Even on the Darkest Night

by Allie Martin

  "I don't want you to die, though. That would really ruin my night..." She smirks and squeezes my forearm. Sarah leans forward to gawk at us, but soon she's smiling, too. Lane is not.

  "Fine. I have butterfly sutures at my place. Your other option is to come with me and stay under my observation. If I think you have a concussion or any damage whatsoever, I'm taking you to the hospital no matter how you feel about it." His glare is hard.

  "Okay, fine." I force my aching muscles up. I don't often have seizures anymore. Not since the surgery. But go figure, it's in front of Jordan. I twist my wrist where his phone number is still scrawled across my skin. I'm not ready for him to disappear. I trace the numbers on my arm. I'm not ready to let go.

  "If there is one speck of dirt in that cut, Evan." Lane points at me, and I nod. I don't want to go to the hospital, but I'm also not an idiot.

  “I’m coming too,” Sarah says, standing and linking her arm through mine. My favorite singer saw me have a seizure, freak out on a guy I’m in a fake relationship with, and still doesn’t take off. Surreal doesn’t even begin to describe this night.

  Lane glances at Sarah in a way that screams without using words. They have an unfinished history, and the way his eyes shadow over hits me with wildly curiousity. But with me and Jordan, and Nat’s issues with Aaron, I don’t have time to add one more messed up love story to my list.

  Lane flips the keys in his hand and shrugs. The keyless entry causes the SUV to beep loudly as the doors unlock, and Lane mumbles something about babysitting as he moves around to the driver side.

  I open the back door and slide in followed by Nat. Hector sprints across the parking lot and jumps in on her other side. “I’m riding with you guys.”

  Sarah turns in the front seat, and Lane seems almost relieved.

  “What are the other guys doing?” Sarah asks, and Hector shrugs.

  “Rick went back for that girl from the concert. I dunno about the others, probably off to find someone to keep them awake for the rest of the night, too.” Hector winks as he pulls a phone out of the pocket of his bright red hoodie and begins tapping it.

  Through the window is the empty, dark street, and my heart squeezes painfully. “What about Jordan?”

  Lane looks at me in the rear view mirror. “Jordan knows his way home.”

  We drive in silence, all staring straight forward, and I try to keep my eyes open. It’s two in the morning and everything inside, outside, and on me is exhausted. A small part of me wishes I could go back to the hotel and sleep. Forget this night.

  My forehead rests against the cold window as the world zips by. I know forgetting is not an option. I know Lane should check my incision. I know I need to talk to Jordan again.

  I know that no matter what happens, I will never forget this night.

  2:02 AM

  Nat has to carry most of my weight up the fifth flight of narrow stairs leading to Lane’s apartment. I lay one arm over her shoulders while gripping the peeling paint of the banister in the other. Lane and Sarah disappear into the apartment, and I stop walking. My senses are overtaken by the slightly musty smell that I assume is natural for a building this old.

  “You okay?” Nat asks.

  “I’ll be fine. Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay.”

  I watch her expression carefully for lies, but there’s nothing but concern. “Wild night, hey?”

  Nat gestures dramatically and piggy backs me up the rest of the stairs, while I laugh. It’s not the first time she’s done this.

  Lane’s place is rundown but nice. Old and clean. No musty smell in here. There’s a huge crack along the ceiling like a stress fracture from the heaving of the brick structure. I follow the crack as it passes over the super old, gold couch with brown flower patterns on it and run my finger along the worn fabric. Jordan lives here, and I can feel him everywhere. I wonder what his day-to-day life is like. I wonder what he does when he relaxes, when he isn't over-thinking and over-feeling everything. There's a small bookcase next to the TV, and I wonder what books he likes, who his favorite poet is, and when he started writing on objects. Fresh tears burn my eyes when I realize I might never get to ask him. My fingers fall from the back of the couch, and Nat flops down onto it like she lives here.

  “Oh man, laying down feels amazing.” She tugs at her hair and stretches her legs out. She’s right. It feels like I haven’t sat on a couch or bed in forever, and suddenly, I crave it. Lane helps me to the little kitchen counter covered in yellow-checkered laminate and pointing to a wooden stool.

