you can do this. nolan rolled his knuckles on the kitchen counter and bounced his heel against the cupboard. get her alone, find the real mia, tell her how you feel.

nolan had refused every escape offered to him; spiked tea from gari-jean, mushrooms from dean, and beer from everyone who knew gary was his friend. the only chemical he wanted was the occasional dopamine rush from mia lane... but as far as he could tell, the real mia wasn't at the party.

the girl who did show—the mia imposter—was dancing drunk in the spotlight of her newest peers, her talent for witty rapport wasted on sorority gossip, celebrity news, and spoken text acronyms like, "o.m.G, gari!" and, "w.t.F, dylan?" and, "i'm about to p.t.f.O."

get her alone, nolan repeated, find the real mia. tell her how you feel.

the smorgasbord of substances was rapidly enhancing the evening's ominous vibe. twenty minutes ago nolan watched a girl in a black-painted pony tail partake in a palmful of dean's "pizza toppings." now she was clawing at her boyfriend's v-neck and begging him to get her out of here. one of gary's brothers, six-foot-six, stood inches from the wall outside ava's room, rocking gently on his heels and gazing into the endless oblivion of white brick.

dean—indifferent to the subtle chaos he'd been creating—stood by the window and sucked alcohol from a plastic hose attached to a guy wearing a gas mask.

focus, nolan, he told himself. he knuckled the tile, propped himself from the counter, pushed his way into the circle around the imposter-mia, and squeezed her shoulder. "hey. can we get outta here for a bit?"

she turned, found his eyes, and—in a split second of genuine concern—showed him the real mia. "i—"

"FUCK IT," said dean from the window. "I'M GOING IN."

mia's attention—the whole room's attention—turned to dean as he stomped to the back door.

"WHO WANTS TO GO ON A HUNT?"

the party erupted with sloppy laughter and egged him on with drunken cheers. "i'm in!" shouted a frat kid. "my shotgun's in the truck!" yelled another. two more abandoned their girlfriends and rushed through the kitchen.

"oh. my. god." mia said, her cheeks curling with the pressure of a wicked smile.

"this is stupid..." nolan said, then raised his voice, "dean! do not leave this house!" but his words were lost in the uproar.

gari-jean pushed passed him. "you need a drink', dude," she said, then followed the boys outside.

* * *

it didn't matter which way ava turned, she could feel jeff on her back.

paranoia slithered up her spine as she shouldered the green door and plunged into the black mass of gyrating bodies in a hopeless attempt to shake her ex... but he was persistent.

he was hunting her.

ava looked for mia, for nolan, for gari-jean or anyone else who would stand up to jeff and send him home... but the drugs tightened their grip. she wanted to barf the mushrooms into the toilet and flush 'em down the house's throat so IT could start tripping; so it could see HER as the demon instead of the other way around.

gari-jean was no longer giving tours of her bedroom so ava bolted inside, slammed the door with a flutter of caution tape, and locked it behind her. "keep him out, keep him out, keep him out," she prayed aloud.

suddenly, jeff was there, standing across her room in the open bathroom door, hair wet and curled atop his head, leather sleeves hiked past his wrists. "i've been trying, ave."

"get out," she said.

"i've been trying to do the right thing—"

"get the fuck out of my room."

"i've been polite. i gave you space when we were searching for gary. but you blocked my number anyway."

"please, jeff..."

he stepped forward. "talk to me, ave. i have things i need to tell you. ten minutes and i'll be gone."

the door handle dug into ava's back.

"i was pissed at you for changing. one day you were talking to me until two AM. the next... you barely looked at me." his gaze was unrelenting. "i was upset. i shouldn't have been."

with tremendous concentration, ava pieced together a cohesive sentence. "i didn't like you before the accident."

jeff's skin crinkled like a plastic bag. "of course you did."

"i didn't go to the spring formal with you..."

"you were sick."

in her hallucinogenic haze, ava spoke the four words she never thought she'd say aloud. "i made it up."

"feeling sick?"

"i didn't want to dance with you. i didn't want you to touch me. i didn't want to ride bitch on the back of your hog ever again."

he looked away. he shook his head. he scoffed. "it makes me wonder..."

"what."

