All the Things We Do in the Dark Read online

  (killed)

  arrested, the evidence is still there. It’s still safe.

  Thank god, Nick finally gets it without me saying anything else. We don’t have time for anything else. He dumps a couple of things into the bag.

  Then he steadies me when I step up on the toilet and push out the screen. It makes the worst noise when it hits the ground. Like throwing spoons into a garbage disposal or something. But I throw the bag after it.

  Hopefully, it lands somewhere hidden. I don’t know. I can’t see.

  “Aroostook County Sheriff,” a man’s voice rings out. “I know you’re in there!”

  The cop. It’s the cop. A relief and a terror at the same time.

  I go to step down, and Nick shakes his head. Now he points. So hard that his elbow pops, he points at me, then the window. He thinks I can fit. He thinks I should run.

  A warm rush floods me; yes, yes, run. Run away, run as fast as you can, but that’s a gingerbread man. A fairy tale. And I don’t have time for those anymore.

  I jump from the toilet and press in close to him. “You’re on probation. Get the backpack and run.”

  He shakes his head, and in reply, I shove him toward the window. It’s not a negotiation. It’s not a question. It’s not a request. He gets out, and hopefully, I get out alive too.

  In the hallway, the footsteps stop right outside the bathroom door. A brief, three-note digital tone tells us everything. Whoever’s on the other side just called 911.

  Before I knew she was Lark, I promised Jane I would take care of her. I promised I’d protect her. Knowing her name doesn’t change that. In fact, it sharpens it. By god, I made promises, and I’m gonna keep them.

  I shove Nick toward the window again. Hard. He’s gonna fall, or he’s gonna leave.

  In a surprising feat of agility, he leaps up, shimmies through, and he’s gone.

  I pull the curtains closed, then I step toward the bathroom door. On wobbly legs, I try to stand tall and straight and certain. It takes two tries to get my throat to give up its sound. When it finally does, I call out, “Don’t hurt me. I’ll come out. Just please don’t hurt me.”

  “Put your hands up,” he barks from the other side.

  Raising my hands, I squeeze my eyes closed, and I hope this is the part where I get arrested. Just arrested. God, what is my life?

  Abruptly, the thin door swings open. It bounces against the wall, and I try not to shake when the man in a sheriff’s uniform levels his gun in my direction. It’s dull and black, like a void.

  “There’s a dead girl in the woods,” I say suddenly. As I do, I catch a glimpse of Lark in the bathroom mirror. She fades, she fades, and then—

  She’s gone.

  I DON’T REMEMBER A LOT FROM THE IN BETWEEN? From Before? With the Summer Man?

  I’m in the middle of this storm with Lark’s murder, and I think probably in a year or two or six, I won’t remember this middle part, either.

  This time, there are no detectives. Not right away.

  The man on the other side of the bathroom door is a sheriff’s deputy, and he is pissed. I burst into tears. His voice sounds like thunder. I know it’s questions—what body, what woods, what does that have to do with anything—but I can’t even breathe. I can’t answer.

  Because I won’t (can’t) say why I’m in there, he holsters the gun furiously. He makes me sit on the toilet until the other cops arrive.

  I don’t say anything to them, either, but they don’t seem to care. They talk on their shoulder mics: breaking and entering, robbery, body, lies—whatever, they don’t care. They’re gonna process me, and this’ll be a whole new adventure compared to the last time.

  (Nobody got arrested last time.)

  A camera flashes me blind again, and this time, there’s a mug shot. Mine. Fingerprints, too, where I roll my fingers on a scanner one at a time, then wait for a beep.

  It’s almost beautiful, the loops and whorls of my identity in black and white. It’s like living forever in π, which contains every number, every thread: your social security number, your birthday, your address, your DNA sequence, your favorite book in binary.

  Now I’m twice contained by the police. I have a victim folder. (Though that was probably shredded a long time ago; if my rape kit remains, it probably hasn’t been tested. Probably won’t ever be tested.) And they take my meager things and put them in envelopes. To wit, I am:

  (1) ring, silver

  (1) nose stud, diamond.

