Night

By Amethyst Turner

I lost myself again last night

And at the pace I'm going now

I'll never learn to do it right

If you won't teach me how

XXX

Daniel clutched the note in his hand, feeling the sweat from his palm drip into the paper. It was growing soft, fuzzy, bits of it peeling away. He stuffed it in his back pocket.

The brambles scraped over his legs like hungry fingers, thorns scratching over his ankles. Daniel remembered what his mother had always said about tall grass and thorny underbrush: tick heaven. He kept going, feeling dangerous, daring. The house seemed so much farther away, now that he was sinking into the depths of their unruly yard.

His shoes made wet popping sounds with every step as the suction between the sole and the mud beneath was broken. He kept lifting his feet, so high he could have been marching. The sound, the feeling of the seal being broken, was immensely satisfying.

Daniel had waited until his parents were out of the house to do this. They were so nosy, always watching him and driving around town to look for him when he was playing with his friends. Right now, Natasha was supposed to be watching him. Instead, she was getting high in her room and listening to loud Jimi Hendrix music. Daniel had heard her calling her boyfriend, so he would probably be over soon. Natasha could not give less of a damn what Daniel did with himself, as long as she didn't get in trouble for it.

The window sill was so close, Daniel could touch it. He inched forward, feeling a thorn catch on the back of his leg. He couldn't go any further. The underbrush got too thick from here.

He had planned to hoist himself up over the windowsill and drop the note inside the house, but he supposed maybe it was better this way. Daniel reached out his hand and placed the soggy note on the splintering windowsill. The house remained silent.

XXX

Melissa Briggs had a love-hate relationship with her job.

She loved watching her students grow and learn, picking up new skills each day. Zipping up their own coat, writing their numbers in the right direction, asking for things without trailing off to silence at the end of the sentence. In Preschool, each little acquisition felt like a conquest.

There were a lot of things to hate, too, though. She hated to see them go, of course, but there were other, more trivial things. Some of the kids couldn't go to the bathroom by themselves yet, and somehow that responsibility fell to Ms. Briggs. No one could ever open the white glue and they often cried over it. Oh, yes, she did hate the tears. Sobs over a bleeding hangnail, over he-stole-the-train-I-was-playing-with, over a runny nose.

Right now was a quiet moment. The children were gone to lunch with their kindergarten counterparts and Miss Briggs was curled up in her rocking chair, listening to Mrs. Asher complain about her husband leaving all the lights on in their house before they went on vacation. Mrs. Asher was one of the kindergarten teachers, a sweet lady who could be quite severe when she wanted to be.

Miss Briggs was listening a little bit, but not very much. In her head, she was replaying an encounter she'd had earlier this morning with a man at the coffee shop she liked to get breakfast at before school. He'd said something smart about her order, she couldn't remember what, now, but it turned her on, whatever it was. She gave him her number.

Her sister always told her that she spent too much time with her head in the clouds, thinking about childish things like makeup and boys. But, she thought, wasn't it preferable to thinking of whatever Ashley had on her mind, whatever made her so sour all the time, so sad? Wasn't it better to be a little trivial than completely depressed?

"Liss. Liss. Melissa!" Mrs. Asher was saying.

Miss Briggs snapped to attention, the rocking chair jerking back. "Hmm?"

Her colleague gave a little eye roll. "This young man is here to see you, Melissa. I have to be going, anyway. Recess next."

"Oh, okay. See you, Maggie."

"Bye."

Melissa reached over and gave her arm an affectionate squeeze before she left. Oh, Maggie. A little too restless for her job. She read novels and used words like "penultimate" and taught kindergarteners to add two plus two. Melissa figured she would combust from boredom one day and that would be the end of her.

She found her thoughts slipping back to the handsome stranger from the coffee shop. He looked a little like Tom Cruise, she thought, same nose, same eyes, same dangerous smile. It made her antsy just thinking about that smile.

Miss Briggs remembered, suddenly, that there was someone else in the room. In the doorway stood a scrawny little boy, olive-skinned and well dressed with his thick, dark hair slicked back like a wave. He looked at her through long lashes, eyes bashful and hazel.

It took her moment to recognize him. When had she had him in her class? Was it four years ago? Ah, yes! Now she remembered: those same eyes, watery with fear on the first day of school.

"Daniel!" She exclaimed. "Come in, dear, come in."

