All the Things We Do in the Dark

by Saundra Mitchell

  My phone pings: a text. I open it and there is, honest to god, a list of new rules right there. While I was making out with Hailey at the edge of the world, my mother was sitting home in the dark writing a new covenant for our house. I slipped the cage, and now she’s rebarring it.

  1. Curfew on school nights is 9:30.

  2. Curfew on weekends is 10:00.

  3. I expect you to be home on school nights. No sleepovers.

  4. I expect you to ASK PERMISSION before going out.

  5. If your grades slip, there will be consequences.

  6. You will take your driver’s test within 60 days.

  7. You will not drive my car without me present, ever.

  8. You will answer the phone when I call.

  9. Common sense is the rule.

  After I skim the list, I look up at her. “Common sense?”

  My mother stands. “You’re not just a smart girl, Ava. You’re brilliant. I expect you to know what I would and would not want you doing, and to act accordingly.”

  No tattoos, no dead girls in the woods, no stalking killers, no meeting strangers for coffee, no driving to Canada, no climbing fire towers, no speeding through the dark of night with the girl I like, no sleeping in her bed and waking up to her face instead of the sun.

  No to this whole past week. No to anything that terrifies me or creates me or makes me over into a whole new Ava. No to all the things that push the borders of my little, little world even an inch further out. No changing my map. My map remains the same.

  There’s a knot in my throat, and the ice maker on the fridge grumbles for me. It looks like Mom’s going to go to bed. That was her mic drop, but I don’t let it hit the floor. I say, “Are you just mad that I finally got a life?”

  Apparently, this was exactly the wrong response. Until now she’s been annoyed but, like, vaguely human. Now her eyes go flat and dark like a shark’s, and her shoulders rise like bat’s wings. Nighttime cuts her into angles, and she clenches her jaw.

  “You’re grounded,” she says flatly. And then, like I’m six and naughty, she jerks her head toward the stairs. “Go to bed.”

  She turns her back on me. She waits for me to walk away. This isn’t fair. This isn’t her. But when I don’t immediately move under her command, she flicks her thumb across the screen of her phone and says, “Now.”

  I wonder what happens if I don’t.

  I only wonder.

  I’m not that brave.

  WHAT LITTLE SLEEP I GET FEELS STOLEN.

  It’s snatches of time where I might be dreaming or I might be awake. Where my mother’s clenched jaw and Nick’s mechanical voice somehow blend into bad dreams that aren’t quite nightmares.

  Morning is still black; it comes on the back of an alarm and the sensation that I’m just giving up and getting out of bed, rather than waking. The weight of days, of disaster, tries to drag me back to bed. Everything is screwed up—everything except being with Hailey. And that’s gonna blow as soon as she finds out—

  I shut up my head with vicious self-talk: I’m stupid, nobody else would end up in this position. It’s just me, flawed me, top of her class and still failing at life. No matter what, I have to go to school today. I don’t know what grounded is yet. I just feel certain it will be monumentally worse if I screw up today.

  This time, I barely turn down the heat at all. I scald myself in the shower. And when I step out, there she is. Lark. Her outline isn’t so certain anymore. She’s a maiden in the mist, a hazy shade made of steam and too little sleep. When I open the shower curtain, she swirls in eddies, invisible currents, then coalesces again.

  Not this. I don’t have time for this. There’s a plan; I’ll hear from Nick soon. Lark is not here. She’s in her grave; in the woods. She’s away. Elsewhere. Not not here. This time I won’t be tempted down to the river. That was before. That was . . . fantasy. Delusion. Something.

  I wrap one towel around my body and drop another on my head. Sightless, I scrub my skin dry, hard, till it burns. I can’t see her, but now she whispers, so close she should be touching me.

  “Answer your phone,” she says.

  It’s not ringing, and I don’t owe a hallucination an explanation. I will not listen; I will not answer. Yanking the towel from my head, I yelp. There, in the mirror, J— Lark—

  Battered and beaten. A blackened, bloody stripe painted across her empty eyes. Blood mats her hair, and the deep, V-shaped gouge in her breast has turned black around the edges. This is not the girl who looked through my window or watched from the corner.

