The Midnights

by Sarah Nicole Smetana

  I marched down the hallway.

  “Mom?” I said, pushing the door to my parents’ bedroom open.

  “Yes?” she replied without looking up. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed. An array of papers covered her like a blanket, rustling each time she took a breath.

  “I’m going to Cara’s,” I said.

  “How nice. I was hoping you two would connect before the summer ended.” She picked up a page, her eyebrows creasing as she examined the tiny lines.

  “She’s having a party,” I said.

  I expected those words to shake something in my mother. She knew I never attended parties, or at least that I never told her so, and I thought she’d inquire about a chaperone, instill a curfew. Give me a lecture about the dangers of underage drinking. Perhaps there was even some part of me that wanted her to make me stay home. But my mother had always adored Cara and her proper manners, the way she offered to help with the dishes on the rare occasion when she came to my house. Cara was a good student. A good influence.

  When my mother finally lifted her eyes, she said, “Is your father still out?”

  I nodded. Outside, a car wove through our street, up toward our house. My mother and I both turned to the window, and even as the engine rumbled past us, fading back into the night, we didn’t move. We kept staring, though we could not see anything other than our half-rendered reflections—two pale oval faces, differentiated only by the color of our hair.

  In that moment, I felt something inside me crack.

  “Well, have fun,” my mother said, breaking away. She turned back to the bills.

  “Mom?” I said again.

  “What is it, Susannah?”

  Her body hunched on the bed and she began rubbing her temples, a shadow of impatience clouding her eyes.

  A few seconds passed before I found my answer. I said, “Can I borrow a dress?”

  I knew exactly what I was looking for: a 1970s pale blue peasant dress with a cinched waist, low shoulders, and faint pastel flowers that swished against my knees when I walked. I’d tried it on in secret many times over the years, but I’d never seen the dress on my mother. Not in person, anyway. The dress had only ever appeared in a photograph.

  The image was actually of the Vital Spades onstage—something I’d commandeered from a shoebox under my mother’s side of the bed during one of my snooping crusades as a child. In it my father stood front and center, illuminated beneath a crisp fan of spotlight. His eyes were closed tight and his mouth was open, grinning slightly as he sang. Around him, the other Spades were rendered mostly in shadows. And perhaps it was because of this, the biased effect of the lighting, that I didn’t even notice her at first: the figure dancing in the background, blurred and partially hidden by a Marshall half stack. She looked so different then, with short hair and a veil of straight bangs covering her eyes, her slender arms suspended in the air, her hips cocked playfully to one side—but I knew it was my mother. She was wearing that blue dress. The fabric dripped off her left shoulder, caught, with her body, in motion.

  When I was younger, I had marveled at the photo. Sure, there were some differences between the man in the spotlight and the man I knew as my father, but for the most part, he looked the same. My mother, on the other hand—she was almost unrecognizable. The animated girl in the background was a stranger, like my mother from another planet. Another life.

  But I suppose that was the difference between them. While my father proudly built his mysteries into an aura, put them on display and let them define him, my mother buried hers like evidence of a crime.

  So I dug out the dress from the depths of her closet. I invaded her bathroom, painting my lips and sketching black liner around my eyes. Then I stepped back and studied myself in the mirror. I’d always thought I looked like my father; we had the same blue eyes, flecked with green, the same dark hair and smooth cheekbones. The same squinty smile. Now, with the makeup, the way my eyes softened against the pale fabric of the peasant dress, I looked like somebody different. Somebody stronger.

  I walked back into the bedroom and stood in full view of my mother.

  “What do you think?” I asked, holding the hem of the dress in my hands. When my mother peered up I did a slow spin, snapping my head around at the last second like a ballerina.

  As she examined me, I searched her face for any traces of the stranger in the photograph. I thought that maybe if I looked hard enough, I would glimpse the place where the two people intersected, like the center of a Venn diagram.

  All that crossed her face was a tired smile when she said, “You look lovely. Don’t stay out too late, okay?”