XXX

The second time, Owl knew she should say no.

He was on the other side of the door again, looking at her with that rough, sallow face, dark with stubble. His clothes looked dirty and he stank of beer and weed and spearmint. He seemed to expect her to let him in this time, like it wasn't a request, but a right he had.

"Why do you need to come in?" she asked. She looked down at herself. She was in one of Tommy's t-shirts, a pair of underwear, and nothing else. Shut the door, said every intelligent cell in her brain. Tell him to leave.

"Why don't I need to come in?" Richard shrugged. "I dunno. Good excuse to smoke a joint, I guess? Just open the door."

"Okay."

XXX

"Ashley?"

Ashley sighed out loud, closing her book. It was a Stephen King tonight, one of the better ones. She had, in fact, not realized her sister was in the house at all. In the dark suspense of the story, she felt completely and utterly alone.

She brought herself out of the fictional world, blinking back into reality. Little bedroom, whitewashed walls, closet in the corner, dresser, musty little mirror squinting back at her. Home. "What?"

Melissa's barefoot steps in the hall, then Melissa in the doorway. She was still dressed in her eveningwear, blue dress and a pearl necklace. "Can I come in?" she asked.

"Sure."

As she came closer, Ashley saw that she was teetering a little on her heels and her makeup was smeared. She looked serene enough, though. "Can I lie down for a second? Please? I feel a little, um . . ."

"Yeah, sit. Are you okay?"

"Um, fine, I think." Melissa sort of collapsed onto the mattress right on top of the novel. "Ow," she grunted. "Ashley, my ass hurts."

"Okay."

"Don't ask."

"I didn't."

"Cause I'm not going to tell you."

"Fine."

"I took it in the ass, Ashley. Just now. And I left and now my ass hurts."

"Liss, you're drunk. Just relax, okay?" Ashley took to easing her shoes off of her red, blistered feet. "You have to stop doing this."

Melissa groaned. "But he was so pretty, Ash. You don't understand. We met at the coffee shop --"

"Of course you did."

"Stop judging me." Suddenly, she looked on the verge of tears. Alcohol-induced tears, probably, but Ashley couldn't help feeling guilty.

"I'm not judging you. I just--"

"I don't care. I need to tell you something." Melissa cleared her throat and looked at her sister, eyes bright with intention. "I want to tell you what happened today."

"Before you took it in the ass?"

"Yes." She closed her eyes like keeping them open was too much effort. She slurred, "This kid . . . what's his name . . . Daniel, I think, he came to my classroom during my lunch break and he said he wanted to talk to me." She paused for long enough that Ashley wondered if she'd fallen asleep.

" . . . Alright?"

"And he sat down and he was telling me about these neighbors he has and how they never come out of the house except sometimes, this one guy . . ." Her hand drifted across the mattress, seeking out Ashley's. She let her sister squeeze her fingers, drunken grip strong and solid. "But, he said he left a note on the window because he saw eyes there and the thought it might be a kid, you know, someone he could be friends with."

Ashley frowned. "And was it."

Her sister shrugged. "He doesn't know. But then that night he heard all this noise from the house: screaming and crashing and crying, and he didn't know what to do. He thought it might be his fault, too."

"So what'd he do?"

"He told me about it."

XXX

Amethyst's right eye was almost swollen shut, but she could still see well enough out of the left one to read the note. It was in careful, loopy, childish script that she savored with every word.

The note was mostly unscathed, and unblemished survivor of a battle in had caused. The back of Amethyst's head still smarted from the impact of the wall against it, her wrist still red from her father's hand around it. Dangerous, he had yelled. People are dangerous. Who are you talking to? Who?

He'd come to his senses eventually, even tried to apologize. But, to avoid talking to him, Aimee laid down and pretended to be asleep until he went upstairs to bed.

But right now, she wanted to respond to the note. The only problem was, she didn't know how to write words. Instead, she drew a shaky smiley face on the back of the paper with the pencil that had been left on the window sill with the note. She folded it in half and propped it outside the open window, hoping desperately that someone would take it before her father noticed. 

XXX

We've turned our hands to guns, trade in our thumbs for ammunition
I must forewarn you, of my disorder, or my condition
'Cause when the sun sets, it upsets what's left of my invested interest
Interested in putting my fingers to my head
-Guns For Hands by Twenty One Pilots