Shades of Darkness

by A. R. Kahler

  “Not to be rude, but I kind of doubt that.” It came out a lot bitchier than I’d intended, but this wasn’t an area I wanted to tread through right now. Not with Brad’s touch still lingering on my shoulder.

  “Everyone has a past, Kaira,” he said. His eyes didn’t waver from mine when he said it. His face was so close, I could smell the cardamom on his breath, feel a tinge of static. “You’re not the only one with ghosts.”

  “Sorry,” I said. I looked down to my cup. “It’s just . . . it’s been rough. This sort of thing hits a little too close to home.”

  “I know,” he replied. “It does for me too.” He paused, sipped his tea. When he spoke again, he seemed unsure. He didn’t look at me at all. “Thanks for taking me in,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Exactly what I said. I’ve only known you a few days, but I appreciate how kind you guys have been. Especially in light of . . . I mean, it’s been really nice. I like you. Both of you.”

  I’d never met a straight boy who was willing to talk about emotions. It was a complete one-eighty from Brad. Everything about him is a complete one-eighty from Brad. And then I looked at him—really looked. The strong profile, the scruff, the hazel eyes so intently fixed on the table of chatting college kids. That, and the little things I hadn’t noticed before: the slight slump to his shoulders, the way he bit the inside of his lower lip, the lithe fingers wrapped around his teacup. He wasn’t stoic and distant and attractive in that self-assured way.

  He’s not like Brad, I realized. And he never will be.

  I don’t know why I wanted to open up then. Maybe I was too raw from the breakdown. Maybe I just wanted the idea of comfort. Or maybe Ethan was right—maybe Chris was my type. Maybe I just hadn’t let myself see it.

  “You’re not too bad yourself, kid,” I replied.

  He laughed. His eyes darted to me, and yes, my chest felt warm as my stomach flipped and I had to look down to my cup to keep from blushing.

  “You say the weirdest shit,” he said.

  “I know,” I replied. “You’d better get used to it.”

  “Already am,” he replied. I looked over, caught just the edge of his grin, and I knew that look—that tentative slight lean.

  And I don’t know why I wanted to lean in, to close that gap, to connect to the gravity. Maybe it was masochism or something else, but I felt the desire take hold, snaring me somewhere behind my heart, pulling me forward . . . at least until Ethan came over and sat down on the cask we’d reserved with his portfolio.

  “It’s real shitty out there,” he said, either oblivious to or ignoring the way Chris and I quickly leaned back from each other. “In case you were wondering.”

  “How’s Oliver?” I asked.

  “He’s all right. I mean, okay, he’s panicking about his upcoming solo performance. In his words, he’s ‘worried he isn’t interpreting the piece the way his composer expects.’ Whatever that means.” He sighed and picked up his mug of tea, which was still steaming. “Sometimes I swear my conversations would make more sense if I was dating another visual artist.”

  His eyes flickered between the two of us, not at all discreet. I could have slapped him.

  “Then you gotta worry about artistic competition getting in the middle of things,” I said. I couldn’t tell if I was trying to snub whatever potential Chris had or what, but the situation was suddenly way too awkward for my liking. I need to have a talk with that boy.

  “I dunno. Could be kinda hot,” Ethan said with a grin. He looked at Chris. “What do you think? Date within the field or no?”

  I knew Ethan was just trying to heal things the way he worked best—by making light of them. He knew I’d dated back home, knew that it had gone horribly wrong and that was why I wasn’t dating anymore. And he knew that was why I had the panic attacks, the moments of sheer terror. This was his way of saying he understood and it was okay. But he didn’t fully understand. I couldn’t move forward—I couldn’t pretend it was okay. All I could do was try to ignore it. Brad had burrowed his way deep inside me, and the memory of him wouldn’t let go. Now that the strange moment between Chris and me was over, I couldn’t believe I’d actually almost leaned in and tried to kiss him.

  Rule number one: Never fall in love.

  “I dunno,” Chris said after a moment. “Guess it just depends on the situation.”

  Ethan nodded sagely over his cup at me.

