Courtney Summers - Defy the Dark

Crazy is contagious, didn’t you hear?

The floorboards on the other side of the door moaned again, and Cali slipped her note into the desk drawer beneath a celebrity gossip magazine whose staples had been removed. She waited for her mother to pass, watched the shadow of her shrink and fade. Soon her mother would slip beneath the threadbare comforter in her own bedroom and watch Conan O’Brien until she passed out, keeping the television on low so she could still hear the baby monitor in Cali’s room, just in case.

As if to remind her, the red light blinked from atop the squishy beanbag chair near the bed, and Cali sighed. She grabbed her water cup, downed what was left. Then she had to pee.

Cali slipped into the hall. She had to walk past her parents’ bedroom to get to the bathroom, and her mother always kept the door open a crack.

Just in case.

“That you, Calista?” she said as Cali passed. Cali had mouthed the words right along with her.

“Yep.” She rolled her eyes. It’s not like she could do anything in there. Just like her bedroom, the bathroom had been carefully modified prior to her return home. No prescriptions. No nail polish remover or mouthwash or toilet bowl cleaner. No hair dryer cord or manicure scissors. No shower curtain rod from which something could hang. It was safe enough for the baby to toddle into unsupervised. In fact, there was another baby monitor on the shelf over the sink, and if Cali took longer than five minutes, her mother would barge in unannounced.

Just in case.

There was no lock on the door.

Just in case.

Cali did what she had to do, washed her hands, refilled her water cup, and quickly returned to her bedroom, pushing the door partway closed behind her. On the desk by the window, her phone glowed blue-green. MESSAGE, the screen said. 12 MISSED CALLS. Same number as before.

Cali pressed the button for voice mail and shoved the phone between her ear and her shoulder. As she waited for the message, she dug out her letter and picked up the Mango Tango crayon.

but I don’tdidn’t know what else to do and

“You. Have. Twelve. New. Messages,” the robotic voice mail system informed her.

then I realized maybeit’s best for everyone if I just

“You have a collect call from Eastport Juvenile Detention Facility,” a disembodied recording on the other end said. “To accept the charges, press one. To decline the charges, hang up.”

A thrill jolted Cali’s heart and she almost screamed at the unfamiliar sensation, but the feeling was fast and fleeting. She held her breath, hoping to conjure that brief spark again, a pulse in her heart, but it didn’t return. All twelve messages were the same. She set the phone back on the desk and watched it, waiting for another call, another thrill. None came.

go away. Vanish. You

can get back to your normal life

lives and I will follow the

White light flooded the backyard that stretched beyond Cali’s window. The trunks of the swaying pines were illuminated, two low spotlights cutting through the blue-black night. They blinked out and a car engine hummed and quieted and ticked itself down to silence. The car door opened. The car door closed. Footsteps on the path. Downstairs, keys jingled and jammed into the lock. The front door opened. The front door closed.

Her father’s footsteps crossed the living room floor, heavy and full of purpose.

Cali pressed her hand to her chest, surprised as always to feel her heart’s drumbeat against her palm. Thinking of her father did that to her now. She’d tried to snuff out her life force that night, and as far as her father was concerned, she’d succeeded. He’d shown up for the family session with Dr. Berg, kept her cell phone up-to-date, allowed her to live in the house and eat his food. But he hadn’t looked her in the eyes since. Hadn’t spoken to her. Hadn’t come home from work earlier than eleven or midnight, lest he risk crashing into her in the hallway or brushing his fingers against hers as they simultaneously reached for the television remote.

Like the natural cadence of her mother’s voice, Cali had forgotten the warmth of her father’s strong hand on her shoulder, his gentle stroke on her soft, brown hair.

Her phone started up again just as the air shifted in her bedroom and two long shadows slipped beneath the door, spreading across her room, darkening the hardwood floor like a spill. The skin on her arms prickled and her phone kept rattling. She felt her father’s presence, saw the shape of him through the gap of the partially open door. He wasn’t moving. The phone buzzed and whirred, its angry green-blue light blinking from the desk. She imagined his hand against the wood, his eyes closed, disappointment pinching his face. Buzz buzz buzz . If he had any words for her, they were lost, broken on the fortress of his anger, on his inability to understand or forgive. Say something, goddamn you. Say something to me . She willed it and wished buzz buzz buzz and crossed her heart and hoped to die buzz buzz buzz but the words never came. His shadow didn’t move, his breath banging down the door with all the force of a feather. Buzz buzz buzz her father didn’t speak, the phone didn’t stop, and finally she answered, pressing number one to accept the charges and then speaking loud and clear into the receiver. Excited, as if she were receiving an expected but overdue call from an old friend.

The shadows outside her room disappeared and the moths circling her overhead light heaved a sigh of a relief.

“Mom?” a girl on the other end was saying.

Cali didn’t respond at first. She’d expected a boy. A gruff, horny boy sneaking around the detention facility after lights-out, hoping to find a little company on the other end of a random phone number in the middle of the night.

“Ma?” the high voice came again. She sounded like a little kid, Cali thought. A scared little kid.

“Who is this?” Cali finally said.

“Don’t hang up. Please don’t hang up.” The girl’s words came out in a tinkling rush, like glass shattering against the floor. There was no sound after that, and Cali thought the girl must be holding her breath. The absence of voice and air jabbed at Cali’s insides, sent a passing tingle from the base of her spine to her scalp.

“Who is this?” Cali asked again. In the background, there was a muffled echo, an intercom system of some sort. If the robot voice on the phone hadn’t announced the caller’s location first, Cali might wonder if she was in the hospital or maybe the airport. Coming or going. Staying or leaving. “Hello?”

“It’s . . . Mom, it’s me.” The girl added that me part at the end, her voice cracking into a whisper. She said it like a question, like she wasn’t even certain herself.

Cali lifted her crayon from the paper. She hadn’t realized she’d been doodling. Beneath her pathetic scrawl and strikeouts was an asymmetrical spiderweb, a moth ensnared in its silky, Mango Tango threads.

Now she’d definitely have to start over. Once she figured out the rest of what she wanted to say. Absently, she went back to her words.

other path. disappear.

there are things you don’t know and

“It’s me ,” the girl was saying again, more forcefully now. “Your—”

“Wrong number.” Cali didn’t know why she’d accepted the charges. Desperate for a momentary connection, maybe. Curiosity, that was part of it, too. But her parents were in their room now and the baby was tucked away and the monitor’s red light blinked from her beanbag chair and Cali had work to do. Solitary, important work.

She pulled the phone away from her ear to hang up, but the girl persisted, screeching across the wires. Her voice had somehow strengthened. Clarified.