  This is the body in the woods, the bella in the wych elm, the corpse that’s rotting even though I’d like to pretend it’s not. Her lips move, soundless. But I can read what they say.

  Answer your phone.

  A coward, I turn away from the mirror. And there’s Lark, swimming in the mist again. She drifts around me like smoke, her eyes plaintive. But her mouth twists. Angry. This isn’t a ghost; this is a revenant. She comes back for a reason; she’ll stop at nothing.

  Syd once told me that people who are crazy don’t think they’re crazy. I told her you can’t say “crazy” like mental illness is all one thing. It’s not, but I have to admit that right now, there’s definitely something wrong with my brain, because ghosts aren’t real.

  The face rotting in my mirror isn’t real.

  The face accusing in the steam isn’t real.

  I throw open the bathroom door. Cold air rushes in. It burns off heat like daybreak burns off fog. The mirror rolls with condensation, and I try to dry my stupid hair without looking up from my feet. Panic heart sets in: something tight wrapped around it, beating painfully fast against it.

  This is my imagination. It has been my imagination. From the moment I found her body in the woods, anxiety and trauma and fear and stress have turned my brain into a midnight carnival. The music is bloated with a minor key, and everything shifts like in a fun house mirror.

  “Ava,” Lark says. Then her voice doubles, two speaking at once. “Ava, answer the phone.”

  “It’s not ringing!” I yell. In the far reaches of the house, I think I hear my mother move. She shouldn’t be here. It’s past time for her to be gone, but if she’s here, she can—

  What? Bring down the ban hammer a little harder? She can’t do anything. She never did anything. Pray she’s gone, girl. Get yourself together!

  I flee the bathroom, my own bathroom, in my own room, in my own house. Throwing open my closet door, I strangle a scream.

  Lark hangs there, her head tilted at an unnatural angle.

  “Your phone is ringing,” she says behind me.

  I shriek and whip around. There’s nothing behind me, and my phone sits in the middle of my bed where I threw it! It’s dark; the clock is even dimmed on the lockscreen. No notifications, no nothing.

  I slam the door and dig into my dresser instead. Socks, underwear, bra, cami, black fleece leggings, black oversized sweater, on, on, on, I just throw my clothes on so I can get out of here. No jewelry today, no makeup, none of it, just get out.

  Grabbing my phone and my bag, I sprint out of my own bedroom. My feet crash hard on the steps, and I slide on the landing. Skidding into the kitchen, I’m not even sure where I think I’m going. (Not thinking, just running.) It’s a good thing I’m alone in this house—

  I’m not.

  Lark is there, elbows propped on the island. She’s waiting for an answer. She taps her fleshless fingertips on the counter. Bone on slate, drumming a march.

  “Just calm down,” I tell myself aloud.

  Somewhere, far away ago, there was a school counselor who kept butterscotches on her desk and let me sit in the beanbag nest in the corner of her office. She told me when things were too big or too scary that it was okay to talk to myself. Just say, It’s all right. I’m safe here. I know that was After Him, but I don’t remember if it was Because of Him.

  Calm down, calm down, calm down, I think. I open the fridge to grab a Pepsi an
d slam it shut again instantly. It’s full of blood. It’s stuffed full of a body. Lark’s body, nude and degraded, wrecked and desecrated, fills the whole space.

  When I slam it shut, every bottle inside the door crashes. That’s going to be a mess, how am I going to explain that mess, how am I going to put myself back together again when there’s a dead girl in my house and she won’t stop saying, “Answer the phone, Ava”?

  It’s not ringing. It’s NOT ring—

  It’s ringing.

  I’M OUTSIDE OF ME, AND I SEE THAT I’M FROZEN. My hand clutches the door handle inside an unfamiliar car. My forehead presses against the cold glass of the window. I sit there in layers upon layers; I realize I’m wearing two pairs of underpants again.

  Nick’s car smells . . . bad. Not like body odor. Like aftershave and sweat; like the gym after the basketball team has its extra day practices. Crumpled burger wrappers festoon the back seat, little floral points of interest on top of a backpack and a stripe of duct tape holding the pleather together.