  “Love is strange,” he finally said. “I hear it heals all wounds.”

  “That’s time,” I replied. “And that’s also an outright lie.”

  He was so lucky the place was crowded. Otherwise, he’d have a bruise to explain to Oliver.

  • • •

  The rest of the evening was spent chatting about school and faculty and what we missed about being a normal teenager—mainly, being able to leave the house after ten, and not having your Internet shut off at eleven. And not always being stressed about homework.

  It was, for all intents and purposes, a very short list.

  Unsurprisingly, no work got done. We kept waiting for a table to open up but, like us, no one seemed to want to leave and head out into the storm. So we stayed there, at our little bench in the corner, chatting about normal high school things for a few hours, and it felt . . . well, it felt nice. It reminded me of the life I’d given up in coming here: afternoons gossiping and talking about teachers or students, trips to cafés that didn’t involve work. And yeah, there was something nice about sharing a bench with a boy who wasn’t also interested in boys.

  We headed back to campus at seven. I made sure to drop by the drugstore for cookies and popcorn and a case of cherry soda I knew Elisa would say I shouldn’t have gotten because she was cutting back on sugar but would drink anyway. It was one of those days, and I had a feeling it would be one of those days for a very long time.

  I parted ways with the boys to head back to my room. Chris lingered when I hugged Ethan good-bye, but I just patted Chris on the shoulder and told them I’d see them both at breakfast. I was too distracted to give much thought to the apparent disappointment in Chris’s eyes when I walked away; I couldn’t focus on anything besides the birds. Even in the snow that whipped nearly sideways, crows lined the power lines like onyx sentinels, all of them silent and still and watching. It made me shiver worse than the cold.

  Having a bodyguard is one thing. Having one when you don’t know why you need protecting is another.

  Elisa wasn’t in the room, so I left the snacks on top of her bed with a little heart scribbled on a Post-it note. As had been drilled into my head the first day here: Presentation is everything. But I didn’t take off my boots or coat. There was an hour left before sign-in and the very idea of sitting in here and doing homework or staring at a wall made me claustrophobic. Going outside was worse, though. I glanced to my pillow. The crystal sat there, like a key to a large and imposing door—one that might hold a sack of gold or a vicious chimera. I knew, deep down, that I needed to take it, but the very thought made my entire body clamp up, constricted in a terrible vise. That crystal was keeping the nightmares at bay, but maybe that’s precisely where I was supposed to venture.

  After all, hadn’t the darkness always been my second home? I’d spent the entire day trying to ignore the shadow hovering behind my shoulder. Mandy was dead. Suicide. Nothing strange beyond the fact that it was sudden and unexpected, and wasn’t that how all suicides were? Always the ones you least expected—always the ones who seemed the happiest on the outside. It was human. Horrible, but human.

  So why couldn’t I force out Brad’s image? And why were the crows so adamant about making themselves known?

  I wished I could lie and convince myself I didn’t already know the answer. That this was all just in my head and I was insane and that was perfectly fine. Because being insane was better than this alternative.

  Munin wanted to talk.

  And if he wanted to talk, I needed to listen. Never ignore an ome
n. Especially not from him.

  A crow fluttered past the window then, and that was enough to tell me I needed to get out of here. I didn’t want to sit around and think until Elisa came back to distract me. I didn’t want to wonder if I should put the crystal on my altar so I could dream. I didn’t want to be toying with these thoughts—I wanted to be normal, to be focusing on work and graduation and maybe even Chris. I didn’t want to let my past catch up with me. I grabbed my coat and headed for the arts building. I’d been doing enough sitting around for one day and I wanted to see the new senior thesis show. I wanted to see if Mandy had left her mark, and if it would lend any clue as to why she’d taken her own life. Mostly, though, I just didn’t want to be alone with myself. Art was a good enough distraction, even if I wasn’t making it.

