Authors: Emily Hainsworth
Mike’s firm grip stops me for the second time tonight, and I’m reminded of how much better shape he’s in than me. I jerk away.
“You don’t want to do this,” he says.
I grab the door handle, and suddenly, this isn’t just about tonight. “I’ve wanted to do this for two years.”
“Okay, fine, then.” Mike speaks so fast, he almost trips over his words. “But do yourself a favor, don’t do it in front of them.” He jerks his thumb over one shoulder. “He won’t need to lift a finger. You’ll never have a chance.”
I hesitate, taking in the size of the crowd gathered around Logan. Ten? Fifteen people?
“Let me go get him,” Mike says. “I’ll bring him out here to you.”
I spit. “No way.”
“What do you think
Viv
would tell me to do, Cam? Stand here and watch you get slaughtered?”
My chest aches. I speak through my teeth. “You have two minutes.”
He opens the door and doesn’t look back.
I don’t watch him approach Logan. I turn the corner where I can’t be seen and stare through another window. There’s a guy and a girl at a booth in the far corner. I can’t make out their faces. They’re huddled close, smiling at each other, insulated against the post-practice chaos carrying on around them.
Logan shoves out the door, tugging Tash behind him like a toy. Mike follows. A few people point out the windows, but no one else joins in.
“You have something to say to me, Pike?”
He stands with his feet apart, arms at his sides. Nonconfrontational.
I meet his gaze, and his eyes are clear, but then I see it … a slow smirk creeping up from the edge of his mouth. This is all a fucking game to him.
I launch my fists at him. Tash screams, but before I can get a punch in, Mike’s hands are on my shoulders, pulling me away.
“If you want to fuck with me, do it to my face!” I yell.
Logan stands his ground, though I missed his nose by inches. The smirk is gone, but he looks more annoyed than anything. I elbow Mike in the gut, and he lets go, coughing to catch his breath.
“Just leave me the hell alone!”
Logan brushes at his sleeve, no worse off for my knuckles never reaching his face.
“Look, Pike, I don’t have time for this,” he says, sounding bored. “Get some help.” He snakes his arm around Tash’s waist, and turns to go back inside.
“You’re paying that girl—” My voice breaks. “To try and convince me I’m crazy!”
Logan stops and exchanges a look with Mike. He turns his gaze back to me.
“Pike … really, do you need convincing?”
EVERYONE THINKS I
’
VE LOST IT
.
I sit on the curb behind Fast Break, staring at a cigarette butt and a flattened bottle cap at my feet. The parking lot smells faintly of gasoline. I pick at my fingernail. Mike left an hour or so ago, telling me to call him. Around midnight the restaurant empties—it’s a school night, after all. Someone trips over me taking a bag of trash to the Dumpster. I don’t move. I sit long after the neon lights go out behind me.
I should go home.
I pull myself up and aim in that direction. My bed waits there, ready to transport me to tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. I put one foot in front of the other. But by the time I get moving, I’m not headed for my house anymore.
When I reach the utility pole, I’m gasping for air. I don’t remember when I started running, but after I got going I couldn’t slow down, even when my leg began to ache.
There’s got to be something here—some proof it
happened
. I’m not crazy.
I lean against the dark wood to keep from collapsing. One of Viv’s remembrance cards flutters to the sidewalk. When I can breathe without my lungs feeling like they’re on fire, I study the shrine. Dead petals litter the ground; I should have brought more flowers last week. There’s a big blank spot where a picture of Viv is missing. My heart seizes up until I remember, and I pull the wrinkled cheerleading photo from my pocket.
I stare at her face a long time and circle the pole, comparing the wide-eyed grin of freshman year to her more mature expressions in later pictures. The most recent was my own addition. I almost didn’t put it up, but I didn’t want her shrine constructed entirely by
them
. The shot was taken on a camping trip a week before her death. We were out in the woods, in the middle of nowhere. We climbed up a rocky ledge to watch the sunset. I called her name and took the picture before she saw what I was doing. Her expression is questioning, her eyes dark and content. Behind her, a brilliant orange and gold sky blazes over the treetops, marking the end of the day, the end of summer. On that trip we felt like the only two people left on earth. She kissed me and said,
I’ve never been so happy.
I give the shrubs a halfhearted kick. The memorial looks like it always does. I’m not sure what I expected to find. The streetlight above me flickers but stays dim. I look over my shoulder, afraid Nina will show up with Logan this time, still wearing her apron from Dina’s Delicious Diner. They’ll come to laugh with Tash and Mike while I flail in the bushes, searching for my sanity.
What if Logan really
is
making me crazy?
I ball my hand into a fist, but there’s nothing to hit, so I take a swing at the shadow of the pole, where it used to stand, at the exact place where I imagine Viv’s head hit the glass.
There’s a flash of green, and my knuckles tingle.
I stare into the darkness.
There’s nothing there.
I reach out … my fingers glow transparent green. I’m not imagining this. It’s like penetrating the surface of water so clear you can’t see it until your fingers are swimming, and just by touching it you’re aware its depths are something foreign and unexplored. I repeat this routine three or four more times, then reach my arm all the way in and leave it there. The electrical sensation pulses under my skin, all the way to my bicep. It isn’t what I’d call comfortable, but it doesn’t hurt.
I’m not crazy—I can
see
this. I glance around, looking for the source of the freaky green glow, but when I put my hands down, it disappears. I reach back out, more comfortable when the light is clearly in front of me—when I can’t question its existence. I wish I could figure out what it
was.
