A Line in the Dark

by Malinda Lo

  “Jamie let me in,” she says.

  I slid the comic I drew of us into her locker yesterday morning, but she didn’t say a thing to me all day at school. I had already started to think about what my next move should be—another comic? send her flowers?—and now I’m caught completely off guard.

  She asks, “Can I come in?”

  “Oh. Yeah.” I step back.

  She comes into my bedroom and shuts the door behind her. She pulls off her coat and tosses it on the end of my bed. She sweeps her gaze around my room, skates over me—frozen in place beside the door—and sees the papers strewn over my desk.

  “What are you working on?” she asks.

  “Kestrel. My project for the arts exchange program.”

  She takes a couple of steps toward my desk, then gives me a quick sidelong glance. “Is it okay if I look?”

  Her hesitance surprises me. “Sure, yeah,” I say.

  She touches the paper, gently moving one sheet aside. I feel as if her fingertips were on my skin rather than the comics. I can’t believe she’s in my room, acting like nothing is wrong between us.

  “What’s going on in this scene?” she asks. “Who’s this girl Kestrel is with?”

  “That’s Raven.” I join her at my desk and flip through the loose pages until I find the start of the story arc. “Here. This is how it begins.” Her arm brushes mine as she takes the first page. Between us is an electric field of unspoken words. I’m listening extra hard, trying to hear what she’s not saying. I pass her the next page and the next, and then Angie sits down in my chair to continue reading. I am standing above her, looking down at the back of her head, her reddish-brown hair tumbling over her shoulders. She’s wearing a blue sweater that has a thread coming loose near the shoulder. She tucks her hair behind her ear, and a strand of it catches in the clasp of her earring, a seashell as pink as the flesh of her earlobe.

  She gasps. “I can’t believe Kestrel did that!” She glances up at me, something between horror and glee in her eyes. “Why did she do that?”

  “Because she—” I shake my head. “I can’t tell you, it’s a spoiler.”

  “Come on,” she says dramatically. “I have to know. I’ve been reading your comics the longest. I deserve to know.”

  She bounces in my chair with eagerness. She is all sweetness and smiles, and it unnerves me because it erases everything from the last five weeks. I back away to sit on the edge of my bed, to put some space between us. When I put that picture in her locker, I wanted her to know I was sorry for how I treated her, but I don’t know if I wanted her to pretend like nothing happened.

  She leans forward, and her hair tumbles over her shoulder, brushing against her upper arm. “You can tell me,” she says conspiratorially. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  The tone of her voice makes me ache, as if she were rubbing out a knot in my neck. It feels so good, but at the same time, she put the knot there. She ties me up inside, and only she can undo me.

  I tell her about my most recent plans for Kestrel; how it affects her friendship with Laney; how it changes the way the Warden sees Kestrel and Raven. Angie listens, rapt, and then I take out my sketchbook and flip to a series of thumbnail-size panels I’ve drawn to rough out the story. We both sit down on the rug, leaning over the sketchbook together. Her hair smells like peaches; she must have changed her shampoo. I feel the warmth of her body beside me as she comes closer so she can see better, her arm against mine, her knee brushing my thigh. The charge between us seems to amplify; my blood is buzzing with her nearness. After so long apart, I’m overwhelmed by how it feels to be together—like sinking into water so hot it burns at first, but when you’re finally submerged, you never want to climb out.

  By the time she has to leave, I’m high on her, her smile, the sound of her voice, the scent of her hair. She tells me she has to go to work and asks, “Are you going to come by later? It’s probably going to be pretty dead.”

  “Sure,” I agree. “I’ll stop by.”

  Her smile reaches her eyes, and I think I see relief too. “Yay!” she says. “It was so good to catch up.”

  She puts on her coat, but before she opens the door she pulls me into an unexpected hug. Her coat is still hanging open, so it’s as if I’m enveloped in a down blanket. Her breasts press against me, and her whole body shudders as she takes in a deep, shaking breath. My hands, trapped beneath her coat, slide around her waist, across her lower back. My fingertips run over her spine, the vertebrae like pebbles beneath the knit of her sweater. She fits in my arms perfectly. Beneath the smell of her shampoo is the deeper, hidden scent of her skin. I don’t know when I learned to recognize that fragrance as distinctly Angie’s, but it is instantly familiar to me. It makes my knees weak.

