All the Things We Do in the Dark Read online

“There’s no point asking for a refund, Tony. It’s right there in all the paperwork: no refunds.”

  “They can’t make an exception?”

  “They won’t.”

  “It was fifteen hundred bucks,” Dad sniped. “You could at least ask.”

  “You do it. Feel free.”

  “I think she should go back. She’s going to turn into a basket case.”

  “Tony . . .”

  “One of those people who never leave the house.”

  “Okay, I’m done. She leaves the house. She’s fine.”

  “Yeah, it sounds like it.”

  I leave the house, I thought. All the time. Usually with Mom, yes. Sometimes with Syd, yes. With anyone else? I mean, almost never, but so? I could if I wanted to. And between Mom and Syd, I see all the movies, buy all the books, and get all the tattoos I need.

  (And you know what? When I go to Dad’s house in the summer, you know what I do? Read books and text Syd and mess around on the internet. Dad and I go out to dinner, and then we go home. Dad isn’t big on the library, and I’m not interested in fishing/war movies/physics documentaries/heirloom tomatoes. So there. I mean, seriously, so there, right in his face.)

  I use the card; I order pizza. And I’m fine, by myself, in my own house, in my own bed. Actually fine, not defensive fine. I don’t double-triple-quadruple check to see if anything is locked. Weird noises don’t bother me; I’ve learned the songs of our house. Of our neighborhood. They’re not mysteries. Wood thrushes, mockingbirds, foxes, the Nguyens’ shed door, the ice maker refilling.

  When I’m by myself at home, it’s a girl, her laptop, and her own large pepperoni pizza: a love story.

  I am not a basket case.

  WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING?

  Everything.

  Some questions have easy answers. Baby math, like two plus two: four. Why did you eat the last ice cream sandwich? Because I wanted it. Don’t you want to go to your dad’s for the summer? No, not particularly.

  You can stripe a life out in primary colors: who’s your best friend, where do you go to school, what makes you gag (Syd, Aroostook High North, thinking about stuff touching people’s eyes).

  But the shades between there, you have to get there to describe them. So if you ask me why Syd is my best friend, I have to tell you that our moms were in a baby group together. But I also have to tell you it’s Syd punching Becker in kindergarten when he licked my apple slice and made me cry. It’s me baking Syd yellow cake–chocolate icing cupcakes for her eighth birthday.

  She only ever asked me once if the cut on my face hurt. Everything else she knows—even details I didn’t tell my mom—she knows because I volunteered.

  So before the body I have to tell you about the fight that isn’t a fight.

  To tell you how it happens, I have to tell you what happened before. This is one of those easy things, and I’m not being smart or trying to avoid the question or anything like that. It’s just that the alphabet goes A-B-C, not A-F-Z.

  I’m getting there.

  SUNDAY NIGHT, IT SNOWS.

  It’s only October, but it’s not a shock or anything. It happens here sometimes.

  Syd and I used to go trick-or-treating in the snow when we were kids. My mom piled us into the car and drove us from house to house. She blasted the heater the whole time. We’d toast up, then surge over walks to front doors decorated with pumpkins and icicles, then run back to the heat again to compare candy.

  Thinking about it now, it makes me wonder why we even dressed up. I can’t remember a Halloween without a coat on, ever. I could have been a princess or a stormtrooper or a princess stormtrooper, for all anybody could see under my layers.

  But this morning, the crackle of brand-new snow against gold and scarlet leaves feels like bad luck. Pulling on thicker socks, I stare out my bedroom window. Huge white fluffs drift down, absurdly large, big as birds’ eggs, light as feathers.

  This isn’t the order of things. (It feels the same as finding out about Syd’s breakups and tattoos after the fact: everything is the wrong way around. Slightly off.)

  I finish dressing for cold. The thermostat at school is on a schedule, and it’s still gonna be set for pleasant fall, not sudden winter.

  The bus is late. (They haven’t changed to the all-weather tires yet, the ones they can chain up if they have to.) The roads are clearish, but people drive like they’d never seen winter before. Skids and stops and horns and slow, slow turns. Every couple of blocks, somebody’s off the road in a ditch.