  I wandered through the empty dorm lobby and out into the snow. In the five minutes I was inside, the weather had gotten worse. Snow whipped up the drive and turned everything an apocalyptic grayscale. The few kids who were out were huddled and running from one building to another. Everything was a shifting mass of black and white—even the buildings looked like they were moving through the flurries of snow. The only still objects were the crows on the power lines. They sat silently the entire walk up the drive to the visual arts building. When I opened the front door, they exploded out into the night in a black cloud, their caws lost to the whistle of wind and torrent of snow.

  As usual, stepping into the visual arts building was like stepping back home. The warmth, the scent, the lighting . . . it made it easier to forget the crazy shit happening outside. This place was like a womb for creativity, a safe haven. It was my church. Though there was something eerie about entering it tonight. Home was haunted.

  There, in the entryway and all down the hall, were Mandy’s ceramic origami birds.

  They hung from fishing line in beautiful clouds along the ceiling; others rested on pedestals in flocks. Some even squatted along the floor, these ones with broken wings and bits of clay shattered along the tile.

  It took my breath away. Literally.

  I paused in the entry and stared at the hundreds of birds and felt tears well in the corners of my eyes as my breath caught in my throat. This was beyond beautiful. And hadn’t she said she was only making a hundred? How had she produced so many, and to such a beautiful extent? There had to be at least five hundred in here.

  I walked slowly, examining every corner. The birds dangled and spun and stared into space, each folded wing a wish, a prayer. They seemed to whisper to one another in the emptiness, filling the space with her final thoughts, her devotion.

  Whether intentional or not, she had created her own memorial. And it was more perfect than anything we could have done in her honor.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” I looked over to where Jonathan was walking out of a side hallway, holding Helen’s hand. I’d never seen the two of them together, but there had been rumors they were dating. I couldn’t blame them. Jonathan was hot in that young-tattooed-professor sort of way, and Helen would always be the most beautiful badass painter I knew.

  “Stunning,” I replied. Helen smiled sadly.

  “She was a prodigy,” Helen said. “It’s such a shame.”

  “But oddly poignant,” Jonathan said, staring up at the birds. “In Egyptian mythology it was believed there were three aspects to the soul: the akh, the ka, and the ba. The ka was what we’d traditionally see as a soul, but the ba was seen as a little bird with a human head, and it could leave the tomb and wander the world. It was the soul’s messenger, in a way, but it always needed to return to the body. There’s a sort of beauty to this being Mandy’s last piece. Like she was creating a fleet of vessels for her own eternal flight.”

  “I don’t know if that’s the way to talk to her about this,” Helen said.

  Jonathan looked at me, considering. “Something tells me Kaira’s not one to shy from the darker sides of life. It’s healthy. It reminds us of the power of beauty and light.”

  “Did . . . did she finish all this herself?” I asked, gesturing to the birds. I didn’t want to be caught in the middle of their lover’s quarrel, and I both agreed and disagreed with Helen. It didn’t seem right to talk about Mandy’s suicide in terms of art, but then . . . maybe it helped place it in a larger context. Maybe it put meaning to something that seemed so terrible. Or maybe thinking about it like that was disrespectful. I didn’t know her well enough to say.

  “She did,” Helen replied. She cast one last disapproving look at Jonathan. “Was in here all weekend working on it. I brought her coffee a few times.”

  “And she never mentioned anything?”

  Helen shook her head. Jonathan wrapped an arm around her.

  “Are you doing okay, Kaira?” he asked. His voice wasn’t the reserved, aloof tone of the teachers I’d had back in public high; he sounded like he actually cared, and the look in his eyes said the same.

  “Yeah. Just still in shock, I think.”

  “Understandable. It’ll be a while before life returns to normal. Or, well, its new version of normal.” He looked down at his feet, then to me. “If you need to talk, ever, you know how to find me. I don’t know if us advisers are also supposed to work as counselors, but I’ll always be here if you need someone to listen. And I promise not to bring up the Egyptian afterlife again.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Same goes for me,” Helen replied. “You know I’m always here for you, espresso machine and all. And seriously, if you need extra time to get your thesis done, don’t stress, okay? You can always put it off. We understand this is a trying time.”