  “I don’t want to go so long without talking to you ever again,” she whispers. Her breath tickles my ear, and tiny sparks travel all the way down my spine. “Don’t do that again.”

  I want to clutch her closer to me, and I have to force myself not to. “I won’t,” I whisper back.

  “Promise,” she orders.

  I feel a molten twist in my belly. “I promise.”

  —

  I’m still buzzed on her. I lie awake staring at the faint glow of light through the mini-blinds, thinking about Angie. The feel of her against me is burned into my body, and it makes me twitch beneath my blankets.

  I have a rule. I don’t think about Angie when I get off. I have the internet. I don’t need to mess up my mental relationship with my best friend by thinking about her naked.

  It’s hard to avoid it tonight, though.

  I push off my blankets. My skin is flushed and damp. I pick up my phone. I look at the shitty Tumblr porn, scrolling past the dicks and the weird stuff, searching for something that looks sort of real, or at least not obviously fake. I pause on a girl with curly brown hair and rhythmically rocking breasts. I can’t see her face, just her hair as it slides over her nipples. It’s easy to imagine Angie’s face on this girl’s body, but it feels disrespectful. More disrespectful than simply imagining her, her hair, her breasts, her freckled shoulders, her mouth, her kiss.

  I drop the phone. It’s a stupid rule.

  AT MIDNIGHT, THE HOUSE IS SO QUIET THE ONLY SOUND I hear is the scratch of my pencil across the paper. Tomorrow is the last meeting of the arts program before Thanksgiving, and I want to get this batch of comics completed to show Kim.

  Over a series of several pages, I’ve roughed out Kestrel and Laney hiking into the woods. It’s winter, and the trees are skeletons against a slate-colored sky. Laney and Kestrel are tiny in the first panel, but in the next one I zoom in to focus on Kestrel, a determined expression on her face, the black book peeking out from her backpack. Laney, following close behind her, looks frightened. They approach a hollow in the woods that’s like a scooped-out bowl rimmed with evergreens and bare oaks. Kestrel, standing on the edge of the hollow, opens the black book while Laney holds an empty horn cup. According to the rules of magic in Kestrel’s world, every spell has kickback, sort of like the recoil of a gun. In order to contain that kickback, an inanimate object must be nearby to receive it. The horn cup, which Laney took from the Warden’s magical stockroom, is their kickback vessel.

  Kestrel believes that the crumbling Doorway to Faerie is manifesting in this hollow in the woods, and she has decided to test her theory with a truth spell. I’ve been trying to figure out how to depict the Doorway for a while now. It can’t look exactly like a doorway because that would be stupid, and I want it to look magical somehow. I’ve tried a bunch of different options, but the one I like best involves inverting the colors. That means the trees become white, the sky becomes black, and in the center of the hollow an egg-shaped black hole opens up, defined by jagged white lightning-like strikes. The cool part of this is that I can sketch it out the normal way, with black pencil, and when I scan it into the c
omputer at Brooke, I can invert the colors digitally.

  On the next page I outline two panels of roughly equal size on the top half of the paper, and one wide one on the bottom half. The first square panel shows Kestrel casting the spell, one hand raised and the other holding her book. I draw a dialogue bubble from Kestrel’s head, where I write in the words of the spell. The second square panel shows Laney realizing that the spell isn’t the one they originally planned on; this one edges close to black magic. Horrified, Laney tries to stop her, but Kestrel is already consumed by the magical aura of spell casting, and Laney is unable to touch her. I draw Laney’s shocked expression and above her head, I outline her dialogue bubble. Kestrel, what are you doing? Laney demands. That spell is too dangerous!

