The Midnights

by Sarah Nicole Smetana

  “Who’s Josie?”

  “Alex’s girlfriend. Or ex-girlfriend, depending on the day of the week.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  Lynn sighed. “Never a dull moment with those two.”

  “And you?” I lowered my voice, only half aware of the boundaries I was crossing. “You’re with Cameron?”

  Lynn let out a sharp laugh. “Oh God, no. I mean, yeah, we’ve found ourselves in a few incriminating situations, but that was ages ago, and it hardly counts anyway.” She laughed again, quietly, and her whole body quivered, as if to shake the memory away. “It creeps me out just remembering. He’s like a brother.”

  “I wasn’t sure.”

  “You think he’s cute, don’t you?” she asked, turning to face me.

  “No,” I said.

  “Liar,” she said.

  “I think he’s talented—”

  “I can talk to him.”

  “No! Please don’t do that.” My heart plunged, afraid that she was going to tell him, maybe in front of everyone. My eyes darted to Cameron, and I was fiercely relieved to find that he was busy rifling through Lynn’s mess of a record collection, oblivious in his hunt. “Don’t say anything. Please.”

  “Well, I didn’t mean now,” she said. “Don’t freak out.”

  She stood up, throwing her head back, and stretched her arms toward the ceiling. “I’ve got to take Susannah home,” she announced.

  I said good-bye, trying not to let my eyes linger too obviously on Cameron.

  We had just reached her car when we heard the screen door slam shut, a voice calling out for us to wait. I turned back, a nervous excitement pounding in my ears. But it was not Cameron who ran out after us that day.

  “Wait up,” Luke called again.

  He had been on the floor across from Lynn and me all afternoon, but he hadn’t said much, just sat with his legs crossed smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. Now, in the milky glow of dusk, I noticed that his dark eyes were swirled like marbles. He was taller than I expected too, thin and angular. Scattered tattoos adorned his right arm: a feather, a compass, the bear from California’s state flag. He said, “I need more papers. Can we swing by Rod’s after?”

  Lynn popped the lock in back. “Get in.”

  Inside the car, Lynn turned up the radio. Luke centered himself in the backseat and began drumming on my headrest. I liked the way the vibrations felt on my shoulders, the gentle thudding sound his fingers made against the fabric. Lynn, I thought, must have liked it too; even though her teeth weren’t showing, I saw that she was smiling as she glanced at him in the rearview mirror. I wondered if he was looking back. From my vantage point, I couldn’t tell.

  It must have only been seven or eight by the time we reached Vivian’s house, but it was late fall in California and night had settled comfortably into the hillside. Before I got out of the car, Lynn scrawled her phone number on the back of an old receipt. “For all those urgent choir questions that I just know will keep you up at night.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and got out of the car. “See you tomorrow.”

  Then Luke climbed into the front seat and they disappeared down the block, the orange flecks of burning cigarette paper trailing Lynn’s car like a comet’s tail.

  Eleven

  I DIDN’T HAVE a key yet, so I rang the bell.

  “Hi,” I said when my mother flung the door open.

  Her expression was conflicted. I could tell that she didn’t know whether to scream at me or hug me, and for a moment, she just stood there, helpless.

  I said, “I’m sorry I’m home so late.”

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  The rich coral flush in her cheeks could have corresponded to any number of things: daylight hours lounging in the sun, a glass or two of red wine. But the anger in her tone—how well I remembered it thundering through the walls of our house on Catalina Street. It stunned me to hear that tone, those words, directed at me, when before she reserved them only for my father.

  “Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?” she asked. “You could have been kidnapped, or dead. Worse.”

  My mother shook her head, obviously flummoxed by her own phrasing, but I knew what she meant. Dante’s Inferno had taught me: so much could be worse than death.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  My mind reeled. If only I could explain to her the electric surge of the music, the unexpected glimpse into my father’s hidden world. The way it felt like something inside of me had been unlocked. But I knew she wouldn’t understand.

