All the Things We Do in the Dark

by Saundra Mitchell

  Some of the trees are broken, the branches, the lowest branches, and that’s where, I think, I ran back up to the road yesterday. I’m numb, staring, watching him. I float until he frees a hand and reaches down.

  “Hey!” I yell.

  His head snaps up. The hood of his coat falls back. More details. Wavy blond hair, short on the sides. Cut neat around his ears and against the nape of his neck. His eyes widen.

  Two eternal seconds and we both stand in place, staring at each other.

  Then he runs.

  “Stop!” My cry cracks the air like gunshot as I bolt after him.

  Cutting up through the trees, he doesn’t look back—grabs branches for balance and scuttles up the ridge. He leaves a deep furrow for me to follow, but it’s like running in a dream. Everything is slow, and fighting harder makes me slower.

  He gets farther away, six steps for three of mine. I will catch him. I have to; I have to hold him down. Make him answer; make him pay.

  My blood runs faster, hotter in my veins. The heat loosens me up, and my mouth is wet. It’s like my teeth are sharper. It’s a hunt, and my body doesn’t understand that only bad people chase prey in the twenty-first century.

  Except he is my prey. Because of what he did. What he must have done. (Like what he did to me. Not him but someone like him. Just like him.)

  I want to hit him. I want to hurt him.

  When I scream this time, it feels like something breaks in my throat. “Stop!”

  Instead, he runs faster. He’s sleek and swift, and starting to blend into the trees.

  I put my head down and try to cut the distance between us. A thousand pinprick sunrises sting my cheeks; it feels like every capillary has burst. My ears are full of drums, and my gut is knotted tight. I have to catch him, and when I catch him, I’m going to

  (eat him all up)

  (my, what big eyes you have . . .)

  I don’t know what I’m going to do, and that single, distracting thought steals my balance. The roots and brambles beneath the pines catch my ankles and I fall, again. Just like before, because the forest is dark and deep and its dangers never change.

  I scrabble back to my feet, but two more steps and I fall again. Tears of frustration spill over. I push up on all fours. I don’t try to stand.

  The crush of his feet, the sound of his jeans rasping as he runs, all fade away. He’s gone. I slump and roll onto my back. Above me, the thick pines and tangled, skeletal birches make a strange canopy.

  Shaking all over, I rake a snow-caked hand beneath my nose to stop the running. I choose my next breath, drawing it deep and hard until my lungs ache with it.

  That boy. He hurt

  (murdered)

  my Jane,

  and I let him get away.

  I’m not strong. I’m not fleet. I’m not a predator. I’m just an idiot rabbit who didn’t think about what would happen if she caught the wolf.

  WITH MY TEETH, I PULL OFF MY GLOVES AS I WALK into town. Town is full of kitsch, but it’s also full of boutique coffee shops and warm places. I need warm. My hands are so cold, my phone barely recognizes my touch. I’m lucky that autocorrect keeps a record of my consistency.

  Knock knock Syd. Now you say who’s there.

  She replies, Who’s there?

  Banana.

  There’s a pause, and then she texts back, Lol don’t start with me, heifer. What were you doing on the bus?

  Getting a ride, duh. Are you busy right now?

  Yeah, kinda. What’s up?

  I could tell her. Could I tell her? If I did, she’d help me find the guy who got away. We’d drive around in her stepdad’s Jeep, treating it like the Mystery Machine. Syd and Ava’s Hardcore Detective Agency. We solve murders with style.

  Light glances across the screen of my phone, and I see Jane reflected there. She makes this knowing, amused face as she shakes her head.

  No.

  She means, No, you can’t tell. Not Syd, not anybody.

  It’s personal and confidential. Our friendship belongs in a sacred vault, and it needs to stay there. The chasm between the real world and our relationship is too wide. Too sharp, too dangerous.

  All of a sudden, I want to cry. Jane’s out there in the woods, all alone. It’s cold and it’s dark, and I’m not the only one who knows where she is. What was he going to do, when he reached for her? Was he going to touch her again? Was he—

  I stuff that box down, fast and hard. Some things, I don’t need to think. I don’t need to ever, ever think. I cross the bridge into town, and rub my fingers against my jeans to warm them.

