A Line in the Dark

by Malinda Lo

  “Oh my God, you two are together?” Margot says, her voice rising in disbelief.

  “We’re not together,” Emily objects, and two pink spots burn into being on her cheeks.

  The cutting rejection of Emily’s words stings. It also has the ring of something painfully familiar, as if she’d made that declaration before. Emily’s eyes flicker to me for a second, and I think I see a note of apology in them, but that hint is gone as soon as I recognize it.

  “Stop being so self-hating,” Ryan says. “You really need to face your feelings, Emily. It’s not healthy for you to deny these things.” The sugar-sweet tone of her voice is blatantly false, and Emily’s face reddens further.

  “Stop following me around,” Margot says coolly. Then she looks at me with her sharp hazel eyes and adds, “I’d steer clear of her if I were you. She’s a little stalkery.”

  I don’t respond. I feel like I stumbled into somebody else’s fight and I just want out.

  “I’m not the stalker, Margot, and we all know it,” Emily says. All her previous coolness has vanished, and she quivers with anger, her hands fisted at her sides as if to prevent them from smashing into Margot’s face.

  Margot flips her off and saunters away, Ryan in tow.

  —

  “I’m sorry,” Emily says brusquely. She’s booking it down the path toward the Commons, and I’m not sure if I want to keep up with her.

  “Whatever,” I say, and let myself fall back.

  We’re nearly at the Commons when she unexpectedly turns around and says, “Really, I’m sorry. I normally wouldn’t care if people thought we were together, but Ryan and Margot are—they’re different.”

  “Whatever,” I say again, more forcefully, but Emily doesn’t stop.

  She says earnestly, “Listen, I don’t care if you’re gay or whatever, but I’m straight. Ryan and Margot like to act like I’m some big secret homo with a crush on Margot, and it’s just not true.”

  I feel the blood rush to my head. “I don’t give a shit. Are we getting coffee or not?”

  All the fight seems to go out of her like a balloon popping. Her shoulders sag. “Yeah, sure.”

  Cooper Commons is an old building—one of those brick colonial types—that has been sheathed in a glass shell. Entering through the main glass doors puts us in an atrium in front of the facade of the original Cooper Hall. There are round wooden tables scattered across the atrium’s stone floor, and an actual coffee cart covered by a large purple-and-orange umbrella is parked by the closed doors to the old building. Emily leads the way to the coffee cart, where a middle-aged woman is working.

  “Hi, sweetie, what can I getcha?” the woman asks Emily.

  “I’ll have a soy chai latte,” Emily replies. She looks at me hesitantly. “What do you want?”

  “Just a coffee. Small.”

  “I can get you anything,” Emily says. “We have credit from the arts program.” She takes out a plastic card and waves it at me. “Get a macchiato if you want. It’s on Brooke.”

  I shake my head slightly. “Coffee is fine.”

  Emily pays with the card and when our drinks show up, I take mine over to the cream and sugar station and liberally dump in cream and sugar. I don’t really like coffee. By the time I get my coffee into drinkable shape, Emily has taken a seat at a table by the outer glass wall. There are a few students sitting at other tables, studying, but the space is largely empty. I take a sip of my coffee. I’ve put in so much cream it’s only lukewarm now.

  Emily peels off the top of her drink, which gives off a spicy, Christmas-y smell. “How’s your coffee?” she asks.

  “Fine. How’s your—yours?”

  “It’s a little sweet. They’re always a little sweet.” She frowns at her drink and says, “I know this is awkward, but I should tell you what that was about.”

  “It’s none of my business.”

  She bites her top lip nervously, then tucks her hair behind her right ear. “Well, I might as well tell you before you find out some other way. Margot and Ryan and I used to be friends. When I first came to Brooke last year, when I was a sophomore transfer, they were the first girls to make friends with me. I was stupid enough to think they liked me, but what they wanted was somebody to do their dirty work for them. I was new and I’d just come from a pretty crappy situation back at home, so I did what they wanted.”

  Emily sounds disgusted with herself. I take a sip of my lukewarm coffee. “What did you do?”

