Lisa Unger - Darkness My Old Friend

Claudia knew their secrets. Each one was like a gem she locked away in a box. They belonged to her, because she was vigilant.

She’d been watching the night Marla Holt disappeared. Claudia had been waiting for Mack to come home. She waited every night to see him pull in to the drive in his sensible car. What was it that he drove then? She couldn’t remember things like that anymore. He’d climb out slowly, retrieve his satchel from the backseat. She watched him mow the lawn on Saturdays, wash the cars on Sundays. She enjoyed it when he played basketball in the driveway with his boy (even though the sound of that ball almost drove her crazy). She liked to watch him stroll with the baby in the carriage on the nights she was fussy. With his broad shoulders and perpetually tousled hair, Mack reminded her of a man she’d loved once. The one her sister had married, if the truth be told. Married and then drove him to an early grave with her spending and demands for this and that. At least that’s the way Claudia saw it, even if no one else did. She moved far away from all of them, rather than watch it unfold.

Mack Holt was the only person on the block to ever show her any kindness. He never failed to wave hello when he saw her, or to offer her a smile. He brought her newspaper to the porch from the sidewalk on rainy Sunday mornings. And so she kept an eye on things for him.

She was at her window that night. Mack was late in coming home. And instead Henry Ivy came walking up the drive. It was their night to jog. (Claudia thought it was unseemly for a married woman to flaunt herself around the neighborhood like that with another man. But she suspected Marla Holt of much worse.)

She saw the boy Michael come home, drop his bicycle in the yard. Henry Ivy left. And then the yelling started. Soon Mack came home. There was more yelling, the sound of something breaking. Then Claudia saw the woman run from the back door, the boy and husband chasing after her. She could have called the police, even put her hand on the phone. Nothing good could come of what she’d seen. But a woman like that, always putting on airs, flaunting herself, having men into her house while her husband was out working. Well, maybe she deserved what she got.

Later, hours later, Mack and Michael came back. The boy was sick, or drunk. Mack was practically dragging him. He brought the boy inside, and a few minutes later he returned to the back deck, leaned heavily against the rail, and looked out into the night. She could see him in the amber light over his kitchen door. But she had her lights out; he couldn’t have seen her, hidden as she was behind the curtain.

Then he turned and looked over at her house, as though he knew she was watching. He looked at her house for a long, long time. And she knew that he wanted her to be quiet. And because Mack Holt reminded her of what it felt like to be young and in love, because he had shown her kindness when others couldn’t be bothered, she made a silent promise to him that she would take what she’d seen that night to her grave. And she would, even though Mack was gone now. She’d keep their secret, no matter who came calling.

When the police knocked on her door all those years ago, she’d told them that she’d seen a black sedan, that Marla Holt had gotten into it and ridden away. She had seen that, many times. The vehicle would come to a stop outside the house, and Marla would run outside and climb in, always dressed up pretty. Once she’d had a small valise. Claudia had seen that, just not the night Marla went missing.

Among all her secrets, her little bits of stored knowledge, this had been her most precious. Watching from her window as the lights went on inside the Holt house, lights she hadn’t seen burning in years, she knew that someone had discovered the truth. And she felt angry, bitter, as though something had been stolen from her.

She shut the blinds and went to bed.

THE HOLLOWS SUCKS. Willow wrote this in her notebook as Mr. Vance handed back their essays about A Separate Peace . She barely glanced at it as he put it on her desk. An A, of course.

“Nice work, Miss Graves.” She looked up at him, and he smiled at her, the way he used to. And she smiled back. He leaned in to whisper, tapping on her notebook, “It’s not that bad.”

They spent the rest of the class talking about the essay question. Willow stayed silent until the end, when Mr. Vance glanced in her direction.

“Willow wrote an extraordinary essay,” he said. “Would you care to share your thoughts about the book? You’re uncharacteristically silent today.”

Everybody was looking at her in the way they had been for the last couple of days. Everyone, it seemed, knew about her running away, falling into the Black River, being fished out by the police. They thought that she’d been chased by Michael Holt. (In fact it was only Jolie who claimed to have seen him. That’s why she was screaming. But Willow wasn’t sure it was true.) They’d really been chasing Jolie, trying to get her to come in from the rain.

In some rumors Michael Holt had confessed to Willow about murdering his mother. (She’d never even seen him. By the time her mother and Mr. Ivy got her back to the car, he’d been taken away already.) They all knew now that she’d been the one to see him digging in the Hollows Wood. They’d stopped sneering and laughing at her, for some reason. Everyone wanted to talk to her, to hear about that night in the woods. And Willow was happy to tell the tale for them. Finally she had something to say that was harrowing and extraordinary, and not a lie at all.

“I think Gene did knock Fin from the tree on purpose,” said Willow. “He bounced the branch.”

“But they were friends, best friends,” said Mr. Vance.

“True. But sometimes we hurt the people we love, and we do it because something inside us is hurting,” she said. “It doesn’t even have to do with the other person. Sometimes there’s just this ugly, unhappy place inside us. And everything bad-anger, jealousy, sadness-it all lives there.”

Mr. Vance was looking at her so intently that she almost stopped talking. Everyone was looking at her.

“Go on,” Mr. Vance said.

“And sometimes you go there-you live in that place. And when you’re there, you might do and say terrible things. Because things that are good and happy and bright seem ugly and cause you pain. You want to smash those things. You want other people to hurt, too. So you hurt them, even if you love them.”

“Very insightful, Willow,” said Mr. Vance.

She shrugged. “It’s just a book.” When she glanced up at him, he was smiling, but he still looked sad. She was sad, too. He was one of the people she had hurt, and they couldn’t be friends, not like they used to, anymore.

“Story is life, Miss Graves,” he said. She’d heard him say that a million times. She finally understood what he meant.

Out in the hallway after class, Cole was waiting for her. He took her backpack and walked her to her locker.

“How was class?” he asked.

She held up her essay.

“Brainiac,” he said. He leaned in to give her a kiss on the cheek. “Want a ride home?”

“I have to ask my mom,” she said. She gave him a roll of her eyes.

“So call her,” he said. “I’ll wait.”

“How was it today?” she asked him.

He shrugged, looked down at his feet. “Fine.” He wasn’t much of a talker.

It was his first day back at school since the night in the woods. His father had been arrested for embezzlement or something like that. And Cole had been reunited with his mother. They were both staying with his stepmother and his half siblings-which Willow thought must be the weirdest possible situation. She tried to imagine her and her mom living with Brenda the stripper. It would not be okay. But Cole seemed happy with it. His mom needed a place; he wanted to stay in The Hollows and be close to Claire and Cameron-and to Willow. So, for now, it worked. When his mom got a good job, they’d get their own place.