'Lock your lip

Don't you make sound

'Cause the walls are thin

And the word is out now'

"You can do this," I repeated myself, summoning all my confidence and maybe some magic with an umpteenth deep breath.

After all, what was the worst that could happen?

I had nothing to lose as my gaze traveled from my open palm to the neon sign, and before my courage could be defeated, I pushed the door open and entered the now-familiar room.

Well, I would never be fully accustomed to the heady smell that hit my nose as soon as I stepped in, but my eyes instantly recognized the gloomy and dark surroundings, every table and road sign as I remembered, even a few familiar faces.

"Hey, Dorothy!"

"Hi, Morris, Clinton, how are you?" I walked to the bar, where both men were standing, while my gaze was running everywhere around the room.

"Good, and you? What you doing here?" Morris replied after some time to process my simple question, enough for my gaze to finish its circuit around and come back to my twisting hands.

"Well, I'm looking for Blade. Do you know where he is?"

"No, I didn't see him today."

"Hey, Wayne! Y'know where's Blade?!" Clinton called to the back of the room, and it confirmed my theory that there was a mysterious labyrinth there when a voice answered instantly,

"He went outta town with Pete."

That explained why I'd been met with a locked door there and had almost turned back.

"Oh, Dorothy!" Wayne nodded as soon as he came into view and spotted me and my figure in pink that surely stood out in all the leather jackets, and apparently, my question was as obvious because he added, "They should be back soon. You can wait for him here."

My eyes went back to my hands and higher, to my wrist, as I contemplated what 'soon' could be, and if it would be before my mom came back home.

In fact, there wasn't much to think about. I couldn't postpone talking to Blade, and it was my last chance. Besides, even if I wasn't sure Blade would be happy to find me here, it was safer to wait in the crowded bar with his 'non-friends' than outside, in the empty and darkening streets.

So what was I even twisting my brain, stomach, and fingers for?

"Maybe we can finish our pool game?"

My twists were stopped by Morris and his mustache, which he was still stroking, and in front of the two other guys' challenging grins, it was obvious they hadn't finished the game from the other night.

It wouldn't have been polite to leave them hanging more, and for this, I had no hesitation as I returned their smiles.

"Okay, but don't tell Blade we played without him."

I had nothing to lose after all, and without Blade and his bad intentions, I was even winning quickly.

Yet after a few victories, I was missing this special thrill, my eyes always glancing around in search of something, which I wouldn't find in the glasses of alcohol or all my defeated opponents.

"How about darts?" I resigned myself as I'd scared away everyone to play pool with me, and Blade still wasn't here.

"Are you as good to aim?" Wayne narrowed his eyes at me, making me shrug innocently.

Should I have let them believe I was a princess or tell them I was a shooting star?

"Give us a break to grab som' booze first," Clinton added, and while I watched him finish the last sips of his beer, I was reminded that I too needed a break.

"Okay, I have to go to the bathroom anyway." The two full glasses I'd downed were starting to weigh on my bladder – glasses of milkshakes from the Rose's diner, of course.

I hadn't drank anything here because I preferred to have my head straight, and I still remembered Blade's insistence that I only got closed bottles I couldn't open.

"Um, where is it by the way?"

"Second hallway in the back, take the first turn to the right, and it's the last door on the left."

The back of the room, the darkest and gloomiest side of the bar that I'd imagined as a labyrinth, it sounded indeed like one, and I swallowed hard Wayne's directions, forcing a smile and a 'thank you' and reminding myself that there was more than appearances.

I'd just spent the past 30 minutes playing with dangerous gang members and beating them while wearing a full-skirt dress, and after all, I'd wanted to explore this labyrinth since the first time I'd entered there.

Yet I hadn't planned to do it alone, when there were so many people all around the bar, and such a thick smoke. I hadn't planned to do it without Blade on a Friday night, 'weed night', more exactly. But these details hit me too late, once I'd already gone past the flood of people like a shooting star, and like the meteors, I didn't try to turn back, stepping into the second dark hallway.

I wasn't sure what was guiding me. My guts? My bladder? Surely these more than my reason, my eyes, or any of my other senses in the dimness.

The farther I was advancing, the fewer lights there was, just like the smoke, the noises, and the people, and when I took the turn on the right, none remained.

It was a contrast for my senses that had been overwhelmed, yet it wasn't relaxing in any way as, in the darkness, my eyes were taking in each shadow and dark shape, and the silence was leaving room for the voices echoing in the back of my mind. Warning, what-ifs, and promises, there were all those familiar voices from Pete to my parents, Raymond, Blade, Spencer, and many more I couldn't even recognize, and with them, my sixth sense was stirred in every direction, letting me feel the shivers along my back and the shakiness of my empty hands.

