We Own the Night Page 9

  It’s a guitar chord progression. Slow, steady. Melancholy and sweet, like dark chocolate. The same tune repeats, around and around like a haunted carousel, and as the melody spins it picks up drums and piano and the bass in a cacophony of sound. The song spins like a tornado, growing louder and more violent.

  I can’t get the image of Micah and Heather out of my head, and I can’t stop thinking about the way Billie twined his fingers into mine at the record store.

  He said he hadn’t changed. But he has. Four years of change. But the golden boy wouldn’t destroy a record. He wouldn’t vandalize a store.

  And he certainly wouldn’t do it for me.

  My phone beeps again. I feel for it on the bed and slide my finger across the lock screen.

  —LD 8:27 p.m.

  you coming over?

  it’s battlefield night!

  [Attached: 1 Image]

  I snort.

  —Ingrid 8:30 p.m.

  Why are you licking your controller?

  Do you even know where that’s been?

  —LD 8:31 p.m.

  ITS ALIIIIIVVEEEEE!

  seriously i thought i’d have to come over and drag you out of your room.

  —Ingrid 8:35 p.m.

  You wouldn’t find me under all the pizza boxes.

  —LD 8:36 p.m.

  that’s comforting

  come over

  pants are optional

  LD’s house is across town, but I slide into my favorite pair of leggings and a large sweatshirt and walk over anyway. It takes maybe all of ten minutes. LD’s parents are in the living room watching some summer variety show, and they smile in greeting. LD’s dad was the one who sent Grams to a specialist in March, when we learned . . . well, when life stopped being normal. I haven’t seen him since then.

  “Ingrid! It’s great to see you. How’ve you been?” Dr. Darling asks, pulling me into a hug. “How’s everything?”

  “Good, sir,” I reply. “She’s good.”

  He nods, and I see the look in his eyes—the look everyone gives me who knows what Grams is going through. It’s not quite pity, but it’s in the ballpark of Oh, you’re going through a lot and I want to say that I know how you feel but I don’t. “LD’s upstairs. She’s doing something on her gaming system. It sounds violent.”

  “It probably is,” I reply, and head upstairs. I knock on the cracked door. “The party has arrived, my fine—”

  “Shhh!” LD throws a hand up to me before quickly returning it to the controller, adjusting the volume on her gaming headset. The light from the TV illuminates her face in pearly white and shadows. The sound of gunfire and a stream of profanities cascade from the fifty-two-inch TV mounted on the wall. It’s some war video game. Blood. Violence. The type that makes conservative parents cream their pants at the thought of banning it.

  LD is, as far as I can tell, handing every other player their collective asses.

  “No, dickweed, he’s in the freaking grass! The grass! Christ, do I have to do everything around here?” she steams, mashing the controller buttons furiously. There’s the sound of some virtual person dying. She shoots me a quick look. “Come in and sit down. I’m almost done—no not you, Sora42. Why the heck would I be talking to you? Sniper on the roof! YES, I’M TALKING TO YOU.”

  I come in, closing the door, and sit down on the bed behind her game chair. She rocks back and forth quickly, eyes trained on the TV. The match ends quick enough, and she’s at the top of the bracket. She says as much to everyone else in a clipped voice she usually reserves for the jockstraps at school.

  She logs out with a sigh, taking off her headset, and pats her victory curls back into place. I’m often hair envious of her. Mine’s stringy and long no matter what I do the night before or how I wash it. Hers is whatever she wants it to be that day.

  In the dim lava lamplight, she’s thin and ghostly, the planes of her body sharp and angular, accenting the indentions around her mouth from too many bloody lips, and the scars on her knuckles from one too many fights, and all I can think of is how much I want to be like her.

  I fall back on her bed. “Video games sound violent.”

  She shrugs. “It helps me deal with the real world. I can pretend all those Nazis are Mike and his gang.”

  I punch her in the shoulder. “Shush, that’s not funny.”

  “I’ll have a bruise there!” she pouts, rubbing her arm. “Almost as big as my bruised ego. I hear you and Billie went to North Platte today without me. I am crushed.”