  The dark, shadowy side I keep under my skin finds it kinda funny when it’s an SUV. Like, they thought they could beat Maine and Mother Nature with four-wheel drive? What are they, new?

  Then my stomach clenches when I see a car like my mother’s off the road, in the tree line. Long skid marks spirograph through the snow, revealing mud and green grass beneath the swirls. Yellow hazard lights flash, but the inside of the car is dark.

  Craning my neck, I watch it disappear behind us. It’s the wrong color. I press my blunt nails into my palm and swear to myself. Not her. Not her. Wrong color.

  (She texts me from work. It’s not her. She’s fine.)

  AT SCHOOL, THE HALLS ARE TOO CROWDED.

  Excited voices compete with slamming lockers, and cold wind blasts down the corridors. It’s gonna be one of those days with shoes soaking wet and dark streaks climbing the hems of our jeans. The first bell hasn’t even rung, and everything already has a slushy-dirty kind of tinge.

  I shoulder between people to get to my locker, and my skin crawls. It prickles and recoils, beneath my coat, beneath my sweater. Everybody’s in the way; why can’t they get out of the way?

  It’s just snow. We see it every year! Too much of it every year! Why people have to pack the halls and breathe all the air and fill up all the space because of it, I don’t know. Bodies graze behind mine; I clench my teeth.

  All these strangers touching me. An electrical tension tightens inside me. I want to hit them all, bash them all out of the way. But I can’t; I can’t hit people for taking up space, even though I’m reasonably sure I could come up with a reason why I should. Before that thought lingers too long, I realize I can bail.

  But I don’t really know how to do it. I’m a good student—on track for a couple of scholarships. I mean, I’m not even sure I’m going to ditch on Senior Skip Day, and that’s a year away and parent-approved.

  It’s time for school, so I have to be at school. Those are the rules.

  But I have to escape.

  I squeeze my eyes closed against threatening tears, and I try not to think about it. About the people near me, invading.

  With a slam, I close my locker and make myself small. Escape, escape. Arms around me, tight, tight, tight, and head down, shoulders first, I burrow through the crowd to get to the library. Nobody’s going there before first period.

  Bursting through the media center doors, I breathe, finally. I draw deep: cool air fills me up and inflates me again. I stand there, between the bars of the security scanner that have stopped no one from stealing the good manga from the shelves.

  Again, I breathe. Okay. I’m good. I’m fine.

  The doors swing open behind me, and I skitter out of the way. When I turn back to look, I see Hailey Kaplan-Cho, wearing a Hufflepuff hat and a smile.

  “Ava,” Hailey says, a laugh in her voice. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I guess you didn’t hear me coming.”

  I hadn’t heard her, not even a little. It’s embarrassing, my fear of otherwise harmless situations. It’s also disappointing. People never notice all that panic in me. From the outside, I look normal.

  I drag myself back to okay and manage a smile. “Yeah, sorry; it’s crazy out there, right?”

  “Completely. They act like they’ve never seen snow before.” Hailey shrugs; she has no idea she read my mind. “Anyway, you dropped this.”

  In her hand, my glove.

  “Thanks,” I say as I take it. �
�I didn’t realize. Obviously.”

  “No problem,” she says, and sweeps the hat off her head. Strands of her hair defy gravity, trailing coppery-bronze into the air. She sweeps a self-conscious hand over it. Her hair drifts free again, unconcerned.

  She asks, “Did you have a good summer?”

  We literally know each other so little that this is a reasonable question to ask in October.

  “Had to go stay with my dad,” I say. “He lives near Mount Desert.”

  “That sounds nice.”

  I would tell her it isn’t, but I’ve learned the hard way that telling the absolute truth ruins a conversation. My bones jolt and tick, warning me not to ruin this conversation. Don’t back away; don’t be awkward. God, I’m so awkward. I say, “It was all right. What about you?”

  “Pretty good,” she says cheerfully. “Got my license, finally!”

  “Yay!”

  “Right?” Her smile blazes bright, a blush darkening her cheeks. “And Dad finally let me get a job outside of his office. That was kind of amazing.”