  Cara lived on a quiet street at the top of a hill, where the houses were wide and remodeled and had backyards with pools. The fifteen-minute walk there was familiar, but the night seemed brighter than usual. Overhead, without the thick filter of smog, the stars winked and blazed. I found Orion, the only constellation I remembered, and sang him my version of “Love Honey,” because I didn’t want my work to go to waste. I sang it over and over, all the way to Cara’s house, knowing that against the wind and the din of traffic, no one would be able to hear me.

  Inside Cara’s living room, people clumped together. Their voices overlapped in melodic discord, rising above the thump of a stereo, the thundering bass. I pushed through the crowd, standing on tiptoe until I spotted Cara near the kitchen. She said something to the people around her, gesturing with her hands. Her face glowed with their laughter. And maybe it was because of the giant, lovely house I knew as well as my own, or the way Cara spotted me and cried out, “Susannah, you made it!” as though I was the sole person she’d been waiting for, but I was suddenly very glad I had come.

  Cara glided toward me, throwing her arms around my neck in a tight, sloppy hug. “I love that dress. Boho is so in right now. Do you want a drink? Josh bought a keg, but it’s totally cool if you just want Coke or something.”

  The night air had left my skin dry, my mouth parched. I asked for the first thing that came to mind. “Have you got any whiskey?”

  Cara laughed. “That’s such an old man drink. Here, try this.”

  She gave me her cup, began filling a new one with the contents of various bottles from the makeshift ice chest in the left half of the kitchen sink. I looked around the room.

  “Cody’s not here yet,” Cara said. “But I have a good feeling. I really think he’s going to come.”

  “I think that’s the alcohol talking,” I said, trying to temper the flurry of my heartbeat.

  “Liquid courage.” She splashed her cup against mine.

  “For me or you?” I asked.

  In another part of the house, something crashed. A collective cry surged from the living room—the same noise that arose when a fight broke out in our high school’s quad.

  “Oh crap,” Cara said, looking behind me. “Josh!” she yelled. “I’ll be right back, Susie. Josh!”

  She rushed off, shoving her way into the crowded hall. I glanced at the clear fluid in my cup and sniffed, detecting a hint of something fruity. Then I drank. I drank it all. It was surprisingly sweet, and yet throat-scalding. I coughed.

  I tried to refill my cup with whatever Cara had used, but there were too many bottles and I didn’t know the difference between them. I hoped that Cara hadn’t known, either, and began pouring. When I took a sip, I had to hold my hand over my mouth to keep from spewing it back out, but after the initial shock I felt light and tingly. Taking a deep breath, I plugged my nose and drank again. At some point, while my eyes were closed or tearing, Nick Fletcher appeared at my side.

  “Someone’s on a mission,” he said through a smile. “What’s the rush, Hayes?”

  “I’m playing catch-up,” I said. I traced my tongue over my teeth, my body feeling warm and loose.

  “Maybe you should drink something a little less toxic. I can smell that from across the room.”

  Though I halfheartedly resisted, Nick took the drink from my hand and we bo
th watched as its contents slipped down the drain. The sink gurgled in response. Examining the bottles, he chose one with gold letters and began refilling my cup while I picked at a fingernail that had grown slightly too long.

  “I wasn’t sure if you were going to show,” Nick said. “How’d Cara do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Get you here. I want to know so that next time, I’ll be able to lure you out.”

  I shrugged, scanning the crowd one last time for Cody Winters, but of course, he hadn’t come. I felt a pang of disappointment. “Guess I just felt like doing something different tonight,” I said. “Cavorting with my classmates. Acting uncivilized.”

  He gasped. “Uncivilized? Is that what you think of us?”

  I pointed to the scene of the fight, which Cara’s brother had finally contained, and said, “Exhibit A.” Then I pointed to a group of guys near Cara’s chrome refrigerator who were arguing about whether or not olive oil would work as a lubricant, and, if so, the likelihood that it would make them ejaculate faster, dubbing this “Exhibit B.”

