Glittering Ashes
a novel
by Kelley Smith
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Kelley Smith
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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To my mom who encouraged me the entire way,
To my dad who is the best person I'll ever know,
To Deb who reasoned with me continuously,
And to my Christopher who is and who will always be my only favorite.
I notice the ugly people first. I see all of the things that don’t belong. For seventeen years, it has been easier for me to find the pieces that don’t fit than to find the pieces that do. I become aware of the boy in the front who’s wearing a sweater too thick for this weather before I notice the clock on the back wall. I see the girl with the broken tooth hide her smile behind her hand before I figure out someone is speaking to me. The glares make more sense to me to than the smiles that I observe. I don’t know them, and they can say the same about me, but the weariness at my appearance at this school is also mutual.
“Introduce yourself, Roe,” are the only words that the teacher says that I can manage to catch. I am standing in front of them, and she is slightly to my right at her desk, but I still have a nagging feeling that my introductions are just to give her time to get the papers in order.
I take a deep breath. I am sure it looks like fear, like I am shuddering because I’m nervous. I check the thought to see if it’s true, and I smile because I find that it isn’t. It’s hard to be intimidated when you’re trying so hard to be disinterested.
“My name is Roe Daniels. I’ve just moved here to be with my aunt. My favorite class is English, if I had to choose something. To be honest, I’m not quite partial to any of them.” I say this looking for a reaction, a slight one, but I get nothing. Tough audience.
I take a quick glance in the teacher’s direction to see if I have to continue with this. She nods, which I have to only assume means I should keep going in teacherese.
“I do like poetry, and I’m—“
“A total Goth freak?” someone heckles, causing my eyes to fall to slits. Now they laugh, and it’s all at me.
“That’s enough, Gregory,” the teacher adds, and I’m impressed that she could distinguish him so easily from all the rest. Maybe it is his M.O. to pull this kind of thing, but I’d like to think I am just the lucky one.
I kind of nod my head, possibly agreeing with his assessment, but still feeling confused by it. She points out a seat for me to take, and I push my black and pink messenger bag higher up on my shoulder as I begin to walk through the middle aisle.
I can feel the eyes on me, but I can only survey myself. I want to see what they see; a black ruffled skirt and a red and black tee that hugs the curves that I tell myself are there. Scuffed black Chucks move me to me seat. I’m Goth? Maybe, but I did put some effort into my appearance that day. First impressions and everything.
I only pause once, near the boy named Gregory. I do make eye contact with him to see what he’d do, but he’s still laughing at me, and he has others joining in. Some cheerleaders have also jumped in for this pursuit. They have pointed noses to look down at me with. When I look at Gregory again, it takes most of what is in me to not drop to the level of his ear and scream “Inbred hick” so loudly that something inside his head breaks. I don’t do it, but I can taste the words like a buzz on my lips as I break the contact and keep moving.
When I find the seat in question, I’m at a table of two with a girl who they must also consider to be one of darkness. She doesn’t look up at me from her notebook, and I can barely see the dark etches of eyes she carves into the pages beyond her blond hair sliced through with black highlights. When I settle into the seat, I drop my messenger bag with a thud next to my chair. I tell myself not to look around for reactions, but I know I see at least one person jump. Goth and scary? I learn more about myself everyday.
“Did they rattle you?” I hear the girl ask underneath the curtain of hair.
I think about the question for seconds before answering.
“No. I just want to know how what I am wearing is automatically Goth. Not edgy. Not punk. Straight to the dark side.” Maybe it’s my hip-hitting, long black hair?
“I’m definitely not anywhere near New York anymore,” I add.
“No, definitely not,” she laughs. “But trust me, them thinking you’re a dark princess is not a bad thing. They’ll be kissing your boots if you’re lucky enough to get the title.” She leaves the conversation at that, and I’m left wondering what I should do with that statement. Luckily it gives me something to think about while the class goes through several bad renditions of Shakespeare gone relevant in the form of a rap CD.
When we’ve been given two assignments for homework and I have managed to dodge three mysterious paper ball missiles, I hear the best sound known to teenage mankind, that of the school bell, and admittedly I do get excited, only to fall harder when I realize it’s only my first class of the day.
I am stuffing notebooks and several miscellaneous pens into my bag when I hear, “Jordyn, by the way.” I look up, but she’s already moving towards the door without looking back at me. I can’t decide if I’m supposed to follow her after that introduction or not, but I do try to, if only so I can easily find my next class. I lose her as she zigzags with a familiarity I don’t think I’ll ever have here. I struggle against the wave to make it to my chipping gray locker, number 13. Lucky, lucky me. As I grab my books, I feel myself get pushed into the door of the locker. I turn quickly to see who had the cojones to pull such a move, but with the waves of matching camouflage jackets swirling by, it's hard to tell one person from another.
“There goes people being nicer when you leave the city,” I mumble to myself as I work my way to the next class.
Two classes later, I find myself at lunch, another stage that exaggerates newness and an environment where I have no automatic place to run to be accepted. I grab a slice of pizza, a bottle of water-- something generic, and a semi-fresh looking cookie of the chocolate chip variety. Pathetically armed, I stand at the forefront of the battle that is the lunchroom.
