mia 05
monday afternoon, mia stomped through the chainlink fence, across the grass, and onto the track where gari-jean was reaching for the sky. "my sister's got a boyfriend."
gari lowered her arms and stretched toward the gravel. "ave? is that you?"
"she's got a boyfriend and she's hiding him from me."
"you MUST be ava since i haven't seen mia in weeks!"
"a boyfriend explains the watch, the lies, that wry little smile..."
gari groaned, raised her torso, and stretched from side to side. "how could she possibly have a boyfriend with everything else going on?"
"she's alone eighty percent of the time. maybe it's jeff... maybe she helped him kill gary and now she's hiding him until the shit blows over."
"this is a joke, right? this is another twin prank?"
"maybe it's dean," she continued. "they'd be able to spend every day together since neither of them have school or a job... but then why would would he call her a demon?"
"dean called her a demon?"
"maybe..." mia paused. "maybe you could talk to her."
"she's not my sister!"
"she's been weird with me."
"can't you telekinesis that shit?"
"not since the accident."
gari dropped to her ass, stuck out her legs, and reached for her feet. "does she act like she's in love? does she seem happy?"
"it's not that she's happy..." (because happiness wasn't black paint, white lies, and spooky prayers), "she's... content. she acts like she's above me." mia's mind leapt to the image of ava floating naked in nothingness and she shivered. "it's like she has this happy little secret—"
"and you want to be in on it."
"i want to know what the hell is going on in my sister's brain."
gari pressed the soles of her sneakers together and pulled her heels to her crotch. "you want me to text her?"
"take her out. bring her to dickson. get a couple drinks in her."
"how do i get her out of the house? your mom already knows she's not going to college so you lost your blackmail."
"tell her you need your twin fix and i'm being anti-social."
"not entirely untrue..."
"if you invite her, she'll do it."
gari pushed herself from the ground and squeezed mia's shoulders. "new backpack?"
mia nodded. "it smells like the first day of kindergarten."
"that's fantastic, hon." gari shook her head and released a flamboyant sigh. "i'm free on wednesday."
mia jumped and hugged her. "are you sure you wanna be seen in public with one of the lane twins?"
"how shallow do you think i am?"
* * *
a thousand times mia tried to turn on music, but the speakers wouldn't allow it.
she suddenly realized just how creepy the house could be when she was alone. it didn't help that gari-jean wasn't responding (probably because ava wasn't letting her text and drive), so mia sat in silence outside her sister's bedroom with a five gallon bucket of white primer trying not to imagine government satellites watching her from space, piercing the roof with heat sensors, and targeting the little red blip sitting all by her lonesome on the living room floor. she imagined the NSA listening to every brush stroke and nervous sigh through her phone or tv or the fancy wi-fi thermostat above her head.
mia slowly worked primer up the wall and quickly realized it would take a dozen coats to cover the black. ava can do whatever the hell she wants to her bedroom, she thought, but the brick outside her door belongs to BOTH of us.
a distant clinking pushed mia one step closer to the edge. when her phone dinged with a message from gari, she nearly dropped the brush in the paint. "we're at the little piggy!"
"good!" she replied. "get her toasted!"
twenty minutes later, mia reached the red blotch from the forehead of gary's grieving brother. she slid the drop cloth into position, dipped her brush in primer, and slathered the pores of the bloody brick.
gari typed, "your sister's kinda funny when you're not around."
"good to know," mia replied. "did you ask about the watch?"
"she says she bought it a long time ago."
"bull. i would've seen it."
"it doesn't even work. she just showed me. the hands are stuck at 9:35."
"why the hell does she have a broken watch?"
gari didn't respond right away, so mia dragged a stool from the kitchen, balanced on the top step, and painted the bricks between the ceiling and door.
gari finally replied. "either ava's a kick-ass liar... or she doesn't have a boyfriend."
"you asked?"
"and i believe her."
"100%?"
"116%"
"ok..."
"i love you mi, but i'm gonna spend the rest of the evening with a friend who actually wants to hang out with me."
mia's breath quickened. she blinked away the tears and hopped off the stool. as her feet touched down, a glob of primer flung from the brush, soared over the drop cloth, and splattered the hardwood floor.
shit shit shit!
wet paper towel. dry paper towel. mia rubbed the mess until her fingers burned.
she threw down the rags in defeat, found a dry spot on the wall, and fell against the brick.
in the stillness, mia felt the distant whir of mechanical eyes staring at her, zooming INTO her, beaming her image back to some super-secret facility where faceless men analyzed her cracking emotions and laughed at her frustration.
this is what ava wants! she thought. she wants me to feel the same kind of panic that SHE feels. not SYMPATHY panic, but the real goddamn thing!
mia thrust herself off the ground, ignored the splatter of primer, activated the flashlight on her cellphone, and marched into ava's cave. she found the nightstand, opened the top drawer, and grabbed the bottle of pills off the diary.
the diary.
the cover was as black as the bedroom walls.
mia popped two xannies on her tongue, swallowed them dry, then plucked the book from the drawer with her thumb and forefinger.
her chest caved as she flipped past the snippets and stanzas from when they lived in little rock (she'd read them all anyway). she slowed when she reached the torn page that once contained the poem for the old man in the diner. next came paragraphs about the woods, about fear, about sex with gary. a full page about his death, then mia flipped again...
