I Was There Two!

MurderWeasel · #1

((Darlene Silva continued from You Gotta Roll With It, You Gotta Take Your Time))

It wasn't as dark out after sundown on the island as Darlene had always expected. That was what struck her time and again, a surprise each night because back home she'd just always assumed that after dark there wasn't much light at all without electricity. She was up late all the time, but never outside. The once or twice she'd for some reason or other tiptoed to the front door and cracked it open, she'd been all tense and scared the entire way, because nighttime was dangerous even a few inches from home. And there was always light pollution.

Inside, in her room, there was whatever level of illumination she wanted. Most of the time she kept the lamp by her desk on, or even the overall room lights, except for right when her parents were going to sleep. For that half hour or so, she shut down everything but her computer. She didn't want to get caught! It wasn't that they'd do anything precisely, but even imagining talking about her sleep habits at length made her uncomfortable. Her inclinations weren't super healthy, and she knew it, and she felt gross and slow and stupid in the mornings sometimes, but all of that wasn't enough to make it any different come the night when she was parked at her desk once again.

It was about making the good moments last.

That's what so many things came down to. Darlene wasn't always about saving the best for last, of course; do that too much and it was easy to not even have room for dessert! But when it was a choice between staying up late and reading (even reading something silly that she wasn't invested in and didn't care about and wouldn't remember the next day anyways) and going to sleep to just be unconscious until it was time for school again, it was a pretty easy decision. And then if she felt like trash, she'd at least be feeling like trash at school mostly, and while Darlene didn't hate school it certainly wasn't her favorite place to be and if she could consolidate all the bad stuff into one clump that was nicer.

The light here came from the moon and stars, when they peaked through the clouds hanging above. It wasn't enough to see far or well, but it revealed little details. Darlene was sitting on a big chunk of stone in a clearing, gun loosely in hand, hand loosely resting on her leg. She was looking at the trees, the rocks, the way beyond a certain point it was hard to say if the forest faded into a blur because the vegetation was too dense or the light insufficient.

She was on watch right now, but it didn't really matter. She wasn't going to be sleeping tonight, not one wink, and even as her eyelids grew heavy it wasn't so hard for once to pull back to those moments at her computer when she hung on for just another minute, just one more, until the morning light made the curtains over her window glow and she hopped into bed for just a moment so her mom would think she'd been sleeping all night.

There wasn't any time to rest. She needed to keep every sliver of time she could, every little insignificant thing. After all, she was probably going to die in the morning.

Darlene couldn't remember what the first song she sung was, and she couldn't remember her first Christmas. They'd both happened, obviously, but she'd wondered about them for a while. She'd also wondered what even counted as a first Christmas. Was it the first one she existed for, when she was a tiny baby? There were pictures of that. She'd seen them, her in the hospital still because her birthday was Christmas Eve. It was hard for her to understand or connect with it, though, because she didn't remember a thing about that.

She didn't really start remembering anything at all until she was three or four, which seemed like a lot of time to lose. That was as much time as all of middle school. Darlene wished she could forget middle school instead! The learning was okay and there were a few good moments, but middle school was when she felt especially nerdy and stupid and fat. It was when everyone else started to stop being kids and she didn't change one bit. Okay, she got a little bit taller, but she was still one of the shortest, and she got her period and stuff, but so did everyone. And a bunch of the others became more sporty and cool and started dressing nicely and discovering amazing talents and even going on dates, and Darlene still wore sweat pants half the time until she finally, finally refused to put them on anymore at age thirteen.

The first Christmas that she could actually remember clearly was when she was maybe six or seven. She was wearing a big sweater with red and white stripes and candy canes on it, but she hated it. The reason was because it was very heavy and made of wool, and it made her itch all over, and even though she thought the colors were pretty, she was sweating and scratching all day long.

Her aunts and uncles kept telling her to stop, because it wasn't proper. It was hard for her to sit still and it seemed like none of her cousins had the same problem, but also none of them were wearing the same sorts of sweaters. All the adults were talking and eating and drinking and Darlene was incredibly bored by it, and spent most of her time instead looking at the tree and the presents. There was a big pile of the latter, all wrapped neatly in smooth paper with snowmen and Santa or with candy stripes, tied with bows and glittery ribbons, and she wished she could be wearing some of that too, and that it itched less.

The tree was even more special, though. The ornaments were something she'd surely seen before, but she hadn't been aware enough to really take them in, and now she saw that along with the normal spheres of shiny glass, there were little nutcrackers and big dangling icicles and golden trains and this strange scary knight with a glowing red sword who her dad said was named Darth Vader.

There was also a lumpy, misshapen hand painted in all different colors, not in any sort of order but just blurring into each other like tie-dye. It was small, the same size as Darlene's hands, and her dad told her that it was a replica that her mom had made back when she was a kid too, and it had been hanging on the tree every year since. He told her they'd make her one too, but things got busy and everyone forgot, even Darlene until they were driving home, and when she remembered she screamed and cried until she could barely breathe. But two days later, back at her own house, they got the clay and they made a hand and she painted it in all different colors, and they mailed it to her grandmother and even though they packed it well the thumb popped off in transit, but it was nothing a little glue wouldn't fix. And it was there the next year, and every year after, on the tree usually right next to her mom's.