Jordyn finds me there just as I am busy contemplating whether to take the pill and sit alone or retreat to the library if I could be lucky enough to find it. She grabs me by the arm in a “We're best friends; so follow me” way, and I am thrown off guard. Jordyn leads me to the far end of the room, closest to the windows and farthest away from the smells of the food up front.
I didn't want to look the gift horse in the face, but she’s smiling at me like I should, and I wonder what is with the shift from mild indifference to buddy-buddy.
When we reach the table, I realize it'll just be us. I just may like her, but I don't know her well, and one-on-ones have always scared me. With three people, there is a balance. If I am quiet, someone can catch the conversation and take it so that there was no lax or awkwardness; with just us, I am responsible for more, and there’s nobody to hide behind.
We sit across from each other, and she smiles, genuinely, I'd say. I really get to look at her now, and I can tell that if anyone was Goth in this school, it would probably be Jordyn, but I like it. At least she is being more original than channeling the hunter within.
“You want to go to Hell with me tonight?”
Or maybe I liked her until she started spewing crazy out of her mouth.
“What?” I say, not getting what must be an obvious joke.
“Hell, the big, dark and scary place, probably located beneath us? Never heard of it?”
“Yeah, I'm familiar. I'm just trying to figure out if I should be insulted or not.”
“No,” she laughs, possibly at me. “Okay. I'll admit it. It's not really Hell, but how often do you get to say that to someone?”
Point taken. “Well, what do you mean?”
“The Abyss. It’s this town's awesomeness and this state's only saving grace for those of us who aren't of the Podunk variety. Even the shiny people who shared they were fans of you earlier are clamoring to get in, and we, princess, are always cordially invited. They want us there.”
“We just met. How do you know that they'd want me? I mean, do they have a rager for dark-haired brunettes? Because--” I pause looking at her own blond hair, now in pigtails, and her shining green eyes. Without the clothes and the black streaks in her hair, she'd be running a little Pollyanna herself.
“They want us because we, you're right, I'm assuming you can be in this ‘we,’ like to have fun and don't assume that rocking the solely happy, sunshiny kind of life is the only fun way to go.” She then stretches, as if this is big speech she's been practicing for someone like me.
“It's a club, a town in itself, a circus, a freaking arena that is way more sinful than anything you can find in a city. You can get more carnal here than in Vegas.” She's watching me for a reaction, practically from the edge of her seat. I'm trying really hard not to give her one, simply because I have no idea whether or not to take her seriously. Is this some kind of freak new girl test? If I say bring on the dark aesthetic, is she going to chant something at me about being Goth again? I decide stoic, restrained interest is my best option.
Yeah, I know all about parties. There is drinking; IDs are never ever checked; and drugs, if that rocked your particular socks, are available. I had been to many, tried stuff around. I mean, it was hard to be seventeen where I’m from and not have done something. But, I am not too sure that my “wild and crazy” matched the country version. If tipping cows or any other country cliché would be involved, I'm not too sure I'm quite ready yet to take the part.
“You're freaked,” she says, studying my face, still leaning across the table.
“No. Not freaked. Confused.”
“There is nothing to be confused about. If you want to chew cud with the rest of them, feel free. But, if you want to be present in life and live why we're still breathing young air, then you'll come with me.”
I'm taken back by her attitude. I feel a desperation run off of her in waves.
“Where is it?”
“There's a red line that marks the edge of town, and beyond that, there's a huge group of woods. If you can go through that without wetting down to your Chuck Taylor’s, you'll make it there, and it's so worth it.”
“You make it sound like there's a bad version of Disney World waiting for us out there.” I keep waiting for her to laugh it all off and tell me that she's kidding. Maybe she’ll tell me that there's a mall in the next small town behind ours, and that they have the most awesome shoes known to the teenage mankind. I wouldn't bite. Not yet.
“I know you think I'm blowing smoke up that skirt of yours, but why don't you just come with me and find out for yourself? Tonight. It's worth a look, and some part of you must be curious?” A smirk came to her face, and I hear myself tell her that I guess it's worth a shot. As long as I don't get killed or lose important appendages.
She laughs at that, and that laughter isn't all that reassuring.
“Do a lot of people go from this school or am I in for some kind of special treatment here?”
“Yes on both parts. No more questions. We're killing the magic here with all this talk. See it. Judge it if you must, but you have to go to make some kind of eval’ don't you?”
I nod, feeling the end of all of the conversation and the forced temporary death all of the questions I feel bubbling in my head.
“Meet me tonight so we can dress you properly. You think you're Goth now?” She laughs manically at me, and before this, I had no idea that people could actually laugh that way in real life. Go fig.
We decide to meet out front of the school as soon as it is supposed to be over. She did propose me just meeting her at her house, but something in the look of my eye, probably the left eye if I had to guess, must have screamed for her not to abandon me, even in the town that is, I think, roughly six blocks, two lights, and one and a half neighborhoods, if the cemetery could count as some kind of barrier.
