Into the Night Read online

  We were at a bar, the four of us.

  They must not have cared we were underage.

  Nicholas helped me stumble out.

  My eyes drift to my toes. I try and remember my choice of footwear.

  Wedges – I had brown pleather wedges on until they came off at some point during the night.

  Did I fall?

  That would explain the cuts on my knees.

  Peter Riggs disappears into the lobby, his phone glued to his ear.

  I watch his back and then realize I have to make a run for it.

  1

  Blair

  Present Day, 2008

  Bottle opener in hand, I’m twisting the top off a Budweiser, my mind on auto-pilot, when the phone rings. I glance at the fluorescent clock that advertises Camel cigarettes from across the smoky bar.

  3:20 A.M.

  Sliding John’s beer across to him, the sweat from the chilled bottle making it glide easy across the worn, scratched bar top, I let the phone shrill another couple of times. Must be someone’s wife or girlfriend, eager to know if they’re here drunk or out cheating. It depends on the woman what the greater offense is – some hate the drink, some despise the sex.

  That’s half the calls I get at the bar. I’m tempted to let it ring until the person grows tired of not talking to a person and hangs up.

  As suddenly as it started, it stops.

  I shrug, turning to the cash register to deposit the five dollars John leaves on the bar top as he stumbles to the pool table to shoot with his buddies.

  A light blinks. The mounted camera that watches my every movement keeps me honest.

  If only they’d invested in these more frequently in the past, I think.

  Cooper’s Bar & Grill, a small dive in Cooper, Nebraska, population fifty-three hundred, give or take the old folks that die off and the young ones that escape to the bigger cities of Omaha, Lincoln, or God forbid, get the hell out of the Midwest and flee to either coast.

  Like I was supposed to.

  I sigh, the tightening of my chest a subtle reminder that I had dreams once. I start to head down the dangerous path in my mind, but the shrill ring of the telephone cancels that trip down memory lane just in time.

  It’s for the better. Those flashbacks have been buried, but damn if they don’t bubble to the surface like lava spewing out of a volcano. Speaking of fucking volcanoes...

  Hawaii.

  Dammit.

  Why can’t I just forget?

  I’ve been punishing myself for a decade.

  Ten years today.

  It’s why I worked a double shift. No sense in being alone on the anniversary of the day my life changed for the worse and everything went to hell in a handbasket.

  She might’ve disappeared that day, but I’ve died slowly ever since.

  It starts screeching again.

  Shoving the register shut, the heavy metal clunking in unison with the annoying ring, I swipe the phone off the hook.

  “Cooper’s.” I yell, louder than I need to. It’s a Monday night and the place is practically dead. Besides the men playing pool, old man Bobby is at the other end of the bar, swaying his head to the ancient jukebox that’s a relic at this point. He’s stuck in another time, the seventies, I think, from his references to Woodstock and the drug culture that had him hooked back when he listened to Jimi Hendrix. Sometimes I think he forgets it’s 2008, the way he rambles on about the concert he just attended or his days truck-driving the long stretch of Interstate 80.

  “Blair.” It’s a statement, not a question.

  I pause. “Who is this?” My hands grip the phone cord.

  It’s not like I don’t know who it is, the tiny voice a distinct difference from the one I was used to growing up, but nonetheless still filled with anger and bitterness, just at a lower volume.

  I’d know her voice anywhere.

  “You know who it is.” She sighs. “Priscilla.”

  “Okay.” I shrug, more to myself since she can’t see me. Even though she’s not in front of me, I feel her invisible eyes boring into my back like a permanent shadow that’s ubiquitous.

  “I thought I could catch you here, with you being an alcoholic and all.” Her tone drips sarcasm.

  Even though I haven’t touched a drop in five years, it’s none of her business. I save my breath. It’s a lost cause defending myself to a woman I’ve had a tenuous relationship with most of my life. “I’m working.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it.”

