The Destiny of Violet and Luke(15)

It’s really late and I can see the moon outside my window, looking like a half-eaten cookie. The stars sparkle like the glitter on my pajamas and my nightlight in the corner of my room keeps flickering. It was the Fourth of July today and I can still hear some of the fireworks the neighbors must be setting off.



I lie in my bed staring at the glow-in-the-dark stickers on the ceiling, some shaped as hearts, some as stars. I try to close my eyes, but it’s not working. Finally, I decide to get out of bed and go down to my toy room in the basement. Maybe if I play with my toys for a while then I can stop thinking so much about all the toys that I’m going to get tomorrow.



Taking my new teddy bear and the flashlight I keep in my nightstand drawer, I tiptoe down the stairs. I pause at the bottom, staring at the window in the living room where I can see showers of red and silver sparks glittering sky. It’s so pretty and I stop at the bottom of the stairs to get a good look at them. When the colors fade, I turn for the basement door and open it. A lot of the kids I know are afraid of the basement, but mine’s not that bad. My dad even let me paint my favorite flowers on the walls and I get to keep all my toys down here, too.



I don’t flip on the light, instead I use my flashlight because I’m not supposed to be out of bed this late at night, but the moon and fireworks shower light through the window. Once I get the flashlight turned on, I skip down the stairs to where my toys are stacked in boxes around the room. There’s also a chair in the corner by a bookshelf where I have a ton of books. I love to read about anything. Princesses. Monsters. Magical kingdoms. I asked my dad once if stuff like that really existed and he told me of course and asked what fun would life be if fairy tales weren’t secretly real.



I go over to the bookshelf, deciding I’ll read for a while, and maybe that will help me fall asleep. My favorite one isn’t on the shelf, though, so I go to the storage room where there are more books stacked on the floor. My dad loves to read, too, and we have so many books that there’s really nowhere to put them. At least that’s what my mom says.



I set the teddy bear down on the floor and shine the light on the first pile of books I come across. They’re all my dad’s books so I kneel down in front of the next stack, reading over the titles. Finally I find it, but as I’m pulling it out of the stack I hear a noise coming from my toy room. It sounds like scratching or scraping maybe and my mind instantly goes to the possibility that maybe it’s a monster or a dragon or something else with claws. My hand shakes a little as I stand up and turn back toward the room. When I step into it, I feel the wind hit my cheeks. I shine the light around and notice one of the windows is open. I don’t understand why. I didn’t open it and I don’t think it was open when I came down here. What if it was a monster?



I sweep the flashlight around the room at all my toys as I start back toward the corner. Then the light lands on something tall… I hear voices. Ones that don’t sound like they belong to a monster, but just people. But that’s what they end up being.



Terrible, horrible monsters.




*

I wake up gasping for air, clutching my blanket, my heart thrashing inside my chest, my lungs desperately seeking air as I hold my teddy bear tightly against me. It’s like I’m drowning and for a moment I actually think I’m buried beneath the water. It’s how I’ve woken up every morning for the last thirteen years. I used to breathe as loud as possible, but I’ve had to train myself to be quieter since I have a roommate now. As my eyes open to the sunlight, my breathing ragged, I quickly roll over and bury my face in the pillow, smothering the fear and panic out of me. I grip handfuls of blanket, reminding myself that I’m not drowning, that it just feels like it. That monsters don’t really exist. That it was just people. Really terrible people who did something really f*cked up and never got caught. Never had to pay. Just went on living, hiding their evil fangs and claws, while I was left to wander the world alone.

I breathe in and out until my face becomes hot and the scent of the fabric softener in the pillowcase overwhelms my nostrils, then I turn to the side, facing the wall, sliding the bear aside. I can sense that my roommate, Callie, is awake and I don’t want to see her looking at me. She’s got music playing on the stereo, some girl bellowing out lyrics to a poetic song. It’s not really my kind of music. I like the rougher kind that will drown out the thoughts inside my head and the emptiness in my heart. But the soft beat of this one is kind of soothing, I guess.