  I glance at the clock. It’s almost two thirty, and I have to get up by six. I should stop but I want to at least rough out the last scene. In the bottom rectangular panel I draw a distant shot of the hollow with Kestrel and Laney on its edge, magic swirling from Kestrel’s book to join with the bolts of light from the Doorway that’s manifesting before them. The point of view in this panel is in the lower left, where a girl with long black hair stands watching Kestrel and Laney. It’s Raven, and I spend a long time on her expression, trying to get it right. I want her to look both stunned and fascinated by what Kestrel’s doing. I block out a rectangle over Raven’s head, and I pencil in her thoughts: She’s using the Black Book. She has more power than I thought. I have to stop her.

  A FEW FLAKES OF SNOW SPIRAL FROM THE GRAY SKY AS Angie and I walk down Washington Street. The shops put up their Christmas decorations right after Halloween this year, but now that Thanksgiving has passed, East Bedford has become an explosion of holly and red ribbons and Christmas trees and mini white lights. Normally we wouldn’t go shopping here—it’s expensive—but Angie wants to get something special for Margot.

  Angie opens the door to a boutique where a stuffed reindeer draped in Christmas sweaters sits in the front window. Inside I’m assaulted by a blast of hot air from the vent over the door. I unzip my coat as Angie starts to browse. The shop is a combination of kitschy New England junk—stuffed lobsters, lighthouse figurines—and piles of expensive cashmere sweaters. I wander to the back of the store and discover a display of Christmas ornaments: more lobsters; tiny fake jugs of maple syrup hanging on gold threads; Pearson Brooke shields on purple ribbons.

  It’s only a few minutes before Angie joins me and says, “I don’t think there’s anything in here for Margot.”

  “What do you want to get her?”

  “I don’t know,” Angie says anxiously. “Something good. It’s our first Christmas. I want to get her something that says, you know, I’m an awesome girlfriend.” Angie’s phone chirps and she pulls it out of her pocket. “Oh, it’s Margot. Hang on.”

  She leaves me by the Christmas ornaments and retreats behind a rack of stuffed lobsters. Whenever Margot texts, Angie has to respond right away. If she doesn’t, Margot tends to freak out. Angie says it shows that Margot cares about her.

  The miniature maple syrup ornament costs $9.99. I spin it around and watch it bang gently against the Pearson Brooke shield while I listen to Angie’s phone chime another couple of times. Last week at Brooke I saw Margot outside the arts building. She acted like she was happy to run into me and asked if Angie liked any particular bath products.

  “Lush?” she questioned. “Or that shop down by the Creamery—Milk and Honey?”

  “She’s allergic to perfumes,” I lied.

  Margot looked confused. “But she wears perfume.”

  “She can only wear that one kind. Don’t get her soap.”

  Margot’s eyes narrowed on me as I gave her a bland, fake smile. “Yeah, okay,” she said caustically. “Thanks for the advice.”

  Finally Angie returns. She looks excited but hesitant. “Margot wants to meet up for coffee in an hour. Do you want to come?”

  “Uh . . . I have to get home and watch Jamie.”

  Her face falls. “Come on, I know you don’t have to be home till later.”

  “Jamie just texted me. Mom’s going out.”

  She looks irritated with me. “I know it’s because you don’t want to hang out with Margot. You would barely come shopping today because I’m shopping for her present.”

  “What are you talking about?” I flap my coat to get a breeze in the overheated shop. “That’s not true.”

  She gives me a stony glance. “You know what I’m talking about. You don’t like her, but you won’t try to get to know her either.”

  “She’s your girlfriend,” I snap. This is the first time I’ve said that out loud. The words stick in my throat and I can’t continue.

  “That’s right,” Angie says, as if she’d won an argument. “And you’re my best friend. Is it so weird that I want you guys to get along?”

  A woman in a Santa sweater is eyeing us from behind the counter to the right of the Christmas ornaments. I shift so that she can’t see my face. “I just have to get home soon,” I say.

  “Why don’t you give her a chance?” Angie asks. “Margot’s great. I know you’ll like her. If you had a—if you were seeing someone, I’d want to get to know them.”

  I can sense the Santa lady’s eyes boring into the back of my head, and sweat is beginning to streak down my back beneath my T-shirt and sweater and winter jacket. “If you’re not getting anything, we should leave,” I say.