  You there? Syd asks.

  Yeah. I let autocorrect tell Syd, Sorry. Just bored.

  K, talk later. Remind me to tell you about my physics project with laurel collins <3 <3

  K, I say, and stuff my phone back in my poorly repaired pocket. It rests snugly against the staples, and I put my gloves back on. Physics project. Sounds more like a new conquest to me. That’s good, though. It’s good. Syd is always happiest when she’s basking in something (someone) new.

  And now I texted her first. And she’s busy.

  So that absolves me of my next move.

  STRICKLAND’S GYM USED TO BE A DOLL SHOP. Rows and rows of dolls suffocated in boxes or breathing free on shelves. They were the creepy porcelain kind, with dead eyes and old-fashioned ruffles. Their feet dangled. The lace on their sleeves hid their hands.

  You can’t trust someone if you can’t see their hands.

  My mother used to ask if I wanted to go in, and I always refused. I wonder if she knew why. If she realized that I felt all those dead eyes on me when I got close, that the powdery smell of the air made me sick to my stomach. She must not have. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have kept asking.

  Anyway, I guess there’s only so big a market for scary, possessed, potential murder dolls, because the place went out of business a couple of years ago, and this gym popped up inside it.

  Standing outside, I hold two cups of coffee and watch Hailey through the glass.

  She rubs her hands together and squares her shoulders. In one smooth stroke, she dips down and picks up a barbell, then hefts it up. Her arms don’t tremble when she holds it at chest level. The muscles shift gracefully when she raises the weight over her head.

  Her whole body is studied action under the effort. It’s not just her arms holding the barbells aloft. It’s strength in her hips and thighs that tighten above calves that curve dramatically. Her face is studied and smooth, but the muscles in her neck stand out in relief.

  I’m not sure how long she holds that pose, but it’s almost a shock when the barbell comes down. It bounces on the ground and Hailey rises up, all soft curves once more.

  Creeper, I call myself, and open the gym door.

  Humid, human heat pours over me. I smell bodies and effort and iron. Grunts and clangs compete beneath the classic rock stylings spilling out of tall speakers in the corners. Everywhere that isn’t weights is glass; it’s mirrors.

  Confronted by myself at every angle, I feel elbowy and out of place. No one looks at me, but if they did, they’d see my scar first and then cut through my clothes down to my skin. They’d know my body isn’t sculpted like an ancient Greek kouros; I’m a smooth-angled, androgynous kore at best.

  Which is to say, I don’t belong here; I’m the wrong shape, and I’m the genius who thought somebody working out might want a hot coffee.

  (Stupid, stupid, stupid.)

  Hailey catches sight of me in her wall o’ scrutiny. She smiles, but she looks confused, too. She steps back from the barbell. Sweat makes her glow, her skin interrupted twice: black spandex boy shorts and a black spandex half shirt. She scrubs her face with a black towel, then turns toward me. “This is a surprise.”

  “Bad surprise?” I ask, stuck in place in my thick coat and double-cup grip.

  Velcro crackles when she peels off her fingerless gloves. She crackles as she looks me over. “Not at all.”

  “I
was in town,” I say. (Truthfully, I was in town. Right after I ran through the woods. Like I said, I’m an honest liar. A piece of the truth, always a piece.) Then I say, as if it’s not obvious, “I brought you a useless coffee.”

  That makes Hailey laugh. Her nose crinkles, gathering up faint freckles at the bridge. Her front teeth are flat, and the canines kind of stick out, and the crookedness of her smile makes it perfect. “I was just thinking that I could go for a useless coffee.”

  I don’t offer her the cup, but I curl mine against my chest. “Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “It’s okay,” she says. “It’s sweet.”

  The air is too thick to breathe. Suddenly, I’m aware of the sweat caught between my clothes and my skin. My coat turns my body into a sauna, and I’m swimming in my own steam. It’s sweet rattles in my head and shakes down my bones. Not nice or funny or any of those other friendly, distancing words. Sweet.