"if you would've gone to the dance with me like you promised... if you didn't have to drive back later to pick up your sister... would you have hit that car?"

headlights appeared in ava's peripherals. she turned. they vanished.

jeff stepped forward. "would you have died for two minutes? would your relationship with your sister be as messed up as it is now? would you still be struggling to write your little poems?" his chin tilted. "would you still have that mangled pussy?"

ava would have lost it if she was sober; she would've fallen to the mattress and buried her tears. she never would've remembered the vent at the foot of her bed... the house's left ear.

this thought... this knowledge that her plight MATTERED to some strange power... it stripped away the paranoia, the anxiety, the BAD kind of fear, so she stepped to jeff and said, "you're right."

her newfound confidence pushed the boy back and made him stutter. "i- i shouldn't have said that."

she shushed him with her finger. "i'm the one who's sorry."

"but you—"

her fingertips brushed his cheek and guided him to the mattress. "i died for two full minutes... and you're right, jeff, it changed me." she laid on her bed with her head right beside the vent.

the house—ava's protector—would hear every moan.

* * *

get her alone, find the real mia, tell her how you feel.

nolan grabbed mia's wrist and tugged her as gently as possible away from the back door. "i need to talk. just for a few seconds."

a battle cry of hyper-macho yelps split mia's attention between nolan and her friends.

"are you there?" he asked.

"that's SO condescending."

"i know. i'm sorry."

"i'm sorrrry," she mimicked and rose on tiptoes to see dean's mob disappear into the night.

"i'm pretty good at holding my shit together," he said, "but this week has been hard and i need to know what this is."

"this?"

"don't make me say it..."

"you're asking me if we're boyfriend and girlfriend?"

"yes."

she rolled her eyes. "you really think this is the best time?" she pointed her hand at the girl with the black pony tail, boyfriend gone, sobbing alone in the corner. outside ava's room, gary's seven-foot brother was rocking so far back and forth that his head connected lightly—again and again—with the brick. thunk. he was muttering something, but nolan couldn't make out the words.

"i know it's a bad night to talk," he said, "but i need to know."

"i'm not the person you want me to be."

"maybe you could be if you tried."

mia's face scrunched with pissed-off bewilderment. "are you kidding me? you don't need a women's studies course to know that's a SERIOUSLY fucked up thing to say."

"it depends on which mia you prefer. if you like the mia with the perpetual smile and surface emotions, then pressing you to change would be cruel. if you like the mia who wears her intellect on her sleeve and can melt a guy's heart with genuine eyes, then pressing you to change would be a step in the right direction."

mia dug her teeth into her lip... stopped... then blinked away whatever thought had prompted the tic. "i can't do this. i'm tipsy and i'm tired and i'm trying to party."

just as she twirled to leave, the door heaved and belched dean and his entourage to the kitchen floor. "look at this shit!" he raised his arm and dangled a BEAR TRAP, rusty and ARMED, with open steel teeth and a spring-loaded latch still unsprung.

"dean!" nolan shouted. "get it out of here!"

his protest was suffocated by the rest of the mob stumbling through the door.

mia abandoned nolan, stepped over a kid belly laughing on the floor, looked at the trap, and exclaimed, "o.m.f.g!"

* * *

"i want to see your scar," jeff said, shirtless and pantless and hovering over ava.

"no," she replied.

"i need to see it, ave."

"no."

"i need to understand..."

with every request she said it again—softer and softer until the word became less than a whisper—"no."

on the opposite side of her door, flesh slapped against brick with a dull thunk.

"what was that?" jeff asked.

ava pulled his body on top of hers.

another thunk followed by a man's voice: "it's dark in here..."

jeff's head shot up. "what the hell? he's right outside your door!"

thunk. "it's dark in here..."

ava grappled his shoulder, pulled him closer, and reveled in the boy and the familiar voice and the sparkling mushroom high. heightened senses; her nose in his neck and the memory-scent of her very first time; that sickly-sweet stench of day-old sweat and mall cologne... she wondered if he'd showered in the ten months since they last shared a bed. she kissed the smell again with a series of audible sucks just loud enough for the vent to hear.

thunk. "it's dark in here..."

thunk. "it's dark in here..."

thunk. "it's dark—"

"hey buddy." a SECOND MAN interrupted the first with a voice like bourbon. "keep doin' that and you'll break your skull."

"god," jeff said, "who's that now?"

"can you hear 'em in there?" asked the second voice. "the haphazard clatter of intercourse?"

"shit, ave! they can hear us!"

ava thumbed jeff's boxers to distract from the living room voices. it worked.

underwear to ankles; she let him in without letting him look, fingertips tracing the stubble-less face of a boy who didn't know any better.

thunk. "it's dark in here..."

"you shouldn't be afraid of the dark," said the second voice just outside her door. "i want you to know that."

thunk.