  “Thanks,” I said again. The real thankful part came when they walked by me. As great as they were, I didn’t want to be talking about death or homework or mythology, which felt like some strange mix of the two. I wanted to have a few moments with Mandy’s work. Jonathan put a hand on my shoulder as he passed.

  “I’ve put together a little study group,” he said. “I know it’s probably the last thing you want to think about right now, but I’d love for you to join. They’re a good group, very supportive—you might find having a group of like-minded peers helpful in these rough times.”

  I looked from the cranes to him, wondering why in the world he’d mention studying right now.

  “You don’t need to decide now. Just think of it is a second family opening its doors. Standing offer.”

  Then, with one more glance to the birds, the two of them walked out into the night, hands held and coats flapping in the snow. I turned back to the display and let the rest of the world fall away.

  Thoughts of Jonathan’s offer vanished into clay dust. I felt like I was floating, surrounded by clouds of paper and ceramics. It didn’t make sense. None of this. It was all one giant knot on the verge of unraveling, but there was nothing I could do or say to make it happen any faster. All I knew was that Mandy was dead and Munin was back and Brad wouldn’t shut up and my life—so carefully constructed, so perfect in its detail—was derailing. I wasn’t supposed to be falling for someone. I wasn’t supposed to remember how Brad’s hands felt, how the blade felt. I was supposed to be past this. I had moved on.

  I fell to my knees.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. I didn’t know if I was talking to Mandy or myself.

  The birds turned slowly. Maybe it was the breeze, maybe it was her ba drifting on to the land of the dead. Or maybe, like me, she was stuck here, mingling in the shadows, tethered to a past that wouldn’t quite let go.

  The rest of the week passed by in a fugue. Everything seemed muted—the colors, the conversations, the weather. It snowed fitfully every night, and every morning I’d wake up from blank dreams to bird feet imprinted on the windowsill. If Elisa ever noticed the watcher, she said nothing, though she did start closing the curtains at night. I was completely fine with that. The farther I was from the birds, the better. If only I could have gotten them to leave me alone during the day.

  As for the dreams
, well . . . I never took the crystal from under my pillow, and if I did dream, I didn’t remember. It felt like staring in the other direction while a train barreled down the rails, but I was oddly okay with it. I didn’t want to know when it was going to hit. I’d avoided the dreams and the shadows before. I could do it again.

  I didn’t have any other choice.

  With my thesis closing in, I didn’t hang out with Chris too often, unless he was joining me and Ethan in our work parties. And, seeing as they were presenting at the same time, they were often neck-deep in work and too distracted to talk in the first place. I only caught glimpses of Chris’s project, but I didn’t try to dig too deep. I didn’t have time.

  It was strange, really, the way life kicked back into motion. It was like a buoy pulled from the sea: Something was missing, something had forever inextricably, immeasurably changed the fabric of life, but life just surged back in and resumed its process. Kids continued to stress. Concerts and open mics were planned. In the corner of my mind, in every class and every late-night homework session, there was a voice screaming that this wasn’t right, that something—someone—was missing, and things should have felt more different than they did.

  But they didn’t. And that made everything feel like a waking dream.

  Jonathan’s classes weren’t helping. Whether by design or by chance, we started discussing the rituals and folklore surrounding funerary rites in Nordic countries. If I never had to listen to another discussion on the Valkyries and Valhalla and Hel, I’d be happy. He hadn’t mentioned the study group again, and I didn’t broach the subject. I had more than enough on my plate with finishing my thesis and keeping the voices in my head from regaining control. Being normal was difficult in and of itself. I didn’t need to join a group of people exploring what I so vehemently wanted to avoid.

  Every day I got just a little bit closer to being finished with my thesis. The cards I was displaying were all done, save for a few minor adjustments, and I knew I could have had the whole thing finished by now if I’d wanted. But I didn’t. I would lay out the cards on my bed and stare at them and panic or feel a small note of pride. I couldn’t bring myself to say they were done. I couldn’t do the finishing touches, and it took a lot of self-control not to throw them all out and claim that I needed to start over and put off my thesis until the very end. I kept finding things I wanted to change. I kept finding reasons to keep working.