  Everything is slow motion around Hailey. I watch her in the mirror as she loosens her hair and shakes it out, only to tie it up again. While she tells me about her workout, I watch the nape of her neck in the glass. I memorize the shape of her hair when it’s pulled tight.

  She pulls on a hoodie. Right in front of me, she steps into sweatpants produced from her gym bag. In go her gloves, her wristbands; one pair of shoes traded for another.

  Wiping down the barbells, Hailey says, “I’m heading out; do you want a ride?”

  Jane stands beside me in the mirror. A black line runs through her, the space between one panel and another. She’s uneven, right side higher than the left, the buttons on her jacket out of place against the holes. She stares at me: Make up your mind, loser.

  “That would be great,” I say.

  I TEXT MY MOTHER, Out with Hailey.

  She doesn’t reply for a long time, and I don’t sit on top of my phone waiting for it, either. It’s so cold out that Hailey makes her own windows fog up. It’s the heat from working out still radiating from her body. She cracks a window. The wind immediately steals a lock of her hair.

  Out of nowhere, I say, “I love driving when it’s getting dark. It feels like flying.”

  “I dream about flying,” Hailey says.

  “Are you in something? To do the flying, I mean. Like a plane or a car—cars don’t fly, but you know what I mean.”

  She smiles the softest smile. It looks like a dream, like she just stepped out of sleep. “No, it’s just me. Sometimes I’m standing on a cliff, and the ocean is like, ‘Jump.’ And I’m afraid, because of the rocks, you know? But the ocean is like, ‘If you fall, I’ll catch you.’ So I jump. And I don’t fall.”

  That dream, out in the world, feels so real right now. My skin prickles, the way it does when I stand close to the water when it’s cold and dark and wide.

  We skim a curve, the sunset glimmering through the reach of leafless trees. There’s no road, no sky, nothing but speed. Nothing but Hailey’s hair, flying free in the wind, and the cold on my face. With a thin breath, I say, “That . . . is the best dream ever.”

  “It’s sad to wake up,” she says. “Finding out it’s not real.”

  Dreams crack like thin ice, but this—this moment—can go on, if we let it.

  I want to stay right here, her perfume clinging to my hair. Flying into twilight, going nowhere. I want it like I want food and sleep and new books and new ink. “You want to keep driving?” I ask.

  Hailey glances at me, a flash, a light. Then her eyes are back on the road, fixed and certain. “I always wondered what was at the end of this road, this one up here.”

  “Take it.”

  The turn signal glows on the snow. The tires groan; we cut the corner short, and a fir brushes the door like a car wash.

  This road isn’t plowed like the main one. There are probably two lanes on a good day, but right now, there’s a messy rut to follow, the path cleared by other drivers during the day.

  Hailey slows, putting her hand on the gearshift. I don’t drive, but I’ve seen my mom do it a thousand times. Even an automatic has first and second gear, ideal for control when the snow is high and the roads are slick.

  Trees grow up and over this road. Barely breathing and full of strange expectations, I take it in. Bare limbs cast a net between the ground and the stars. The pines fill in between, gathering dark. It’s a tunnel, one that lives and shifts and breathes. As we venture deeper into it, I feel the real world slip away.

  “It looks like a holloway,” I murmur.

  The snow deepens; Hailey shifts into second. “What’s that?”

  “Old roads. The oldest roads . . . trails walked before cities. Time passed, new roads were built, you know. But that old trail is so worn, it’s lower than the ground on either side. Everything grows up around it. Ancient trees that spread their branches so far overhead it looks like . . .”

  “Like this.” Hailey smiles.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Just like this.”

  I’m breathless as the road narrows. Our flight lands, and we creep down the middle of the road. The dark presses in, but we press back. Nothing can stop us; this is an adventure. Our journey into Hades, to see if we can return without looking back. Our march toward Russia in winter. Nobody’s come back before, but is that really a good reason to stay home?

  “Do you see that?” Hailey asks.

  Leaning forward, I squint into the distance. For a while now, I haven’t seen anything but the curve of Hailey’s lower lip in the dark. It takes me a second to figure out what she means, but then I see it.