  Even though the heater blasts, threaded with the pungent scent of oil or antifreeze from the engine, I shiver. We are on our way to the cop’s house. The house where Nick thinks Lark died. My throat is so dry; I just want something to drink. My stomach is so tight; it twists in sour knots.

  “Explain to me how we know he’s not home?” I ask. It feels like asking for a bedtime story. A fairy tale: enchanted words that will make everything right with the world.

  “Smart ssssecurity system n-not very . . . smart.”

  He hands me the tablet crammed between our seats, waving a hand. He can’t really drive and talk at the same time. Instead, he lets me look—again. It’s creepy that I can sit in a moldering Toyota Corolla, easily doing seventy on the highway, and watch the insides of someone’s house.

  Thumbnails of each room nestle in the app’s toolbar. I touch one, and there’s an empty kitchen. It seems like a still photo until a cat walks through the doorway, its tail pointed at the ceiling. The whole house is wired; I can watch two different empty beds, the inside of an empty garage, an empty living room. It’s a digital dollhouse waiting to be filled with people.

  We hit town, and Nick slows to a crawl. Tourist trap towns like Walker’s Corner are known for two things: an ox load of kitsch and extremely aggressive cops with ticket quotas. As we glide through a barely woken Main Street, my heart pounds irregularly. It’s so hard to take a breath; every breath in this car makes my skin crawl.

  Could I be having a heart attack? I press my fist in the middle of my sternum. It doesn’t make the pounding stop; it just diffuses the ache. A sour pricking rises in my mouth when Nick turns at the candle shop. This is the road to Amber’s tattoo studio. This is a road I’ve been on a million times.

  We glide right past her warehouse loft; instead of left, we turn right. My head explodes with alarms. I’ve been here before; I’ve been in this alley. I’ve seen that fence from the outside.

  Without a word, Nick throws the car into park, then reaches for the tablet. His fingers fly, swift across the screen. And then the lights outside this house go off. Hazy morning darkness surrounds us. It’s not pitch but dim. I spill out of the car onto the drive.

  What if there are dogs? Vicious dogs? What if there’s a secret basement? What ifwhatifwhatifwhatif?! But if Nick has reservations, they don’t show. His spine is straight; his step, sure. When we reach the back door, he goes to the tablet again.

  All he has to do is draw a finger along a slide, and the red light on the back-door lock turns green. He nods at me to open it. I’m the one wearing gloves. Wincing, I push it open. No alarms blare. The cat doesn’t even streak out the door between our legs.

  The house just opens, abracadabra. Some citrusy scent greets us from the kitchen. We’re in the kitchen; the clock on the microwave ticks over from 6:39 to 6:40. A grumble startles me. It’s just the ice maker in the fridge resetting. Ours does it too.

  I follow Nick, because he seems to know where he’s going. How much time has he spent watching them secretly through their own cameras? Does he watch them sleep? Has he seen them stripped for a shower when they thought they were alone? My innards recoil at that thought. Being seen, vulnerable and ignorant, through the system that’s supposed to keep them safe.

  But if Lark’s killer lives here, he doesn’t deserve to be safe.

  He doesn’t deserve to watch the playoffs in one of those La-Z-Boys in the living room. He doesn’t deserve nice meals in that kitchen; he shouldn’t get comfort and care and warmth and happiness. He deserves none of that. Tick by tick, righteous anger melts away my anxiety.

  Down a long wallpapered hallway lies our destination.

  A bedroom, crammed tight with a bed too big for the space. Walls obscured by posters of half-naked women and half-million-dollar cars. Lotion on the headboard, mountains of clothes on the floor. This room is musky and feral, and I don’t want to be trapped in it.

  Nick goes straight for the laptop in the middle of the bed. I wouldn’t touch that comforter in a hazmat suit, but he sits down like he’s at home. As he rifles through this guy’s digital bedroom, I’m stuck looking through the real thing.

  I have a list on my phone; Nick texted me before he picked me up. Lark’s necklace is missing: a half-moon charm with a blue stone in it, delicate on a silver chain. A snake ring, one that climbs the finger, its silver tongue lapping at the knuckles. Her wallet, her ID—the things he didn’t find in the dumpster.