  “Oh, stop that. You were working and you go off with Billie all the time on your day off.”

  “Yes, but today was especially terrible. I had to work with Heather.”

  “Did you see Micah?”

  She shrugs again. “A little—does he always wait for her outside the shop?”

  “Always.”

  “Boring.” She rolls over onto her stomach, and props her head up to look at me. I like the way she does her makeup even when she isn’t going anywhere. It’s always perfect and cat eyed. “So dish; what did you and Billie do today?”

  “What, did Billie say anything?”

  “Should he?” she asks.

  I blush, remembering holding his hand. “Nope.”

  She squints. “Mmmhmm.”

  “Seriously, it was nothing.” I roll off the bed and pick through her bookshelves to distract myself. They’re all from fantasy series: A Song of Ice and Fire. The Wheel of Time. The Halo and Dragon Age novelizations. And other books I’ve never even heard of. Sheet music for a violin, in a tall and skinny folder. It doesn’t fit with the rest of the shelf.

  The violin itself sits collecting dust in the corner of the room behind the nightstand.

  I take out the folder of music and leaf through it, smiling as I come across a transposition of “I’ve Got Friends in Low Places” by Garth Brooks. “Remember when you made this for Micah’s stupid sixteenth birthday? Those were good times.” I brush my fingers along the notes tenderly. “The best times, I think.”

  LD scoots to the edge of the bed, frowning at me. “Oh, Iggy-Pop, you need to get over him.”

  A knot forms in my throat. “I know.”

  “I don’t think you do. Trust me, I know what it’s like to get caught up in someone. It’s poison.”

  “Yeah.” I quickly close the folder and stick it back. I motion to the corner of the room, to the violin that was supposed to be her ticket out. “I should’ve been there for you. For your audition. I’m sorry I was MIA these last few months. I’m sorry I let you down.”

  “Oh, please, I doubt you wanted to see me choke.” She glances over at the violin case. She never talked about the audition before. It was one of those taboo topics, like Mr. Bleaker’s death, like my mom’s absence. “It was my one ticket out and I choked. I couldn’t even read the notes on the piece of paper in front of me. I didn’t know where to put my fingers. I couldn’t breathe. I choked.”

  “So you just gave up?”

  “There could be worse spots in hell,” is her reply.

  “But you’re good. You’re really good.”

  “I don’t want to be good anymore,” she replies, frustrated. She has the music right there at her fingertips—something I would kill to have. Her music is a little piece of heaven in hell, like Billie’s sunflower watchtower, and the space between Micah’s window and mine, and our booth in Den’s Diner where no one else ever sits.

  Whenever I sat outside of her practice room door it made me forget for a little while who I was. It made me forget about cramped Steadfast and the jocks in the next hallway and Micah. With her rendition of Green Day’s “Whatsername” she had the power to pick your soul up and waltz you around the clouds.

  “I think you deserve more than Steadfast,” I tell her.

  “But don’t you know the song? “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

  The weight of those words hangs in the air like thick smoke.

  I sink down on the bed next to her
again. She rests her head on my shoulder, and we stare at the teal violin case for a long, long time.

  Finally, I say so quietly, my voice wobbles. “Why couldn’t it have been me?”

  She wraps her arms around me. “Oh, Iggy.”

  “It’s like he has blinders. Everything is her. Her, her, HER.” I don’t know where all this pent-up anger is coming from, but I can’t stop it. My mouth is running a mile a minute, gushing out with all of the anger in my heart. My eyes are blurring. “I wish I’d never made that promise. I was so stupid. I should’ve just told him to keep screwing her behind the Barn. He didn’t need a girlfriend. He had me. He had me.” I repeat again, my throat clogging with sobs. “He had—he had me . . .”

  Tears pour out of my eyes as I sob into her chest, and I can’t stop myself. LD wraps her arms around me and holds me tightly, and she lets me cry and ruin her perfectly good Sailor Moon T-shirt.

  After a while, she pulls me away from her and grabs my hands. She squeezes them tightly. “C’mon.”

  I stifle as she begins to drag me off the bed. “W-what? Why?”