  “I’d argue that Exhibit B might actually fall in the civilized category because of creativity,” he said. “After all, evolution can work in mysterious ways.”

  I said, “God help us if those are ‘the fittest.’”

  Nick laughed, his eyes squinting into slivers, and I caught a glimpse of the little boy he had been when we met in elementary school. He’d had big plastic glasses then, and short spiky hair. As kids, we’d passed many hot, smog-saturated afternoons playing kickball on the cul-de-sac in front of his house. Though Cara just sat on the sidewalk and watched, Nick always invited me to play because I was one of the few girls who wouldn’t cry if she got pushed down. It had been a long time since I’d last thought of that. For some reason, though, the memory suddenly seemed important, and I grabbed on to it, let it rise with the flush in my cheeks.

  Nick handed me the cup. “Vodka Sprite,” he said. “Simple, tasty, effective.”

  I sipped. My head floated, light and airy on my shoulders, and something about Nick—about that moment—made me want to tell him everything I’d spent the summer withholding. I wanted to tell him about the days my father spent locked in the studio. I wanted to tell him about Lance and Travis, and how they were ruining everything. And above all, I wanted to tell him how those lyrics he’d read at the café had almost turned into a song that I thought was good—really good, maybe even great—but I had lost it to the winds and the emptiness of my house without my father and I feared I’d never get it back no matter how hard I worked or how many nights I lay awake, sleepless, watching the sky lighten into another wasted dawn, because it felt like my father was disappearing, chasing some distant force the way the tides chased the moon, and without him I had nothing—just a notebook filled with half-rendered phrases and predictable patterns of chords. Not even my interpretation of “Love Honey” could change that. My father was my teacher, my mentor. But he needed nothing from me.

  My mind flattened, unable to support the weight of all the words I left unspoken. I gazed out at the party. In the shadowed corners, couples pressed up against each other with an intimacy so public it alarmed me. I felt the bite of tears in my eyes.

  “What’s your dad like?” I said suddenly.

  “What do you mean?” Nick asked.

  “I don’t know. Do you get along?”

  “I guess, yeah.” Nick gulped his beer. “We’ve had our moments, but he’s not around much.”

  “He still works a lot?”

  “He’s never too busy for his students, but for me?”

  Nick’s bottom lip curled down as his head shook. His father, I knew, was a highly regarded professor of environmental studies at Occidental University. I’d only seen him a few times, always at mandatory school functions. He had a mustache and stood plank straight, with his hands clasped behind his back. I’d never spoken to him but he seemed like a nice man, wise and understanding. I imagined him to be all the things my own father was not.

  I stretched my palms across the strange, soft fabric of my mother’s dress and wondered if my father had shown Lance and Travis his tape. I said, “Mine too. I mean, it’s not exactly the same. But kind of.”

  “I always thought your dad seemed so cool.”

  “Turns out he’s just the same as everyone else.”

  “Parents can be such assholes sometimes,” Nick said, glancing at his phone. It was getting late. Though he probably had practice in the morning, I didn’t want him to leave.

  “Speaking of assholes,” Nick continued, “Chris Crowley has developed some weird obsession with his own nudity, and every time he drinks, he announces that we’re all going streaking, then passes out naked by himself in the front yard. I’ve seen his junk so many times this summer that it haunts me in my sleep, and if we aren’t careful, you might get the full frontal, too.”

  I laughed. “You’re bluffing.”

  Nick checked his phone again. “Give it about . . . one more minute.”

  I looked back out at the party. The faces had begun to blur. Nick and I were standing so close that I could feel the heat of his body. A strand of hair had fallen into his eyes and I felt the urge to reach up, to push it aside for him, but my hands were too heavy. The minute slipped by.

  Then someone yelled, “Who wants to go streaking?” and Nick pushed me playfully on the shoulder.

  “Told you,” he said, his hand lingering.