  “It’s a Monday. What do you want?” I balance the phone between my shoulder and ear, turning on the faucet to rinse some empty shot glasses.

  “You don’t have to pretend to work on account of me,” Priscilla intones. “You know what day it is today.”

  “Yeah, so?” I use the sprayer since it’s louder, hoping to drown out her voice...and maybe the memories of today, March twenty-fourth.

  “How can you be so crass?”

  “It’s not like you’ve ever let me forget.” I slam a pint glass down harder than I mean to. Wiping my hands on a dish rag, I take a deep breath. If anyone can get me from zero to sixty in record time, it’s her.

  “Oh, stop it. You’re always the victim.” Priscilla’s bored. “She’s the victim, not you. I wish you’d remember that when you’re wallowing in self-...”

  I interrupt. “I thought you were?”

  Silence looms between us. There’s been distance and reticence between us for years, not just in proximity but in her refusal to acknowledge I’m the other daughter.

  The living, breathing one.

  She breaks the lull. “I got a package.”

  “You always get a package.”

  “This one is different.”

  “How so?”

  “She’s dead.” I imagine her petite frame shaking, a crocheted blanket wrapped around her frail body. “It came with a good-bye letter.” Her voice has an air of finality to it.

  “Priscilla, she’s gone. She’s been gone a long time,” I murmur.

  “It’s done this time.” Her voice quivers. “It’s really done.”

  “Why would this one be any different?”

  “Because of what the box contains.”

  There’s a pause.

  I knead the dishrag through my fingers, letting her gain her composure enough to continue. “I need you to see it.”

  “I’m working.”

  “You’re an hour away.”

  “I can’t just come to you when you dictate.”

  “It’s not for me. It’s for her. Wouldn’t you want your baby sister to know you still cared?” Her voice has hardened again, the tears not enough to preserve a moment of fleeting sadness that isn’t replaced by her war on me, a truce that will never be in the cards for us.

  “She’s not alive, Priscilla.” I raise my voice. “There’s no rush.” I lean against the counter, turning my back on the trio of men staring at me, my sudden outburst causing an interruption to John’s hunched stance over the cue stick.

  She’s firm. “Come see what they sent.”

  “You don’t know it’s a ‘they.’” I whisper.

  “Of course it’s a ‘they.’”

  “Call the police.” I stretch the phone cord as far as it will go to walk around the side of the bar. “You opening it is already tampering with valuable evidence.”

  “I didn’t know what it was,” she lies through her teeth.

  “Every year you get a gift. Why would this year be any different?”

  “You need to see this.”

  “I can’t.” I hang up.

  A minute later, my cell buzzes in the back pocket of my jeans.

  Yanking my phone out, her name pops up.

  It’s an attachment – a photo, grainy since my mother can’t take pictures worth a damn, always shooting the image half out of the frame, cutting off limbs and heads in most shots.

  My father was the designated picture taker of our family, God rest his soul.

&n
bsp; It’s a tan cardboard box, ubiquitous enough it could be a package from anyone. It’s the kind you buy at any shipping store.

  Except what it contains isn’t from a concerned relative or an online retailer.

  Priscilla’s opened it up to reveal the contents of the package. Red tissue paper lines the inside of the box, reminding me of blood.

  My stomach churns as my eyes drift over the items, and my pupils dilate in horror as I see what arrived this year.

  Priscilla’s right about one thing.

  This year is different. How could it not be?

  It’s the tenth anniversary of her disappearance.

  A tingling sensation overtakes my body as I’m transported back in time, my hands gripping the uneven edge of the counter.

  I shut my eyes against the image, trying to gain control of my breathing, to slow down the inevitable panic attack that feeds on my body, the host.

  Panic disorder, the doctor writes a script – it might as well be the narrative to my life. Anti-depressants, benzos, downers, uppers, and everything in between. Fumbling for a small peach pill, I sink against the wall, sliding down the rough wood paneling.

  I’ve buried my past, but it always rises to the surface.

