At Home in the Dark Read online

  “Temporary or not,” Remington says, “that’s the same thing, though. Right?”

  Remington’s saying that made my face flush. I hoped that didn’t show in the poor light. It took me a long moment to say it, but I did. “Right.”

  I made a point then of deciding not to get to know Remington at all, because tonight would be her last night. I knew what Clarisse was doing. She was going to use someone we weren’t close to for probing the team, seeing how good they were, how long it took them to put Remington down. It was a mean sort of gesture, to put her at the front, like she was important to the team, but what she was, was expendable.

  I could practically feel Remington vibrate beside me. In a few hours there wouldn’t be any more vibrating. It would be over for her, and we might learn something from her death about the other team, which admittedly was a team that changed up their game plans. They had a lot of solid, long term members, and they were without a doubt the toughest we had ever faced. I had seen some of the film made of their games, and it was chilling. They had an amazing defense and an even more amazing offense. When they left the field, it was always wet with the blood of the other team.

  “I’m going to make all of you proud,” Remington says.

  “Of course you are,” Bundy says, and all the other girls said something like that out loud. They were supposed to. I didn’t say a damn thing. It might cost me some extra laps at the gym, Clarisse wanted to push it, tell the coach, but the thing was, I was done after tonight. I got home I only had one more week on the team, and that was all ceremonial until the graduation honors. I could run a few laps. I could do extra sit-ups or any other exercise that was asked of me. But tonight, I wasn’t going to give Clarisse the satisfaction of agreeing with Remington’s sacrifice. Poor Remington. She thought she was going to be a hero, not a corpse.

  “Should I attack right off?” Remington says.

  I didn’t answer her. I didn’t say anything. She said a few more things out loud, but I wasn’t paying any attention any more. I was sitting there looking out at the landscape, flooded white by the moonlight.

  • • •

  When we got to the café where we always stopped, Clarisse stood by the door of the bus, and as the team came out she reminded us not to eat heavy, the way Jane always did, like we needed to be reminded.

  As I started past her, she called my name, says, “I need to speak to you privately.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out and stood off to the side and let the others pass as they headed into the café.

  When it was just me and her, I say, “What?”

  “You’re supposed to be an example. Keep the new girl up, not try and bring her down.”

  “She’ll go down all right,” I say. “She’s got about as much chance as a rabbit in a dog’s cage.”

  “She has her training. We were all newbies once, and we all took our chances.”

  “We were better than her.”

  “That’s how we remember it.”

  “That’s how it was. And why aren’t you talking to Bundy? Why didn’t you pull her aside?”

  “Because you’re a Point, like me, like Jane. There has to be a third point, and with Jane out, she’s the only one with the jets to play that position.”

  “Remington’s no Jane. She’s no anybody. And besides, you don’t start the new ones off on Point first game out. Pull Bundy up.”

  “She’s not fast enough. She’s better where she is. Remington is fast, I’ve noticed that at workouts.”

  “Yeah. All right.”

  I knew it was a done deal. Clarisse was, much as I hated to admit it, the team captain. Unless the coach decided to override her, Remington would have her two seconds. And then she’d eat dirt.

  “You protect the ones who have experience,” Clarisse says. “That’s how we win, with the regulars.”

  I quit talking to her then, went inside the café.

  There was music playing and I could smell food cooking. I ordered a hamburger, one of the small ones and a side salad. Remington came over and slid into the seat across from me.

  “I’m so excited,” she says.

  “Save some of that,” I say. “Tame it, use it.”

  I don’t know why I even bothered. She was a goner.

  She chattered on about this and that, about the team, and finally our food came, and still she chattered. I ate slowly, way you need to, and when Remington wasn’t chattering, she ate quickly, the way you’re not supposed to.

  “I know you don’t think I’m ready, but I am.”

  “I know you’re not ready.”

  “I believe in the team.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Sure,” I say, but I wasn’t certain. Did I?