"it's dark in here."
her heart dropped.
the same four words—different sizes, different styles, some tiny, some bold—spanned both pages so she flipped again.
"it's dark in here." upside down and sideways, over and over in black pen filling every crevice of the page so she flipped again and the phrase followed.
four pages.
five pages.
SIX.
"it's dark in here. it's dark in here. IT'S DARK IN HERE."
she dropped the diary and slammed the drawer.
her heart clenched with another pang of panic.
she pulled out her phone and pounded trembling thumbs into the keypad: "gari... i'm freaking out... please say nice things..."
her gut heaved in an attempt to purge the pills. she swung the flashlight at the bathroom and bolted for the toilet, but the beam caught a white patch around the closet where ava forgot to paint.
mia swallowed the sickness, stepped closer, and inspected the odd patterns of white and black on the side of the closet door.
she found it in the top left corner, a handprint, dead center in her quivering spotlight.
she opened her left palm. she pressed it against the wall. timidly, she dragged her hand along the brick until it aligned with the black print.
it didn't matter how far she spread her fingers, the hand on the wall was bigger.
gari's text popped up an inch from mia's face. "you're fine mi. you're strong and sexy and kind. and you have nothing to worry about... your sister is happy too. and she DOES NOT HAVE A BOYFRIEND."
* * *
a blanket of clouds cast the quad in the same shadowless light as the woods behind mia's home. impending rain didn't stop her classmates from hammocking in groups like banana bunches dangling between trees. they seemed comfortable without jackets, but mia wished she'd borrowed her sister's sweater.
she pulled her arms into her coat and stared at the communications book in her lap. she re-read the first paragraph, then read it again... but the text was liquid and her mind was a colander.
"i thought class was done at noon on thursdays?" gari-jean was standing over her in track shorts and a burgundy tee.
"i can't go home..." mia replied, but gari was staring at the top of her head.
"what's in your hair?"
mia ran her fingers over her scalp and found a crusty splotch of primer at the top of her head. "shit... it's... it's nothing..."
gari sighed. "i don't know what this is or how i can help..."
"this?"
"ava says she's worried about you, and i'm starting—"
"ava's worried about ME? she was afraid of RAIN less than a month ago! now i find her standing all alone in the middle of bear-infested woods without any protection. just standing there!"
"mi—"
"she's lying, gari. all the time and she won't tell me why."
"can you lower your voice?"
"i've been trying for months to get her on the same page as me... but i'm starting to wonder if i need to get on HER page. maybe i need to smash my car or mutilate myself or lock myself in a pitch-black room so i can finally understand what the fuck is going on!"
gari stepped back. "holy hell, mi. the whole 'twin thing' was fun at first, but this is getting dark..."
"i'm trying to be an adult. i'm trying to be the responsible one. i'm trying not to call home crying. but it's hard. it's hard when every morning feels like a hangover. it's hard when i hear voices every time i go to sleep. it's hard when the only thing that would make me feel better is to crawl in bed with the one person who shares my blood and truly knows me, but i'm more afraid of her than the bears or the perverts or whoever the fuck visits her while i'm away. and in the meantime, i'm trying desperately to be a genuine human being for my boyfriend since he's the one person who hasn't abandoned me—"
"you think i abandoned you?"
the kids in hammocks were staring. mia tilted her head to her textbook and grimaced.
"i gave you every opportunity to make friends with the sorority sisters," gari said. "even after you blew it, i still offered to hang out because i genuinely enjoyed spending time with you. your boyfriend kissed me first, but i backed off because you seemed interested. then i interrogated your sister as a favor... and this is how you thank me."
"i—"
"you were never gonna be a tri-delt, mi." gari turned, then paused. "also, you still smell like skunk."
mia cried.
she smelled her shirt.
she smelled her backpack.
she smelled her textbook, smelled the skunk in the binding, and her tears turned to sobs.
mia pushed herself from the grass, stumbled to the nearest trash can, and jammed her textbooks—all of them—to the very bottom.
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