  As Nick takes pictures of the laptop screen, I kick through the crap on the floor. I hate this. I hate this room. I hate everything about it. And what I hate most is that Lark might have spent her last night on earth in here.

  I freeze when I kick over some jeans to reveal a plaid shirt. It looks just like the one she wore when I saw her on the side of the road.

  (basket case)

  But when I kick it over, I realize it’s not a shirt at all. It’s a bandana or something, with a screen-printed band logo. My head pounds as the adrenaline ebbs briefly. Turning in the narrow space, I edge around the bed to his side tables. They have drawers, and they’re piled high with all kinds of garbage.

  There’s an ashtray overflowing and another ashtray full of change, not so overflowing. I don’t care that I’m wearing gloves; I don’t want to touch anything. I use the edge of a magazine to move things aside. Two empty Mountain Dew cans topple, exposing a bottle of Tylenol—and a necklace.

  A silver necklace with a half-moon charm on it.

  Claws clutch at my heart. That’s proof. That’s evidence she was here. Lark was here, alone, with this guy, and who takes off a necklace when they’re just sitting around and visiting? I mean, who even takes off a necklace when they’re hooking up? I lean down to get a better look: the chain is broken.

  “Nick,” I whisper. I point.

  His grim expression darkens. He mimes a finger on a camera. Take a picture, the gesture says. I do, but I have to take it three times because my hands shake. This is real, this is really real, and she stood here, she was hurt here, she was taken apart—here. I’m standing in the last traces of her life. I’m the heat that drains from her body.

  A screaming whirlwind of crows fills my head. This whole house shifts around me. It closes in. This too-full room is too tight. The orange freshness smells like the dust they drop on vomit at school.

  Through tears, I take more pictures of the necklace. I fight every muscle in my body to stay still. My skin wants to peel off; my bones will run away if I let them. What have I done? How I did I end up here?

  “Look sharp.”

  My neck crackles when I whip around to look. The windows are still dark, and Lark frames herself in them. She’s a horror, but her voice is an urgent bell. Her head rolls onto her shoulder as she gestures toward the outside.

  “He’s coming.”

  I SNATCH THE TABLET OFF THE BED, AND SHE’S right. There’s a truck in front of the house. Its headlights linger, and a slender silhouette of a man
approaches the front door. I can’t see his face. That doesn’t matter. He belongs here; I don’t. We don’t.

  Too hard, I grab Nick’s arm and shake him. I shove the tablet under his nose, and then I whisper, “We have to get out of here.”

  Now we’re both live wires. Nick takes a couple more pictures and then rolls off the bed. He’s fast (I already knew that) faster than me (knew that, too). He reaches back into the room and grabs me. I don’t know how we’re going to get out.

  This place is a ranch, one long hallway, basically. Burning, I turn in place until Nick puts his hands on me again. They’re hard and alien and his grip crushes when he drags me backward into the bathroom. I start to flail. It’s a reflex; his arms tight around me. The stink of his aftershave. Nonononono, screams in my heart and my blood and my brains.

  “Let go of me,” I growl, elbowing back against him. “Let go!”

  He releases me and hisses. I think he’s trying to say, Shut up, but he just can’t get past the “shhhhh.” His breath still falls on the back of my neck. It’s a tiny bathroom, doesn’t even have a tub. We’re trapped.

  We’re trapped, we’re trapped.

  Footsteps fall in the hallway. The cat casts out a greeting yowl. And behind me, there’s a metallic click. This is a cop’s house! This is a killer’s house! What do cops and killers have in common?!

  Gun. He has a gun.

  Instantly, I act. This won’t be for nothing. I’m gonna lean into it. A dead girl led me here. A dead girl warned me to get out. I’m not gonna let her down. Whatever happens next, to me, maybe I deserve it. But she didn’t. All she did was meet up with a boy who turned out to be a beast.

  Turning, I yank off my backpack and unzip it. I shove in the tablet and my phone. I tell Nick, low and close to his face, “Your phone, put it in there. Put everything in there!”

  He hesitates, baffled. I point past him, to the small window above the toilet. Throw the backpack out, I say with a glare. Backpack first! If we get caught, and get