  “Just come on!” Gripping one of my hands, she grabs a candle and a lighter from her bedside table and pulls me out of her room and down the stairs. I try to stop her, but she’s way too strong as she leads me out onto the back porch and into the Darlings’ backyard. A decrepit princess castle sits in the corner, almost overgrown with weeds. LD and I used to play there all the time, self-rescuing princesses fighting an invisible dragon, Sith Lords protecting our new Death Star; Time Lords protecting humanity from the rest of the universe.

  “What are we doing?” I ask, wiping the tears out of my eyes. I sound whiny.

  She lights the candle and spins back around to me. Wax begins to slide down the sides of the candle. It smells like butterscotch. “Give me your hand.”

  “What?”

  She grabs my hand anyway and forces my fingers around the candle. She holds them there. The candle illuminates our faces in warm gold and flickers in the breeze. “Iggy, you’re my best friend,” she says.

  “And you’re mine,” I agree, and it’s truer than anything I’ve said in a long time. I love her like grass loves rain. Like sunflowers turn toward the sun. I don’t know what or who I’d be without her because she brings out the best parts in me like best friends always do. “But let’s go back inside and—”

  “No! You need to get over him. Like I . . . ,” she says, and swallows and forces it out, “like I need to get over Erin.”

  “You can do it in your own time—”

  “We can do it together.” She takes a deep breath. “I’m willing to try if you are. I’m tired of this ghost in my head. I’m tired of saying her name and feeling like I’m drowning, and I know you feel the same about Micah.”

  My throat tightens. More than she knows. “Yeah.”

  “Then what could this hurt, right?” She squeezes my hands tightly. “We’ve got half the summer left. We’ve got our whole lives. So let’s just let it go. I read about this in one of Mom’s magazines.”

  “The doctor type of magazine or the Vogue type?” I joke.

  She pretends to glare. “I’m horrified you even think I read Vogue.”

  “Okay, that’s a lie.”

  “Shush! Just bear with me. What’s the harm in trying, right?”

  I sigh. “Fine. Right.”

  “Okay, so pretend this candle is a star.” She looks back to the flickering candle between us. “And imagine that this star is all the feelings you have for that stupid ape-brained piece of shit—loving shit, because we still love him—but shit anyway.”

  “And you pretend that it’s She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”

  “Erin. It’s Erin. And it’s the way she laughed, and how she held my hand, and all the futures we wrote about together in all those notes we passed. The ones where we went to Paris and lived in Beijing and ate churros on a beach in Spain. In the end they didn’t mean enough.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  She blinks the wetness out of her eyes. “But I do, Iggy.”

  It’s my turn to squeeze her hands. “Then let’s let it go. All the way up there.”

  She looks up, and I look up, too, even though I’ve seen those constellations a hundred times before, traced by Micah’s oil-stained fingers.

  “All the way to Pluto,” I add, “because you are more than any of those notes combined. You’re a symphony, and I’m sorry she couldn’t hear it.”

  She’s still looking up at all the stars. “And you’re better than anything Micah could ever want.”

  The wax slowly inches down the candle.

  I know how I feel about Micah isn’t going to change overnight. I know my heartstrings will still swell and surge whenever his chocolate eyes meet mine. But for tonight, as LD and I stand in her overgrown backyard, with nothing but Orion and Sagittarius as our witnesses, I put all the love I have for him—all the aches, all the pains, all the joy and hate and hope into this flickering little light between us.

  We blow it out and send all our love to the stars.

  RADIO NITEOWL

  SHOW #160

  JUNE 25th

  DARK AND BROODING: What do you call a chaos of cats?

  NITEOWL: A cat-otic mess?

  DARK AND BROODING: A cat-astrophe.

  NITEOWL: (laughs) That’s terrible!

  DARK AND BROODING: It works every time. I promise. See, it just worked. Still sad?

  NITEOWL: No—no. I’m just cringing. Do you just collect terrible jokes?

  DARK AND BROODING: Like some people collect bottle caps and baseball cards. Don’t knock it! . . . Unless you want to know who’s there.