When she sat there that first year she remembered, scratching and sweating and staring, Darlene liked to imagine that she would go into the Christmas tree and be there climbing around in the branches, hidden away in the inside near the trunk of the tree, having adventures with the nutcrackers and Darth Vader and hiding behind the beautiful glass icicles. There was a glittery silver spider in a web that always went near the top of the tree, and she thought they would go and challenge it, and then maybe make friends.

The birdie sailed over the net and Darlene darted in for it, looking to return with an underhand swing because she was too late to do anything but sort of scoop it back to the other side, but she was too slow and her aim was off and instead she swatted it straight into the net, to bounce back to the ground at her feet.

"Three – love," she announced, leaning down to pick up the birdie and then gently bouncing it off her racket and across the net to where her opponent waited.

"You okay?" Misty called back.

This was after-school practice, and they were playing singles, and Darlene was paired with Misty which was normally a good thing, because while Misty was definitely better at badminton she wasn't better enough that it was a total blowout every single time like with some of the others. But today that was exactly what it was! The first set had ended something like twenty-one to six, and this was shaping up to be more of the same, and it was probably obvious that Darlene wasn't really playing her best or even particularly focused.

"I'm fine," she said.

Misty served, nice and slow, a softball, and Darlene returned the rally in kind, and it felt like no sooner had it crossed the net than Misty jumped and smashed the birdie straight on back past Darlene and into the ground.

"Four – love," Darlene called, and then sighed as she plodded over to retrieve the birdie and send it back for the next volley.

"We can take a break if you want," Misty said. "I think Coach Skinner's off talking to Garcia again."

Darlene looked at her feet and scraped them against the court a bit, thinking.

It wasn't that she didn't like badminton. She did. And she liked playing with Misty, mostly, in singles or together in doubles, and physically she felt fine. The team was a good thing for Darlene, a spot she felt like she was, if not valued, at least sort of in a place she belonged, which wasn't common much of anywhere else except choir. It was strange, because the badminton team got a whole lot of support from the school, even though they weren't very popular or particularly good. Somewhere back in the day, they had once been, at least that was what Darlene had heard, and so a bunch of resources had been put into making sure the court was nice, but then the really good class had graduated and the teacher in charge had left and things had fallen apart.

Nowadays, the team seemed to be enjoying a bit of a renaissance, but mostly it was with two grades below hers. When Darlene and Misty had joined, they'd been one of the smallest groups ever to sign up, and they'd been carried first by the teammates older than them and then by those younger. It was sort of strange to think that after they graduated, the team wouldn't change all that much actually, and also sort of strange to think that it wouldn't be that long before she never ever again would wear the green and black and white uniform that made her look so much like all the others, though that wouldn't be so bad because Darlene always thought it was a little tight and she didn't like that it had short sleeves.

"I'm okay," she said, "I, we... let's finish this set?"

Even from across the court and through the net, Darlene could see as Misty's lips went thin and then broke into that big gap-toothed smile, and she wondered what was so funny until she realized that she'd just suggested that she knew she wasn't going to win this. Otherwise, there'd be a rubber game to break the tie.

"I, I mean," Darlene said, as she tossed the birdie to her opponent, "I mean..."

"It's okay," Misty said, then went straight into a serve Darlene didn't even manage to return. She sighed, then went plodding after the birdie, which had bounced almost all the way to the bleachers.

"Five – love." Misty called the score this time. "You sure you're feeling it?"

"I mean," Darlene said, and then she stopped and thought. Really, she wasn't feeling it at all! She wanted to go and sit on the bleachers, or even better out in the hall or in the library, or even better still to just go home for the day. She could say she was feeling sick, except it was a little late for that because she hadn't been sick at all up until this point and her nose wasn't running and she knew her temperature would be fine. And the big issue, of course, was that she didn't really want to have this conversation with Misty.

Darlene liked Misty fine. The girl was pretty and confident and funny in a way Darlene envied, but also most of their classmates hated her in a way Darlene really did not envy. Much better to just be invisible! A lot of the problem was that Misty was a Republican and was very loud about this, and this made Darlene especially uncomfortable because she didn't follow politics a lot but some of her aunts and uncles were Republicans too, and they seemed fine and didn't have anything really to do with the stuff that got people so worked up all the time, but she worried if she talked about that or even tried to puzzle it out more then people might hate her too.

The other thing though was that Misty was pretty mean sometimes, and that didn't usually come out at Darlene but there had been a time or two when she got really worked up and frustrated, and Darlene just wasn't entirely sure how this would go, especially with the thing that was actually bothering her.

"I, I mean I'm okay," Darlene said, "But thank you. Maybe, maybe after?"

The birdie flew back over the net as Misty took position in the corner to serve again.

"Yeah, okay," the girl replied, smiling once more as she launched the birdie back for another round.

