Dark City

8.

        

Alex,

If I could trap a moment like a firefly to hold and keep in a jar, I would seal away our last kiss, so that in my loneliest hour, I might feel the warmth of your lips against mine.

How could feelings so strong just vanish? How could he abandon her like this?

Her instructor Liam batted the epee from her hand. She looked up at him through the thick mesh of her mask and raised her arms in defeat.

"This is pointless!" she snarled, turning her back to him, ripping off her mask and marching toward the door.

"What's wrong, little daisy?"

"I'm leaving." She tore at the zipper of her lamé as she headed into the women's changing room. Fencing hadn't helped her relax at all. She was only more incensed now.

"Your mother already paid for the lesson!" Liam called after her.

The door muted him and she was glad for it. The man had once been a welcome distraction. He had a charming sort of confidence that won girls' hearts and he had always harbored something a little more than fondness for Alex. He was handsome, mature, cultured, so much so that his crow's feet and hard laugh lines hardly bothered her. While Alex enjoyed his worship, she didn't dare let his infatuation with her reach fruition. She had only room for one man in her heart, and though that man was gone now, she'd sooner let the organ shrink and wither than fill it with new passions.

Outside, the rain pattered against her windshield. Ten minutes into her drive home, her cell phone rang. She fumbled for it, hydroplaning a little as she stopped at a light.

"Hey."

"Alex! What's going on? Why did you walk out of your lesson?" her mother demanded.

"It's raining, Mother. I can't talk," she said plainly.

"Are you not feeling well?"

"I feel fine." That was the necessary answer if she didn't want to spend an hour on her father's couch being psychoanalyzed and grilled about her emotions.

"Were you sneaking off to see Nathan?"

"No, Mom. I'm driving and it's raining. We can talk later."

"Oh, trust me, sweetheart. We will definitely be talking later."

Alex knew she should have been mortified. Her mother's wrath always came with a whirlwind of accusations and threats, ugly assumptions about virtue or the lack therof. That evening Alex received quite the verbal lashing. Her mother asked if she was sexually active, if it was time for her physical, if she needed birth control, overreacting on purpose.

That night, Alex waited for her parents to go to bed. She climbed out of her window and got picked up by her friend Laura. Growing up, Alex and Laura had been a pair of geeky loners. Laura would come home from her summer trips to Japan with video games that weren't available in the states. As instructions in Kanji would flash across the screen, she would translate for Alex, shouting commands and jumping up and down as Alex failed to respond in time.

Laura was one of the more eccentric members of Neptune's elite. She dressed like a hippie and fantasized about living on the road, collecting a postcard from every state. She had no shame when it came to embarrassing her parents at social functions, which automatically made her amazing in Alex's opinion.

Once on what might have been just another boring summer day, Laura and Alex dressed up as princesses and cruised around town blasting Disney songs, but in the last year, Laura had discovered the joys of prescription pills. She'd come into possession of her dead grandmother's oxy and offered them once or twice after a round of video games. Alex had been hesitant at first. She found Laura increasingly tiresome. All she ever talked about were her experiences on drugs.