The class I have following lunch is chemistry. Part of me is excited because somewhere inside of me, past the kidneys and the miscellaneous guts, I know there's a mentally deficient witch who is dying to get at the potions. I can feel the goober inside me glowing, and it guides me down the halls until I find myself in front of the correct door.
Entering, I see the same sea of indeterminable faces, some of which are drooling. Not at me, but more at the fact that their brains must be rebelling against the idea that they're in chemistry. Their spit drips from the tables to the floor in several cases. I try not to slip in it as I find my table near the middle of the room, closest to the window.
“Hi. Rachel. Nice to meet you,” I hear a female voice say. A girl dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans pushes a hand into my face, in some attempt to have me shake it. I smile, grabbing her hand and shaking it twice, wondering if that's how people still shake hands because I'm not too sure who really shakes hands anymore. I guess I did it right. She lets go.
“Roe. Nice to meet you.”
“You're new right? What am I saying? I know you're new. Duh. Introducing myself here,” she laughs, at ease. “Do you like it here so far?”
“I guess. It's a lot to get used to,” I say noncommittally.
“Uh, trust me. When I first started, I kind of felt like I needed to lobotomize myself to fit in. Wow, that sounded mean. But, it was like everyone was down and out, and well, not nice to me. I hated it,” she said, shaking her head.
“What changed?”
“I figured out why they were like that.” She leans in and whispers, “Truth is, they're mostly hung over.”
I laugh, looking around, noticing a few more droolers in the room. Where is the teacher again?
“I'm being serious. They're totally gone. Won't resuscitate themselves until tonight, I'm guessing. It just takes some getting used to.” She shrugs. “I think they don't even try to really wake up until about last period.”
“So do we have a teacher here or--?”
“Speak of the devil,” she says.
I turn to look at the teacher walking in, and the devil sounds about right. He stands out like a sore, good-looking thumb. He has bright blond hair that falls over his eyes, and a chin that I've only seen in the magazines that my friends used to have at slumber parties. But it stops at his eyes. They're burnt blue and slanted in the corners in a way that made you not want to trust him. There’s one cut above his right eye.
“Wake up,” he says, slamming a book the size of a small calf against the large oak desk sitting at the front of the room. Only a few stammer to the upright position. He tries again, stalking the room, letting his fists fall on the tables of the students. One by one they rise like the great undead, drooping eyes, drooping pants and all. Rachel catches my eye, and her eyebrow lifts to say “See what I mean?”
Maybe she did have a point. They could be hung over, and maybe that means that they know something about this Abyss place. I'm not sure if that should make me run towards the Abyss, turn away screaming, or, the magical third option, turning away with my head at a crooked angle looking over my shoulder.
Immediately after school, I run towards the exits. Well, I run as much as I can with a hundred students in a cattle-like motion running in the same direction. When I finally make it to the front, Jordyn is already waiting for me, her hand on her hip against a red, chipping old car. Blond hairs run through with black dye whip in front her face. Her ponytails must have been abandoned sometime during the day.
“You in?” The sunglasses on her face hide her eyes, but not the knowing smile on her face.
“Maybe.”
“You can’t straddle the fence without knowing its name. That'd be down right slutty of you.”
“Do you always try to upset people or just me?”
“When I see potential, I pounce. I scare you?” she asks.
“If I thought that wouldn't make you too happy, I might say yeah, but now I want to see what all of the fuss is about and why my teacher spent Chem. trying to keep people from blowing bubbles in their own spit.”
“See, that's the ticket. And neat, I am capable of scaring. Let's go.” We jump into her car, and I pray I don't catch something from the seat, or, like, die from this whole thing.
"I think I should tell my aunt that I'm not coming home. I mean, that I'm not coming home right now. She'll probably freak," I say.
"Yeah, that makes some sense. The last thing we need is for her to try looking for you around town. Yours is the yellow on the left of main street right?"
"Mm-hmm," I say, distracted by the girl walking down the road by the school. She's dressed in all yellow. Yellow in her hair, and yellow down to her dress. All yellow except for her white shoes. But, it's the look on her face that stops me from just forgetting about her. Her eyes are haunted, blue showing through her skin right beneath them, and she's swaying just slightly, as if the fall wind will blow her over.
"What's with the girl?" I ask.
"That's Alyssa. Ignore. She was stupid."
"Stupid how?"
"Well...You know the place I've been telling you about?" I nod. "She apparently got a little too excited about the whole place, and-" Jordyn stops mid-sentence and looks around her. It's only us in the car, but now she seems spooked about something.
"Well, what? What happened with the place?"
"Nothing important. We'll have a good time, and I won't let it happen to you so it doesn't matter."
We start getting closer to the house, and I feel my skin crawl, like electricity is running in a steady current over my arms, into my skin itself. I can't tell what Jordyn is hiding from me, or if I should even listen to her, let alone how I am supposed to convince Aunt Lisa to let me go to some place, with some girl I don't even really know. I ask Jordyn for some ideas.
While she's thinking of an excuse, I'm wondering why I'm even going with her. I had a pretty basic life with Mom before I moved here. Sure, she started to freak when I started hanging out with new friends. Thought they were too much for me, some kind of influence. But honestly, lately I just wanted to feel something, anything. I had gone so long being numb, watching people live and breathe easy on TV, and I was sick of worrying about everything.