  And in the box, a sense of tragedy and doom complete what I’ve known all along.

  She’s dead.

  This package confirms it.

  2

  Blair

  After my shift ends at 4 A.M., I trudge up the stairs to my second-floor apartment. Not a bad commute, if you ask me. All I have to do is exit the stock room at the back of the bar and follow a small hallway, climb ten steps, and mine’s the second door on the left. The right side has one other apartment, my employer, Marge, and her obstinate cat, Pickles.

  I met Margaret McCallister a.k.a. “Marge’ at Alcoholics Anonymous about five years ago, after my DUI – ‘driving under the influence’. Losing my license for a year was the best thing that ever happened to me.

  But not the worst. Go figure.

  It’s small – a studio, but that just means I can see every corner and crevice, even a spider crawling up the wall, the way I prefer it. The closet reaches the stretch of the six-hundred feet and a small bathroom has a pocket door with a combined shower and tub. A kitchenette’s in the corner of the room, with a makeshift island that I use as a table, since I prefer to eat at a bar top.

  This place was a fresh start for me, my old life in the rearview where it belonged.

  At least, fragments of it.

  I was sharing a house with my drug-addled party boyfriend who lived fifteen miles outside of town. We got in a drunken fight the night I got pulled over.

  It was one of many, our time together consisting of his violent outbursts and my desire to bottle everything inside by drinking away the pain.

  The numbing effect.

  We had gotten in a physical altercation after too many shots of tequila for me and speedballs for him. Events of this particular night are hazy – the only difference from our other ‘episodes’ is that I had a broken nose that needed medical attention. It tweaked precariously to one side, broken vessels soaking the towel with blood. Hence the reason my driving was reckless, as I swerved with every curve of the road in my tormented fog to the hospital.

  Tonight I remove my clothes, tossing them in a laundry basket, the smell of fried bar food and cigarette smoke remaining in their fibers, permeating my space. I spray air freshener on them, disguising the odor.

  I lay down on my full-size mattress. A bigger one and the room would look cramped. My covers are scattered across the bed, disorderly. Ever since the morning I came back to the hotel and found our duvet cover intact, I hate the way a made-up bed looks, immaculate and untouched.

  I’m certainly not pristine and unscathed.

  My thoughts are as disorganized as my sheets. My hand reaches underneath the pillow to grab Bristol’s old Hawks sweatshirt, the logo faded and the words cracked in the decade since I’ve had it. My mother sewed a quilt of her favorite tees and shirts, but I couldn’t bear to reconstruct this sweatshirt into something else.

  It’s my security blanket. The last piece I have of her.

  I shove my head beneath the faded flowered pillowcase and close my eyes.

  Her face comes to mind, frozen at seventeen, instead of how old she’d really be now at twenty-seven.

  As much as I don’t want to re-live the turn of events that led to this juncture in life, I can’t help but wander back in time, the way I always do on the anniversary of her disappearance into thin air.

  I’m home from college, visiting our small Midwestern town, restless and bored. Even the ramen noodles and shitty cafeteria food I’ve become accustomed to make my stomach growl in protest. It’s amazing how leaving your hometown, population under three thousand, gives you a different perspective.

  It’s almost the end of winter vacation, and I’ve been dreading the conversation with my parents when it comes to spring break.

  A vacation is what I want. A vacation is what I need.

  Not a road trip to Kansas City like I did with a group of seniors in high school, but a trip to Cancun, where a group of my Alpha Delta Pi sorority sisters are headed. It’s all they can excitedly chatter about. Unfortunately,

  I have never been out of the Midwest.

  They whisper about sunshine and sand, boys and booze. My nineteen-year-old mind pictures washboard abs and maybe…just maybe losing my virginity to some Latin boy or an older guy, maybe mid-twenties.

  Anything to make my friends jealous.