  Clarisse had already eaten, something small and mostly vegetables, I figured. She always looked great, played great. She came down the aisle of the café, walking between the rows of tables, saying, “Everyone. This is the championship game. This one counts more than any of the others counted. We have to—”

  “They all counted,” I say, the words jumping out of my mouth. “Ronnie’s game counted, didn’t it?”

  “Of course. That’s not what I meant.”

  “I am so tired of your yacking and trying to act like you’re some kind of hot stuff. Why don’t you shut up and sit down and just do your part later?”

  “You’re jealous, aren’t you,” she says, glaring at me. “You wanted to have a day dedicated to you, and you didn’t. Didn’t earn one. And you thought you might actually take Jane’s place while she was out. Be team captain instead of me.”

  “You don’t know anything,” I say, but I was thinking, yep, that’s about it. That and the fact that I was tired of the whole thing, tired of dreaming about the final dark, the possible pain. I have nightmares about being dragged around the inner stadium with my dress hiked up and my ass hanging out, flapping along like Clarisse’s tongue.

  “I’m the team captain,” Clarisse says, “like it or not.”

  “I don’t like it much,” I say.

  Everyone looked from my face to Clarisse’s, except Bundy. She says, “This can be settled.”

  “It can,” I say. “The old way it used to be settled.”

  “We don’t do that anymore,” Clarisse says.

  “You mean you don’t want to do it that way,” I say.

  “You and me, we been friends a long time.”

  “No, we were friends a long time ago. This whole team captain thing, it can be solved, way Bundy says. It’s in the rule book.”

  Bundy eyed Clarisse, says, “Think she’s got you there, Captain.”

  “Very well,” Clarisse says. “This is a bad time for it. Game night. But yeah, I’ll give you your satisfaction.”

  She touched the bayonet strapped to her hip.

  That’s when Lady Red, owner of the café, her hair dyed red as a beet, drags all three hundred pounds of herself out from behind the counter, wags a finger at us. “You know the rules for any squabbles, fist or bayonets, or just bad language. Take it outside. One of you gets killed, you’ll bleed in the parking lot, not on my floor.”

  “There’s no need for this,” Remington says. “One for one, and one for all.”

  “Shut up, Remington,” I say.

  • • •

  The lot was lit with lights and moonlight. It wasn’t as bright as the stadium would be, but it was pretty good. We could see how to kill one another, that was for sure.

  We spaced off, ten feet between us, our bayonets drawn, the edges of them winking light. Clarisse stood with her legs a little wider than shoulder width, standing to the side, the bayonet in her forward hand, not the back one, way you should hold it if you knew something. We both knew something, but I got to thinking there might be a reason she was team captain, not me, because earlier she had hit it on the head. I wanted that place, thought I deserved it, and Clarisse had always won out over me, in everything. She got the
best body and face to begin with, born that way, and she had better clothes and they fit her the way the same clothes would never have fit me, even if my parents had the money to buy them, and she got all the boys, and twice she got my boyfriends, and all she had to do was walk by and smile, and it was a done deal.

  I had dreams where she died, and I never knew how I felt about them. Was I happy or sad? I awoke with tears on my face but a happy heart.

  “You’ve always been jealous of me,” Clarisse says, like she’s been reading my mind.

  “You don’t know everything,” I say, but right then I’m thinking, yeah, well, she knows a lot, and she probably was a pretty good team captain, and she just might kill me tonight, or wound me bad. I didn’t have the team to work with against her. I had me and she had her, and that was it.

  Thing was, to save face, I had to do it now, and I thought, maybe I’ll wound her good enough, or maybe she’ll wound me good enough I won’t have to go in with the team tonight. I’ll be through.

  I swallowed and eased forward and she eased toward me.

  “Touch off,” she says, and though this isn’t a game, just a fight, I do it, reach out and tip my blade against hers. They make a clinking sound, and then we both move back one step, like we would in a game, and start to circle one another.