In the end, the score was not twenty-one – love, but Darlene was pretty sure Misty let her score the four points she got out of pity! She was always stuck in these moments between appreciating the kind thought and resenting the condescension, but neither emotion was all that strong, and so Darlene just settled into a sort of neutrality. This was how she was feeling as she made her way over to the bleachers and plopped down next to her stuff, but she was so in her own head she didn't realize until a second later that Misty was right behind her. The girl sat down next to Darlene, leaning back some as she took a long drink from a water bottle.

Practice was mostly over now anyways, so they weren't likely to get in trouble, but Darlene didn't quite feel right taking off without Coach Skinner's okay, so she instead reached for her backpack to get a book. She was still deciding between her math textbook (boring, but she had to get the work done at some point) and her English textbook (which she didn't have any work in but she was reading some of the stories they hadn't been assigned just because they were interesting) when she felt the tap on her shoulder. Turning, she found that she same wide smile, that same tooth gap.

"So, come on," Misty said, "what's going on?"

"It's," Darlene said, glancing around to see if there was anything else happening in the gym that she could use to escape, but there wasn't; the other groups were still playing because they hadn't gotten stomped twenty-one – four, "it's nothing, no big, I—"

"Is it boy trouble?"

"No," Darlene said, putting a lot of oomph into that denial because she desperately didn't want the wrong ideas going around, and then because that was such a concern she messed up and spilled what she'd been hiding: "It's Tonya."

"What?" Misty raised her eyebrows and glanced over down the court even though they were far enough up the bleachers Darlene would have to squint to figure out which girl Tonya even was, if she was even in the room, which she definitely wasn't going to check. "She being a bitch or something?"

"No," Darlene said, "no, just that she's, she's back and, you know, she was gone because..."

This was all a horrible mistake and Darlene wanted to turn into some sort of primordial slime and just sluice through the cracks in the bleachers and become a pool somewhere in the dark below where nobody would ever see her again.

"Yeah, because she got knocked up," Misty said. "You knew, right? Like before today?"

"Well, uh, yeah," Darlene said. She had. It was the sort of thing that didn't stay quiet around school, even if you were someone as far away from everything as Darlene. But it hadn't seemed real really, and it wasn't like Darlene really knew or interacted with Tonya aside from the badminton team, and the girl had just been gone for a while but then this week she was back, and it was just a lot to think about. Darlene hadn't even really talked to her yet, and wasn't sure if she was going to. Probably she'd just wait a week or two and then act like everything was normal and Tonya had never been gone in the first place.

"So," Misty said, with patience that felt just a little exaggerated, "what?"

"It's just weird." Darlene was talking quiet now, to her feet more than to the girl beside her. She probably shouldn't be having this conversation at all, because Misty might spread it around to everybody, but Misty might also make a huge deal if Darlene disengaged, so she was doomed no matter what, and it was easier to just keep talking and kick the consequences down the road.

"It's like, it's, how can she be a mom?" Darlene continued. She glanced around but nobody was paying the two of them any mind, and Coach Skinner was still off somewhere else. "It's, I, I mean, that's just... I don't know. You hear about it on TV, but I didn't think anyone in class would..."

Misty sighed, and when Darlene snuck a look at the girl she was gazing up at the ceiling again, but her tone wasn't annoyed, even though it was sharp.

"The problem," Misty said, "is that Tonya is stupid and a slut."

Darlene didn't reply to that. She did look around, just because if someone else had heard, then she didn't want to be part of this conversation anymore. But even though Misty wasn't being quiet, the others were involved in their games and everything was buried under the soft whack whack whack of birdies against rackets. The wood of the gym floor looked so bright, reflecting the big lights high up in the ceiling.

"You can be one or the other," Misty explained, undeterred, "but if you're both you have a problem. A lot of our class is stupid, and a lot of them are sluts. If you're smart about it that's okay, because you use a condom. It's, you know, not very tough actually."

"It's just strange," Darlene said, landing in that spot where she didn't explicitly disagree with something somebody said but also sure wasn't agreeing with it. "I, well... who takes care of the baby?"

"Who knows?" Misty shrugged. "Maybe her parents or something. Wouldn't surprise me. The stupid has to come from somewhere."

"I just hope the baby's okay," Darlene said. "And I, I don't know, just having her back makes me think, it just seems wrong."

"Well," Misty said, "the good news is, she might be out of practice. Why don't you stop thinking about babies, and we go again, and maybe you can beat her for a change next time you play?"

When bad things happened to Darlene, she often yearned for death. It wasn't exactly sincere, but it wasn't exactly insincere either. She wasn't suicidal. It was just, sometimes she thought that life would be a lot easier if she was dead. The benefits were many. No more homework. No more gym class! No more having to tell her mom about her day after school.

Usually, she imagined death coming for her in a silly way, because that was less scary and more fun. If she was in the library, and a cute boy came and looked her way and got that strange wrinkle in his nose and turned away real quick, she would picture the bookshelf next to her abruptly tipping over and squashing her like a grape. If she was in the science lab, she'd imagine some crazy chemicals spilling and making her explode or burst into flames. Outside? An airplane or helicopter would plummet from the sky and land on only her! If there weren't any plausible environmental hazards to run afoul of, falling or melting through the ground and into the bowels of the earth was a perennial favorite. It was just nice to imagine a quick, simple conclusion to difficult or painful situations, one that left it so Darlene didn't have to worry about anything anymore, and maybe other people were left scratching their heads.