  Emily fixes her drink with a gaze so intense I’m surprised the paper cup doesn’t catch on fire. “Just gossip, saying shit online,” she answers. “Trolling other people they didn’t like. I shouldn’t have done it, but it happened to me at my old school, and I didn’t want it to happen to me again. But then they wanted me to do something so mean I—” She stops, takes a shaky breath. “I wouldn’t do it. And that pissed them off so they started a rumor about me, saying that I was obsessed with Margot, following her around and taking pictures of her. And then Margot came out, and everybody at school thought she was so brave”—Emily’s tone hardens sarcastically—“and that I was such a sick jerk for stalking her.”

  Finally Emily raises her gaze to me, and she looks like she’s about to throw up.

  “The only thing I could do was say it wasn’t true, but nobody believed me,” Emily continues. “I even had a boyfriend at the end of last semester but still nobody believed me. He ended up breaking up with me because he couldn’t deal with it anymore. I was hoping that over the summer everybody would forget about it, but I don’t think Margot and Ryan forget about anything. And if they don’t forget, nobody does.”

  She takes a quick sip of her drink and almost chokes on it. Behind us the glass doors open and a group of students comes in, heading toward the entrance to the brick building. Emily quickly turns her chair so that her back faces the newcomers, but I catch the damp shine in her eyes as she blinks away rising tears.

  I reach out hesitantly, my hand hovering in the air behind Emily’s shoulder, but I drop it before I touch her. “I’m sorry,” I say.

  Her shoulders are curved defensively. “Don’t be,” Emily says in a low voice. “I just wanted you to know because when we go into the Commons for dinner, nobody’s going to want to sit with us. I’m sorry you got stuck with me.”

  AFTER SCHOOL, I HEAD TO ELLICOTT PARK. I KEEP AN EYE out for the giant white oak at the bottom of the little hill, and when I step off the trail, I run my fingers over the rough bark, scraping off white flakes of lichen. At the top of the hill I pick my way around the outcropping of boulders, and then I gingerly descend the other side, trying to avoid slipping on the mossy patches. I skid the last few feet, my arms windmilling to catch my balance, and then I’m at the bottom of the hollow.

  I shrug off my backpack and sit down, leaning against the rock. I take out my sketchbook and pencil, flipping it open to a blank page, and outline four panels of equal size. Since talking to Kim, I’ve been thinking about the mutant farmer. He’s probably not that significant, but the woods where he dies are, and I feel like I have to get a better grasp on the setting. In the first panel, I sketch the forest floor. I only have a black pencil with me, so it’s all about shadows, attempting to capture the way the mottled leaves create a soft layer over the darker earth. I draw an axe half buried in a pile of leaves, its honed edge a sharp, straight line.

  In the next panel I sketch a boulder, white pine trees clustering above it. I turn to study the rock I’m leaning against, the pattern of dark gray and reddish-brown specks against a pale, reddish-gray background. At the place where the rock meets the ground, the earth is a soft black seam. I run my finger against it: It’s damp, clumping on my fingertip like potting soil. I wipe my finger off on the rock and return to my sketch. I add an outstretched hand lying on the ground next to the boulder, the forearm, clothed in a black sleeve, disappearing into the pan
el frame. The fingers of the hand are curled up. Black soil smudges the fingertips, and the nails are broken.

  I check my phone; it’s after three already. I have to get home soon. Now that my pencil has stopped scratching against the paper, I hear the sounds of the park more clearly. It’s quiet, but not silent. Birds twitter nearby, and the wind sweeps in one long sigh through the dry leaves. A gull screams overhead, and I look up to see it crossing the circle of sky above, white wings outstretched. The hollow where I’m sitting is surrounded by oak and pine trees, so that it feels like I’m at the bottom of a deep well. I set down the sketchpad and pencil and push my backpack over to create a lumpy pillow. I lie down and gaze up at the sky, where white clouds are slowly moving across the blue. The gull returns, swooping around, and disappears again.

