I heard there is a petty crime wave across the country - kids, they say. They always say that, with mostly disapproving eyes.
When I looked over at my mom, she was stern, which is to be expected. But my dad, man, he'd never admit it and no one else noticed it but I swear I could see a faint twinkle in his eye. And that's all I needed to know that that was my last chance to impress him, to get him to notice me, or hug me, or maybe just to get him off my back.
It probably wouldn't have mattered if he approved or not; once I saw the news reports replay every night, I knew I wanted to be one of them - wild and free and out there, feeling the night come alive in my bones.
I could see the neighbors talking in hushed tones. I can't see why they bother to whisper, like this is something obscured and unspoken. This kind of clash between the ages is deeply ingrained around here. What doesn't need to be said, isn't. This town is an ecosystem in itself, shuddering under even the dimmest spotlight.
We all know each other. Mrs. Owens next door helped us get a loose deer off our property and we know her daughter ran off with that one guy who went to college three hours away. One night, he came by and she slipped into the night. That was five years ago.
The Steiners two houses down had a tree fall directly on their unfortunate dog and we helped them bury her. And we know Mr. Steiner visits the widow Graham before he walks into his house and kisses his wife.
Some of the kids are good and some we have assigned as bad and no one really thinks too hard about it; neither would the parents of the bad ones say so. Who would?
###
Getting out wasn't even the hard part, really. After the evening news, my parents are in their own world. No, the hard part was calming myself down from the adrenaline of walking completely alone in the shadow of the streetlights, extremities chilled, but my body warm.
I was able to call Dana at the perfect time, before she was heading out herself. We met at the Quik Stop, the only viable place. She had her brother's car and she knew of people and a place and that's about all she said about it.
On the way, she told me about the dark underground wave teeming at the surface of polite society. It's like an impending danger, a barely contained chaos.
The kids are fed up, I guess. But am I? I don't think I've had it particularly bad. But sometimes the kids need to carve out their own path. Like I said, this wired future is a battle that's been waging long before I got here.
###
I sat in the backseat with Dana and a boy with sunken eyes named Keith. His parents volunteered him, he said, knowing he was a misfit from birth, so they could secure a more comfortable future for themselves.
There's a presence over this town, a group, an entity? It's never really spoken about by the parents but the kids are clued in.
In the front seat is Blue, a wild wisp of a girl, who seems to exist only when she's present. I never see her until I see her, if that makes sense. It's hard to get a read on her, having to suss out the truth from the rumors. Her parents live within a block of each other, never having been able to quite stay together long enough to live together.
This town has an event. It isn't called anything, and it isn't even official, but it happens. Under a supposed cloak of anonymity, desperate parents will hand their kids over to - well, we don't know what or who... but they hand them over and, in return, are financially taken care of, until or unless their kid comes home. That doesn't always happen and the answer is never given why some make it back and some don't. No one really hears about the kids when they do come back since parents are naturally hesitant to admit what they did.
In the passenger seat was Matt, a year older than all of us, but insecure because of his weight. I don't know him as well as Dana does, but it doesn't take long to notice his nervous habits.
They have a plan and I guess I'm in on it now.
###
While the salivating billionaires licked their chops at the newest recruits, I was two cities to the west, in the car waiting with Blue, as Matt and Dana went into the Powder Keg, a bar known for being lax with ID's. And cleanliness. And a working cash register, really.
Not much was spoken between Blue and I. Whenever I would try to start a conversation, it came out awkward because it came across like I was trying too hard to kill the silence, which I guess I was. Blue answered but I could tell she was off in her own world, the smoke from her bummed cigarette twisting around her hair, phantom locks against the night.
When Matt and Dana came back out to the car, there was a noticeable urgency to their step. It wasn't until we were almost on the highway that they told us what they had done.
Behind the main area of the bar, there is an open room, with three pool tables that refused quarters. Only one table worked, but wouldn't dispense with the balls, so an amalgamation of different balls were used, careful not to lose even one.
While the five people in the whole place were occupied, Dana used her female presence to distract the cast of characters long enough for Matt to slip behind the bar and grab whatever money he could find, and a couple of bottles of the good stuff. Dana got a weird feeling after an awkward silence and, with no plan B, she walked back out after making an excuse to go back to the car, with Matt clumsily following behind.
###
Grinning and laughing and splashing the liquor around, we howled at the moon and we looked into each other's glassy eyes and thought we were the only ones alive.
Stars dancing above us, we have rejected this post-society malaise. We are grabbing what we want and tonight is forever.
I wonder where my old classmates are now - the idle ones, the peppy ones, the broken, all the confused souls weaned on the soft glow of the reflection of the attic stained glass. Is it seared into their memories like mine?
Are they having twilights like this? So close I can taste Blue and everything she never says straight from her lips. Dana and I holding hands and making occasional glances to each other, like isn't this just wild?
After midnight, we found a house hidden in the woods, made of floorboards that creak soothingly. There wasn't supposed to be anyone home. It didn't look like their would be.
We split up. (You never split up.)
I didn't know my first taste of the untamed chaos I'd heard so much about would be my last. I didn't know a random house in the woods would be occupied by elders. The elders.
We heard too much. Or saw too much. I don't even know what I heard, or saw. I just know I opened a door to a kitchen, where seven figures sat at a table and all turned their head to me. Just me. Where were the others?
Two arms grabbed me from behind.
"Why don't you join your friends?"
"Where are they?"
Right here.
Right there.
Heads on platters. Ready to be consumed.
###
Planes. Flights. Plans. Cargo. Retired sea breeze.
A soul floating off into the universe, made of every color at once.
It wasn't the death that was painful, it was that I didn't get to experience tonight forever.