Her conception of what exactly death was, or what it was like, had always been just a little fuzzy. Her grandmother had gone to church a lot when she was a younger woman, and taught Darlene some of the old songs, and they were all about Heaven and God and eternal paradise and that stuff, but Darlene's grandmother didn't go to church anymore and Darlene didn't believe in Jesus. She had a more scientific bent, but the problem was science mostly only speculated on what people could directly see and observe, and there weren't a whole lot of people dying and then coming back to answer questions about it.

There were, of course, a few, though it depended on the definitions in play. Darlene had spent a while on the Wikipedia page for clinical death, and had read stuff about Lazarus syndrome, and had gone looking around online for people who'd come back, and there were a lot of discussions of what they experienced. The thing was, though, she didn't think that really counted! The term "near death experience" was a lot closer to the mark! And even if it did really actually count, it wasn't the same, because the part of death that nobody knew wasn't the part where you were dying and your body was pouring all the chemicals it had left into you all at once, but the part that came after, when your brain hadn't been doing anything for a good long while.

Her grandmother said once that she still liked to believe there was a Heaven, and Darlene agreed that sounded nice. Hell wasn't quite that appealing, and Darlene had tried to imagine what it would be like to go to Hell and be tortured forever and ever, but she had trouble with that. She hadn't had that much pain in her life, but she'd gotten really sick a few times and thought that if she ever found herself in a place where that was what the rest of her life was like, she'd rather die than just lie in bed puking nonstop.

What she hoped, mostly, was that being dead was just like being in the deepest parts of sleep, where you closed your eyes and then when you opened them the world had changed and you had to catch back up. It would be like that, except without the part where you opened your eyes again. That didn't sound terrible. Some scientists or philosophers or something said it wouldn't matter anyways, because you needed to exist to perceive things, and thus could never perceive your lack of existence. Other scientists said there were a million billion universes and dimensions, and Darlene thought that if that was true and there really were that many out there then there had to be at least one that she'd end up in even after she died here, right?

But all of this didn't stop her from being scared. Mostly, she tried not to think about the actual experience of dying and being dead. She just focused on the process, and made it funny, and in some tiny way that made the inevitable feel just a little better.

Sometimes, when Darlene started to nod off, she'd press the revolver against her forehead so the cool metal would jar her back to alertness. She used the side, mostly, felt the curves of the cylinder pushing against her greasy skin. The barrel only came into play when she was really really positive that Christina was completely asleep.

Other times, she would stimulate her mind by spinning the cylinder and listening to the faint whirring clicking sound it made. The weapon was fascinating, in its own way. It was a little machine, a piece of technology that had revolutionized the entire world and helped create the society where Darlene and Christina and Jonah and Max and Arizona and Stephanie and everyone else grew up. Darlene didn't really understand how it worked, either the macro or the micro. Guns had never held that much appeal to her, honestly, because they were so violent and dangerous and when she was imagining adventures she just gave herself magic or really good bow skills, because she was pretending anyways. What was the point of make believe if you kept too close to what life was actually like?

But now, after all these days of carrying it everywhere, holding it and relying on it, she had a lot of affection and familiarity for this particular firearm, and she wished she knew more about it. It looked almost beautiful when the faint moonlight caught the silver metal and made it shine even through the dirt and forehead grime all over it.

It hadn't been worth lighting a fire with the ground so damp still, at least that was what Darlene had said. It wasn't entirely true, and she should've felt worse about that maybe, but she didn't. Christina was okay, even without a fire going. Christina was, moreover, what Darlene had left. But a campfire with just her and Christina would have been an awful lot sadder than no campfire at all. For it to feel right, to be proper, there had to be more people, to talk and sing and laugh. Darlene felt better when there were people all around, even if she liked being alone within that context. She liked to hear other people laugh and see them smile, and to appreciate that from just a few steps to the side. She didn't want close deep personal one-on-one conversations, not all the time and not really often even. She just wanted to enjoy other people enjoying themselves, and maybe, just maybe, to sometimes get closer and join in.

She missed Abe. She missed lots of people, really, and if she was going to go through every single person she'd seen since this started Abe would not be first or second, but he wouldn't be too far from third place. The thing was, though, Abe was still alive, or had been last Darlene saw him, and the way they'd parted didn't feel good and she just absolutely hated the idea that she'd never see him again and that would be it. She wanted to say goodbye. She wanted to say she was sorry, and to ask him to please stay, and to say they'd make everything better and undo the damage. She wanted him and Christina to become friends.

At that, Darlene missed Ace, too, because he was another one who was still around and who she could actually possibly really see again. Ace was probably a worse person than Abe was, because he'd done bad things to people that actually stuck, had killed again and again instead of just scared people, but Darlene didn't care. She'd done bad things too, also again and again, and the only difference was most often she'd failed or somebody else had taken the blame.

She wanted to miss Jonah and Arizona and Max, but she didn't have the energy left to think about them and also keep breathing. This was all going wrong. This was a long night, maybe the longest she'd ever had, and she was supposed to be enjoying every little moment left, but all she could think of was sad things and what she'd lost. It was no good living only in the past. She had to find the right moments to cling to in the now.