I wave my arm around, and it bumps into something. I’m clearly hitting the utility pole to my left, but to the right my arm seems to be stopped by empty air. I reach forward, and don’t feel anything but tingly space. I can still see the school straight ahead, through the green. I hold my breath and take a step, stick my face into the light. My nose and cheeks buzz with energy, and when I open my eyes and look at my hands, they’re see-through. I can
see through
my skin, veins, bone—I’m getting nauseous. This isn’t real—
This is real.
I start to pull back to safety, but when I gaze ahead through the green, something about the facade of the school makes me stop. It looks different. I narrow my eyes, but my whole head tingles now; it’s hard to concentrate. Something Nina said when I saw her disappear echoes faintly in my mind:
This looks like home … but I guess it does there, too.
I blink, take a step forward, and then I realize what it is. The art-room window. It should be boarded up from a kiln fire—it has been for nearly a year. I know, because Viv and I were in that class when Scott Melore, pottery prodigy, did a glazing experiment gone wrong. Only I’m staring at the window now, and there’s no hint it ever happened.
When Nina vanished before, it was so surreal.... I didn’t give much thought to
where
she might have gone until I saw her at the diner. Then I figured the disappearing act was part of a cruel joke.
But what if this strange green light really
does
go somewhere else?
I need to settle this once and for all.
I step all the way in, and I’m immersed in green. Everything is so bright—but it doesn’t burn my eyes. In this glow, it’s like I can see
more
than is visible in regular light. Not because it’s brighter, but it seems to penetrate deeper. Like I can see my arm
and
comprehend what it’s made of—and understand the space it takes up.
It feels like I’m breathing electricity.
I glance up to get my bearings, and a wave of panic crashes in.
I can’t see the pole.
I turn around. All the way, I think, but I’m disoriented. All I see is bright light. My heart feels like it’s going to explode. I wonder how sweat will react with electric air. I wonder if I’m in some kind of open-air magnetic field that’s cooking my brain. Maybe this is the light people see in near-death experiences. It doesn’t really hurt, but they never say it does. I try not to breathe.
I’m okay with death if it means seeing Viv again.
I close my eyes and everything goes dark … familiar. Like I’m home in bed, drifting off to sleep. I force myself to inhale, ignoring the tingling deep inside my lungs. I reach out. My hands grasp air, but I suck in another breath and take a step. Then another.
I move randomly from side to side until my fingers brush something like … wood. I open my eyes. The splintered, dead wood of the pole is right in front of me. I fling my body at it,
out
of the green light, stumble and catch myself with both arms around the sturdy fixture. It’s solid; I’m safe. But it still takes a few minutes before the electricity leaves my skin and I can pry myself away.
The green light is gone and I’m in the dark again, staring at the pole, at the shrine.
Or where it ought to be.
A tattered white ribbon hangs in a knot tied around the middle. There are some torn scraps of paper, a couple dead flower petals on the sidewalk, and part of a card that says
Forever in our hearts.
There isn’t a single picture. I tear the cheerleading shot out of my pocket and move clockwise, studying the pole, but there’s nothing else there, no trace of the rest of Viv’s memorial.
I look down at the photo in my hand and inhale sharply when I see Viv’s smile. How long has it been since I breathed?
Long enough to take down a shrine?
That’s impossible.... That’s sick.
Even Logan wouldn’t do that.
Maybe that green energy evaporated everything.
But why not me?
A breeze comes up, chilling my body and clearing my head.
Nina’s words haunt me again.
This looks like home....
My gut twists. In front of me the school is dark, but familiarly shaped. I force myself to look at the pole again, at the remnants of cards and ribbon, then beyond it, at the art-room window—intact. I swallow hard. My eyes dart around, searching for something else, something safe and recognizable. The bus shelter sits dirty and abandoned on the opposite corner. At my feet, the bushes are still misshapen from the car accident.
I cover my mouth, but I can’t close my eyes.
NINA LIVES ON GENESEE STREET. I REMEMBER THINKING THAT WAS
odd because Mike lives on Genesee Street and he didn’t seem to know her at the diner. But she’s the only other person I
know
who has been through that light, so she’s the only one who might be able to tell me why things are wrong … I hope. When I get to Genesee Street, I can’t recall her exact address. Twenty-six? Twenty-four? I walk slowly up the black asphalt, pausing at Mike’s house, number 17.
It looks exactly the way his house has always looked. I keep going.
I stand in front of number 24 a long time. It resembles all the other houses on the street. Split-level, nondescript, dark. I think about Nina saying she was chased away from her friend’s house. I think about Viv’s missing shrine.
I trip up the uneven front walk, trying to decide what I’ll do if this is the wrong house. Do I run? Try to explain? I have no idea what time it is, either too late or too early. I’m halfway to the door when something catches my eye—a light in a window at number 26. It’s turned on downstairs, at the back of the house. I glance at the dark front steps ahead of me, and back to the glowing window next door. At least if I try there first, I won’t be dragging anyone out of bed.
I cut across the lawns to the neighboring walkway, all the way to the front door. But when I place my thumb over the doorbell, I second-guess myself. What if this isn’t her house and I’m about to harass some random family? What if she
is
here? Will she act like she knows me? Pretend not to? I won’t let her get away with that this time.
I’m startled by a loud chime inside the house. I pull my hand away from where I leaned too hard against the doorbell.
Run? Explain?
It’s an eternal moment before I hear shuffling inside, and I realize how stupid this is. It must be three, maybe four o’clock in the morning, and I’m ringing a stranger’s doorbell. If it were my house, I wouldn’t answer, or if I did—
The deadbolt slides inside the door.
I swallow, step back.
The door opens a crack, and someone peers out.
The porch light comes on, and I blink against the glare. The brown eye staring up at me widens. There’s a gasp. A handheld video game clatters to the floor.