  “Let the girl come inside, Diane,” Vivian beckoned from somewhere in the house. “There’s no need to get the neighbors involved in this.”

  My mother hesitated, as if actually considering the satisfaction she’d feel when slamming the door on me. Then her body slackened. She stepped aside and let me pass.

  And I thought that might be it. She would leave me with the shame of my disobedience, the tremendous guilt I felt for forcing her to imagine a world in which she had lost her daughter, too. Being left with my thoughts would be a harsh and fitting punishment. I turned toward my room.

  “Susannah,” my mother said. She folded her arms. “We need to have a talk.”

  Her anger was already waning, allowing a sliver of relief to shine through, and my father’s wife fell from her like flakes of dry skin. We had all made mistakes. In that moment, I knew I was not the only who didn’t want to repeat them.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “That’s not good enough.” She headed into the kitchen. “Do you have any idea . . .” She shook her head and started over. “If anything had happened to you . . .”

  “Nothing would have happened. I made a friend. A girl from school. I just forgot to call.”

  “But how would I know that? You can’t forget to call. Not ever. Do you understand me?”

  I nodded. In the kitchen, Vivian sat at the table drinking tea. She was still made up for the day, with bronze dabs of eye shadow on her lids, smears of pink on her cheeks.

  “We’re just glad you’re home,” Vivian said. “Right, Diane?”

  “Of course,” my mother said, leaning against the counter. “Of course we’re glad you’re home.” She paused, thinking. “What’s that smell?”

  “Patchouli,” I said. Lynn had me slather my arms with the stuff before we reached my house. She claimed to have used it for years to cloak the scent of cigarette smoke. But from the way that my mother looked at me then and the odd expression striking Vivian’s face, I knew I had answered too quickly. The question was not intended for me.

  “I put one of those frozen pizzas you bought in the oven,” Vivian said, one eyebrow just noticeably arched. “I figured Susannah might be hungry.”

  “I’m starving,” I said, smiling, and sat down at the table next to her. “Thanks.”

  “So we’ve all agreed, then,” Vivian said. “You made a mistake. You should have called. It won’t happen again.”

  I said yes.

  “Good. We got you something.” Vivian slid a small white box across the table.

  I looked from Vivian, who still had that same knowing smirk on her face, to my mother. “What is it?”

  “Just open it,” my mother said, a hint of excitement in her voice.

  Bracing myself, I opened the box. Inside was a cell phone. “Why do I need a cell phone?” I asked.

  “You could say thank you,” my mother said.

  “But I don’t want this.”

  “Most kids your age already have them,” she said. “And Vivian was gracious enough to get one for you.”

  “Well, thanks. But you can take it back.” I put the lid on the box and shoved it across the table.

  “Call this your punishment,” Vivian said, pushing it back.

  “It’s so you can always call,” my mother insisted.

  “It’s so you can keep tabs on me.”

  “Bingo,” said Vivian.

  “So
I screw up one time, and you give me a twenty-four-hour monitoring device?”

  “If that’s how you choose to see it,” my mother said, “then yes. You will have it on you at all times. You will not leave the house without it. If we want to talk to you, we will call you, and you will answer.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “The world has changed, Susie,” my mother said. “It’s about time that we—all of us—accept that.”

  I thought back to Cara’s party. My mother had no objections then to my going out alone at night. And this was just an afternoon, a few daylight hours after school.

  Of course, I understood that the difference was Cara, a girl who had been a part of my life since childhood, whose mother sat next to my own at all school functions, and the neighborhood I knew as intimately as the lines on my palms. Now, I was living in foreign territory. I wedged the phone from the box. It was a bulky thing, black, heavy as a paperweight. But as I glowered at the screen, ensuring that my disapproval was known, I allowed my mind to slip. Certainly, my punishment could have been worse.

  “And you’re grounded,” my mother said. “Two weeks.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “So why do I even need this, then?”