Unfortunately, the first Christmas song Darlene could actually remember learning and singing was Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. It was unfortunate because it was one of the very few holiday songs she actually didn't love. The message was weird. That was actually true of a lot of Christmas songs, and Darlene didn't mind it entirely in most contexts, particularly if it was being done on purpose. Sometimes life was sad, and even songs about happy days could acknowledge that. But the problem with Rudolph was that it advanced a moral that put a lot of weight on joining the bullies being a good reward. Rudolph got ostracized and teased and then Santa put in a word for him and suddenly he was popular and all was forgiven. And that was all well and good, but Darlene thought Rudolph should've turned around and told the other reindeer to go take a hike!

Also, the start of the song was very silly, because it began by suggesting the listener was familiar with each and every one of Santa's reindeer, and then ended by asking if they remembered Rudolph, even while admitting he was the most famous. That part totally spoiled the end of the song. And besides, who remembered Donder but didn't know who Rudolph was? Nobody ever!

Rudolph was also Darlene's first Christmas movie that Darlene remembered, but even though the story was basically exactly the same as in the song, the film version was a lot better. Some of it was that Darlene's family had it on actual VHS tape still, at least when she was a kid. They didn't use the VCR for much of anything besides this, but they had Rudolph taped from a television broadcast back in the late 1980s, and it had the commercials that came in between segments right there as part of it, and that was very interesting to Darlene. It was like going to another time, and she thought of the advertisements as part of the movie and waited for them just like the other scenes. She remembered especially a polar bear drinking soda, but whether it was Coke or Pepsi she could never recall, and she didn't much care for either compared to orange soda.

She also liked that the movie spent more time on the story and introduced side characters and gave everyone nuance. She liked the elf who wanted to be a dentist, and the island where all the broken toys lived, and the horrible snow monster scared her so much when she was little but she always laughed when its toothache got cured. And also the way they made a movie like that, with models and stop motion, it was amazing. She barely understood it, and had asked her mom why they didn't just do it on a computer like the Toy Story movies, and her mom had said there weren't computers back then. That had thrown Darlene for a loop, and it stuck with her even when she got older and came to understand it wasn't really true exactly.

The moral of the story was still more or less the same, though,

At some point when Darlene was growing up, the VCR had disappeared. It didn't fit in the cabinet anymore, and they didn't have many VHS tapes anyways, and the ones they did have were old and grainy. Her mom had gotten Rudolph on DVD, of course, and they still watched it every year, but it just didn't feel quite the same. There was a menu before the feature, and the story played straight through, no interruptions, no cutting in abruptly. The image looked so clean. Darlene smiled and laughed and enjoyed it, truly and honestly, but she never suggested it. When she was the one picking movies, she always chose something else.

Max's last name was Rudolph. It was the only thing about him she really knew before the trip.

When Darlene told Ace that she didn't have a better plan than he did, she was telling something kind of like the truth, if you squinted at it. All the same, she wasn't being quite honest, and she knew it, and she did something sneaky and kept on talking without giving him a chance to cut in, and she changed the subject so he wouldn't notice. And he didn't notice, and she was glad, but at the same time it made her kind of sad, because she thought Jonah would've noticed, or even Max, and they would've asked her about it, and try as she might to hide what she was thinking Darlene would've ended up spilling the beans.

They, he, whoever she was talking to would've been very upset and suggested she reconsider her plans.

It had all been there in what she'd said before, what she hadn't hidden: "I might still give up." That was it. That was the plan.

Okay, it was slightly more complicated than that. The giving up part was kind of beside the point, and was something Darlene felt sort of guilty about. After all, she'd given Ace that whole big speech about how this entire ordeal wasn't for nothing, and how it meant something, and how she was glad that she'd been there and experienced it, and all of that was all completely true. But what was also true was that Darlene knew she wasn't going home ever again. She couldn't. She could barely even deal with keeping going after what she did to Arizona, and she thought that if she left the island alive she'd probably just go crazy. And what it took to make it, being the last one, she couldn't kill people on purpose like that she didn't think. Not if they weren't really bad, at least, and she didn't have a good record, and, and it was just too much and too hard and it was easier and felt better to give up and stop hoping.

But more than that, she wanted everything to end on a good moment. That was the crux of the plan.

Killing Arizona had been the most awful thing Darlene would ever do, but also it made her eligible for the daily prize. She didn't deserve it, in that she didn't deserve anything good for doing something so terrible and wrong, but on the other hand, that seemed to be exactly what got rewarded. And so, she'd made her request, just in case.

What she hoped was that they would give her everything she wanted. They'd give her a sandwich, smooth peanut butter and strawberry jam, and they'd send her to the waterfall to get it. She'd say goodbye to Abe and Christina, because in this fantasy they were all still together and she hadn't had time yet to revise it to account for the fact that Abe had left, and she'd act like it was normal until she was fifty feet or so into the place they couldn't follow, and then she'd turn around and shout back that she was sorry, and that she liked them a lot and wished them the best, and that they should stay safe and take care of each other, and she wished she could be there to help but she couldn't and she wasn't coming back and this was goodbye.