  “You sit.” His mouth twitches enough so I know he’s not quite as irritated with me as he’s pretending to be. I stumble backward and sit hard. “Shirt off.”

  My eyes open so big it hurts. Hector and Sarah are watching me intently. I shake my head.

  “Evan, you said no hospital. I need to clean that incision, patch it, and re-bandage it, because, if you don’t recall, the doctor said it had to stay on for twenty-four hours after you left, which it hasn’t been yet.” Lane snaps his fingers, pointing to my shirt, and I’m amazed at how much he sounds like my dad. How he can say small, seemingly meaningless things, but like an iceberg the words only make up a fraction of what he’s really saying.

  “Evan,” Dad said through a sigh when I came home from the hospital after my myectomy surgery where they carved out some of the excess muscle in my heart to make room for more blood. “The doctors feel like we could do more for you." But between each word was a blame laid on all of us. Mom and Dad fighting all the time. Me insisting I was fine, disappearing further into the stars. We were failing. All of us.

  We were failing each other.

  Lane calls to Hector who's sitting next to Nat on the couch, I can see her arms hanging off the couch, but I can't see her face. Hector turns his attention to us.

  "These scissors are dull. Can you go in that desk over there and grab my spare first aid kit?" Lane asks, and Hector walks under the crack in the ceiling. "First drawer."

  He absently slides open the drawer and grabs a bright red case, but he pauses and leans over the drawer. In his other hand he holds out a Manila envelope and frowns.

  "What's that?" Lane asks as he finishes setting up all the bottles and sutures and things he'll use to poke at me with.

  "It's from Royal Holloway..." Hector sounds confused.

  "What's Royal Holloway?" I ask, and Nat sits up on the couch. Hector's frown has morphed into a glare, his gaze hitting Lane so hard I feel it.

  "Did you know about this?" he asks and Lane’s face pales (He definitely knows about it. Whatever it is.) before he reaches for the first aid kit. Hector tosses the little case at him and mutters a string of curse words that I don't understand the meaning behind.

  "Jordan's a big boy, Hector. He makes his own choices." Lane pulls scissors from the kit and begins to disinfect them with some alcohol solution that burns my nose. Sarah washes her hands at the kitchen sink.

  I shift my gaze between the three of them. None of them will look at each other.

  "What is this all about?" Nat grabs the envelope from Hector's hand and shakes her head as she opens it. "This night is too dramatic for me." And that’s saying something.

  Nat slides a paper out and snaps it in the air, holding it close to her nose.

  "Dear Mr. Evans," Nat begins and clears her throat. "We have reviewed your portfolio of work, and the faculty of Royal Holloway at the University of London were impressed by the overall quality of your poetry..." Nat's words slow down with each added syllable. Her voice trails out, and her mouth falls open. She twists her body from side to side.

  "Shut up," she continues.

  "What Natalie?" I urge her. Now is not the time for theatrics.

  "He was accepted wasn't he?" Hector leaks the words through clenched teeth.

  "Accepted on full scholarship." Nat whistles. Hector snaps the paper from her hands, startling us all. She exposes more papers from the envelope. “He only had to fill all t
his crap out to apply...”

  "And he didn't.” Hector pushes the words out. It's more of a statement than anything. Nat shakes her head slowly.

  “The deadline was April third,” Nat says quietly.

  “Hector,” Sarah says, and he silences her with a single glare.

  “I pulled a lot of strings to get this done, Sarah, and he doesn’t even bother to fill out the paperwork? To tell me about the scholarship?”

  “He didn’t have to tell you about it,” Lane interjects as he snaps on a pair of blue gloves. Hector transfers his glare from Sarah to Lane. “He didn’t have to tell you because he doesn’t want to go. He didn’t apply. You did.”

  A whole flood of questions comes to my mind, but I don’t dare interrupt. Sarah smiles at me weakly, and I can tell this isn’t the first time this topic has been argued.

