap hisses, and he sinks down next to me, hitting the neck of his bottle against mine.

  “Sorry to hear, man.” Rick’s deep dark features sink into his even deeper, darker skin. His face almost disappears into his scrunched up concern, which means I really am pathetic. But after the third time Annie left me he stopped being genuinely interested even though she's his cousin. I can see it on his face that he thinks this is stupid. That I’m being stupid. I probably am, but I can’t stop it. She’s my girl. I need her.

  “How’d you hear?” My head falls back against the amber fabric of the sofa. I count the pieces of glitter embedded in the stucco ceiling, but I get stuck at the large crack that splits our apartment in two.

  “Ran into Annie. She seemed pretty torn up...”

  I shoot up, back straight. “She doesn’t get to be torn up. Not when I walked in on her screwing that guy. Again.”

  Rick’s features tighten, his eyes the only in the world that see me for what I am. Except for maybe my brother. “That really sucks. She neglected that part of the story.”

  She always neglects that part of the story.

  I relax back into the couch and lift the green glass bottle to my lips. Using booze to fill the great disparity between my head and heart isn’t working. Though I shouldn’t be surprised; I rarely drink.

  The silence ticks by between my friend and me. The physical space is mere inches, but we may as well be in parallel universes. Disparity.

  Such a great word. Totally shit meaning.

  “What did you do with those tickets?” he finally asks.

  “I thought about burning them.”

  “You’re so emo bro. Writing poetry and burning your ex’s shit. Taking her back time after time after—”

  “I get it, man,” I say holding my hand between us. “I don’t wanna go. Lemming Garden sucks now, anyway.” That’s a lie. They really don't. They may have sold out, but their stuff is still sort of decent. I guess.

  “No they don’t. You’re just pissed.”

  “I’m not pissed.” I’m a capacious void of anger.

  “Well then, let’s go to the concert if you’re not mad.” Rick downs the rest of his beer in a couple gulps.

  “I don’t want to go to the concert.”

  Rick sets his empty beer on the coffee table and stands, holding out one of his huge basketball-sized hands. “Then give me the tickets. I’ll take Trooper. He’s always down for some concert action. Those fangirls are crazy, dude.”

  I slap my hand over the tickets laying on the coffee table.

  “I’m not paying for you to go pick up some woman from a concert.”

  “Then...” He lets his voice trail off, but I know what he’s saying. Get off your ass.

  I hide the tiny twitch at the corner of my mouth with a mumble and stalk off to jump in the shower. If I’m going to hang out with crazy fangirls, I may as well smell half decent.

  Friday, April 19 • 4:30 PM

  Evan

  “Do you think we’ll get to meet the band?” Nat asks, holding up two different shirts in front of the long double mirrors. My head lolls to the side, but I don’t sit up. I follow her from my side-ways world, laying like a starfish on the tacky comforter.

  “I dunno,” I say, pointing to the shirt on the left half-heartedly because it’s guaranteed she’s going to put them both down and pick two new ones. Nattie isn’t vain, she’s indecisive. She’s also probably nervous, but so am I. Neither one of us are what one would call rebels.

  I’ve never snuck out before, unless it was out to the backyard to study stars through my telescope. Because that’s how undeniably cool I am.

  But when we found out Lemming Garden was playing a small and intimate anniversary show in Philly the night we were going to be here, even my science brain couldn’t totally deny the coincidence. I didn’t think Nat would pull it off. These guys are a huge indie band playing a small show; the odds were definitely not in our favor. But if anyone could swipe these tickets, it’s Nat.

  “What would you do for a chance to meet them?” She tilts her head from side to side, before tossing the shirts on the bed and taking two more.

  “What do you mean, what would I do?”

  She has a super crazy serious expression. “I don’t know. Like, make out with the bouncer to take you backstage?”

  My hand goes to the metal lump in my chest that I’m still not used to.

  “Uh, no. No I would not do that. Would you?”

  “I can’t, EJ. I’m taken,” she says flashing the little ring on her left hand. “But you wouldn’t take one for the team to get us in to meet the band?”

  “Take one for the team? What is wrong with you?” I say but I’m not annoyed, I’m amused. Leave it to Nattie.

  “Yeah, I knew you’d say that. So, we’ll have to find an ethical and moral way to get backstage?”

  “I don’t care if it’s ethical or moral, Nat. But leave my virtue out of it.”

  Both Nat and I are virgins. Nat’s waiting. I’m...I don’t know what I am. I’ve never been in a situation that forced me to think about it (the whopping two guys I’ve kissed in my life don’t count).

  “Fine, your virtue is still safe. For now...” She grins.

  “Thanks for looking out for me. You’re such a peach.”

  She tosses her shirts at me, and they drape over my head. I shift the fabric so I can see her.

  “It’s a pretty small venue, I think. There were only two-hundred tickets in print, or something. I almost had to kill a guy for these tickets, Jordans. We better frickin’ meet the band.” Nat raises her eyebrows and juts out her hip, her smooth skin and all her dramatic curves emphasizing her tone.

  “Okay, whatever. If it’s such a small venue, then they will probably come out into the crowd. They do that at their concerts. Plus, they’re from here. It’s an anniversary concert. I bet they’ll know a ton of peo
ple in the crowd. I’m sure you can find a way. No one has ever denied your tenacity.” I slowly move back to a seated position. A small wave of dizziness floats through me, but I force it out with a deep breath. I’m glad Nat’s shirts are still on my head because the last thing I need right now is for her to get worried. My fingers run along my collarbone and I cross my legs under me. We’ve been looking forward to this night for weeks, and this metal box (That I didn’t want in the first place) and my busted heart aren’t going to stop me. I can’t say for sure how much longer I’m going to feel good, but I feel okay right now. So I’m not going to waste this opportunity on what-ifs.

  “Aren’t you going to get ready?” Nat asks, snatching the shirts off my head and leaving my hair a static mess of waves.

  “I am ready.” I gesture to my jeans and hoodie then back up and burst out laughing. Her lip is curled up, and her nose is scrunched on one side, like I’m a tangle of hair she pulled from the shower drain.

  “What if we actually do meet the band?”

  I gasp. “Is there something wrong with the way I look, Natalie Russo? Do you not love me just the way I am?” I press my hand to my chest in fake shock.

  Nat sticks out her tongue and sinks down onto the edge of the bed. “Shut up. You know that’s not what I meant.”

  She spins the little silver ring on her finger, and I avert my eyes. A rare moment of awkwardness suddenly passes between us, and I slowly lean back against the headboard. She glances at me once, her eyes settling on my hand, still against my chest.

  Realization comes over me, and a long sigh compresses my chest, filling the room.

  “What is it?” I ask, poking her leg with my toe.

  “Nothing.” Nat flops down on her back, hanging her head over the edge of the small bed, her hair nearly touching the floor.