Then she would turn and walk away, crying all the while.

When she reached the place with the food and the gun, she would deal with the weapon first, and she would throw it off a cliff or smash it or toss it in the river without even looking to see what was inside the box. Then she would take the food and she would go to where she had left Max and the dog. She would sit down with them, not looking too close at Max because he deserved privacy and because she didn't want to know what had happened to him since she left, didn't want to get scared or sad. She would get real close to the dog, though, and hug it as she ate her sandwich as slowly as she could.

When the last bite was gone, she would clean her mouth out with her tongue, scouring every nook and cranny for any stray peanut butter, and she'd take one last sip of water. She'd hug the dog, and she'd put the gun in her mouth, and she'd smile because that one last moment would be as good as it got. It was as good an end as she could hope for, and it was greedy and selfish and she didn't deserve it but she wanted it so much, and she hoped the others could forgive her and knew it wouldn't really matter whether or not they did.

She just had to figure out a way to make really sure she didn't get any unnecessary blood on the dog.

It was hard to believe, but somehow things had gotten even worse!

The party wasn't over, because parties like this probably didn't ever end. Probably Forrest's dads would come back in a week or something, and there would still be people partying in the attic, and some stranger sitting in the pool with a bottle in hand. Was there even a pool? Darlene had never gone out back in the end, because she was too afraid of standing around the secondhand smoke, and there were lots of smokers there every time she looked. How did so many of her classmates smoke? Darlene had only been eighteen for a few months, and she still felt guilty even looking at cigarettes in a store. She still felt guilty when she told websites she was over eighteen, because she hadn't yet really realized she wasn't lying anymore.

The reason everything was worse was that Darlene's friend who'd driven her here had said she'd be right back, she had to pee, and Darlene had been left sitting on the sofa with a few others from the Go Fish game, which was long over by now, and she sat there waiting and waiting and it seemed like an awfully long time to be peeing. She'd heard whispers that something was wrong with one of the bathrooms earlier, so maybe there was a line? But even if one of the bathrooms was entirely flooded or sealed off, Forrest's house probably had more bathrooms than Darlene's house had rooms in general. Her friend should just pick another.

Then, Darlene took the tiniest sip from her disgusting beer, which she was thinking of maybe throwing away but also it seemed a shame since over the past two or three hours she'd made it at least three fourths through it, and checked her phone, and that was when it got really terrible. She had a text message, and she hoped it would be her mom asking if she was okay, but it wasn't. It was her friend, saying that whoops, her own family was super duper mad because they heard something from someone else's parent about something with the roof and they wanted her home right this very second, and she was so worried she just went and started driving home and forgot that she was Darlene's ride, and now there was no time to turn around and come back so Darlene was on her own when it came to getting home, sorry.

Darlene picked up the beer to chug the rest of it, but when the first drop hit her tongue she just couldn't, so it became yet another tiny sip.

This was a real predicament! Her grandmother would say she was in a pickle! She was still at the party, which was showing no signs of slowing down, and now she had no ride. She could call her parents for a lift, and they would definitely come and pick her up, but then they would see what the party actually was, and they might smell that she'd been drinking beer, and then she would be grounded forever, which wasn't even fair at all, because this wasn't her fault, because they'd told her to come! She'd sooner die. But, the other option was to take a ride from someone else at the party, and everyone at the party was drunk or high or both, and then they'd crash into a tree or rocket off the side of a bridge and she'd actually die. It was in theory possible to wait things out for a ride from parents after everything was over, but that would take forever. She could maybe walk home, but even though Chattanooga wasn't exactly New York City, which Darlene understood was a potentially dangerous place indeed, she didn't want to just be wandering around in the middle of the night. And the bus didn't even start until morning, she was pretty sure, and she was tired.

Somehow or other, Darlene made her excuses and made her way up off the couch and through the house. She dumped the last of the beer down the sink, and put the bottle in the recycling bin. There were people everywhere, not quite as many as before, but the press and chaos and noise were hitting her harder now that she knew she was stranded here. Was she actually drunk? It seemed halfway likely, in this moment. She wanted to be somewhere else, to be outside, to be home in her room. It probably wasn't even one in the morning yet! Darlene stayed up this late all the time, but staying up all night at home was a different thing than spending the entire evening surrounded by crazy people and having to constantly watch your back and your drink and seeing them taking off their clothes.

Darlene wondered if there would be a new Tonya in a few months, because of tonight, but then she remembered that even if there was she wouldn't ever know most likely because the school year was just about over.

The last big hurdle was the front door. It was closed. This was tricky because Darlene tended to feel awkward in other people's houses, like anything she did was intruding or making herself too familiar, and opening the door without explicit permission definitely felt like a forbidden imposition. On the other hand, Forrest, wherever she was, was probably on too many drugs to even speak, much less give her blessing. It wasn't right for Darlene to be a prisoner here, but it also didn't feel right to break free.

For maybe a couple of minutes (or at least one—it must've been!), Darlene just waited by the door in case somebody else would come and set her free, entering or exiting and letting her coast along in their wake, but nobody did. The music was thumping and she could feel it in her insides, shaking through her guts full of beer, and she felt her eyes getting wide and decided, forget it, she was out of here!

