Kelsey Sutton: Some Quiet Place

I turn my attention from him to the paintings. Shadows slant over them now as night sneaks in. “Whatever you think you found, Fear, is nothing. If someone did do this to me, they made sure that the trail to them would never be uncovered.”

“Ah.” He lifts a finger. “But that’s not true. I found this.” He reaches into his black overcoat and takes out a newspaper, yellowed with age. He hides its contents.

“What is it?” I ask, just as he wants me to.

Fear unfolds the paper, mocking me as he pretends to read it. I don’t play the game by reaching for it. He sighs, relenting, and holds it out to me. “Oh, very well. Since you want it so badly.”

I take it with both hands, noting my own picture on the front page. I’m about three or four—it’s one of the pictures Mom has framed in our living room. It’s the girl that I don’t recognize as myself; her face glows with that inner life. Girl Survives Car Accident , the headline reads. But as I start to scan the words—I’m barely past the second sentence—the entire article fades away, the letters, the picture, everything, until I’m holding nothing but a blank paper.

“What is it?” Fear frowns when I hand it back to him. He takes in the empty page, brow furrowed in thought. “The plot thickens,” he murmurs. “But now we know that there is someone behind this. Your immunity really could be a power of some sort in play.”

“And how do you propose we find out?” I ask, sitting back down and looking out the window again. The hay pokes at the bottoms of my thighs. “I’m starting to think whatever happened to me was meant to make me forget something. I don’t think it’s just emotions that have been removed from me—there are memories missing, too.” If that’s what the dreams are. But are they my memories? Or … someone else’s? And why can’t I remember when this change in me occurred?

I turn to face Fear again and see his gaze sharpen. “Maybe they did this to you to hide something. You could’ve seen something you weren’t supposed to … ”

The sun has finally left, and the moon’s faint outline begins to emerge from the other side of the sky. “Maybe,” I say.

Before I can ask him about what the rest of the article contained, Fear tucks the blank newspaper back into his coat and bends down to me. “You’re so distracting; I’ve lingered here too long. See you soon, Elizabeth,” he whispers. His lips touch my ear and his arctic breath fans my face. It smells distinctly of strawberries.

The Emotion vanishes, and an instant later a man jumps from the shadows of the loft with a long knife, making as if to stab me in the stomach. He’s wearing all black and his face is swathed in a ski mask. When I only stare at him, making no sound of alarm, the attacker disappears right when the blade is about to go into me.

“Fear?” I call.

“Just checking,” he chuckles, his voice coming from the night sky.

“You did this.”

A whisper in my ear. The words are a hiss, meaningless to my groggy mind. But the strong sense of someone watching drives me completely awake. Fear? My eyes open to darkness and take a moment to adjust. The black becomes solid shapes. Dresser, mirror, chair. I’m alone; there’s nothing but the furniture and the night. Yet there’s a hint of power in the air. I sit up, frowning. It’s raining outside, a light smattering against the glass of the window. It casts quivering shadows over everything. Something isn’t right.

“You did this.”

I turn. The voice comes from my left. Young, soft. I make out a human shape, standing in the dim corner, that wasn’t there before. Slender. Not an Emotion, my senses tell me. Something else. “Who are you?” I ask. Thunder rumbles.

The strange visitor doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. For what seems like hours we both remain frozen. Questions linger on the tip of my tongue. The storm intensifies, and a flash of lightning illuminates the room. And I’m able to make out his features.

It’s impossible.

It’s wrong.

When he continues to stare back at me with accusation in those familiar eyes, there are no plausible explanations. Because it’s him. The boy who stars in all my paintings. The boy who never moves, never changes, never speaks. The one who the beautiful girl screams over with such anguish.

“You’re dead,” I tell him, clutching my blankets. Can’t be, instinct keeps insisting. This is another one of Fear’s games. Another illusion. My wall of nothingness stirs. I imagine a brick cracking, pieces of rubble showering down.

The boy doesn’t acknowledge this. Now that the lightning has subsided, he’s shrouded in oblivion again. For an instant I wonder if he’s gone—disappeared back to the recesses of my mind—but then his voice emerges, drifts to me again: “You killed me,” he whispers.

The storm bursts one more time, and I see that a stream of blood has slipped out from beneath his hairline to run down one side of his face.

My eyes fly open and I jerk upright, twisting instantly toward the corner where I know the boy won’t be.

Because it was just a dream.

No whispers, no blood, nothing but the realities of this world.

How strange.

The rain is gentle outside, not as portentous as it was moments ago. Oblivious to my plight, the millions of drops fall to the earth with a symphony of wet sounds. I shove my blankets to the floor. Hot, too hot in here . I lie back again and invite sleep to return.

I’ve known Joshua Hayes since we were small children, placed in the same kindergarten class. We’ve never been friends, exactly, but we’re always aware of each other. Once in the fifth grade, when a group of boys gathered together and tried to make me cry by pinching my arms over and over, Joshua defended me, landing in detention with even more bruises than I had.

It wasn’t until the beginning of high school that his feelings began to change. He watches me as if he sees more than what there is. He probably takes my silence as deep contemplation, takes my endurance of Sophia’s vicious treatment as patience, sees my solitary state as a choice to stand apart from the others. Though he’s right in his belief that I’m different from everyone else, he’s wrong about the reason for this. I’m not special or an independent thinker. Yet I’ve never bothered to correct him in his beliefs because he’s never approached me.

But he wants to. I see his desire growing each day, notice how the Emotions’ visits to him at school are becoming more frequent. I watch and wait, knowing I’ll have to put this fire out someday soon.

“I’m going to let you choose your partners for our first project,” Mrs. Farmer says early Monday morning, toward the end of class. She tiredly brushes her hair out of her eyes.

“What’s the project?” one of my classmates asks. Susie Yank, the tiny girl everyone has labeled nerdy and know-it-all . She’s really just lonely, taking solace in knowledge rather than drowning in her friendless existence. I see Longing standing beside her, touching Susie’s shoulder as the girl glances at Sophia, probably imagining what it would be like to be her best friend. Longing is a beautiful Emotion, with long sleek hair and slanted, exotic eyes.

Mrs. Farmer sighs. “I was getting to that. Your job, along with your partner’s, is to make a portfolio of your own work. We’re going to focus on creative writing for a while and take a break from the classics. I’ve given you partners because I know some of you struggle with writing. So you can help each other and feed off of each other’s ideas.”