  NITEOWL: I’m quitting you tonight before you get worse. Hello, next caller! What’s your remedy for heartache?

  CALLER THREE: Listening to you two! Are you a couple?

  NITEOWL: With him? That’s flattering, but if we were in the same room he’d probably be in three different states. In pieces.

  CALLER THREE: You’ll change your mind. Like a band coming back for an encore.

  NITEOWL: The only encore tonight’ll be the half a burrito I saved for later. Thanks for the call! Next!

  DARK AND BROODING: Who did the mushroom go to the party with? A fun-guy. (NITEOWL laughs)

  NITEOWL: I’m sorry; I carrot hear you!

  DARK AND BROODING: Then you better turnip the beets.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Since last week’s spiritual Let It Go, I’ve felt . . . no different. Sadder, actually. And maybe a little lonelier, but I’m refusing to let it stop me. I refuse to hold a grudge against Heather (unless it’s for something she does), and I refuse to look out my window at Micah’s window, and I refuse to see if there’s a light on.

  It’s harder than one would think.

  LD helps. I don’t know if she feels happier or sadder after that night, but she hasn’t mentioned Erin since. She invites me over after work today for a Super Smash Bros. tournament with Billie. The loser buys pizza, since her parents went to a medical convention in Omaha for the week, leaving her in charge of the house. In the final match of the tournament, the two losers—me and Billie—butt heads to see who will be the ultimate loser.

  “Hope you brought cash with you,” I taunt, worming my butt into the cushions to get into my fighting sit-stance. Hunched, elbows on knees, clammy hands on the controller.

  Billie takes the controller from LD, flopping down beside me on the couch. “Don’t worry, North; they take credit, too, for when you lose.”

  LD sits cross-legged on the floor, grinning at both of us. “Ooh, talking dirty. I like this.”

  The turtle on the screen floats down from the cloud. The light starts to count down. Three, two, one—

  Spoiler: I’m terrible at video games.

  “Go, go, go!” LD cheers as Billie and I race our Nintendo characters around the pixelated course. I dodge Billie’s flying turtle shell, but then on the second lap he bounces me out of the wa
y with his star-power. On the third and final lap, we’re neck and neck.

  I hunch forward, concentrating. I won’t lose. I’ve lost every time we have a tournament, but I’m getting better. And so far, I’m in the lead.

  Which means I’m fifth out of six places.

  “Oh, he’s gaining! He’s gaining!” LD announces, tossing her fist into the air. “Go! Go! Go!”

  “Whose side are you on?” I cry.

  “Mine! Watch out for the—”

  Billie jerks his hands over, tapping my knuckles with his. I shoot him a glare. He does it again.

  “No,” I warn. One more turn to go and then the home stretch. I’m not losing this.

  This time, he bumps his shoulder against mine. My fingers slip, but I manage to keep the lead.

  “Playing dirty!” LD crows. “Ten points for Slytherin!”

  I mash the A button as deep as it’ll go, but my cart can only go so fast, and Billie’s Donkey Kong is right behind me.

  “I swear to God, Billie—” I begin.

  He lets go of the controller with one hand and grabs my side, squishing it. I have very squishy sides. That are also very ticklish. I yelp, jumping away. My thumb slips from the button, and Donkey Kong passes my Princess Peach to the finish line.

  He throws his arms into the air. “YES!” he cheers.

  “Not fair!” I cry, dropping the controller. I launch myself at him, forcing him down into the soft leather couch. “You cheated!”

  Laughing, he pretends to struggle against me. “Never said it had to be fair!” Then he grabs me by the thigh and using one of the moves he learned from WWE, he flips us around and presses me into the couch, hovering over me. He grins. “You just assumed.”

  “Cheat!” I howl, laughing so hard my spleen is beginning to hurt. “Cheat! Cheat! Foul on the forty-yard line!”

  “And what’s my penalty?”

  My laughter slowly dies in my throat as I realize how close we actually are. Closer than in the car. Closer than at the record store. We’re so close, everything I see is him, from his golden hair to his emerald eyes to the way he’s smiling—not his golden-boy kind of smile, but a new one. One I recognize, but haven’t seen in years.