  “This isn’t team work,” Remington says, stepping out of the circle of girls around us, saying that like it might not occur to us that it wasn’t.

  It’s then, that just beyond Clarisse, as we’re circling, I see Bundy’s scarred face there in the light, her one eye and her black patch on the other, and she’s lit up like she’s just had an orgasm, first communion, and a ticket to heaven.

  Oh yeah, I’m thinking. We do this, I kill Clarisse, or she kills me, or we just get injured bad, neither of us may be able to be team captain, and next in line is Bundy. Wouldn’t be a lot of discussion on that, not tonight, when it’s the last game and there’s no time to rethink things. Bundy ends up captain tonight, and we win the game, she goes out a hero, gets another parade. Me and Clarisse get some hospital time, and maybe the game’s lost because we’re not there.

  Was that why Bundy was so eager to have us fight?

  Was I trying to find excuses to dodge out?

  Now Clarisse was easing closer, using the fake step, where you drop your back leg behind you, but your front stays where it was, gives the impression she’s moving away, might make you think you can get her on the retreat, but it’s just a trick.

  I knew all her tricks, and she knew mine.

  “We’re a team,” Remington said. It sounded like her voice had been sent to her via wounded carrier pigeon, like it didn’t really want to be there.

  “Hush,” Bundy says to Remington.

  But that’s when Remington began to sing our fight song, and damn, her voice was good. It rose up and filled the air and it almost seemed as if the lights got brighter, and if that wasn’t enough, some of the other girls started to sing. They tightened the circle around us, and the singing got louder. I could feel tears in my eyes, and then one of those tears escaped and streamed down my face, and the other tears, like lemmings, followed.

  “And they called to the crowd, and the crowd called death, and the bayonets came down,” they sang, and then the chorus, “Came down, came down, like a mountain, came down.”

  For whatever reason, that chorus always got me, and it had me then, and I think to myself, get it together, lose the emotion, or Clarisse has got you.

  But that’s when I see Clarisse’s face in the light, and it looks like she’s just sucked a lemon. The war paint she wears was running over her cheeks, her face was wet. Her bottom lip was trembling.

  All of a sudden, she lowers the bayonet to her side and starts to sing, and then I lower my bayonet, and I start to sing, and coming in late, but clear and strong, Bundy begins to sing.

  Everyone of the girls is singing now, and just as loud as they can.

  Me and Clarisse spin our bayonets into our sheaths in unison, like one of our drills, and we smile at each other, and we keep singing, and when we come to the end of the song we embrace.

  Remington says then, “We got time for a cup of coffee. One cup is good for you in a game, coach told me that, but two, that’s too many.”

  I went over and put my arm around Remington, and then Clarisse did the same thing from the other side, and we walked Remington back into the café, the team following.

  • • •

  On the bus, me and Clarisse sat together, up front of everyone else, and were mostly silent in the dark, but when we were maybe like, five miles out, she says, “Do you remember when we were little, how we used to make our dolls fight?”

  “Sure,” I say. “I remember,” not telling her I was thinking just that thing earlier tonight.

  “We were close then,” she says, “and I always have felt close to you, even when we weren’t getting along.”

  “Me too, I guess.”

  “I was always jealous of you, Millicent.”

  “Say you were?”

  “You were smart, and could see things quick, and I got to tell you, I maybe overdo a bit when I’m around you, cause I’m thinking whatever I’m doing, you could do as well or better. I don’t like to admit that, but I’m admitting it now.”

  “Yeah, well, you got your stuff too. I never had your looks, your style.”

  “You say. I mean, you know, you could push your hair back a little more, show your face. You got a good profile, girl.”

  “Yeah?”

  “But mostly you’re smart. You’re smart, and you’ll probably stay smart. No one stays pretty, not in the way they think. My mama told me that.”

  “She’s damn pretty.”

