The last part had just come out, making Derrick laugh. When Claire looked at God, he was trying to keep a straight face as he mouthed, “What are you talking about?”
And just as quickly as the panic had come, it began to drain out of her. Maybe it was talking to Derrick. Or God, trying so hard to honor her freak-out, but failing utterly. His entire body was shaking with laughter. Or maybe it was the realization that she wasn’t trapped—she was safe.
“Are you okay?” Derrick asked. “Do you want me to come get you?”
“I’m good,” Claire said. As she did, God smiled and turned around to push the button for Dark’s apartment. When the buzzer sounded, he held the door for her.
“Hey, Claire—” Derrick paused, taking a full beat before he finally said, “Have fun. Okay?”
Dark’s apartment was dimly lit and smelled like take-and-bake cookies, which were waiting for them on a paper plate in the center of a cheap coffee table. A lamp with a missing bulb stood in the corner, barely putting off enough light to see the room—which was smaller than Claire’s bedroom. Leg was fiddling with the back of the television, trying to connect an old video game console and swearing every few seconds.
“I wish she wouldn’t unhook this, man. It’s a real pain in the ass to strip the wires and get the connection to your old-ass TV.”
“Grandma thinks it’s going to start a fire,” Dark said, looking to the kitchen where an older woman leaned against the counter, smoking.
“I’m going to go on record and say that this Nintendo 64 is less of a fire hazard than, say, falling asleep on the couch with a lit cigarette,” Leg said, cussing again.
“She’s old,” Dark said, his voice flat and lacking emotion. He did look at Claire, as if he was embarrassed by—what? Leg? His apartment? The fact that his chimney-smoking grandmother wasn’t going to be a member of an IT team anytime soon?
“My brother is scared of lightning,” Claire offered, giving Dark a quick smile. A quick moment of solidarity. “Like, he won’t sit near windows during a storm because he thinks the lightning is going to come in through the window.”
Leg stopped messing with the television. “What.”
“That’s, like, physically impossible,” God said.
“Meteorologically impossible, even,” Dark mumbled, which made everyone laugh. God slapped him on the shoulder and Leg went back to the work of connecting the N64, which after a few more seconds, lit up the dark room in one brilliant flash of light.
Leg and God played a game called Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, which Leg proclaimed “the best damn game of all time” before he cut himself off and immediately started swearing.
“My controller is broken. These things are old, and my controller is broken.”
“The controllers work fine,” God said. “And stop complaining. We have company.”
Dark sat on the floor, his back against the couch. Every few seconds Claire would peek at what he was drawing—the same heavy black lines. The same chaos.
“Can I use your bathroom?” Claire said. Dark nodded and jumped up, rushing in front of her to close doors on the way down the hallway. It was the fastest she’d ever seen him move.
“It’s right here,” he said. “Sorry. The whole place is kind of gross.”
“Stop apologizing,” his grandmother said, stepping out of what must’ve been her bedroom at the end of the hallway. Claire hadn’t even seen her leave the kitchen. Before she could stammer out an apology, the woman snapped, “Nobody walks into a place like this and expects Buckingham Palace.”
Dark cringed as his grandmother trudged past them, lighting another cigarette on her way back to the living room.
“You should’ve seen our trailer in North Carolina,” Claire said. “The bathroom was a total pit.”
“Yeah?” Dark said, looking at her through his dark hair. “Well, tell me how it compares. Wait. Is that weird?”
“I mean, it wasn’t.”
Claire smiled and Dark smiled, shifting his weight to his other foot before saying, “Okay, well. Good. I mean, let me know if you need anything.”
He cringed again.
“I should be fine,” Claire said, pointing at the bathroom. “Over a decade of experience.”
Dark laughed uneasily before walking back down the hallway, checking the doors a final time before he disappeared into the living room.
The bathroom was small and, in striking contrast to the dim living room, was lit by a bright and obviously new bulb. Claire had to squint as she washed her hands, looking at herself in the mirror when she was finished.
She was thinner, maybe by ten pounds. Her eyes seemed darker, too. As if something inside of her had changed and was only now pushing itself out. She fixed her hair and smiled at her reflection, wondering if that, too, had changed.
She could hear the boys playing their game as she stepped out into the hallway. As her eyes adjusted, she almost tripped and fell over a large, fat cat that had decided to sit right in front of the bathroom door. He looked up at her lazily, as if to say, “Step over me. Or wait there, I don’t care.”
Choosing to step over the yawning cat, Claire noticed a door was now open in the hallway. The cat must’ve been in there and pushed his way out. She wasn’t planning on looking, let alone opening the door. But a faint red light caught her attention first. And then it was the eyes, bone white and piercing. Spotlights in the otherwise shadowy room.
The Monster.
Its head seemed to push through the back wall of Dark’s room, expertly drawn around the twin windows that looked down into the street. And from the corner of the room, two arms reached forward, trying to catch her before she could run away. Its face, unlike the ones in the notebook, was plaintive—almost pained. Like it could be crying or screaming, depending on what happened next.
She knew that look.
They’d only been in Minnesota a few days, back when she still believed they could run away. Derrick had the television on—they always had the television on back then—and in a moment of either confusion or misplaced excitement, he’d said her name.
It was Eleanor, her friend. Her teammate since second grade. But she looked different, as if she’d been changed in some fundamental way. She was screaming, crying, right outside the front doors of their high school. Of course, everybody would end up focusing on the FUCK GUNS that she’d scrawled across her T-shirt. The pure fury that seemed to shake the otherwise still picture.
But for Claire, it was Eleanor’s face. Something universal, traveling across the thousands of miles between Minnesota and North Carolina to perfectly capture the pain and the fear and the grief that all of them felt. That Claire still felt every single moment.
“Hey . . .”
Claire would’ve run God over fullback style if he hadn’t caught her by the shoulders. She couldn’t stop herself from shaking in his hands.
“I’m fine,” she said automatically.
God followed Claire’s eyes into Dark’s room and, after a second, closed the door. He looked like he wanted to say something, but instead he let go of Claire’s shoulders and looked back to the other room.
“We’re going to run over to Grand Ave.,” he said. “Get something to eat.”