I quickened my steps, running away from those echoes inside and dreading sensations more than from the moving shadows that were mine, and I'd never been that relieved to find the bathroom than in that instant. 

I didn't even slow down at the white lighting and sewage smell hitting me when I stepped in, and it wasn't my bladder that rushed me, as I needed a few minutes before I entered the single stall. Even then, I surely would have turned back if the shadows from the dark labyrinth hadn't been that fresh in my memory.

There was only one mixed toilet for the whole bar, and it was showing. Yet it was crazy how sometimes, a light, a lock, and some fresh water were all you needed, and it was a good thing because there was nothing else in the small room, not even a towel to dry my hands.

Maybe I shouldn't have washed my hands at all, as there was no soap either, and the only thing it washed away was the blue paint in my palm. But I also used this as an excuse to stall more time. 

Stalling more time, it seemed the only thing I was doing these days; I realized once my cold hands had dried, and I pulled out the small jar where I'd put paint and a brush out of my bag.

If I'd done this before, it would have been much easier, and I wouldn't have been looking like the mess I was glimpsing in the small broken mirror after escaping imaginary shadows and too many voices echoing inside. I even wondered if it was some kind of life's metaphor for other questions I had pushed away, more complicated than this simple word my fingers were trembling to trace.

"It's simple, it's yes or no. I don't have time for your bullshit."

I hadn't even started the first letter that the P ended in a straight line resembling a shooting star's trail, and I whirled around at the voice that this time, wasn't coming from the back of my head, but from over my shoulder.

Only once my gaze had run all around the yellowish walls, did I remember that I had locked the door, and no one could be here, and still, I jumped when another voice echoed louder.

"It's yes... in a few days. I got a small hitch 'cause of that fucker."

Was I imagining it? No, it was too real: the venomous words, and the spatting intonation on the last one. It was Rye, talking about Blade. There was no possible confusion, and I almost expected to meet that sick intention in his eyes mocking me.

However, there was only me and that look of terror in my wide green eyes, and once they had traveled from the closed door to my reflection a few times, I noticed the open hopper window in the top right corner.

The voices were probably coming from it, from another room of this labyrinth, and if it was too high and small for me to see them, they couldn't guess I was overhearing them either. Once more, I was eavesdropping on a private conversation, and I should have left.

"But I have a killer plan."

I still wasn't moving, not even my lungs as Rye continued, and I didn't need to see him for my guts to twist with that same bad feeling. Yet I would have wished to glimpse the face of who was replying,

"Isn't it what you already said last time?" That voice was familiar; a hint of disdain and so much hypocrisy, I'd already heard it, yet I couldn't place it.

It wasn't one of the guys I'd been playing with, and I didn't know anyone else at the bar.

"This time's different. I won't bug with the talking."

'Talking', the last time I'd heard Rye pronounce those words, it had been through bloody lips, after having tried to stab Blade in many ways. So I couldn't imagine what he could do without 'bugging with the talking'.

"Then stop talking, and act before I lose my patience," the other man insisted, apparently not as curious as I was to know about Rye's plan, and I found myself with my still bare hand on the lock when Rye's voice sounded again.

"I will. Give me two more days."

My brush had been shoved back into my bag along with the question it was supposed to trace, and once more, I was running. Yet it wasn't from the shadows; I was rushing straight into the dark hallway. 

As for the voices, I wasn't sure if I was fleeing them to not find myself alone when Rye was around or if I was going headfirst to find out whom he was talking to and get a clue about his plan. It was hard to know as the rush of adrenaline in my veins could be for both reasons, and either way, I had to get away before them.

However, my great momentum was stopped behind the door, as much figuratively as literally, when I collided with a moving figure, and if I closed my eyes for a second, it was more to not see what was in front of me than to prepare for the impact of what was behind.

Had they been talking in the hallway? The scary possibility coming with this question crumbled down with the unmistakable clink of broken glass and metal on the floor, and never ever this sound had echoed as sweetly. 

When the sharp pain shot through my behind, my eyes were already reopening to take in the slim silhouette on the floor like me, and my heart restarted so quickly to wash relief over my body that it numbed the throbbing instantly.

"Sorry, I didn't see you." The girl opened her eyes too, and I caught the same relief in her dark eyes before she glanced down at her tray on the floor, and I recognized that look. It was the waitress from the other night.