She let the door slam a little louder than she meant behind her. Outside was not entirely the freedom she'd imagined, however, because it was dark and kind of chilly. Darlene became suddenly aware just how warm and stuff it had been inside the house, because her sweater was damp from sweat that now leached the chill out of the air and into her body. The scary drug boy with the dreadlocks who'd been manning the door was gone. The thumping was still audible, but faintly. There were cars parked all over, and even a motorcycle, but not really any other people.

Darlene made it halfway down the walkway, then just stepped off the path and sat in the grass. It was scratchy and damp against her legs, and she immediately regretted her choice because she was going to get her skirt so messy, but she'd made her bed now so she'd just deal with it. At least now she had space to figure out how she was going to get home.

The only problem was, being able to think more clearly didn't give her any new options. It was just the same stuff she'd thought of inside. She was probably going to have to call her parents. Maybe she'd walk a block away first and lie and say some other house was Forrest's. They were all pretty big around here. She didn't like doing that, but...

"Whoa, hey, it is you."

The voice jolted Darlene straight up like a bug had crawled over her leg. The door had opened and closed again while she was thinking, and she'd even heard it in the back of her mind, but had not been consciously processing that sort of sensation. She turned, and her eyes rolled their way up the figure standing beside her, taking in scuffed up black suede shoes, then the purple-and-black-striped stockings, then a span of bare thigh that made her flush a bit, then the hem of a short black dress, then the rest of the dress with its spaghetti straps, and then Misty's face and only then did Darlene really process that Misty was wearing a cape. It was like she'd come prepared for Halloween! Darlene shrank back some because Misty was a little bit scary even in good times and she'd been drinking with that half-naked girl not so long ago so who knew what she was capable of now?

Misty bent down into a squat, the cape pooling behind her in the grass. Even Misty was taller than Darlene, but only by maybe an inch. Right now, though, her posture gave her an extra boost, because Darlene's butt was firmly planted on the lawn.

"I thought I saw you," Misty said, then tilted her head and brought her eyebrows close together. "What are you doing here?"

"I, I, hi, Misty," Darlene said. Now that they were a little closer to being on level, she could see that Misty's hair was stringy and clumping oddly. The girl smelled overwhelmingly of beer.

"Hi," Misty said. She sighed. "Are you okay?"

"I'm," Darlene started, and then she stopped. She knew Misty better than she knew most of the other people here, at least, even if not that well, but one thing she knew for sure was that Misty also didn't know how to drive. This meant that if she was still here, she had to have some sort of ride planned for herself, and maybe Darlene could piggyback off of it and get home after all.

"I'm okay, I guess," Darlene said, "except, except for my ride left."

"Wow," Misty said, shaking her head. "What an asshole."

"No," Darlene countered, on instinct, because that was just sort of what she did when it came to her friends, but upon reflection she had to concede that it hadn't actually been the nicest thing to do to her, "I mean, I mean her parents got worried and she forgot and..."

"Yeah, whatever," Misty had set her purse down between them and was rummaging in it now, and Darlene glanced too, and was that a clump of green hair in there? She quickly looked away.

"Here." Just as quickly, she looked back, eyes wide, but Misty was just holding out a stick of gum. "I saw you drinking."

"Oh," Darlene said, "I didn't, I... thanks."

She unwrapped the gum and checked it closely, too make sure it wasn't actually drugs or something, but she couldn't really tell and it felt like gum and when she stuck it in her mouth it was chewy and minty. Just having something to keep her teeth busy helped Darlene feel, if not normal, at least better, and it washed away the stale leftover beer flavor she hadn't even realized had settled on her taste buds.

"So, like... why are you here?" Misty asked. She straightened up, offering Darlene a hand, and Darlene took it and pulled herself up off the lawn, carefully. She always felt kind of awkward doing things like this, felt like she was way too heavy and had to work not to pull Misty down on top of her, even though she knew it was mostly just in her head.

"I just, I thought it would be," Darlene started, and then she gave up. "My mom thought I should come."

Misty just about laughed hard enough to fall back down, and Darlene felt her face getting hot and red, but it was probably too dark to see.

"Why are you wearing a cape?" she shot back.

"It's a cloak," Misty said, offhand like she'd answered this probably a dozen times just tonight and completely unperturbed, "and I like it."

"Oh." Just like that, Darlene felt like she was the bad guy now! So she quickly added, "It's cool."

"Thanks." Misty was smiling wide. "I made it. I have nicer ones at home."

"That's cool," Darlene said again, and she sort of meant it, even if she was pretty sure she'd just die if she wore something like what Misty was. Even just the dress!

They stood for a time like that, not saying much. It was quiet here, no sounds of cars, nothing really except the faint noise of the party, the ephemeral thud of music. There was a little breeze, and just for an instant Darlene felt very very lonely.

"How are you getting home?" she finally asked.

"Come on," Misty said, flourishing her hand in a way that tossed her cape, "we'll figure something out."

Walking away without the dog was probably the most alone Darlene had felt in her entire life. She thought it might have also been the bravest thing she'd ever done.