When Mom decided to send me away to live with Aunt Lisa, part of me wasn't even upset. I mean, technically, I was losing everything, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew I had nothing to lose, because I really hadn't had anything before.
Maybe that is Jordyn's appeal. She didn't seem to care about anything but this place, and the place seemed to mean really everything to her.
"Tell her you have a hella-ridiculous test scheduled already, and you've enlisted me to help out a new friend in need. Make it a sleepover."
"On a Tuesday?"
"Yeah, well. Those teachers are so unreasonable that you couldn't possibly just leave it at a couple of hours and pass."
"See, now I'm starting to doubt your skills. If so many kids do it around here, how do they get away with it?"
"Honestly, I don't know what they do, but I tell my mom that I'm going out, and since I pull the grades I'm supposed to, have no visible tattoos, and I keep the cussing to a minimum—plus, I haven't been knocked up once— she lets me be," she shrugs.
I laugh. "It's worth the try," I say as we pull up in front of the yellow storybook country house. "I'll try to be quick."
"You better, Betsy's waiting for you" she says, patting the car and revving the engine. I laugh again, questioning why for the thousandth time I'm going with a girl that could in all honesty be a complete nut bag. I just haven't decided if that nutbaggyness is a good thing.
When I enter the house, I hear a cooking show on the television, and I find my aunt standing in the kitchen, making something that smells suspiciously of baked chicken and chocolate pudding.
"Hey. What's cooking?"
"Molé chicken. You'll love it. I'm making that and mash potatoes. I know how much you like those. So I thought I'd give them a try."
I feel like an a-hole right about now, as I see all the work she's put into the meal. I almost lose my nerve about the whole thing. Maybe I should just back out, but something is pulling me towards there, maybe Jordyn's enthusiasm is to blame.
"Actually. I have bad news."
"Something with school?" she asks, stopping everything to look at me with concern shining in her eyes as clear as a Batman symbol shines in the night sky. I feel awful, but the words come out.
"Yeah, actually. I have this test, math. You know how bad I am at that. Well, it's tomorrow actually, and since they have my transcripts from the last school, they say I should be right on track with them. They're still having me take it with the rest of them," I say in one breath. The lies are running out of my lips faster than they can catch up with the words.
"Well, that doesn't sound right. I'm going to call them and see if they won't change their minds and give you a few days." She reaches the phone and begins to pick it up.
"No, honestly. It's okay. I mean, I do know most of the stuff, but this girl, Jordyn, she offered to help me tonight and do some kind of chick bonding thing. And, I wanted to know if I could go with her."
"Jordyn? About this tall? Blond and black hair?"
"Mmh-hmm. That's her."
"Well, she was always nice to me when I saw her working at the downtown store, but she seems like a bit of an oddball."
"Yeah, just slightly. But I figured I should try to make all the friends I can with me coming so late in the school year."
She sighs, looks around the kitchen at the mess, and then back to me. "I suppose you're right about that. You understand that you can come to me if you're having a hard time adjusting. I know your mom wants the best for you."
I nod, finding it weird that I haven't thought about my mom too much since I've been with my aunt. I guess it has something to do with my mom not being the most motherly-type of woman on the planet. Not to mention her having some midlife crisis. She’s been running around and acting just younger than a sweet-sixteener lately.
She takes a deep breath and tells me that I can go, as long as promise to call her later on that night, and as long as I solemnly swear to fill her in about everything at school the next night over dinner.
"I think I can manage that," I say, running to my room to grab some supplies.
What do you take when you're going with a stranger into some dark party? My guess? Black and red clothes and the nicest boots in my possession.
After throwing half of my wardrobe into a bag that is just big enough to hold twice the capacity, lest it scream "I'm preparing for something reckless" to my aunt, I run outside using the side door that bypasses the kitchen.
"Long much? I could practically taste the Hallmark moment from outside in the car. How much schmooze did you pour on to pull off being let out of the house on this auspicious Tuesday?"
"She wanted to know all about you and the test and class. What could I do but lie my arse off and feel horrible about it?”
"See. That's one thing I need to break you of. That horrible conscious. Who needs it? I think it just tends to get in the way of a good time, personally."
I shake my head and throw the bag into the back of her rusting old red car, again wondering if I was going to need a tetanus shot by the end of my friendship with her. I already feel closer to her than I had with half of my friends at home. She makes me want to be reckless, and I feel like I'm beginning to breathe again.
"Let's ride, kimosabe." She peels out of our street loud enough that I have to look back and see if my aunt is running outside after me. All there is behind me is the house, along with three others, and a suspicious looking cat, which even looks at me like I must be crazy.
I hear Jordyn start howling as she motors pass the stop sign, which I guess she sees a suggestion not worth taking. We head several streets over to her own little house. It too is graying and a little chipped, just like her car.
Jordyn throws the car into park, and we gather up my things to head inside. Once she opens the door, I enter a world quite unlike the tranquility of my aunt's. This place is in stark contrast to Jordyn. It's streamlined. Pencil perfect, like someone literally drew what comes to mind when one thinks about a modern house that looks like someone's office. I stop just beyond the front door and try to reconcile my mental picture from what's in front of me.