  A chorus of cries amplified across the room, and the crowd began swaying, jumping, trying to see what was happening and snap pictures with their phones. I anchored my gaze on Nick’s sunburned nose, at the spray of freckles there, but I couldn’t focus. The room began to spin.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Fine,” I said, but as I leaned back against the counter for support, my grip slipped. Nick caught me right as my knees buckled.

  He wrapped my arm through his elbow and leaned into me. “Let’s go sit down.”

  My legs were moving but I could barely feel them as Nick led me toward the staircase and we climbed higher, past the school portraits of Cara and Josh, one from every grade in chronological order up the stairs. It looked like a flipbook—I could see them aging right before my eyes and even after we reached the top and the end of the hallway and the guest bedroom, the one door still standing ajar, I saw their faces getting older and older until they were gray and wrinkled and their skin started melting like wax. Finally, we tumbled down onto the bed.

  “Thanks,” I said, rolling onto my back. I tried to focus on the ceiling fan but the blades were tilting, even as the air felt sultry and still. Nick lay down next to me.

  “You look really pretty tonight,” he said quietly.

  My pulse quickened. I wanted to thank him, to say something true and real in kind. But so little felt real right then. My world had become crooked—a place where anything could happen, where everything could fall apart.

  “I’m afraid of the winds,” I told him. At least that’s what I said in my head, the words I thought I had formed, if I formed any at all.

  A moment passed, then Nick said something else I couldn’t hear. Our proximity had turned his voice to a whisper. I tilted my head toward him. Closing my eyes, I breathed in his scent (beer and peppermint ChapStick, the faint chlorinated tang of his skin) and thought about how badly I wanted to be close to him. How natural it felt when he lowered himself down and pressed his mouth to mine.

  The kiss was gentle at first—both clumsy and fluid, familiar and new. Then the full length of my body pressed against him, and when my lips parted, his tongue reached for more. My skin felt liquid as his hands roamed over me, beneath my dress. I grasped for him, fumbling. For an instant the world was motionless.

  Then a fresh cry of voices seeped under the closed door and a flush of clarity zoomed through me. I heard the thumping bass of a stereo downstairs, the smash of someone dropping a bottle on the tile floor, the low groan of movement in the next roo
m. I opened my eyes. On a side table, Cara’s face popped out from the lush green landscape of a photograph. Nick continued kissing my neck, soft lips fluttering across my collarbone. I shut my eyes again but even then I saw her smiling, joyous in her pink bikini, her face rotating with the blackness behind my lids.

  “Wait,” I said.

  “What’s wrong?” Nick asked.

  “We can’t do this.” Dizzy, my skin damp with our sweat, I sat up.

  Nick sighed, rubbing his hands over his face. “Because of Cara?”

  “Yes,” I said, and only then did the answer feel true. We were in Cara’s house, at Cara’s party, with a hundred people roaming around us. My stomach smoldered. I did not want my first time to happen like this.

  Nick pulled his body up next to mine and said, “There’s nothing between me and Cara.”

  “What?” I looked back at him, my head moving too quickly, my body unable to settle.

  “We both agreed. It was a mistake, and what happens at ASB camp stays at ASB camp.”

  “Oh God.” I stood up. A wave of nausea spun through me. “You and Cara?” I shook my head again. “Oh God.”

  Nick reached for my arm, trying to stop me, saying something about how he and Cara only ever made out, but I had seen her face shift and soften when she spoke of him, had heard the lazy way his name lingered, sweet on her tongue. I said, “I have to go.”

  Spilling down the stairs, I refused to stop—not when someone called my name, and not when Cara’s smile flashed before me, transposed on all the faces I passed. Acid rose in my throat as I pushed out of the house. When I was far enough away that the sounds of the party had faded, I stumbled to my knees and vomited.

  The next morning: head pounding, mouth parched like a desert wind. I stumbled out of my room with little black dots clouding my sight. I couldn’t remember getting home but I was still wearing the blue peasant dress, my eyes red and puffy and crusted together. The previous night swirled around me. The pit of my stomach was heavy and empty at once.