What had Jonah said about bravery, all the way back at the start? That being scared and doing it anyways was being really brave? Darlene had heard that somewhere else, too, long ago, she thought, but it was difficult to reconcile. She was scared a lot. She was scared of everything that had happened since she'd been kidnapped, for one, but also she'd been scared even back at school. She was scared of talking to boys she thought were cute. She was scared of forgetting her homework. She was scared of her mom asking her how her day had gone. She was scared of real dogs, if they were big or barked a lot. Sometimes, moving past fears was just what you had to do to keep going about your day. Sometimes, you did it because the alternative was even scarier.

For a few days now, there had been three constants in Darlene's life besides the people: the dog, the claw, and the gun. Now only the last of that list remained, and she didn't know how she felt about that. It was the least complicated relationship, that was for sure.

Her head hurt, a lot, where it had been gouged. Her ear hurt where it had been torn. Her shoulder hurt where it had been punctured. None of these were quite the same as how her throat hurt, though. The metal collar wasn't the cause. Most times, Darlene forgot it was even there. It was just how things went; when there was stimulus for long enough, it became the new normal and stopped bearing mention. But her throat was tight and painful because she was alone. She'd sent Stephanie away, which she didn't regret, or at least not for herself. Max was gone, and that she did.

It should've been her. There was no real way around it. She had messed up, and she'd been hurt, and if he'd turned around and run away instead of helping her she would've died but it would've been okay because she was going to die anyways. Mustache would've crushed her face like an egg, and Stephanie and Max would've fled and gone somewhere to mourn, and Max wouldn't have kicked Stephanie out. They'd probably still be watching out for each other, maybe figuring out how to do better next time, or getting back to the mission.

Darlene even would've had the dog to watch over her. It had been right there in her bag, and mustache wouldn't have taken it, she thought, just because it wasn't good for anything to anyone but her now. She didn't think he would've torn it up, but the possibility made her stomach get tight and her throat even more painful when it occurred to her.

In her mind, now, it was almost better that way, with her dying, even for her. It wasn't that bad an ending, was it? Dying quickly, to save someone else? Her only big regret was, she wouldn't have known it happened even. She wouldn't have gotten to say goodbye. Max wouldn't have sung for her, but not because he wouldn't want to.

Darlene's attention was dragged back to the path as her shoe caught a rock and she almost took a spill, flailing her arms and somehow retaining balance, squeezing the trigger but the gun wasn't cocked. It was dark now, but she wasn't tired at all. Jonah and Arizona were still out there, and bad people too, and, and...

And even if she wanted to give up still, she couldn't just yet.

Darlene hadn't said much of anything to Christina even when morning came. Groggy and grimy, sticky in that way you only got if you stayed up all night, damp with the morning humidity, she pretended she was properly rested. She'd done it. She'd stayed up the entire night, and everything felt hazy and foggy but as always the daylight brought her a second wind, and it seemed like things would be alright for a little bit longer.

They got a move on pretty soon. Darlene trekked along towards the mansions and waited for the announcements in silence, mostly managing to avoid stumbling over debris on the ground and her own feet. She still hadn't adjusted her plan to account for Abe being gone. She still didn't quite believe it. It still hurt.

When the voice did arrive, Darlene paused. Up ahead, she could see the gardens, the place where everything had gone to bits yet again. She should've come back here sooner. She should've come back after Michael left, should've watched over Jonah or waited for Arizona, or, or...

It seemed like even the man reading the names was getting tired of it all. He lied about what happened with Darlene and Arizona, but that was an okay sign. She was expecting it. Her heart sped up, and she squeezed the handle of the gun, and she waited.

And the winner was Ace.

Ace had killed one of the other boys who'd killed a lot. Ace had been killing a lot of people, which should've perhaps made Darlene more nervous yesterday, and apparently what he'd done had been good enough that he was getting chicken, beer, and macaroni and cheese.

Just for one brief moment, Darlene entertained the idea of trying to find him before he went into the woods and begging him to pretty please just save her a tiny bit of macaroni and cheese. She didn't want anything else. She didn't need chicken steak. That was just kind of okay, not really her thing. And she didn't even like beer. She hated beer. Ace probably liked beer, though. He could have it all.

Darlene shook her head. No, Ace would go and get his food, and she was happy for him, because Ace was someone who she knew—knew!—would enjoy it, and he wouldn't waste it by shooting himself right after. He was actually, in a manner of speaking, less selfish than her, at least in that way.

Darlene hadn't had a single bite to eat since the ribs, even though she had some bars left. She wasn't going to eat them, though, ever, even though her stomach was growling at the very idea of food. She'd been thinking yesterday, and had decided that if she wasn't getting a sandwich, ribs was a better last meal than ration bars. It hurt that it had already happened, that final meal, because it was easier to pick a beautiful last moment when it was in progress or still in the future than when it was all used up, but she wasn't going to ruin it. She would try to be happy with what she had.

Also, it meant she didn't have to shoot herself quite yet. It actually was sort of a relief.

And so, Darlene trudged on, once more towards the garden where it had all fallen apart.

((Darlene Silva continued in I'll Probably Get Homesick, I Love You, Goodnight))