Jordyn looks back at me as she reaches the steps that go up the center of her house.
"Shocking, isn't it?"
I nod, slowly moving towards her at the staircase.
"My mom's a bit anal retentive about having the place immaculate at all times. You know, just in case she'd like to forget that we're in the freaking borderline country bumpkin district of a nothing city." Her voice grows louder near the end of her statement, as she directs her voice to run through the kitchen that's to our left.
Her mother enters, looking every bit the owner of the house.
"Jordyn. Nice of you to come home for once when I expect you."
I see Jordyn roll her eyes and motion for me to hurry up and follow her. I start to pick up my things again and rush to catch up.
"Hello. Since Jordyn has forgotten how I raised her, I'll introduce myself. I'm Jordyn's mother, Eliza." She offers her hand, and mine are too full to take it. I shrug with the things I'm holding, and she retracts her hand. I can feel her take me in slowly, like a lion with a wounded animal. I try to smile, and I tell her my name.
I'm guessing she approves of what she sees, because a smile grows across her face, and she says, "I'm glad Jordyn has met such a nice girl. Maybe you can rub off on her?” She turns to Jordyn. “Oh, and by the way, I saw an episode of Oprah today that had some wonderful diet tips for you.”
Jordyn stomps the remaining stairs up to the second floor, and I run after her, trying not to drop the contents busting out of my bag due to a newly broken zipper. We enter her room, and she seals it off with a house-rattling slam.
"So, your mom seems nice..." I say trying to break the silence as Jordyn throws clothes around her room, looking for something that I'm not too sure exists.
She stops and looks over at me. "In comparison to who? Hitler? She's acted like she's hated me ever since she blamed me for running off her last boyfriend. Nice guy, named 'Gunther.’ Imagine him, and yeah, he was all that that name entails... A real keeper, I'd say."
The hostility rolls off of Jordyn in waves, but I try to ignore it while I try to find a place to put my bag down. I find some room on a chair by her desk, and she continues to clean her room—or horribly mess it up, I can never really tell.
"That's why I’m freaking ridiculously grateful that I have some place to run to, you know? I just need an escape. A pause button for life when I can say, 'Hey, it doesn't suck as much' whenever I want."
I nod again, knowing the feeling. She wants to run away from her home, and maybe her feelings, but I just want to run away from the numbness of, well, everything sometimes.
"So do you normally go by yourself there?"
She waits before she answers, and then finds another chair to sit in front of mine.
"I haven't told you enough about where we're going, I don't think."
I wait for her to say more, and she looks hesitant, as she picks at a fraying string on the knee of her pants.
"It's fun as anything. I can't imagine a better place, literally. But...it's dangerous too."
"Dangerous how?" I ask, again wondering how much I should believe her.
"Dangerous as in, bad things can happen if you're looking for them too. This place is like Disney, but on 'roids. It’s a different kind of place. You dream something; you get it. And, you don't need anyone to go with you, because you can always find someone inside, or it'll find someone for you."
"I don't understand," I say. Was she serious? How could a place provide people? I didn't want to go to some place where I'd be matched up on some proverbial blind date.
"I know. It's crazy. I sound like I'm on the best type of crack, but it's true. I've heard all about it. You should hear the stories. They all sound unbelievable, and they can't all be wrong."
"Wait. You said you go to this place all of the time. How would you not know what's there?"
"I do. I go there all of the time, but I never said I really went into the place."
A weird laugh comes out of me, because this is all so crazy. "So, what? I'm supposed to go with you to some place that you've just heard is really cool and that it is some kind of magical?" I start picking up my things and move towards the door, and all the while I’m thinking about how I'm going to walk home from here and how many lefts I'll have to take before I get back to sanity.
"Wait. Please? I know it's magical. I've looked inside from the gate. I know it. It'll be everything I've heard and more. I-I just needed someone to go with me, and I thought that person could be you. I could just tell when I first saw you that you'd go." She doesn't look at me as she finishes. Her voice goes soft like a small girl waiting to hear the parents scream "No!" at her.
I look at her, and something inside of me thaws. That is, until I remember the girl in yellow.
"What about that girl, Alyssa, or whatever. Does she look like that because she went in there?"
"I don't know. I mean, there's rumors about her going in, but you know never know who to trust about that exactly."
"What all did you hear? What did the rumors say happened to her?"
"I never really listened to them. I just know that she went in. A lot. Everyday she went there. And then, one day, supposedly they wouldn't let her in anymore. She had been barred from the Abyss. Ever since then, she's been pretty bummed about it."
"That's what you call ‘bummed’? She looked like death warmed over in a microwave." I shook thinking about Alyssa, the blue skin below her eyes, how lost she looked in her own body. "It's really called the Abyss?"