  I hear a series of thumps that sound like something pattering onto the leaf-strewn ground. Acorns, maybe. A single louder engine rumbles over the muted hum of traffic in a long, slow acceleration, then fades. I hear girls’ voices in the distance. I can’t make out the words but their tone has an excited edge. One of them laughs, and then her laughter cuts off abruptly, as if she or someone else clapped a hand over her mouth. The girls are coming closer. They aren’t approaching from the trail but the opposite direction, the East Bedford side—from Pearson Brooke. I don’t move. Their voices sound familiar.

  I hear their footsteps now, quickening, irregular. They’re close enough that I can understand what they’re saying. There are two of them.

  “It’s almost three fifteen.”

  “We’re almost there.”

  “Good, because we don’t have much time for this.”

  “Come on, I promise it’s good.”

  They’re so close I’m afraid they’ll see me. I feel hidden down here, at the bottom of this well created by trees and rocks, but I’m not hidden. All it takes is for someone to walk up to the edge of the hollow and look down, and I’ll be exposed clear as day. I train my eyes on the trees across from the boulder. Some of their roots are exposed where the ground was torn away at some point in the recent past, like a mini mudslide. I can’t see the girls, but they have to be just past those trees. I hold myself still as a stone, as if that might hide me from view.

  “Here it is!”

  I see a flash of color. One of the girls is wearing red. I hold my breath.

  There’s a slow, rough scraping noise as something is dragged across the ground. I hear the rasp of a metal buckle unfastening, the unmistakable rustle of paper sliding against paper, unfolding.

  “Look! I told you.”

  The paper flexes, the sound ricocheting through the park.

  “‘My darling,’” one of the girls says, and breaks into giggles. “My darling?”

  “Shut up, it’s so sweet. He can’t exactly write my name.”

  The giggler coughs, turns serious. “‘My darling,’” she says again. “‘I have been thinking about you constantly. I wake up and think of you. I make my coffee and think of you. I drive to school and think of you.’” More giggles. “Wow. He really thinks of you!”

  Something about the girl’s voice clicks in my mind. It’s Margot.

  “Shh, don’t read it out loud if you’re going to make fun of it,” says the other girl. She has to be Ryan.

  “Oh, relax,” Margot says, then falls silent.

  The crackle of paper is as loud as lightning. Every muscle in my body is tense with the effort to will myself invisible. I stare anxiously at the spot in the trees where I saw the flash of red, but there’s no movement now.

  Finally Margot says, “Aw . . . he’s really sweet.”

  “I told you!”

  “But you know you can’t do this.”

  “Don’t be such a prude!”

  A moment of silence, and then the sound of papers shuffling again. “You have to be careful,” Margot says.

  “Why do you think we’re communicating this way?”

  “He doesn’t text you?”

  “Never.”

  The buckle is fastened again, and something is shoved along the ground.

  “Well, I’m glad he makes you so happy. Just be careful.”

  “You already said that, Mom.”

  Laughter. “Okay. Come on, we have to get to practice.”

  I hold my breath as they move, listening to their footsteps retreat back in the direction they came from. When I can’t hear them anymore, I get up. My left arm has fallen asleep and I rub the tingling life back into it as I walk over to the edge of the hollow. I pick my way up the small hillside. Small bits of rock and gravel clatter down the slope in the wake of my passage. At the top of the slope, several pine trees cluster around a fallen log. It has lodged against one trunk, causing it to lean slightly to the right. I step over the log and look back. I can’t see down into the hollow from here. The woods seem to end in a steep drop a couple of feet beyond the fallen log.

  I glance around. This area is exactly like every other part of Ellicott Park: trees, rocks, more trees. There aren’t a lot of hiding places; there’s only one. I lean over to look into the shadowy recess beneath the juncture where the log pushes against the tree. The ground is damp here, and some of the leaves that cover the forest floor have been scraped aside, revealing chocolate-brown earth. The impression of a running shoe is clear, the ridges standing up fresh and new.

  I kneel down near the mud and peer into the small, dark space. Something has been shoved in there. I reach in and feel something smooth, like leather. I wrap my fingers around it and tug. As I pull, I hear the scrape of an object against the underside of the log—exactly the same sound I heard when the girls were here.