  My mother took a bottle of wine from the refrigerator and poured herself a glass. She said, “There’s an alarm on the phone. I’ll expect you to be ready by seven fifteen for school.” Then she left the room.

  Vivian and I sat silent in the kitchen until the oven’s timer beeped. She slid the pizza out onto a large cutting board and sliced it four ways, pulling two pieces onto a plate for me.

  “Did you and Mom eat dinner already?”

  “Your mother said she wasn’t hungry,” Vivian said.

  “I didn’t mean to scare her.”

  Vivian turned to the sink. “We rarely intend on doing the things that hurt the most.”

  Wetting a sponge, she began to wipe off the countertops, though from where I sat the granite already looked polished and clean. I watched her lips pull taut as she scrubbed, the trail of water gleaming beneath the lights, and I felt a nagging urge to say something else—defend myself. After all, hadn’t I done exactly what my mother and Vivian wanted? Wasn’t I making friends and moving on?

  A beat passed. Between us, the countertops sparkled.

  In bed, I spent an hour scrolling through my new phone’s settings, perusing the manual and learning how to make the thing work, because once I’d stopped seething over the slices of frozen pizza, I realized that my mother was right: Everyone had cell phones. Lynn had one, and Nick, and Cara. All the boys probably, too. And the cell phone, despite what my father believed—what I’d always believed—was quite the opposite of a prison. It was freedom.

  Perhaps out of habit, the first number I entered was Cara’s. I pulled it up on a fresh text message and began writing, Hey, it’s Susannah . . . but I couldn’t think of anything to say next, and deleted the message. Instead, I wrote Nick.

  Guess who finally joined the 21st century!

  Give me a hint, he wrote back, punctuating the sentence with a smiley face.

  I must have still been reeling from that afternoon—emboldened by the conversation I’d had with Cameron, my newfound mystery and the ability to be whoever I wanted—because I decided then to voice the ideas that had been bouncing around in my head all day, offering Nick a clue that I thought only he would be able to decipher. I wrote, I’m surrounded by foreign faces / Close my eyes, pretend I’m not alone / This city might be bearable / if I wasn’t bearing it on my own.

  Minutes passed without any reply and I began to fear that he didn’t understand. Hoping to quell the twisting in my stomach, I busied myself getting ready for bed. I was brushing my teeth when my phone finally buzzed, but that didn’t stop me from picking it up and grinning at the screen, toothbrush idling in my mouth as I read, Roses are red / Violets are blue / Your absence is everywhere, Hayes / Los Angeles misses you.

  That night, I dreamed about a plane crashing. About turbulence so powerful it knocked me from my seat. The nose pointed southward and I began falling, legs flailing. My mother’s hand was in mine. And then—the room rocking like the waves of the ocean, swaying like my childhood body in the arms of my father. The sound of him singing “Love Honey.”

  I woke on the floor, legs knotted in satin sheets and a cold sweat coating my skin. It was the middle of the night, but so different from the midnights I had known before. This was all-encompassing—no seeping streetlights infiltrating the edges of blinds, no murmur of freeway traffic. Only darkness so disorienting that at first, I didn’t even realize the world was still shaking.

  As children, we’d been taught to duck under our desks or stand beneath door frames, tuck our heads into our chests and cover them with our arms. I did none of these things. Lynn had known the earthquake was coming, and I felt a surprising complacency now. It won’t be the Big One, she had said. Not this time.

  I turned onto my back and stretched my arms over my head. The tiny trembles shivered against my spine, the larger movements like the undulations of water. Outside a coyote began howling, while in another part of the house something shattered. I wondered if my mother was awake, even thought about checking on her and Vivian. But once the earthquake stopped, I only wanted to talk to Lynn.

  Feeling my way through the unfamiliar room, I crawled over to my backpack and fished around inside for the crumpled receipt. Then I grabbed my phone. The screen’s harsh glare flooded the room. I shielded my eyes from the light, squinting through the cracks in my fingers as I saved her number and opened a new text.

