Page 2 of The Dark Before Light

His voice is so dry I can’t tell if he’s making fun of me or not. I’ve never heard anyone talk like him. Then again, in the week my family has been touring Ireland by car, I haven’t had a single one-on-one conversation with a local past generic, service-oriented pleasantries. Maybe they all converse in lines of satirical poetry.

Or maybe he’s as high as I am drunk.

“Vacation,” I mumble.

He chuckles, a manly sound that percolates sluggishly through my body, and taps his chin with a long, pale finger. His palms are big like he hasn’t stopped growing yet. I’ve never noticed a boy’s hands before.

“Let me guess where the bird flew from.” He squints at me, taking in my baggy sweatshirt, the black joggers on my thick legs, and the tasseled ankle boots that are hand-me-downs from Olivia and years past trendy. He snaps his fingers suddenly. “California!”

My sullen silence makes a smile overtake his face. It’s blinding but fades fast. An eclipse.

“Go on then, tell me.”

I frown. “Tell you what?”

“Why your eyes are so angry and sad.”

My heart jackknifes, slicing as it goes and spilling blood into my cheeks. “What?” I squeak.

His stare is heavy. Penetrating. Not exactly kind but not condemning, either, like he knows my problems are those of privilege but thinks they’re still valid. This boy, with his tattered jeans and sweatshirt with too-short sleeves, wants me to unburden myself.

It occurs to me with syrupy certainty that this is the most terrifying, humbling, and exhilarating moment of my life.

“This is your villain origin story, Birdie,” he says in a voice that’s my new favorite song. “The moment you confront who you are and decide to be someone else. Tell me.”

As the sky grows darker overhead and the rain keeps falling like a rippling veil between us and the rest of the world, I tell him everything. How my parents are getting divorced but this trip was already planned. How awful and awkward it’s been with them trying so hard to act normal while they can barely stand to look at each other.

How over the last two years, my sister has become a pretentious, vain bitch who treats me like a pet or a slave depending on her mood. I tell him what happened tonight—how when she asked me to go for a walk, I was stupidly excited she wanted to spend time with me. How she dragged me into a pub and stowed me in a dark corner before ordering four shots of whiskey from the bar. How a group of boys flocked to our table—to her—and I fell for her act when she introduced me like I mattered, telling them I was the coolest sister in the world.

I wanted so badly for that to be true that when she shoved two of the shots at me, I drank them one after the other. But they were disgusting, so disgusting, and afterward I had to hold my hands to my mouth to keep from throwing up all over the table. My sister laughed, the boys laughed, they all laughed at the awkward, mousey girl who wasn’t cool at all. Then Olivia did her own shots—easily, perfectly—and told the boys to take her somewhere better, leaving me without a glance or a goodbye. The bartender, noticing me alone at a table of empty shot glasses, panicked and shoved me outside. It took twenty minutes of stumbling back to the hotel for me to realize I was going the wrong direction. The graveyard called to me because no one here can laugh.

I tell him how I’m bullied at school and have no friends because I skipped two grades and am still at the top of my class. How I spend lunches alone, my head stuck in a book, and even the nerds won’t talk to me because I’m too weird for them.

Sometimes I feel like there’s a monster inside me trying to get out, clawing at my skin from beneath. And I don’t feel like I fit anywhere in the world.

“I’ll never fit anywhere,” I finish in a cracked whisper.

My confessor is silent. The encroaching darkness obscures his expression, but I can tell his eyes are closed. For a second, I think he fell asleep, and the devastation I feel is so violent, so encompassing, that I make a small, wounded noise.

His head swivels in my direction, eyes like dark pits but alert. They suck the remains of daylight, shimmering. Stars on a midnight sea.

“Do you know how I know you’ll be okay?”

I can barely speak over the relief clogging my throat. “How?”

A cold finger taps the end of my nose. “Because I was wrong. You’re not a bird, after all. You’re a lioness. A queen of the jungle still growing her claws. Hold fast, Birdie. Someday the world will kneel to you.”

I stare at him until my vision blurs and I’m forced to blink. Tears or rain gather on my lower lashes. My throat aches as I ask, “Even you?”

He doesn’t smile, but I feel his delight. “Maybe even me.”

Wind stirs around us. All at once, my body screams with complaints. I’m soaking wet, freezing, tired, and hungry. A shiver wracks me. My teeth start chattering. My head pounds.

He climbs to his feet, pale palm outstretched between us. “Up you go. I’ll walk you back to your hotel.”

His hand swallows mine and he lifts me easily to my feet. I stumble and he laughs, catching me with his other hand on my shoulder before I face-plant into his chest.

“You’ll start feelin’ better once we walk a bit. What’s the name of the place you’re staying?”

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