Jordyn nods. "Well this just sounds better every minute..." I flop myself down on her bed and look up at her ceiling covered in posters of bands I've never heard of. I finally take a second to look around the room. Most of it looks like the ceiling, covered with posters, pages ripped from calendars. Drawings of faeries, but the faeries are different somehow, their wings are all clipped, or one is always broken. On the far side of the room is a treadmill covered with clothes all dripping in dark blood red or black. Every inch of her counters is covered in makeup, perfume, or empty small bottles made of glass. It was a romantic mess of contrast from my own room of boxes and bareness, with nothing but a small oval window to bring the light in.
"It sounds crazy stupid to go, but we should. Don't you want a story to tell your grandchildren?"
"What if we die in there? Like, what if that Alyssa chick got off lucky by getting kicked out? And, big question, how do you know we'll even get in?" I say, sitting up and looking at her for a reaction.
"We will. Every time I go, I wait on the far left of the giant doors, and I watch who goes in there. And every time they let people our age get in. They come from everywhere. None of them looked all that special to me, and no one gave them any money or checked IDs or anything when they got there. It was like they were waiting for them inside."
"Exactly. They could have some kind of reservation thing or guest list or something."
"I really don't think so. It doesn't look like the type of place that would have that kind of stuff. From what I've seen they look like they want people there."
"What did you see when you snuck a peek from the gate?"
"That it was beautiful."
I wait for her to continue, but she's looking past me, over my shoulder to the wall behind me. I turn to see what she's looking at, but there's nothing on the wall. Nothing but an empty white space, amidst the room covered for every other spare inch. I turn back to her, but she seems to be out of her daze now. I think.
"Now let's get ready," Jordyn says, clapping her hands together in a way that I desperately try to tell myself doesn't look crazy.
I wait for one of us to say something, to break the monster of a silence that is lying between us like some kind of hippo on speed. Jordyn doesn't take the initiative, as it looks like she is still in some kind of catharsis thinking about the Abyss. I am starting to believe that it is either the best place on the planet, or, the more probable idea, that it is place that pumps out hallucinogens into the atmosphere like a grandma makes kick arse cookies.
"So I'm guessing that look means that we have to go?" She nods at me expectantly.
"And you know I think you're crazy to some extent and I cannot fully believe anything you say until we see it?"
Again, she nods, before jumping off the bed and running towards what may be described as a closet to the creative, but what actually looks like some kind of explosion of black, red, and silver and bras of every color.
I begin to start preaching again, something about the dangers and not knowing what we're walking into in the least, but I can tell when I'm not being listened to so part of me gives up. I think.
I follow her into her self-made hole of a walk-in, and we get to work. I try adamantly to tell her that I don't care how hot Hell is, I'm not wearing anything see through, and she continues to pitch clothes at me that are as close to being street-walker worthy as possible. Where did she get all of these clothes? I have no idea, but I refuse to wear them. One of us has to be a little sensible.
"You're not getting it!" she says, after I reject another pair of studded shoes to match a studded bra and black fishnet shirt.
"What am I not getting? You're trying to make me look like a hooker, and if we're actually going, I'd like to make it there without being harassed by johns and the cops."
"No, if we get in--I mean when we get in, we have to be the cutest ones there, and you can be, if you let me dress you in a way that doesn't scream ‘Spinster-in-training’ at the top of its lungs."
I sit there watching her face turn red in frustration, showing all the way to the roots of blond and black.
"Please. I see these people every time I go there. I know what they're looking for." Apparently she doesn't see me being completely convinced so she tries another angle.
"I've told you this place is amazing. Live a little. By the time you see it all, you won't care what you're wearing. You'll just never want to leave." Her voice takes on that whimsy-ness again, and I feel some of the excitement rub off on me once more.
"Fine, but no studs, and nothing showing that can get me a lewd in public...Please."
This time, she throws a short black skirt at me, and looking at my already black, little over knee high boots, she decides that's acceptable. How gracious. For the top, she isn't as nice, but I think she is trying to be. She may be bigger than me size wise, but I still beat her on top. Little miracle? I think not. At least, not when she's shows me what she's got planned as far as the top is concerned.
It's black like the skirt, but that's where the similarities end. If the skirt could be me channeling some kind of prep school for the Catholic or deranged, the shirt is just shy of my order not to be arrested. It's tight, but only slightly sheer. And by slightly, I mean, it's a good thing my black bra matched everything else. I try to beg her into a tank top. But she demands that I play dolly, and hooker Barbie I must be.
She, however, dresses much more modestly, in comparison. More like the dark princess of the preteen variety—edgy but family friendly at the same time in her black jeans and red t-shirt that is covered in vines and swirls of black roses. It conceals and accentuates, and part of me is jealous that I'll be the only one exposed. But, whatever. She does have a point. This place just better be worth it.
Getting out to the car proves almost less difficult than convincing Jordyn of my clothing options. We walk out of her room and go the main staircase, i.e., the only way we can get out of the house from the second floor without jumping into something with some hellacious thorns.
When we somehow do reach the first floor, I am sure that Jordyn's mom is going to pop from around a corner and skewer us over a pit of some sort to find out about where we're going. While I am right about Jordyn's mom showing up, I find out Jordyn wasn't lying about her mom not caring about where we go.
"Where are you two headed?" she says, holding something that looks like a dish, wiping with one hand and holding with the other.