  Nothing else. Because the rest is in the backpack. The rest is—god, I hope—in Nick’s hands, and hopefully he’s talking to a lawyer who’s gonna talk to the police or something or somebody. Hopefully, he’s not going to leave me in jail. Hopefully, hopefully, ha ha ha: what a stupid, useless word.

  I believe he’ll come, because I have to believe it.

  The cops have to take my word for it about my identity, because I have no ID with me. They look askance when I tell them I’m seventeen—

  (underage! minor! alert!)

  and I don’t know how this would usually go, but they put me in a small cell with a concrete bench and leave me alone for a long time. Long enough that I get to read the graffiti etched into the walls (I wonder with what, because I couldn’t leave a mark here if I wanted to). Long enough that I’m sure I’ve been noted absent at school. Long enough that my mom is gonna get a robocall from Attendance annnny minute now, telling her I’m not there.

  Maybe all that time gone is why the guard (officer? matron? I have no idea) finally unlocks the door and leads me to a desk. Asks for the number I want to call as she holds an institutional phone halfway between the desk and her ear.

  Sure, I consider calling Syd or Hailey. But those thoughts drain away silently. One is gone; the other will be soon, I’m sure. And anyway, the only number I know by heart is my mother’s.

  (I would have picked her anyway.

  Probably.

  I guess we’ll never know.)

  I know that I tell her I’ve been arrested, and I know that I ask her to come help me. But I swear, her responses are only silence. Long pauses. They probably aren’t. I think there are words; I’m sure there’s anger. But I just have nothing in me to hear; I’m not in me, not really.

  It’s a quiet kind of numb, a shock that doesn’t sting. It just vibrates. I need my mom because I need to tell her about Lark. I need her to find out from me that I’m not in jail because I decided to take up recreational trespassing. I need her to tell me what to do.

  Because I am well past being protected now. Mom can’t keep me in the tower. The only thing she can do is stand with me or turn away from me. Something Terrible has happened before, and she’s the one who stood. Who stayed. I’m pretty sure she’ll do it again. I think. I wish. I

  (hope).

  When I hand the phone back to the GuardMatronLady, she doesn’t take me back to the cell. Instead, she walks me up a hall and deposits me in a small cold room. It’s outfitted with a big mirror wall, a plain bolted-down table, and two chairs. The walls are a scuffed, institutional green, and I’m sure people watch me from the other side of that glass.

  All I see is myself, with hollowed-out eyes and fried hair and greyed skin. I burrow into my own arms. What’s funny—funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha—is that I think I look a lot like Nick looked that night in the Red Stripe. Back when he was hoping his camera full of evidence would magically reappear at the Customer Service desk. I guess we’ve been careening down the same train tracks, toward the same brick wall, for a while now, he and I.

  When the door opens, I expect Detective Cho.

  (Because of course! Because why not?! I know everything with Hailey is definitely over now. Because there’s no way the father who only finally let her get a library job this year is ever going to let his little girl go out with a felon.

  God, everything is over. Syd is over. Hailey is over. My life is over.)

  A swish of perfume precedes the detective. It’s not Detective Cho; it
’s a Black woman with coiled braids and a mask for an expression. Her badge sits comfortably at her waist. She’s got a gun belt under her jacket, which matches her dress pants and sensible shoes.

  “Ava, right?” she asks, looking at a folder.

  What could possibly be in it? All I am is a girl who got caught in somebody else’s house. Did they somehow dig up my past? Will it count for or against me? I almost want her to ask about the scar. Ask. Ask about it, Detective.

  She goes to shake my hand. “I’m Detective Pera. How are you? Can I get you anything?”

  The way she asks sets my teeth on edge. I don’t think it’s a real question—like, if I asked for a cup of coffee, she’d probably say something like, “Lemme get a few things down here, and then we can get that coffee for you.”

  “My mom. I’m only seventeen.”

  “She’s on her way,” she tells me. “But we can talk until she gets here, right?”

  So patronizing. I’m already a liar to her. A criminal. Fair enough. I’ve done a really shady thing. No, I’ve done a lot of shady things and told a lot of lies and acted so screwed up that I look guilty.