"you've heard of the hubble telescope, right? one night, astronomers decided to point it at the darkest part of the sky... a tiny fraction of space where every other telescope had detected nothing but emptiness."

jeff's hands took their familiar hold and bound ava's wrists over her head. "i missed you," he cooed. "i missed you so fucking much."

thunk.

"they left the hubble's lens open for eleven days, forcing it to stare into that empty void..."

thunk.

"and on the eleventh day, do you know what they found?"

thunk.

"ten. thousand. galaxies."

weird sex. HIGH sex. somewhere-between-a-ritual-and-an-experiment sex. every thrust burned in ava with adolescent fury as jeff groaned and grappled for catharsis.

thunk.

"every one of those galaxies contained hundreds of billions of stars, and every star emits enough light to travel thirteen-billion years to earth."

thunk.

"do you know what that means? it means even the darkness is brimming with light."

thunk. "it's dark in here..."

the second voice sighed. "i'm afraid it's time to go. all of us; back to the shadows. but now you know... i'm here if you need me."

the drugs quadrupled ava's nerve endings turning toes and fingers and knees and nose into hyper-sensitive erogenous zones.

thunk.

jeff's body tensed and writhed like a pissed-off snake. his lips curled into a silent "o" as he hissed a litany of filth into ava's ear.

to her bewilderment, she could have finished right along side him. instead, she clenched, rejected the pleasure, and shoved the boy off her chest.

thunk.

she heaved. she wondered, did it work?

as jeff crawled to the head of the bed and pulled the covers over his body, the house responded definitively to ava's question with a chorus of terrified screams.

* * *

nolan spun from the rusty bear trap to the sound of shrieking coeds. a half-dozen girls leapt to the couch in heels. others bolted for the door.

"get it out!"

"kill it!"

"you're pissing it off!"

nolan and mia shouldered their way through the chaos, passing the shroom-tripping giant still facing the wall outside ava's room; blood on his forehead, blood on the brick. thunk. "it's dark in here..."

"poke it!" someone shouted.

"get me a broom!"

"what the hell's a broom gonna do? use my gun!"

nolan burst through the gathering and found himself toe to toe with a drowsy SKUNK moseying through the laundry room door, nails clicking the hardwood, tail docile and dragging behind.

the blood drained from mia's face as she watched her friends flee.

nolan stretched his arms to hold back the crowd, then knelt to the skunk. "don't corner him," he said. "step away. now."

"it's gonna spray!" someone shouted.

"nobody leave!" mia called.

thunk. "it's dark in here..."

the skunk wiggled its snout in the air with a quick succession of sniffs.

"something's wrong," nolan said. "he's confused."

gari-jean poked her head from the party. "how do ya know it's a he?"

"females stay in their dens all winter and don't usually get this big."

"what if it's rabid?"

"he's not showing any symptoms; probably just ate somethin' he wasn't supposed to."

"hey!" mia called, dashing outside. "you can stay! we're fixing it!"

the skunk—suddenly aware of its surroundings—scurried three feet toward the bedrooms and stopped when the partygoers jolted, gasped, and laughed.

"clear a path to the door!" nolan shouted. "if we lose him, he'll burrow in the walls and we'll never get him out."

the remaining frat boys stepped sideways to form a lane to the open door.

the skunk sniffed and turned. the midnight air was beckoning.

"go on, little guy," nolan coaxed.

"gary?" dean wedged his way between nolan and gari-jean and locked eyes with the skunk. "gary!" he said again, irises red from the weed, voice garbled from the booze, head glitching from the 'shrooms.

"get back, man!" nolan said.

"it's him!" dean stumbled forward and the skunk coiled, arced its tail, and rapped its feet on the floorboards; click-click-click-click. "gary came back!"

"dude!" gari-jean grabbed dean's collar and jerked him away from the animal.

he twisted out of her grasp and flung himself forward with one final cry. "GARY!"

the skunk raised its tail. its puckered red hole locked onto dean and fired a globby torrent of yellow mist.

dean crumpled and barfed.

the frat boys scrambled for the door—skunk clamoring between their legs—in a cacophony of vulgar laughter and sobs.

nolan hid his nose under his shirt but it didn't do a dang thing. his stomach lurched. he tried to blink away the needles in his eyes but they only burrowed deeper.

in the driveway, white headlights consumed mia's swaggering silhouette as the inebriated herd took to their cars. rubber twisted against gravel, gravel spattered against brick, metal crunched against metal and somebody screamed.