"Out. I'm showing Roe the one horse of this town. We'll be back eventually," Jordyn says, barely looking over her shoulder before grabbing her keys and running to the nearest exit. I follow in tow. But her mother stops me by grabbing my shoulder. I look for Jordyn but she's already headed out the front and to the car, assuming that I had been following her.
I look up at her mother and wait for her to say something. Part of me is scary conscious of her hand pulling at my shoulder, compressing it in an almost harsh way, but I fight the urge to push her off and just leave.
"If she gets sick again, I'll need you to not let her be pigheaded and make her head back here. I can help her."
I wait for her to elaborate, but she doesn't, so I go ahead and ask.
"Sick how?"
"If Jordyn hasn't told you, I don't believe it's any of my business to air it, but you'll know what I mean if it happens, and I want you to bring her back here if it does. Okay?"
I nod, and adjust my bag of extras I took from Jordyn's room on my shoulder. Walking out to the car, I have this nagging feeling that if something bad does happen I hope the Abyss is close enough that I can do what her mother asked me to do. But part of me feels like the edge of town might have just been a line Jordyn told me to get me to go.
I get into the car and throw the bag into the back seat. The car has already been started, and Jordyn looks at me like I've just committed a crime by talking to her mother. Her eyes are slightly slanted, and I know she wants an explanation.
"She asks me to look out for you. Not to be home too late. You know?"
I stop to see if she believes me and I suppose that she does, because she throws the car into drive and we move at an alarming speed away from her house on the corner. I don't think I'll ever get used to her driving.
"She can't tell me what to do, and if this place is amazing like I know it will be, I'm hoping we don't come back."
And on that note, we drive past the four streets of houses that I have already been on, past the Gaudium Falls High School where I spent my first day, even though, already, it seems like I was there so long ago, but I know this is just the beginning of something.
After fifteen minutes of driving I realize that I was right about the Abyss not being the on the very edge of town. How do I know this? Because the houses ended where the country version (or perhaps countrier version) of the Piggly Wiggly stopped, and I'm pretty sure the town doesn't go much farther than that. The sun is already setting, and I turn to look out of the back window. It's dirty and covered in the lightest layer of black soot, but I don't ask Jordyn to explain that right now. I just want to know how far we're going and how cold I'll be wearing something that shows off both what my mother and God gave me.
"Is this going to be much further or what? I'd like to get this show on the road.” Plus part of me still feels bad about my aunt.
"We're almost there. I can feel when we're close."
"What, by the ankle bracelet they gave you?"
She laughs and shakes her head, wildly throwing her blonde hair into the breeze entering the car from the windows. "No, hon’, the air turns all electric when you're in a close radius. You can't feel it now, but you will."
"What happened to it being on the edge of town, huh?"
"It is on the edge of town, the edge of the next town over. Besides, look around us. Can you really tell we've left that bit of cow country for another? I've lived here for six years, and I can barely tell the difference."
She has a point, but I'm not admitting it. Twenty minutes later, I see the first car yet that we've made any sight of since we've left her house. It's about as beat up as Jordyn's but a large part of me is relieved that there would at least be someone to witness us being out here, if something were to happen. Maybe it's the crime shows in me, but that part of me is slightly satisfied by that thought. The car seems to be heading in the same direction we are, as we follow it for the last two miles leading to a large parking lot.
By large, I mean, gargantuan. Take three football fields and throw them next to each other with little white lines and that’s what I see what when we got there.
Jordyn hardly pulls into one of the last spots on the lot before jumping out and checking her makeup by looking at the side view mirror. I gradually join her, after looking around and noticing that her car and the other black chipping antique are not the only cars that are in this lot. Further up ahead, about twenty spaces is a cluster of more cars, and beyond that lies even more.
I don't know what to think, but if that many cars are there, I wonder how secretive this place could actually be. Did she ever tell me it was a secret place? I can't at the moment remember, but I know that there must be something elusive about the place to keep it from staying out of trouble. And how could some place even pretend to be secretive with a parking lot that big?
"Are you going to space all night, or can we roll?"
I start to grab the bag out of the back seat, but Jordyn stops me. "You won't need it. Trust me." The excitement in her voice makes it higher, and I can tell it's taking everything out of her to wait for me to get with the picture and hurry up to go with her. I wonder if she'd leave me if I decided not to go. Something inside of me says yes, but the excitement is semi-contagious, and I want—no, need to know what all of the fuss is about.
She hooks her arm in mine, and we start to head towards the top end of the parking lot. I thought there were only a few cars, but we pass ten, then twenty, and then what seems like hundreds of cars before we finally begin to see a twinkle of light up ahead. The darkness has fallen now like a cooling coat on the landscape around us. Chills run through the sorry excuse of a shirt I'm wearing, and I grip Jordyn tighter as I begin to hear the hum of music coming from far up ahead.
Jordyn begins to hop slightly, the charge of it all running through her like a current. I feel it too. It runs over my skin like silk on velvet, and I hear the hum of it jump through me. There is a pull of pure electricity shocking the air, making it crackle, and I see a group of people huddled together far ahead of us.