  It’s a leather messenger bag with metal buckles. The leather is water stained, discolored in patches so that it looks almost like the forest floor itself. I unbuckle the bag and open the flap. Inside is a small collection of envelopes. The paper is thick and creamy, only slightly mottled by the moisture that must collect inside the bag. I open one envelope and remove a note that’s handwritten in small, precise printing.

  There are seven of them, all addressed to “My Darling,” all signed with simply, “Yours.”

  I read every one.

  ANGIE POSTS A SELFIE WITH THE CAPTION, “TGIF!” SHE’S wearing dark eye makeup, which she normally doesn’t; it makes her look older. Her hair is pulled over one shoulder in a loose braid, and she’s wearing a sleeveless pink eyelet shirt over tight black jeans. The picture was only posted ten minutes ago but it already has a bunch of likes and comments, all praising her look. Normally I’d like it too, but I don’t do that anymore. I scroll through the people who liked or commented on her picture, and I know all of them except for one: gogo43, who wrote, “hottt.” I click on the link to gogo43’s profile, but it’s locked. The tiny profile picture shows the back of a girl’s bare shoulder and a sweep of dark hair.

  My fingers tighten on my phone, and the crack that runs across the upper-right corner of the glass shoots off a tributary. I force my grip to loosen, but I keep staring at gogo43’s shoulder as blood rushes to my head. It throbs in my ears in a thick pulse.

  It’s been two weeks since Angie stopped texting me.

  I walk over to her house just before seven o’clock. It’s already dark, and half the streetlights are burned out on my block. I pass West Bed High, where the parking lot is almost full. Behind the school a dim glow emanates from the football field. Scattered cheers float on the cool night air.

  Angie’s house is a couple of blocks past the high school. Lights shine in the front windows, and a TV flickers through the lace curtains. Angie’s room is the right-hand window on the second floor. Her lights are on too, and the mini-blinds are half closed.

  I stand across the street in the shadow between two streetlights, staring at her window.

  I could call her. I imagine hearing her answer the phone, her voice in
my ear. I imagine the tentative welcome in her hello?, a hopeful lift as she says my name. I slide my hand into my pocket and feel my phone, but I don’t take it out.

  There is movement behind her mini-blinds. Angie comes to the window and spreads the blinds open with her fingers, peeking out as if she could feel me watching. I freeze, afraid that she’ll see me, but after a couple of seconds she retreats. I let out my breath. I move to the right so that I’m halfway behind an SUV parked on the side of the road, but I still have a good view of her window.

  I run my finger along the crack on my phone’s screen over and over, lightly tracing the glass edges. Talking to Angie feels impossible, like placing a telephone call to yesterday. I remove my sweaty hand from my pocket and wipe it on my jeans. I keep watching her window.

  Two blocks away a sustained cheer rises from the school. Maybe we scored a touchdown. I haven’t been to a football game since last year, with Angie and her friends. It was cold that night, and Angie and I huddled together, our jackets draped over the two of us in a poor semblance of a blanket. I remember her shivering against me like a rabbit, all breath and softness.

  A Mini comes down the street, slows down, and pulls to a stop outside Angie’s house. The bumper has a sticker on it that reads BROOKE PRIDE in rainbow letters. I shrink farther behind the SUV, peering around the end of the vehicle. The streetlight angles into the Mini so that it outlines the driver’s silhouette. Her hair is loose and long. A phone glows on in her hand, briefly illuminating her face. It’s Margot. A moment later Angie appears at her window again, waving down at the car. She’s wearing the pink top that was in her photo.

  My mouth has gone dry. My thighs are quivering from my uncomfortable half-squatting position, but if I stand up I’m sure they’ll see me. I want to watch Angie emerge from her house, but my quads burn too much. I sink down so that I’m kneeling on the cold sidewalk, my view completely blocked by the SUV. I hear Angie’s front door close, and a few moments later I hear the Mini’s passenger door open.