"please find him!" dean had become a writhing fetus by the laundry room door, peeling wet cloths from his body like afterbirth. "somebody find garrry!"

nolan ignored the chaos outside, ignored his friend, ignored the smell and the burn in his chest, snapped mia's quilt from the couch, spotted the skunk by the fireplace, tossed the blanket with exquisite timing, then attacked the bulge, scooped it up, and wrestled it in his arms.

mia appeared at the front door in a halo of taillights; mascara tears, unfurled hair, shaking her head at nolan and the blanket flailing in his arms.

time froze as deliberation toyed with mia's expression; creased eyelids, a despondent shake of her head... then the rapid intake of air, a half-hearted smirk, and a confident nod.

she kicked off her heels, bolted to nolan, and helped him wrangle the animal. together, they tightened their grip... and the creature gave up. "shh," she said. "you're okay, little guy."

the couple inched their way toward the open door—skunk subdued between them—and passed gari-jean helping a buck-naked dean off the floor.

they shuffled outside, down the porch steps, past the garage, and into the woods.

"ready?" nolan asked.

mia nodded.

"one..."

"two..."

"three!" they said in unison, unlocked their arms, snapped open the blanket, and released the critter into the dark.

mia fell to the dirt and wiggled her bare toes in the air. she tilted her head back to see the house... then laughed.

nolan plopped beside her. "funny, eh?"

her lips widened, her brow raised, and she cackled louder. it was an honest laugh, stripped of pretense, as naked and grimy as her outstretched feet. "they're leaving!" she said. "all of them!" her cackle diminished into an adorable giggle fit before subsiding completely. "your-" she stammered, "your friend is dead."

"i know."

"my sister hates me and a skunk just scared away all my friends."

"your sister doesn't hate you. and if they're real friends, they'll come back."

she nodded. "if they were real friends, they wouldn't be leaving in the first place."

nolan responded with a peck on her forehead.

she grinned, took his face her her hands, pulled him to the dirt, and kissed him back.

* * *

ava was pretty sure she didn't use superglue instead of eye drops last night... but her eyelids were tugging on each other instead of opening and—from what she remembered of the party—anything was possible.

purple sunlight finally pried them open... then the smell of shitty weed sealed them shut.

she patted her nightstand, found her phone, and winced at the screen.

thirteen missed calls from mom.

she rolled over and moved her hand around the bed.

she was alone.

ava stood. she shouldered the bathroom door, then pushed harder when it wouldn't budge. a blond head slumped in the gap and ava had to use the full weight of her body to slide gari-jean out of the way.

she stepped over the girl and found dean naked and asleep in the empty tub, his body and face covered in a flaky orange film. beside the bath: a broken can opener and four empty cans of tomato soup.

ava peered through the crack in her sister's door. she couldn't see faces, but smiled at the sleeping tangle of black and white limbs.

the putrid potpourri of ganja and vomit chocked her as she hobbled from her bedroom to the front door. she opened it and stepped into a landscape of morning fog; the cold kind of fog that clung to the ground and feathered skyward in patches of warm sun. she purged the sick air from her lungs and inhaled the soggy mist of the arkansas dawn.

two steps forward and she saw it... leaning against the garage... the only vehicle left from the post-funeral bash.

jeff's motorcycle.

ava's dress did little to block the cold but she didn't shiver. she grabbed the bike by the grips, pulled it upright (it was heavier than she recalled) and walked it through the alley between the house and garage.

the drugs were still partying in her head. she knew this because bits of poetry were emanating as physical, reach-out-and-touch-them WORDS from her surroundings; semi-transparent letters weaving through the mist; tangible phrases creeping like inchworms up the bark of fallen trees. ("you shouldn't be afraid of the dark,") they said. ("i want you to know that.")

ava wanted to touch the words, to pinch them between her fingers and rearrange them, but the motorcycle was heavy and the dirt made it hard to push.

("even the darkness is brimming with light.")

she found a spot in the train tracks where enough earth had built up to push the bike over the rails.

the ground stiffened as she approached the shack and made it easy to guide the bike inside. she angled the handlebars to fit through the second door. she grunted once, heaved, then dropped the whole damn machine against the makeshift wooden toilet.

("i'm afraid it's time to go. all of us; back to the shadows.")

a glimmer caught ava's attention as she stepped from the shack... a trio of silver cylinders stacked on the fire pit, clean and out of place in the woods.

she inspected them from a distance—paint cans?—then cautiously inched forward.

white labels with tiny text identified the contents of the cans. stacked before ava—in the middle of the forest—were three gallons of blacker-than-black, rarer-than-rare, vantablack paint.

("now you know... i'm here if you need me.")

(End of Part One)