  I would have mistaken it for a fall of trees, if I’d seen it at all. Spindly legs stretch above the trees on a high point, crosshatched with uneven strokes. The shape swirls into my head, assembling itself until I recognize it.

  “Oh,” I say, still leaning forward. “I think it’s an old fire tower.”

  “Seriously?”

  She sounds awed and excited. And without warning, she drops the Bug into first. The car shudders a little as we veer toward a nonexistent shoulder. It takes no effort to stop; we’re pointing up an incline and we were going four miles an hour anyway.

  Hailey crunches the parking brake into position, then opens her door. When she turns toward me, the wind sighs behind her and her hair floats loose around her face. She says, “Come on,” and backs out of the car.

  There’s no way I can open my door. Hailey knows that; she leans back in and offers me a hand. Stripping off my seat belt, I hesitate, then reach out. Beneath a soft knit glove, Hailey’s hand is sure and strong. Her fingers close around mine, and she waits to pull until I’ve hefted myself over the gearshift and brake. She pulls me to my feet smoothly.

  Our bodies collide, not hard. Just on a thermonuclear scale, my atoms and her atoms brushing and expanding.

  It’s possible I step out of the way of the door; equally possible that she pulls me out of the way. Either way, she closes it, then takes off toward the fire tower. I trail her. She hasn’t let go of my hand; I don’t want her to.

  It’s full dark now. The sky still wears that almost purple edging, the sun’s last signature after setting. I’m not sure where the moon is, but it must be out. It must be bright. The snow glows, and it can’t do that without a light to reflect.

  The fire tower is deeper in the woods and farther up the hill than it seemed at first. It’s a long run through Wonderland to get to it. We feel very late to an important date.

  The trees actually fall away when we reach the peak with the tower. The ground around it is thick with snow—all from last night. We stop at the edge of the clearing, shoulder to shoulder, elbow

  (Things I Can)

  to elbow, hands linked. Both of us tip our heads back at the same time. A narrow flight of stairs resolves into a ladder. That ladder leads into a little box, a little house on stilts in the middle of nowhere.

  Hailey and I breathe hard.

  “Let’s climb it,” I say recklessly.

  Hailey looks to me. She doesn
’t ask, “Are you sure?” She doesn’t protest, “We probably shouldn’t.” No, her eyes burn bright, and she smiles in wonder. Like maybe she was thinking the same thing, and I’m just the one who said the words out loud. Like maybe this is as close to flying as we’ll both get outside our dreams.

  Since I cast the words into the air, I squeeze her hand and go first. There’s a little gate at the bottom of the stairs, but it’s not locked. Just a little latch that lifts easily, and I step onto the platform from the bottom.

  Clutching both rails, I take a couple steps. Then I stop and jump up and down. My heart all but explodes in my chest. This is crazy; this is dangerous. Except, it doesn’t seem dangerous, and I look back at Hailey, exhilarated. “Sturdy.”

  “Go, go, go,” she says. She plants a hand in the middle of my back.

  She doesn’t push, but I move anyway. The stairs are narrow, barely wider than my hips. They cage me in, tight and safe as I ascend. I get dizzy when they double back on themselves, then back again, a wide spiral almost to the top of the tower.

  When they stop, it’s on a platform where the ladder rests. The wind pulls harder here. The tower sways. For the first time, I taste fear.

  It’s like climbing a pine tree. The branches are so close together at the bottom, so thick. They’re practically steps; it feels like you could walk on up. But then you get higher; the trunk grows thinner. The wind kicks up and everything sways. You sway; the spindle snaps.

  That’s when you realize, you don’t climb pines! They bend. They break. You hit every branch on the way down. But I refuse to think about how far down the ground is. Hailey’s at my heels, and all I want to do is climb on.

  At the top of the ladder, a hatch. I have to hang on to a rung with one hand and twist a bolt with the other to get it open. The hatch gives, but it’s still heavy. Bowing my head, I press against it with my shoulder and use my body to lever it open. I clamber into an attic. When I get to my feet, I duck preemptively. I turn back and offer Hailey my hand this time.