  “Oh yeah? Where at?”

  “The library; I’m a page. It’s not super exciting or anything. I don’t have a desk, but I don’t have to listen to the drunk tank the whole time, either.”

  I forgot that Hailey’s dad is a cop. A detective, actually. Somewhere in time, I’d known it, and when she mentions it, the thin glass cracks and memories squeeze through.

  My mom closed the door between me and her; she stood on the front porch and talked to Officer Cho. He was the first. Then came the many; how many cops does it take to get to the center of a disaster?

  His face doesn’t float up from the murk. There were too many uniforms and too many people and just too many everything, to be specific. But he’s connected; one stitch in my scar.

  I bet Hailey knows all about it. Or maybe not. Or maybe?

  I have to cut off the loop in my head, or this is all I’ll think about all afternoon. I should deploy another thought. One from the present, one that is pleasant.

  I wonder what kind of job Hailey had at the police department. Was it a real job, or was her dad keeping an eye on her? Because he knew what happened to me. Because he saw.

  New thought, Ava!

  A new job, she’s happy, so I celebrate with her. For her, I guess. I hear my lips say something dumb: “Woo hoo, freedom!”

  “All the freedom! All for me!” Her laughter is soft and kind of indulgent.

  God, she’s just being polite. This whole morning has me frazzled and acting like a (basket case) space ranger or something.

  I’m not usually like this.

  It’s just the wrong snow and not my mother’s car in a ditch and all the people in the halls and I’m—off. And she can tell. So I make myself say more words, more stupid words as my mouth goes dry.

  “But now we’re back in school,” I say. “Booooooo.”

  She laughs again—it sounds realer. “Boo for real. Bring back summer, already.”

  “The one whole day of it we get a year,” I joke.

  “Exactly.”

  When we go quiet, it’s not silence. The halls are too loud for that; the clock on the wall ticks off seconds until our first block starts. Another dizzy, awkward wave rolls through me. I don’t know what else to say to her. I don’t not want to talk to her—but now it feels like I’ve thought about it too long. It’s my turn, and I’ve got nothing.

  I blurt out, “I, sorry, I need to get to my locker before the bell rings.”

  “Oh,” she says. She dims, then she nods. “Me too.”

  “Thanks again,” I tell her, waving my glove in her direction. Manners are automatic.

  Hailey pushes the doors open for me. As I pass, she says, “No problem.”

  Her perfume smells like cedar and citrus.

  MR. BURKHART’S CLASS IS A MUSEUM OF MAPS.

  They line the walls, some of them hanging, some pinned with thumbtacks. (Clear thumbtacks, so clever. Where does he find them? I always wonder.) Mercator Projection, Boggs-Eumorphic, Natural Earth—posters and plastic projections where the mountains rise up to meet your fingers.

  But most important, chronological. If you start at the door and walk around the room, you can see the world change in cartography over time. Roman empire, Byzantine empire—above those, dynasties: Xia flows to Shang to Zhou.

  It’s a flipbook in slow motion, ending in a modern map with unions instead of empires, a separate Serbia from Bosnia, the world now as we know it. Sort of.

  The pieces keep shifting across the Atlantic, but the drift is so small and so far from Maine, that things feel permanent to me. Puerto Rico as a state? The glimmer of a dream. Catalan independence? Not if the Spanish can help it. So this map without those seismic shifts, this is my world.

  “So let’s think about this in perspective,” Mr. Burkhart says without preamble. “Richard III’s death on Bosworth Field could be considered the beginning of the American experiment. Seven years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, a hundred and twenty-two years before Jamestown, almost three hundred years before Alexander Hamilton wanted to rise up . . .”

  In my bag, my phone vibrates. The buzz creeps against my ankle, insisting, urging. And it keeps going: quick, staccato stings that come one after the other. While Mr. Burkhart continues to outline chain steps in history, I lean over my bag.

  Pretending to shuffle for some paper or a pencil or something, I turn the face of my phone toward me. Texts from Syd bubble up and float off the screen, so quick I almost miss them before I read them.

  I waited for you this morning and you never showed up.

  Then I saw you hanging out in the library.

