Page 30 of Even in the Dark

I have all these photos now, full of memories—and yet it also feels like I still have nothing.Because none of them mean anything to me.Not one thing about them is familiar, and the only memories I do have are of a life that was a goddamn lie. A fucking joke.

I push the album off my lap and stand, rake my hands through my wet hair as I stare at it. Then stuff my hands in my pockets, trying so hard to get that feeling of happiness back. Becausethis is what I wanted.Photos. Proof of this happy life from before. So what the hell is wrong with me—that I’m angry for having the proof right in front of me that those three years, at least, weren’t a lie?

I turn and stalk across the rug to the bathroom, push the door closed with my fist until it clicks quietly shut… turn the lock. Take three steps until I’m right in front of the wall beside the full-length mirror, with the painting on it of a couple of colorful sailboats in the Sandy Haven harbor. I lift the painting off the hook and prop it against the shower, then tap my knuckles lightly against the blue wall, side to side… feeling where the studs are. None right behind the space where the painting was just hanging. Good.

I curl my hand into a fist and rest it against the wall, right where the hook was. Lean my weight into it, drop my forehead so it’s resting right beside my fist, and try to breathe normally. Because my heart’s doing that thing again, where it feels like it’s beating right out of my chest in a way that can’t be normal. There’s no way. Feels like I’m having a heart attack or something, only I’m seventeen freakin’ years old. So guess I’m just messed up. Only we all knew that already, right?

I’m so fucking messed up.

I lean back onto the balls of my feet, pull my right arm back and slam my fist into the spot where my head was just leaning asecond ago. I don’t feel a thing—just hear the loudthunkof bone against sheetrock and pray to God no one heard it downstairs.

My breaths echo in my ears, louder now but also steadier, as I pull back and punch the wall even harder. And this time I do feel it. A sharp pain I know throbs nothing like it will later. Because right now, it’s tampered by the rush that shoots from my gut to my chest, my cheeks… the ends of my extremities. Like I’m a goddamn live wire.

I do it again, leaving behind a rough dent this time, and blood on my knuckles.

Then again.

Then again.

And again.

Then, during the next pause, I hear a knocking sound.

Someone at my bedroom door. Probably Phil.

Shit.

I glance over my shoulder at the locked bathroom door, then down at my fist, which is busted all to hell now. Bruised and scraped and bloody. I flex my fingers, curl them back into a fist… flex again. Nothing broken.

And my heartbeat feels like it’s back to normal. Which makes no sense. But that’s how messed up I am, that punching a goddamn wall slows my heart rate. It’s like I have all the same parts as a regular person, but none of them work like normal people’s do.

I take a few deep breaths. Phil knocks on the bedroom door again.

“Just a sec!” I yell, scrambling to grab the picture hook from the vanity, which I push into the wall with the pad of my thumb, just a few inches above the blood-smeared fist-sized hole in the sheetrock. I pick up the painting and hang it back on the hook. Brush the dust and bits of sheetrock into the corner with my bare foot.

Good enough.

“Dylan?” I hear the bedroom door open.

“In the bathroom!” I turn on the tap, all the way to cold, and run my right hand under the water, palm down, until the water runs clear. Flex and clench again. Run it under water for another three seconds.

“Everything okay, Dyl?” He’s knocking on the bathroom door now.

“Yeah.”

A brief silence, and then, “Can you open the door, Dylan?” He sounds worried. Suspicious.

I grab the torn T-shirt from the garbage and use it to pat my hand dry, then ball it up and toss it back in the bin. Glance around one more time, then walk over to the door and twist the lock up… pull the door open and slip into the bedroom just as Phil steps aside to let me pass. I shove both hands in my pockets as soon as I cross the threshold.

My gaze meets his, which is part concern and part skeptical. He looks me up and down, then steps forward to glance over my shoulder into the bathroom.

I hold my breath…

His eyes slide back to meet mine, and they narrow slightly. “You sure everything’s okay?” They shift lower, to my left forearm… then my right. He wants to check them.

He also doesn’t want to piss me off.

“Everything’s fine.”

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