I Am Darkness

VI

 Hot water washed away the dried and caked sweat that stiffened my skin. It was the kind of shower that was easy to lose yourself in. The acoustics in the shower all the way at the back of the bathroom were nice enough for me to be reserved as my own, and the one nearest to the sinks basically had a label with Sebastian's name on it.

After finishing I ran a borrowed brush through my wet hair, trying my best to pull it taut enough to make it dry straight. It didn't work, of course, and my hair puffed and frizzed up as expected. I threw it into a low ponytail with a red scrunchie I had on hand if the need arose.

Kara gave me one pair of jeans in the entire stack of clothes she had placed in my arms. I was disgusted when I put them on. Never in human history should bootcut jeans have been invented. But they were and apparently Kara had them at one point. I didn't blame her from wanting to give away those monstrosities. I just thought we were better than bootcut-jeans-kind-of-friends.

I cut off the jeans as soon as they began to flow out and rolled them up so they looked like capris. On top I put on a horrible, green-colored crewneck sweatshirt that just barely met the point of comfortably fitting. Kara was a slight girl with a gap the size of the Grand Canyon between her thin thighs and small, bony arms. Still, how could I not have been jealous of her perfection and purity?

I went to the campfire feeling like anything but myself. I felt like a girl that had enough money to support two families but had no siblings. Like the girl who liked pop music and pretended to be perfect, but I felt like the girl who'd send nudes of herself in her own bedroom. A girl who had a high pitch voice and laugh and sneeze and who guys would lay down their lives for.

But what I found was not the judgment that school brought. What I found was a family brought together by horrible situations. What I found was those people, those dragons, had found a place where they belonged.

Kids were separated into groups of two or three or four or more. They laughed over memories from other lives. They looked back and forth to see if anyone was looking, then stole the bowl of tortilla chips, only to be chased down, laughing and smiling the entire way. Their best friends wrapped playful arms around their bodies, tackled them to the ground, because no one stole the tortilla chips and got away with it. They danced around to no music and with no rhythm at all, but somehow it felt perfect.

And I was going to destroy it. If I stepped into the crowd of laughers and believers I'd find a way to tear it apart. In a rage, my father once told me that I destroyed everything I touched. I had just broken most of his "realistic action role play figures". He didn't realize how a self-conscious twelve year old could absorb it and repeat it over and over again. He didn't think of how her mind could twist it and turn it into an anxiety attack.

But then Kara showed up with a smile and an open hand. "Hey, Rip! I was hoping you'd come! Where are you going?"

Whenever I couldn't handle something, I ran away. Usually it wasn't literally. Usually it was me breaking someone's heart because the feeling of getting hurt was too daunting. Usually it was me quitting plans last minute because I was so afraid I'd mess up.

I had done too much running for that day, though, and had instead took to speed walking back to the fire cabin. Hair had already started falling out of my ponytail and getting in my face. I spat a strand out of my mouth and continued walking.

"Hey, what're you doing?" Kara was surprisingly fast for someone six inches shorter than me. She was already standing in front of me, blocking me from retreating.

"This is not for me. I am not you. I am not some perfect pleasant savior of humanity."

"You don't have to be. All you have to be is yourself."

"Trust me, you don't want me there. You won't want me to be myself after you figure out what a monster that person is."

"Don't think you can lie to me, Rip. I see it."

"What?"

"The light in your eyes. Your mom had it too when I met her all those years ago. I used to look up at her for it, both figuratively and literally. I mean, most people only have a sliver of what you guys have."

"What're you talking about?"

"You have that unalienable want to change the world. Your mother did too. It's so amazing!"

"I am not amazing."

"Do you want to change the world or not?" It wasn't the typical, ice-breaker, get-to-know-you question. My answer would always be yes, but I wasn't about to tell her that. She'd turn me into one of her, a blonde minion of her villainous mastermind.

"Well . . ."

"A-ha! So I was right!"

"Doesn't everyone want to change the world?"

"I believe that everyone has it in them, yes. But you, you have an overwhelming sense of it."

"Look, I don't care about your hippy bullshit. I agreed one month but I did not agree to this."

"You will not wreck us because we are already wrecked ourselves. You think I'm perfect? You think I'm someone who's never known darkness? I ran away from adoptive parents who yelled and screamed at me if I did anything wrong, just because I couldn't fit in. But if you want to change the world, you've come to the right place. Come back. Join me."

Subconsciously, my lips curled up into a smile, despite my mind's protests. "Okay," I agreed against my most stubborn wishes.

She smiled back, then led me to the campfire. The fire was still lighting up the faces of all those kids, all those dragons. It flickered back and forth, sweetened my clothes with my favorite smell. Campfire smell.

"Hey, you're Rip, right?" a girl with thin, monolid-ed eyes and long black hair asked me.

"Yeah. And you are?"

"Kayla." Okay, so maybe human, or rather dragon, interaction isn't as hard as I thought it'd be.

I spoke into the night with countless dragons, all eager to meet me. I never had to pretend to like rap music or hide who I really was around them. I could like alternative music and ripped jeans and tall, leather boots and they didn't care.

Long after the sun had set and my eyelids had grown heavy, I retreated back to the fire cabin. Darkness had a weird effect on me. After the sunset I was alive, like adrenaline had been pumped into my system. My eyes were open wide, sitting back and gaping at the stars.

Peter had always loved the stars. We'd go on camping trips when we were younger and less busy and my dad would tell us to look up at the newfound stars that had made themselves known to us after leaving the city. He was staring at the stars long after Dad and I had both gotten bored with it. What I saw were only specks of light in a dark sky. But what he saw were burning balls of gas millions of lightyears away. What he saw were people that lived on planets that orbited those stars, going about their normal lives. What he saw were lives that we would never know, and that would never know ours. But all I saw were stars.

That night I dreamed of when I still hated my new step family. Dad had dragged Peter and I out into the middle of nowhere for some "family bonding". He had set up all the tents while we layered coat upon coat of bug spray on our skin. He led me to a shallow pit, telling Peter to get firewood, and built an A-frame. "You have to start small," he told me. "Light the dead briar first, and then build your way up. If you put too much wood on at once you'll smother the fire, and it'll fizzle out."