  Angie shakes her head, looking annoyed. “Fine.”

  I’m boiling by the time I make it outside, and I peel off my coat in the frosty air. It feels good on the flushed skin of my face and neck. Angie stops on the sidewalk and starts texting again. I pull out my phone and glance at the time. It’s still early. If I go home now, I’ll be alone for the rest of the afternoon, while Angie flirts with Margot over fancy coffee drinks. I imagine sitting with them instead, but the idea of it turns my stomach.

  “I’m going to meet Margot at Bradstreet Café in forty-five minutes,” Angie announces. “You don’t have to come, that’s fine. I get that it’s weird for you.”

  “It’s not weird,” I object, but Angie gives me a skeptical look before I even finish speaking. “Okay, fine, it’s weird,” I say, frustrated by the way Angie’s watching me.

  Her expression immediately softens. “I know,” she says gently. A few flakes of snow settle on her hair. “I guess it is kind of weird to hang out with just the three of us. What if more people were there, like in a group?”

  I let out my breath in a steamy exhale. “Maybe,” I say grudgingly.

  A flash of excitement lights up Angie’s face and then is instantly snuffed, as if she doesn’t want to show how much she wants this. “Okay, I was going to wait till you knew her better to tell you, but she told me she’s having a Christmas party right before she leaves for break. It’s going to be at her parents’ summer house in Marblehead. It’s just going to be her group of friends—and me. I want you to come too.”

  “I don’t think I should just show up at Margot’s party. She probably doesn’t want me to come.”

  “She totally wants you to come!” Angie insists, but when I give her a doubtful look, she backtracks. “I’ll ask her. I’m sure she’d want you to come.”

  “Yeah, well, if she personally invites me, I’ll go.” I’m certain that Margot will never do that.

  Angie likes a challenge. “All right,” she says confidently. “I’ll get her to invite you.”

  —

  While I’m washing dishes after dinner, my phone vibrates in my pocket. I rinse off a soapy bowl and set it in the top rack of the dishwasher to drain before I dry my hands and pull out the phone.

  It’s Margot. Angie gave me your number. I wanted to invite you to my party Dec. 16. Hope you can make it. 344 Atlantic, Marblehead.

  I stare at the message until the letters start to look like unintelligible
scratches. My right thumb is still damp, and it leaves a wet smear on the edge of my phone. The kitchen light buzzes, flashing briefly off and on again.

  Dad comes into the kitchen. “Did the lights go off?” he asks, and flips the switch so that we’re plunged into dimness once again. “Have to fix this,” he mutters. “Jessica, you have to finish the dishes if you want your allowance. No halfway washed.”

  “I know,” I say, and put my phone away. I turn the water on again.

  “Don’t let it just run like that—you’re wasting the water,” Dad says. “Plug the sink.”

  “It’s plugged, but it leaks.”

  He makes a frustrated sound. “Does your mother know?”

  “I don’t know.”

  My phone buzzes again, but I wait until Dad leaves before I check it. This time it’s a message from Angie.

  Margot said she invited you to her party. Promise me you will come xo

  THE WALLS OF THE COMMONS DINING ROOM ARE PANELED in dark wood, broken up by tall, paned windows that reveal the rapidly darkening evening outside. Chandeliers hanging above the long dining tables shed a warm glow over much of the room, but the corner where Emily and I take our trays is a pocket of shadows. It’s the last arts exchange day of the fall semester, so we’ve been invited to stay for dinner again. I loaded my tray with a plate of stuffed shells with marinara sauce, french fries, a piece of apple pie, and a soda—stuff Mom never cooks at home. Emily eyes my dinner with suspicion. She went to the stir-fry station and got chicken and vegetables with rice.

  “You like it?” she asks after I try my food.

  The stuffed shells are oddly sweet. “It’s okay.” I squirt some ketchup onto my plate and dip a french fry in it. “Margot invited me to her party.”

  Emily raises her eyebrows and forks up some chicken. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. Did you get an invite?”

  She snorts. “You’ve got to be kidding. No.”