Darkheart

The Past: Firsts & Lasts

Long white streamers fluttered in the darkness around her, twining up the trunk of the tree and along its branches like the centerpiece in some medieval maypole festival. Except that this festival was in the middle of the night, and it was October.

"Heather! Oh my God, Heather!"

The girl spun, her shiny dark hair swishing at her back, a grin spreading across her face. The empty toilet paper roll in her hand fell to the ground as she embraced the friend that approached her. The two stepped back to look at one another, dim as it was in the darkness. "Where were you, Ash?"

"We were doing Jack's house."

"Did you get caught?"

"Not yet! But I think some little kid was watching out the window."

Heather swung an arm over the other girl's shoulder. "Doesn't this look amazing, though?"

"Yeah, wow--you did all this?"

"It helped that the tree is so low." Heather looked around. "But we should get out of here, for real. They're meeting us at the car."

The two girls jogged across the dewy-grassed yard, their long legs bare in spite of the chilly air, their graphic hoodies identical except for their self-selected nicknames "Buttons" and "Dollface" in vinyl letters across the front, under the standard image of their high school pirate mascot. They made it to the sidewalk, crossed the street, caught sight of others sneaking around various houses, before they arrived at a bright blue sedan, its color a shimmering cerulean visible only because it was parked under a streetlamp. As they reached the car, Heather withdrew a set of keys from the pocket of her hoodie and unlocked the driver's door, then popped the locks for Ashley, who slipped into the passenger seat. A shout from nearby drew Heather's attention, and she waved along two more girls, who were hurrying down the sidewalk toward them. Once in the car, the four cranked up their music and pulled out into the night, entirely lost to their own youthful joy.

Their neighborhood was a dreamscape of tissue hanging still in the breezeless darkness, cascading from trees and gutters and mailboxes, mummifying cars and webbing bushes and lawns.

It was a long-standing tradition, publicly denounced but privately encouraged, uncreatively called ladies' night. The eve before the homecoming dance, junior and senior girls would spend the night out, vandalizing the homes of the boys they were crushing on. It hadn't started out that way, the practice; it'd begun decades ago as a twist on the Sadie Hawkins dance, where girls in the upper grades visited the homes of the young men they'd like to ask as a date. Years of changing social pressures and dwindling self-esteem had turned the event into something more enigmatic, more deviant, with flirting delivered via toilet paper and invitations--if one were so daring--scrawled in ketchup or chocolate sauce on a driveway or sidewalk. And though the practice was still referred to as ladies' night, many boys had taken to engaging in the night's activities as well, always interested in some tacitly condoned debauchery.

Not all students participated; in fact, only about half did, and of those, many sat back and watched while the bolder of them did the actual damage. But Heather was far from shy, and she knew exactly who she wanted to ask out; she'd been waiting for this emboldening opportunity for some time.

"Aren't we going back to your house?" One of the girls asked.

"It's two. Weren't we supposed to--"

"But there's school tomorrow. I need some sleep at least."

"No," Heather inserted into her friends' argument. "It's an all-nighter. That's what we do--stay out all night. We'll get breakfast early at that bagel place. They open at four."