Proxy

Good Morning, Baltimore

Light can destroy darkness.  No, it will destroy darkness.  No matter now bleak or cold or dark, a bem of light can cut through it and bring life.  All you have to do is carry the light with you.

Darkness cannot put out light.  There's no such thing as a flashdark, or a darkhouse.  And light means the same thing for everyone:  hope.  Life, beauty, and warmth.

Except for those three.  For them, the light is something completely different.

*     *     *     *     *

My birthday.  September 15th.  When I woke up that afternoon, I knew exactly what was going to happen that day.  I would go out at around two, pick up my friends, and we would go bowling.  After a few hours we'd go and eat somewhere, and then we'd screw around for the rest of the time.  

Then, when it seemed right, we'd go to Good Shephard Cemetary and start the night with the weed Caleb bought last week.  I probably wouldn't have any for a while, then eventually spend my seventeenth birthday night high for the first time.

"Danielle!  Are you up?"

I groaned loudly and put my arms over my face.  The light hadn't quite made it to my window from outside, but I knew that if I didn't go see what Micheal wanted, then he'd come in anyway.

Throwing on a Ravens sweatshirt, I got up and walked to my older brother's room.  "What?"

He lay there, his usual drunken, nasty self, eyes still glazed and red from the night before,  The shower connected to his room was running.  "Another girl?"

Micheal just grinned and motioned me over.  "Happy birthday, Devi."

I was genuinely surprised that he had remembered.  "Thanks.  I need to get going pretty soon, and I won't be back until tomorrow."  I went to leave his dirty room, but he called me back over.

"Stupid bitch, I got you something," he mumbled, picking up his bag and fishing through it.  After a few moments of shoving things around, he pulled out a $15 Starbucks gift card.  "Here you go."

I stared at it.  "Where did you get this from?"

"The Target in town was selling them and the casheir didn't see me put it in my shoebox.  You can get like three drinks with that."

"Is it activated?"

"God, Devi, I don't know.  I thought you had to be somewhere."  He sat up and shoved his messy hair back.  He hiccuped and coughed, spitting a loogey onto his carpet.  I jumped back, narrowly avoiding the phlegm and walked out of the room.

"You're disgusting," I said to no one as the shower turned off.  I heard footsteps pad their way into the bedroom as I shut the curtain separating his room from the hall.

"Who was that?" A particularily high-pitched blonde-sounding voice asked from behind the curtain.  I didn't stay to hear the rest.  

I checked my little brother's room.  Jo's bed was neatly made with pajamas folded at the foot of it, and the floor was clean as usual.  For the millionth time that year I scanned his walls.  Easily hundreds of pictures fresh from a seven-year-old's mind were pinned to to every blank surface and overlapping in some spaces.  This wouldn't have bothered me if not for what was on the papers.

Every single one was inspired by death.  Jo had developed a facination with it ever since the accident, and despite psychiatrists and therapists and nurses, he just didn't understand death, plain and simple.  

I turned off his light and headed back to my own room.  After fishing around my closet for a few minutes, I decided on white shorts and a mint blue/green off-the-shoulder shirt.