I like to listen to music on the walk home from school. Supertramp, Kool & The Gang, The Supremes. Maybe Alanis Morsette or Heart when it's raining.

Rain sloshes down metal pipes, streaked with flashing lights from cars skidding past. Thick rivers of water running down my shoes, icey between the toes. My bangs are plastered to my forehead, and my fingers are numb around the straps of my polyester backpack.

Crazy on you! Let me go crazy, crazy on youuu! I sing, shoes splashing in muddy sludge and crystal-clear puddles. I can barely see through the fog as I turn onto my street, making sure to tip-toe over concrete cracks and potholes.

The house is four stories, crammed between a row of townhouses in either direction. The windows are squeezed in between each layer, like a marshmallow punched into a dense sponge cake. The whole exterior blends perfectly in with the steel and lightning-streaked sky.

The top two floors are rented out. Only one light is on, on the highest floor. The rest in the town house, including our floors, are all a black abyss.

Something else I've also noticed about our house: the windows have no reflection. Down the street, when the lights are off, you can see yourself in people's windows, or maybe the hint of a dog perched on the back of a sofa, growling at everything that passes by.

Not ours.

My parents don't trust me with a key yet, but I know the code to the garage.

I glance over my shoulder. The wind has slowed, the rain to a soft drizzle. Wet leaves drift lazily in the gray sunshine that has peaked through.

It's quiet. My school starts a little early and ends a little early, so it's not rush hour yet, and not much would be happening, anyway.

I flick up the latch and type in the code on the yellowed rubber buttons (803019), and UNLOCK. A pause, and then the screech of the pulleys as the door lifts back.

Another glance. An empty road.

I hurry through the garage, eyes glancing over the heedy dark that fills each empty space. I step over bikes and shovels, empty boxes saved for recycling. I reach the door and tilt my head back behind the large shelf.

A person in an orange hat strolls on the sidewalk with their German Shepherd. A white car slows, then whooshes by.

The garage door shudders as I press down the switch on the wall, and slowly, the light in the room darkens and pulls away with a hiss. I see images in my mind, of me turning around too early, a dark-clothed figure whispering beneath the door before it shuts.

When it's an inch away, I flee into the house, hands shaking with the thought of being alone in the pitch.

If you don't make it up the stairs in one second, you'll––

"Crazy on you...let me go crazy, crazy on you..."