  Since when are you friends with Hailey?

  Her dad’s a cop btw. So don’t let her see your ink.

  Seriously if she gets Amber shut down . . .

  I’ll talk to you at lunch.

  ***Or will I?***

  I drop the phone and sit back up, stung. We didn’t plan to meet up this morning. I mean, we usually do. Her locker’s close to mine, and we’re best friends, and obviously. But it’s not a law. We don’t have a standing date.

  Even if we did, she was the one who usually skipped it. She had boyfriend lockers to visit, girlfriend lockers to linger near—in random halls at random times on random days.

  Instead of listening to Mr. Burkhart, I listened to Syd’s voice in my head, saying the words from her text different ways. Variations on a theme: annoyed, worried, plaintive.

  Which one is the right one? The venomous one that makes me feel like an enemy? Maybe the sarcastic one, where she’s slightly irritated but annoyed at herself for being irritated?

  The possibilities dig into my skin, burrowing under layers till they reach bone. My hands itch to answer. Why should Syd care if I’m friends with Hailey? Not that I am friends with her.

  But Syd has a huge circle: people from work, people from classes I don’t take, people from off the street and at the coffee shop and . . . basically, anywhere she goes. She collects people; I am one of many. (First of many, she likes to joke. Am I still?)

  So that’s weird, and the thread from saw you talking to a classmate to we’re maybe not speaking is so knotted it makes no sense. I follow it again and again, and each time, I tangle it further. The more I think about it, the hotter my face gets. As I sit, spine pressed to the back of my seat, I feel my nose threatening to run.

  Now my eyes are hot; my breath gets thin and my throat closes. That terrible, uncontrollable wobble ripples across my lower lip. I can’t do this; I can’t cry here. People already look at me—are they already looking at me?

  I sit closest to the door, front row. It’s the best angle to take notes from the overhead. Also, it means I can hit the hall right on the bell, before people surge to fill it. Strategic. Like the city of Calais. For two hundred years, it was either England or France, just depending on the day.

  I grab my bag, and pluck the bathroom pass off the wall. Mr. Burkhart
has it attached to a fat Henry VIII doll that wheezes if you squeeze it. I do not squeeze.

  I slink into the hallway, clammy and quiet. Instead of going to the closest bathroom to let the tears break, I slip down long corridors of medicinal green and industrial blue, far from history.

  The air changes, from dry and papery to wet and earthy—welcome to the art department. I pass classrooms full of clay and chalk and charcoal, almost running now to the bathroom at the far back corner.

  “Syd,” I say, crashing into the door to open it.

  Blue-silver hair pulled into a knot on the top of her head, Syd sits on the unused radiator beneath the windows. Ankles crossed, she tips her head when I burst in. She belongs here, down with the art; she’s long limbs and angles, deep into her Blue Period.

  Incredulous, she laughs. “What are you doing here?”

  I shove my phone at her. “What’s this?”

  “Oh my god, I’m just messing around.” She says it like she does stuff like this all the time; she doesn’t.

  My pulse sends messages in Morse code: SOS, Mayday, SOS. Everything tilts, like in a dream. The bad dream where I have to take a test and I’m late and running through molasses and when I finally get to class, I’m naked. So naked.

  I say, “I’m sorry?”

  For a moment, Syd closes her eyes. It’s like she’s gathering patience. To deal with me. Her best friend! Sliding to her feet, she slips an arm around me. Hugging me close to her side, she gives me a shake. It says, We’re so jolly; this is so okay. Her mouth says, “I was just being stupid. I saw you with Hailey and I poked.”

  “It’s not cool, Syd.”

  “Sorry,” she says. The emphasis: I should accept things and move on. This alien moment; this pod Syd; this confrontational, bizarre stranger—accept them? Move on? Impossible.

  “I just don’t get it,” I reply. “Why?”

  Exasperated, Syd throws her arms up, peeling off me and walking to the sinks. She turns on a tap, thrusting her hands under the water as the sound fills the cold tile bathroom like white noise. “There’s nothing to get. I was an idiot, okay? I got bored in econ and thought it would be funny. Obviously, I was wrong.”