  And I am guilty; I stalked a guy. I broke into a house. I hid Lark’s body.

  The body thing might not even be against the law, but trailing Nick, downloading his whole phone, attacking him in the woods? Those parts are definitely a few different levels of illegal. Breaking into a house; getting caught inside it: so illegal.

  Not to mention all the forbidden ink I wear on my skin.

  There are layers and layers to peel here. Nobody’s going to cry, because this isn’t an onion. I’m an old, moldering scroll crushed between sheets of oxidized bronze. It’s going to take a specialist to figure out everything inside me.

  I wrap my arms around myself and say, “I’m gonna wait for her.”

  “Hey,” Detective Pera says gently. “All we’re trying to do is figure out what’s going on. You said something about a body? That sounds pretty scary.”

  She sounds so seductively reasonable. My forebrain wants to tell her everything, but my lizard brain hisses for me to stop, stop, stop. Just shut up. Say nothing.

  I know for a fact that I have a right to remain silent. Miranda versus Arizona was decided in 1966, exactly nine hundred years after William of Normandy added “the Conqueror” to his name and took over Britain.

  Detective Pera allows herself to look a little annoyed when I shake my head. “How am I supposed to help you if you won’t let me?”

  Because she doesn’t know, she has to ask. Cajole. Maybe if I were Nick, she’d even yell. But I’ve learned some things this past week. People can’t look at you and know what’s in your head. In your heart. In the moment.

  They overlook everything except the things we say out loud, explicitly. And that means, if we say nothing, they move on in their own orbits and spheres and galaxies.

  We’re all just shells filled with secrets and lies and words we never say. I don’t smile; instead, I ask, “Can I have something to drink?”

  Her chair grinds against the floor when she pushes it back. “Do you know Deputy Sheriff Pelletier?”

  With full and complete honesty, I can say, “No.”

  “What about Zach Pelletier?”

  I press my lips together and shake my head. Mm mm, no. Nope. I don’t, at all, but I do wonder if that’s the guy in those Discord chats, the OhWeeOh that ArcanePriestess was supposed to meet up with that night. But that’s my question, my secret stash. I’m not giving it up.

  Tipping her head to one side, Detective Pera considers me. Her eyes are still a mystery, but I know what’s behind them. She wants answers for a break-in . . . but the body. I said I knew where a body was. Maybe she is on my side. Maybe she is worried there’s a dead girl in the woods, that I’m keeping in my soul.

  But just like it’s impossible to look into me and to know, I don’t see anything in Detective Pera’s eyes. Maybe all she wants is I lied, I’m a juvenile delinquent, I broke in, and this is why, on video, audio, preserved and ready for court.

  Her voice is measured when she says, trying to come across as sincere, “From what I can tell, you’re a good kid. There’s gotta be an explanation for this, Ava.”

  Changed the subject, didn’t she? My mind’s already a mixed-up, screwed-up, goat’s breakfast of a thing, and she’s trying to mess with it. For Lark’s sake, I’m glad that Detective Pera’s going to be working on her murder. But for me? I want her to listen, to hear, when I say I’m not saying anything until my mom arrives.

  This is why I think I won’t remember all this later. It’s too much and too heavy. It’s too scary and too alien. It’s a place I never wanted to be, and a moment I hope won’t scar me until the end of days. That’s why I told you everything that came before. And I’ll tell you what comes after, as best as I can.

  But this part here, I’m going to put it in a box. An iron box, with iron bands. An iron lock and a key I’ll throw away. This box will sink to the bottom of my ocean, and I’ll never, ever open it again. Because what happens in the police station doesn’t actually matter, but it’s the part where I have to realize:

  A bad thing happened to me. And it’s still happening.

  But I ended up here all on my own.

  MY MOTHER COMES IN LIKE A NOR’EASTER.

  Her voice, howling and furious, precedes her. She spits out consonants like hail, which means I can make out the most important words long before I see her. Underage. Child. Lawyer. Charges. No.

  And then, right outside the door, she says, “We’ll see about that.”