I start to ask Jordyn about them, but before I can, I see it. The gate is like nothing I have ever seen. It towers above us in such a way that, at first, I don't think I see the top of it. In either direction, it doesn't look like the gate would ever end, that it would just wrap around the earth, hugging the curve of the ground and reaching towards the sky like a bird in soaring flight. The gate itself looks like it's made of old wood, but more than that, it looks like the gate it moving, constantly in flux. I stop where I am, and I know my mouth is open in awe of it, but I can't help it.
"Wait till you see it up close," Jordyn whispers in my ear before grabbing my arm tighter as we move past the group of teens standing near us. It's hard for me to tear my eyes away from the massive structure ahead of us, but I turn my head slightly to look back at the people that we passed. They're dressed in a similar color palette, hues of black, the blue of bruises, and the deepest of deep reds. But there's something about them that is familiar, even though the rational side of me is sure that I couldn't have seen them before.
They huddle together as if to take warmth from each other, and none of their faces show the excitement of our own. Out of the group, I only see two of the six or seven of them to be girls. One of them looks at me, and when she catches my eye, she straightens her head, staring at me, at what part of me feels is my soul, and she mouths "Be careful" in a choked whisper I know I could have barely heard if I had been right beside her.
The others that are with her look to me after she breathes her message into the air. I start to stagger a little, thinking that they have something to tell me, or something to warn me about, but Jordyn pulls harder, growing restless of my wondering away from what lies ahead.
The final steps towards the gate are the scariest. Apparently, we are at the long side of the gate, and the entrance lies to our far, far left. As of yet, I know I can't see anything but more darkness, and the slight cresting of a hill that lies that way. It's a hill that the gate clings to from the ground. I look up at the gate when I realize that this is my chance to take it all in. It towers higher than I thought possible, but my eyes strain and see some resemblance of a top.
My hand reaches out to touch it, as if compelled on its own. Jordyn has stopped as well, as taken with the sight as I am. I see the gate move beneath my fingers as they fall towards it. Now that I am this close, I know what the movement is. Vines. They are the darkest green, the greenest a color can be without being black. They crawl over the dark wood, swarming like bees. Beyond the vines, I see inside through cracks in the wood and gaps in the trees beyond it.
It is like sunlight lives in there. I breathe warm air over my fingers, as my eyes have moved just near them to peer through them and into the gate. I try to push at the vines, as the ache inside me screams for me to get closer, to get to the light itself, so that it may fall on my skin and I can let its warmth consume me. But I cannot get closer, no matter how hard I strain, and the vines lock around my fingers, pulling back at them, as if they are telling me to leave. The vines make themselves impenetrable. As I move my head and my eyes from the crack, I see a bit of light climb through that crack towards me. I shake my head and look over at Jordyn.
She isn't looking at me but is staring at what is unfolding before us. I look again to see if the light wants me as much as I want it, and then I realize that there is no miracle, at least on our side of the gate. These are fireflies, the smallest I have ever seen, pouring out through the crack, like sunlit sand through my fingers.
"How can this be?" I say, unable to look away from them. "Summer's over. They should be dead by now. It's almost winter." I feel my head shake, saying to myself that it isn't possible. And they're so small, like grains of light or small pearls of the sun's rays.
I put my finger near one, and it crawls onto it. I smile, and before I can think, so many others have joined it that I have a cluster of light on the tip of my finger. I hold it closer to my face like a beacon, and I can hear them swarm over each other, clamoring to get closer to my skin. Their beauty pours into me, and I laugh, because I also feel like E.T. at the same time.
At the sound of my laughter, they flutter off, making sprinkles of light rush into the air, swirling before running back into the crack. I turn to Jordyn. "Let's go in." Our laughter runs behind us, as we push full speed in the direction Jordyn's says leads to the entrance.
I am breathless when I start to see a light grow brighter ahead of us. I hear Jordyn pant beside me, but we don't stop. We keep pushing ourselves until we see it. We are moving. We are excited. We will get inside; we know it.
When we get to the entrance, I see the largest doors on the planet, I am sure of it. There is already a line of people in front of us, and we clamor to get in it at the back. At least fifty teens my own age are waiting in front of us for something to happen. But the gate is closed. I can only see that some light bleeds through around its edges.
Agonizing minutes pass before I feel my breath return to me. I hear the talking stop ahead of us, and I push myself to the edge of my toes to see over the heads in front of me. Maybe the gates have opened.
"What happens now?" I say, turning to Jordyn.
She's straining as well to look over the crowd. Distractedly, she answers, "Well, this guy comes out. Shining silver hair, dressed in all black, a suit or something, and he has some kind of clip board that he checks. He talks to each person and then lets them in."
I'm nervous. If he has a clipboard, he must be checking something, right? There must be some kind of guest list, one that we're not on. The high I felt starts to drain out of me, even though I can still feel the air crackling around my ears. Then I see who Jordyn was talking about.
He is older than us, but only by a few years. Maybe twenty-one, or twenty-two. He does have the clipboard in his hands, but I am just upset that I didn't see him come out. I wanted to at least get a glimpse of the world inside, because now I am sure we won't get in to see it for ourselves.