  “Yeah, but you should see pictures of her when she was younger. She was beyond pretty.”

  I let that soak in, her compliments, and then I say, “Remington, I don’t know. Front lines. I mean, it’s your call. She is quick, damn quick, and eager, but I’m thinking maybe you put her in at the back, first round, then move her to the front later, second or third round, third would be best, and by then she’s got a feel, isn’t quite so eager she’s rushing into something she doesn’t understand.”

  Clarisse nodded. “Coach told me, said, you’re the Captain, but someone has a suggestion, listen to it, and you like it, do it, you don’t, don’t do it, but whatever happens it’s on your head.”

  “That’s a heavy responsibility.”

  “Listen here, girl. Let me be completely honest. I wanted Remington up front, because I didn’t want you up front. You’re great. You can play the spot, you know you can, and you do, but, I figured tonight, we might both go home, and then, we might can, you know, be friends again.”

  “I’d like that, but I don’t want Remington to die for it. And besides, you need me up front with you. Like always.”

  Well, then we could see the stadium lights, they were pointed out from the stadium toward the sky. A moment later we could see the big open gate that led inside. The bus went in, and then it stopped and we got out.

  Clarisse tries to get everyone’s attention, but there’s too much excitement. Championship game, you know.

  “Hey, listen up,” I say, and I say it like I mean it. “Captain has something to say.”

  Everyone goes silent and we huddle around, and Clarisse says, “Remington, you’ll play at the back first round, maybe through the second. Then, everything looks good, we’ll move you up.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Remington says, and if she looked disappointed, I couldn’t tell it.

  Clarisse gave us a few more instructions, stuff we already knew, but it’s all right to hear it again, to keep sharp.

  Then we marched in formation toward the big opening that led onto the field. It was dark in the tunnel and we stopped right at the opening that led onto the field, and looked out. There was some light on the field, but only at the far end, where the other team stood waiting. Being that they were the challenging team
, they got to come out first, get hit with their lights.

  Clarisse says what we always say before we step onto the field. “We know not what comes.”

  We chant the same words once, softly, and then Clarisse says, “Remington, lead off with it.”

  Remington starts to sing our fight song, and then we all start to sing. Bundy slaps Clarisse on the back, and out we go, marching onto the field.

  Hearing our voices, our school band starts to play up in the stands, a little heavy on the drums, but good on the horns, and then everyone from our school, parents, students, teachers and so on, they start to sing too, and then the stadium lights flare on us.

  We look up and see our supporters standing up, singing, smiling down at us, and we march confidently onto the field, still singing.

  If Only You Would Leave Me

  Nancy Pickard

  The problem with being married to a nice man who adored you was that you couldn’t divorce him without looking like a jerk. “Why?” her mother would ask her if Melinda actually did it. “Did he have an affair? Did he hit you? Was he verbally abusive? Did he gamble? Was he addicted to something? Alcohol? Drugs? Leon has always seemed just wonderful to me. I thought you two were doing fine! This is so sad. Your dad thinks the world of him. I do, too. Has he done something to deserve this? He’s even improved since you married him. I’ve never seen the like of it. I just can’t believe you’d leave such a nice man who clearly loves you! Is it because you don’t have children yet?”

  The incredibly frustrating answer to each of those questions that could be answered by yes or no was, “No,” a definitive, wildly irritating, honest, desperate, “No.”

  He hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

  He didn’t have any goddamn faults, he was too good for faults. My God, he even did his own laundry.

  Well, there was one major fault that he couldn’t correct.

  She couldn’t say it to other people, though. That would be terrible of her to actually confide to anybody, and especially to her parents or to his. His! Oh, my god, they thought she was perfect for their perfect son. How could she say, “He’s the world’s worst lover.” She couldn’t. Never, ever. She thought too highly of him to hold him up to that kind of embarrassment. He was far too decent a human being for her to blame a divorce on the Missionary Position.