Dancing With The Devil

sister someone.

I had asked Gabby to drive me to the airport since Luke was with Ethan today and to be honest, I was scared he would be mad at me.

"Flight 719 to Wilmington, North Carolina is boarding now" an announcement over the loudspeaker projected. I got onto the plane, put my headphones on, and flew halfway across the country. Drowning my thoughts in music, I closed my eyes and pretended like everything was fine.

In the afternoon of my arrival, I inhaled a cheap doughnut from the airport and headed East by bus. You couldn't spot Southport from a distance; its tallest building was two stories. I passed a scribble of white-painted stores, a gas station that was barely holding itself together, and a tiny park where young preteens went to peer pressure each other into smoking a cigarette. Then came a lonely cul-de-sac of old houses, meant to be part of a development that never happened.

The town ran along a bay, docks of boats lined the shores, and the sound of seagulls echoed off the waves. The smell of saltwater filtered through my senses. There wasn't much around. There were a few residential houses scattered around and all the small local restaurants were all seafood-related. On the water, a few middle-aged men were poking their nets in the water in hopes of removing a piece of driftwood.

In a town so small, it probably forgot its own name by now. It was dependably safe and thus the news, such as it was, was correspondingly dull. Outside in the world, volcanoes erupted, governments rose and collapsed and bartered for hostages, rockets exploded, walls fell. But in Southport, things were peaceful, and riots and bombs and earthquakes were quiet thumps, muffled by distance.

This town was the complete opposite of Chicago. It was a town where nothing ever happened. The kind of town where no one ever leaves.

I looked at the address that Sejin had texted me. The town barely had any roads or street signs that weren't rusted of their words. There was only one main street with a post office, a town hall, a police department with one sheriff's car, and a hair salon owned by a little old lady. The rest of the residential houses were nearly impossible to navigate. There was one every couple yards from each other, separated by a few trees and sandy grass.

"Hi, excuse me?" I asked a woman. She looked like a local with one of those floppy sun hats and cheap sunglasses. She had a lacey cover dress over her bathing suit and worn-out sandals.

"Yes?"

"Do you know where I can find this address?" I pointed to my phone and she took a look.

"You're not from around here, huh?"

"Is it obvious?"

"You have too much life in you" she eyed me up and down, "you're different. Different is good. This town has too much of the same"

"Yeah I can see that"

"See that white house right there? That's it" she said, pointing at a white house with a makeshift tree swing.

"Ok, thank you"

"Tell Ty he still owes me a trip to the dime store"

"You know him?"

"Oh yeah. He owns the fish store on Main street. Great guy" she remarked, walking away, dragging her feet every step she took.

I made my way over to his small bucolic house. There was a sand path that led up to the stairs with little rocks that felt natural to kick as you walked past it. The wood on the deck was painted pearl white and slightly chipped at the parts that were stepped on more frequently. The porch had a few plants that were just recently watered and some picked seashells laying in a pile beside the door.