"No, it's my fault. I was rushing... again." I smiled, thinking that my nickname really fitted me, at least, when it was about my evil genie, and that same rush was already coming back as I asked, "Do you know where the bathroom window opens onto? If we can hear people talk–"

I stopped as her reply came as an 'ouch' under her breath, and I realized that my questions had made her snap her wide eyes at me, and she hadn't been looking at what she was doing and the shard of broken glass she'd grabbed. Now, she was bleeding because of me.

Being a shooting star was great until I crashed and dragged people in my fall.

"I'm sorry, never mind." I shook my head, still catching the mess I'd made on the floor and the drop of blood on the broken glass. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, don't worry, I'm used to picking up broken glasses." She sucked the tip of her finger, already standing up and turning on the light like the simplest thing it was for everyone but me, apparently.

If she hadn't already thought I was crazy before, she definitely did as the light widened and highlighted my aghast gaze.

It was the thing about the light; it didn't leave any shadow of doubt.

"Hey, but weren't you the cleaning lady at the What'Sub newspaper?" Of course, I'd already seen her dark skin and eyes somewhere else, and away from all the shadows, leather jackets, and smoke, it was easier to recognize her. Maybe also because I'd stopped for two seconds in my race.

"Yes, I'm still working there, it completes my wage here. How do you know?" She stopped her movements, this time being careful to not hurt herself more as she focused her attention on me and probably searched for the familiarity in my red hair and freckles.

Though I wouldn't tell her how and why I'd spent some time at the newspaper. I preferred to be known as a crazy mess than as the great Spencer's ex-girlfriend and get a pitiful look. So I rushed another question.

"It must be a lot of work. How do you find time for your–"

"My family? I try to help my parents like I can, and I'm lucky to have brothers and sisters who help with the tasks."

I closed my mouth in front of her simple shrug. I had been about to say 'studies', maybe 'hobbies', or even 'yourself', but it wasn't how it worked around here.

I'd been so caught up in my rush that I hadn't even taken a second to look around, and now that the differences were hitting me, I felt the impact in my shriveling ribcage. We were both girls, around the same age, and I was surely clumsier than she was. Our only differences were our skin colors and where we were born. 

I could still hear Blade's blunt truth: 'it changed everything'. We weren't in my princess world, and while I was complaining about not being able to choose my studies, some didn't even have the opportunity to study, and they accepted it silently.

I felt so 'ungrateful', as my mom would have said, and I didn't even know what to reply. So I just picked the broken glass on the floor, while she pulled a garbage bag out of her apron front pocket, and when someone called her name from down the hallway, the words came out naturally.

"Let me do it."

"You're sure?" She seemed taken aback by my offer; well, she had been looking at me from under those lifted eyebrows since I'd run into her, but this time, a genuine smile followed.

"Yes, where's the trash can?"

"The next door on the right." She pointed, taking her tray and the bottle-opener that were the only things saved from the crash, though she still stopped to glance at me. "Thank you... what's your name?"

"Dorothy."

As she disappeared with a nod, I felt like she would remember my name, and I smiled to myself, as for once, it was only for who I was, and not whom I knew.

Though it didn't mean there weren't shadows in my mind, and the questions and doubts I'd pushed back were quick to come back. Just like this hallway, as long as I didn't cast light on them, they would haunt me, and hopefully, like the narrow and dark space, they would surprise me in a good way and end up less scary than I'd imagined.

There was only one way to know, and as I stood up and passed by the light switch, I had a newfound determination to face my questions, starting with the most recent one: Rye and his 'killer' plan.

I had to know to shake that bad feeling out of my guts.

Maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought. Maybe it wasnt' about Blade. It was hard to convince myself when the words kept spinning in the back of my mind and all my insides. But anyway, I had to clear that clutter that had started forming from my first encounter with Rye, passing by the drug delivery, and had worsened today, and for this, I had to be careful.

I couldn't rush like I always did, I reminded myself as I walked through the door on the right and searched for a light switch around what looked like a large inner courtyard, and when I spotted the large trash container on the left side, I was already thinking and planning where I should go next.

Yet in spite of all my willingness, the crash still happened, my wide eyes taking in each detail of the scene illuminated by a single light, and my slow steps freezing, and it was worse when I was fully aware of everything until each of the erratic bangs of my heart.

CLIFFHANGER!!! 😱😬 You know the drill now 😅 But maybe I won't leave you hanging too long... 😏

Tell me all your suppositions about what's happening! Whom Rye was talking with? Why Dorothy is here? And I might post the next chapter sooner than expected 😘

Also, don't forget to vote ⭐ and comment if you liked this chapter! 

What do you think about the waitress Angel, Wayne, Morris, and all the bad boys, and all these inequalities? 💔

PS: If I torture you, it's always made with love 😘💕✨ You're the best, my little shooting stars! 🌠