  “Oh, that’s bullshit and you know it, Lane,” Hector says waving the paper in the air. “He is scared to go. Scared to leave Annie...” His face goes stoic. “I bet she—”

  Lane waves his hand. “Annie doesn’t know. He never told her. What you did was a dick move, Hector. Jordan doesn’t want to go. It really is that simple. So drop it, okay?” He points the scissors at Hector.

  “Dude—”

  “I said drop it.”

  Hector growls and crumples the paper in his hand. He storms to the door and flings it open. As he passes through the doorway he slams his fist into the already cracking trim, and I jump.

  "Hector!" Sarah calls and runs out after him but stops in the hall, letting out a long sigh. She comes back inside and heads down the long hallway. A door slams.

  “Well, that was intense,” I say.

  Nat nods and leans on the back of the couch. The air seems as if it’s expanded in the room and filled every corner with a lingering tension.

  “Why is Hector so invested in what Jordan does with his life?” Nat asks.

  Lane shrugs. “He thinks Jordan could do big things with his writing. Hector sees Jordan as a performance artist, especially with the writing on public property, almost as much as a writer. But Jordie’s weird about his poetry.”

  Nat laughs— short choppy. “Yeah, we figured."

  “My brother is an all-or-nothing kind of guy. And he’s very private. Not many people have been able to crack him.” Lane looks at me directly, and like before, I feel like what he said is only a small part of what he means.

  “It sounds like this Annie chick cracked him pretty good,” Nat says, picking at her fingernails, and my heart hammers at the mention of her name. I know it’s dumb, but I’m jealous of her and pissed at her at the same time, and I don’t even know her.

  Lane scoffs. “Annie didn’t crack Jordan. She disintegrated him. He never opened up with her, only caved in on himself, trying to please her.”

  “I think maybe you’re a bit of a poet yourself, Lane.” I attempt to lighten the mood, and Lane’s lip twitches.

  “I prefer science to emotion,” he says. He points to my shirt then gestures upward, telling me to take it off. I let out a long exhausted sigh as I strip off my hoodie and t-shirt carefully.

  “Me too.”

  He adjusts my shoulders so I’m square with his body and picks up a pair of scissors. “Okay, Evan, this might hurt...” He lightly pinches my skin where one of the stitches has ripped clean through the flesh.

  Saturday, April 20 • 2:30 AM

  Jordan

  The wind whips around me, and I hunch forward on the bus stop bench. I try to contain all the thoughts swirling through my mind, all the feelings that are choking them out. Nothing helps. Nothing stops them, and I feel defeated and broken. I can’t close my eyes because I see her face, her smoothness, her freckles like webs of stars across her cheeks. I see her weakness now. What I thought was a confidence thing and lack of experience has been completely turned upside down. It’s not that she’s weak, it’s that she’s strong, and I see the toll it takes on her through those bars that lock her eyes.

  A sense of shame tears through me, and I run my hand through my hair, in an attempt to get it out of my head. My phone rings, and I take it out of my pocket, setting it next to me on the bench. It’s Hector, and I don’t want to talk to anyone.

  He calls three times before I start to think that something is wrong.

  “Dude, I don’t really want to talk right now,” I say, skipping the pleasantries of a hello. His breath is thick and heavy in the phone, and it suffocates me.

  “Where are you?”

  “At the bus stop a couple blocks from my place. Is something wrong?” I ask, thinking of Evan, but Hector has already hung up. I stare at my phone in one hand and grip the pen hanging around my neck in the other. The urge to get up and run jabs me in the spine, but I fight it. The need to know if Evan is okay keeps me still. Each second that passes I feel the world close in around me, the shadows moving closer, swallowing me in darkness. My heart speeds up, and my gut turns in on itself. I have no idea why I feel this way until Hector’s thick frame appears around the corner, the streetlight casting deep, gray anger across his features.

  I stand up, feeling like I may need to defend myself. He shoves me backward, and I stumble.

  “What the hell, man?” I stop the stumble, but the world still feels like it’s shrinking. Hector slams a piece of paper into my chest, and the shrinking world suddenly explodes outward, making me dizzy. I already know what it is.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “I found it,” Hector says, stepping right up to me. “Accidentally.”

