Under a Silent Moon

12

Chapter Twelve: A Light that Flickers

ZACK

When her friends depart and I emerge from the closet, Lana is holding some sort of animal close to her, like a security blanket.

"What's that?" is the only thing I think to ask after overhearing a pretty tumultuous conversation.

"What's this?" she asks and I nod. She holds it up and announces, "This is a ferret."

I laugh. "Who's that?"

"Terrence," she says absently, petting his little head and smiling.

I kneel down in front of her, examining the furry friend. "Hello Terrence."

"My brother got him for me."

I think back to the conversation. Lana sounded genuinely concerned when her friends mentioned they had told Blake (brother, I assume) about her absence.

"He's at college," she says with finality, so I don't push the subject. "I'm sorry to drag you into my drama," she adds.

I stifle a laugh. "Well, seeing as you're highly involved with my drama, let's just call it even."

She smiles in response, setting Terrence on her shoulder where he sits contently. I don't know much about ferrets, but I feel like this is odd behavior for one.

Without saying a word, Lana gets onto the ground and reaches under her bed. She pulls out a clear storage bin packed with linens and removes two blankets from the top. Next to her bed, she spreads one of the blankets onto the floor. Terrence is standing on her shoulder now, his tiny paws tangled in her hair, but Lana doesn't seem to care.

She tugs a pillow off of her bed and props it up against her nightstand. She hands me the second blanket. "Makeshift bed," she tells me, sitting cross legged on the floor across from me now. "We can figure out a game plan in the morning. I think rushing to make a plan when we're stressed and tired will leave more room for error."

"Have you done this before?" I blurt out, half-kidding, half-curious.

This embarasses her, because her cheeks fill with color. "Not really. I just like making lists and planning things out."

"Lucky for me," I say. "I could've almost killed anyone tonight, but it happened to be someone apt in bringing people back from the dead."

That sentence made me feel uneasy saying it, let alone Lana hearing it. I apologize and she waves away my concern. "I'll be happy to bring you back from the dead. First thing's first, though. We need to make the walking dead, the talking dead." She opens a drawer on her desk and pulls out a pretty beat-up cell phone. It's red paint is chipping, and when she tosses it to me it feels heavy in my hands. It must be a decade old. "If you still have your battery and SIM card we can put it in this."

I reach into the jean pocket of my pants that sit folded in her closet from where I set them after my shower and pull out my phone. The screen is so shattered that a piece of glass falls off when I flip it over. Carefully, I remove the battery and SIM card and transfer it to the "new" phone. I hold down the power button but receive nothing but a black screen in return. When I turn to Lana, she hands me the power chord and I plug it in next to her lamp.

"If this doesn't work, we'll make a point to get a new one tomorrow."

"Don't you have school tomorrow?"

She only blinks at me, dumbfounded, as if I just suggested we rob a bank in broad daylight.

"My missing classmate is alive, and I'm the only one who knows about it," she tells me simply. "I'm not going to school tomorrow. I'm going to help you until we can go to school together."

As she speaks, I feel something deep in my chest. It isn't pain for once. Relief? Happiness? I'm not sure, but I do know I want to feel it again. I need to feel it again if I'm going to be able to live with myself.

My sleeping area is on the right side of her bed, nearest the window I crept in through earlier. This makes it so that if anyone opens the door, they won't immediately be able to see me. Lana and I whisper a couple of more times before her light snoring fills the room. I lay wide awake, staring at the patterned white ceiling, slightly uncomfortable but also extremely grateful to feel soft fabric against my skin and warm air on my face.

I breathe in my surroundings and my senses are overwhelmed with Lana. It's a sweet aroma--not overly intense--that of lilacs and laundry detergent. I pull the blanket up to my chin and inhale. Everything smells fresh in here, light. A stark contrast compared to the gloominess I felt upon arriving.

Lana's hand is dangling slightly over her mattress. Her purple-painted nails are chipped, her skin the color of ivory. The ever-present pulse emanating from her wrist is distracting, and I have to squeeze my eyes shut and take a deep breath just to refocus. The pounding of blood through blue veins is almost visible to me through the translucent skin of her wrist. I'm so hungry all the time, I wonder if the intense thirst will ever be quenched.

Trapped in my thoughts, my eyes fixate on a light that flickers on above my head. I prop myself up on my elbows and see the red phone has taken a charge and is powering on. If my heart could flutter, it would be doing so right now.

Still connected to the chord, I remove the device from its place beside Lana's lamp and bring it down to the floor with me. I impatiently wait for the damn thing to turn on, but when it does, I'm elated and also nervous to find that all of my contacts were successfully transferred. Almost immediately, a text message pops up saying, Been thinking about you a lot today. I hope we find you soon. It's from Lizzy.

I haven't seen or thought about my girlfriend in so long. Understandably, I've had more critical things on my mind. What will I say to her when I finally see her? Will she be happy to see me, or will our reunion be disappointing?

This phone is too old to have applications, but it does have an Internet icon that I click on. I want to check Facebook and see what people are saying about me, but a No Internet Connection screen greets me and I'd feel too bad to wake Lana just to ask for the WiFi password.

My connection to the World Wide Web will have to wait until the morning.