  Then she sweeps into the room. I don’t think she even let the detective open the door for her. One minute she’s out, then she’s in, roaring around me, until I’m in the calm circle of her eye. Her hands fall on my shoulders. She stands behind me, and I see her eyes flicker briefly in the mirror.

  The tattoos.

  She has no idea I have tattoos until this moment. One eyebrow twitches. To me, it’s a sign set on fire in the middle of the night, visible for miles. Still, she turns back to Detective Pera. “I need a moment with my daughter. Alone.”

  And then, proving either that she’s picked up a lot of stuff from the firm she works at or that she, too, watches television, she points at the mirror. “And if somebody’s listening on the other side, they’d better shut the sound off now. We want a lawyer.”

  Detective Pera doesn’t roll her eyes. But she does shut the door harder than she needs to. Mom waits a few seconds, giving the glass a hard glare. Then she pulls up the chair next to me. Forcibly turns my chair to face hers. Leans into my face and asks, under her breath, “What the hell is going on?”

  Suddenly desperate, I grab for her hands. They’re familiar but cold, because she hates wearing gloves. The rough spot on the back of her hand is the pin in a map I’ve read a million times.

  Maybe these hands held me too tight; maybe they let me slip through at the worst possible moment. But they are home; they are my mother and my true north and I need to be a fixed point. Just for now. Just until the whole world shifts under me again.

  “There’s a dead girl in the woods, Mom.”

  Whole empires rise and fall in her eyes. I’ll probably never know all the things she thinks at this exact moment. What she feels against what she knows, her heart against logic, but she’s only wild for a moment. Something settles in her, hard. Her shoulders dip. She never lets go of my hands.

  “You killed someone?”

  “No, no no no!” I say, too loud, and she shushes me. Lowering my voice again, I say, “No, I found a body in the woods. I didn’t hurt her, but I know who did. I have evidence. I have . . . proof.”

  And under my breath, I tell her everything because I’m probably going to jail and everything’s going to come out anyway. I tell her about flying; about lying. About hunting Nick and Nick hunting me. The backpack in the bushes; the proof that Lark spent her last night alive with a guy who still has her necklace. Tattoos and S
yd’s anger and everything. Everything that feels relevant; everything I’ve told you.

  I tell her about my friend Jane.

  That I saw her. Talked to her. Lay in bed with her; answered the phone because of her. Mom gets greyer as I talk, but she doesn’t interrupt. Doesn’t move. Not until I finally shut up.

  When I do, she shakes me. She actually puts her hands on my shoulders and shakes me. Not hard—strangely gentle, strangely plaintive. Her voice runs ragged, and she says, “You should have said something!”

  “I know,” I say. And then I break and press my brow to her shoulder. I can’t weep; all my tears are gone. But wracking grief doesn’t need tears to feed it. It wrenches through, completely on its own. It splits my breast and cracks my wishbone. I am crushed down to nothing.

  You’re not going to believe me when I say that most of the time I’m fine. Really. I do okay. I get by. But this isn’t most of the time. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that this is a singularity. What has happened now will never happen again, not in my life, not in history, not in the future.

  So right now is not fine. I can’t do this by myself. I look up at my mother and I say, “Mommy, I need help.”

  And she cries.

  MY MOTHER DISAPPEARS, AFTER WARNING ME TO SAY nothing. She’s gone forever, calling a lawyer, I think. I don’t know. I don’t care, really.

  I curl my arms on the table and put my head down. Exhaustion is lead, poured into my skin. Honestly, if it weren’t so bright in here, I think I could lie on the floor and sleep. I could slide right down, pull my sweatshirt over my face, and just sleep.

  Rumpelstiltskin sleep, sleeping beauty slumber. Let the woods and the vines and the briars grow up around me.

  Behind my closed eyes, I see Hailey. I see the streaks in her eyes and the ghost of freckles on her nose. The curve of her mouth and the drift of her hair, the way winter tugs it from beneath her hat. I wonder if she knows where I am

  (that I’ve been arrested).

  I wonder if she’ll ever speak to me again, or if she’ll just be silence. If the arrest is enough, no explanation needed. Then again, what explanation would ever, ever make sense to her? I can elaborate and justify and insist, but I cannot change an immutable fact—