  His gaze challenges me, and it drags me through my memories to when we were kids. Hector swings first and asks questions later. He’s fierce and loyal and was a great asset to someone like me in middle school—someone weak and emotional, who saves cats and dates bitches, and writes instead of fights his way out of problems.

  “Accidentally?” I’m not sure what else to say. I know he wants me to challenge him.

  “A scholarship, Jordan?” He rips the paper away from me and holds it in my face as if I’ve never read it before. “A goddamn scholarship. Were you ever going to tell us?”

  His jaw juts out, and his chest puffs, and I do the same thing.

  Defend yourself, Jordan, I think but don’t move. I can’t bring myself to, like I couldn’t bring myself to tell him I did the interview but chickened out and didn’t actually enroll.

  “Right.” Hector says with condescension. “Fine. Keep hiding. Keep ignoring the people who love you. Keep running away from what’s good for you and going back to her.”

  “Annie has nothing to do with this,” I say and regret it immediately. Hector crumples the paper and drops it at my feet. He tosses his hands out to the side.

  “Of course you defend her.”

  “I’m not defending her. I didn’t even tell her.” I feel a small ball of anger gaining heat deep in my chest. I don’t want to talk about Annie. I want to put Annie in the drawer with London and forget about her.

  “But she’s the reason you didn’t go. She’s the reason you told me you didn’t get in. Admit it.” He jabs his finger into my chest, but I don’t say anything. “This isn’t even about London, man. Not really. It’s about your addiction to that toxic girl, and you don’t even see that she’s destroying you. Whether you’re with her or not, she’s killing you.”

  My head falls, and I memorize the crack the sidewalk as the sound of a bus whooshes past us, flooding my ears with welcomed distraction.

  “You want to know why I really sent your work to Holloway?” Hector’s voice is softer now but still tight with anger. “I think you’re brilliant, man. I’m wicked jealous of your skill with the pen, but that’s not why I sent it. That’s not why I went behind your back. I wanted you to see that you had a future without Annie. That the world is so much bigger than her. That in a few months you’re graduating and you can leave here. I wanted you to go to London, to get away from her. We all thought if we got you away from her for even a few months, y
ou’d see her for what she is, what she’s doing to you.”

  My head snaps up, and for the first time since Dad went to jail I feel like I could cry. The expression on Hector’s face is twisted with fear and anger and pity and so many other things that I have to turn away. I may be emotional for a guy, but I still can’t handle this kind of direct face to face. I stretch my hands up and grip behind my head. I catch sight of the stars and think of Evan. I think of how big the world is. I hear her smooth beautiful voice telling me stories of galaxies far away, and I get it.

  “We are the ones who love you, man.” Hector doesn’t make eye contact with me. “It pisses me off that you deny it. That you don’t even care.”

  My phone rings in my pocket, and I use it to distract myself from telling Hector what I know I should tell him. That he’s right. That I get it. That I love him, too. That I know he’s trying to help.

  My heart contracts in my chest, and Hector’s jaw sets again, and he shrugs.

  “I’m tired of it, man. You do what you want. Answer it. But remember everything that’s happened so far tonight. Remember there are actual cool girls out there. Smart, funny ones who are truly worth the effort..." He gestures toward my phone, and I’ve never felt more confused.

  “Annie, I seriously am not even—”

  A loud sob cuts through the phone, and my stomach doesn’t drop, it disappears altogether. My foot gains a mind of its own and all my frustration about Annie, about Hector—about Evan—goes into kicking the bus stop bench. I pull the phone away from my ear and crush it to my chest. Over and over I kick the bench and curse the worst words I know. Hector seems to get my silence now. All over his face the anger begins to dissipate, but he doesn't leave. I wish he would leave. Hector's eyes and Annie's sobs are not helping me, only further clouding my mind, and my emotions can't tell what they are crashing into.

  When I’m finally calm enough to deal with even a fraction of what’s going on in my head, I put the phone back to my ear.