  I felt it, I wrote. Then, as an afterthought, This is Susannah, by the way.

  I waited, staring at the bright white glow. After a while, the phone automatically turned off, casting the room once again in full, sweeping darkness. I pressed a button and the world lit up. When my phone finally vibrated against the sleepy silence of the room, my heart hiccupped.

  I looked at the screen: Told you.

  How did you know? I wrote.

  Another moment passed. She said, Here comes the aftershock. And sure enough, the earth omitted one final, faint rumble before everything settled again.

  Cameron really wants you to come next Saturday.

  I grinned. My fingers hovered over the keypad. I’m grounded, I typed.

  Shit. Was it the smoke?

  I forgot to tell my mom where I was going. She completely overreacted.

  The boys aren’t scheduled to go on until at least eleven. Sneak out?

  I’m not sure it’s a good idea, I said, hoping that she would try to persuade me.

  Then make it one, she replied.

  I closed my eyes, my smile expanding, and rested the phone on my chest. I’ll think about it, I said.

  Good. We can talk logistics tomorrow. Meet me outside the library before first period.

  Sure, I said. But you have to tell me how you knew about the earthquake.

  She wrote, If I told you, I’d have to kill you.

  “It says so right here. A four point seven, out in Riverside,” my mother was saying when I entered the kitchen the next morning, the Orange County Register spread in front of her.

  “Well that’s comforting,” Vivian said. “For a minute there, I thought it was just me.”

  My mother frowned across the table. “This isn’t something to joke about, Mom. Tell me the truth. Do we need to call Dr. Hartford?”

  I shuffled around the perimeter of the room, groggy and hoping to avoid detection for as long as possible, but when I opened the pantry in search of breakfast, the hinges creaked. Both heads snapped in my direction. “Morning,” I said.

  “Good morning, dear,” Vivian said, making her voice sound chipper. It was only seven, and already she was dressed, her hair styled. She sipped her coffee through pink-painted lips.

  “How’d you sleep?” asked my mother.

  “Okay,” I lied, hoping she hadn’t heard my phone thrumming in the midd
le of the night. I peered into the pantry, craving sugary cereal, or a cinnamon roll from the Last Bean. All I saw was wheat bran, granola, flaxseed meal, and—a flash of orange? I reached back, my fingers touching the smooth plastic of a tiny pill bottle. Covertly, I pulled the vial forward, examined the label. I saw Vivian’s name, some other words I couldn’t pronounce, and the directions: Take two tablets once daily, with food.

  This seemed like a weird place to store medication, I thought, but in a strange way, I guessed it also made sense. Take with food, keep near food. My eyes drifted down the label: May cause dizziness, it read. Avoid alcohol.

  “Susannah?”

  I slid the pills back behind the boxes, as though guilty of something. “Yeah?”

  “I asked if you felt the earthquake last night.”

  “Oh.” I pulled out the granola. “No. I must have slept through it.”

  “You’re lucky,” my mother said. “A lamp in my room fell over and scared me half to death. I haven’t felt one like that since you were a little girl. Do you remember?”

  I did. Vividly. When I was maybe seven years old, I was awakened not by the rocking and swaying of the earth but by my mother scooping me from my bed, huddling over me in the door frame. Her body canopied mine. Because I had been half asleep during the incident, my tired young mind unable to divide the dream world from the real one, the memory is steeped in the surreal, the view from behind the waterfall of my mother’s hair fractured and bizarre.

  “Sort of,” I said, and shoveled a heaping handful of granola into my mouth before excusing myself from the kitchen.

  On the way to school, I couldn’t stop thinking about my father and his own orange bottle of pills with the wording scratched off. I remembered my mother saying, You’re not supposed to drink with that. I remembered my father saying, Don’t tell your mother. From there, my mind whirled to Detective Melendez: there were no skid marks, he’d said, no sign of my father braking. And when he left our house that night, the overpowering scents of fermented oak and rye.

  “Susannah,” my mother said, startling me. “I want to talk to you about something.”