  My parents are God-fearing conservatives that forbid talk of birth control and promote abstinence. Specifically my father, who pounds on the pulpit every Sunday as he leads our church in prayer and speaks of other fortuitous misdeeds with beads of sweat dripping down his forehead.

  Stomach churning, I’m not only asking them to trust me in Mexico, I need their money to finance my trip. I have a part-time job at the mall, but let’s be realistic, minimum wage and a clothing discount at said store only gets you so far. My money’s filtered back into Abercrombie & Fitch with gusto every other Friday on payday.

  “Daddy?” I ask on our way home from church. My tactic to go to the congregation without an argument, smile and sing loud in the front row, act like the pleasant daughter they swear they used to have before I became moody and withdrawn, has worked this Sunday.

  Even the new tattoo on my lower back is covered by a sweater set.

  “Yes?” My father’s attentive, never moving his eyes from the road, always laser-focused on the task at hand.

  “I’d like to go on spring break this year with my sorority sisters,” I spew out, sitting in the backseat of our old beige Toyota van, my younger sister Bristol beside me. The words jumble together, quick to release from my tongue, hanging in the air, testing the waters and my parents’ nerves.

  My mother’s incredulous. “With what money?” Her green eyes drift to the backseat, widening dubiously, matching Bristol’s.

  “Aren’t you working a part-time job?” My father asks. He has the patience, well, of a pastor, and his tone doesn’t waver.

  “At the mall.” Bristol smirks. I elbow her in the ribs, her annoying sing-song voice grating on me.

  “Have you been saving for it?” My father ignores the peanut gallery.

  “Wait,” my mother interjects. “She’s not going on spring break.”

  “I’m nineteen,” I huff. “You can’t keep me little forever.”

  “Blair…” My father intones. “That’s not what your mother’s trying to do.”

  “What’s so bad about going on spring break?” I huff, blowing a chunk of brown hair out of my face. I even took out the hot pink clip-in extension for this visit.

  “Because all you girls will act like sluts and get drunk.” My sister mutters under her breath so only I can hear. She says this all with a plastic smile. I want to smack the smugness off her face, the brat.

  My mother twists her
body from the front seat, shooting me daggers. “Because nothing good happens on spring break trips with college girls.”

  “Except random boys,” Bristol adds, eyebrows shooting up. I want to punch the freckles off her nose. “Bet you’ll end up pregnant.” She gesticulates a baby belly.

  “How do you know I’m not going on a mission trip?” I deadpan.

  “Is it a mission trip?” My father’s confused, thinking of the usual volunteer groups going to El Salvador or a third-world country.

  “Yeah, sure is.” I bite my lip. “It’s not through your church, Daddy, it’s through a partner of the sorority house on campus.”

  “You’re such a liar,” Bristol yells, nearly bursting my eardrum since she’s right beside me. Pinching her knee in rebuttal, she digs her pink polished claws in my arm. I swat her away, crossing my arms defiantly. “No, it’s not a mission trip, Daddy.”

  “Then where are you thinking of going?” He drums his hands on the steering wheel as my mother glares at him in silent fury. He doesn’t notice, his eyes focused on the highway, the barren landscape of ice-covered branches and frozen fields the only scenery passing by.

  “Mexico.” I take a deep breath. “Cancun.”

  “Absolutely not.” My mother’s stern. Her eyes narrow at the road, my father’s denseness at her annoyed expression unnoticed. “Girls get kidnapped there. You’ll end up a lampshade or killed by a drug cartel."

  “If your mother says no, then no.” My father turns the dial, the Christian music going up a couple decibels on the FM radio.

  “Ha,” Bristol sneers. “I knew they wouldn’t let you go.”

  “Fuck off,” I growl under my breath. “I hope you get murdered in your sleep.”

  How I’d come to regret those words, even a decade later. The way they were intended to sting, seems to only intensify with time. My headache throbs, reminding me I can’t take them back. And there’s so much I want to do-over, except life only lets you reexamine your behavior, not amend it.

  3