**It has been so long I don't even know what I can say. Life is crazy. If you're still here, I love you. I'm coming back around slowly, I am. Every once in a while, I end up re-reading bits of Luz and Drake, and I really remember why I was writing Dark Places, why I will finish Dark Places.
P.S. I've been away so long, uh, DOES WATTPAD NOT ALLOW GIFS ANYMORE?? ALL MY CHAPTER GIFS ARE GONE. CAN YOU SEE ANY??
❝you've got your finger on the trigger, baby—
give in to me.
i hear your reasons;
you get along
over the weekends...
but i've got it bad,
yeah, i'm not sleeping,
and every time i hear her name,
my heart is breaking.❞
☽
FRIDAY. JESS. JESS.
Jess could die, Luz.
Call 911, Luz!
Do you know what drugs Jessica was taking?
Everything burning blurry. Heat pressurizing in my chest, my neck, my cheeks. My throat closing up. Heroin, I think—
They know who you love. They know.
I'm trying to help Jessica.
I'm here to help you.
HELP
It's a crystal clear soundtrack on repeat all night long. Tears. Acid. Burning. Jess. Jess. Jess. Drake breaks it softly, brushing a hand across my shoulders, helping hold my hair back as I throw up. They want to help Drake.
HELP
Le digo todo.
Ozlenen, Nikki, Larina. How I'd been barely alive on a park bench in Greenpoint. How I'd choked on vomit, passed out, woozed awake dizzying (stomach-pumping) lurching chaos. Drunkenly, I let it go, and Drake shushes me in soft-spoken Spanglish. Luz, mírame, he keeps saying, as if I'll never look at him again. Tranquila. Estás bien. We're okay. Us. Them.
(Why Jonah? Why? Why? Why?)
Eventually, I doze off on our bathroom floor, and I wake up in his bedroom, chased by shadows on his ceiling, and I throw up again.
Jonah? Jonah?
Jonah is sleeping when I leave on Friday.
There's a body on the Maine State Pier.
There isn't. There wasn't.
Sophany had been dead since September. (Hadn't she?)
Ozlenen isn't in Light & Space. Nikki is alive.
Jess. Jess. Jess.
I rendezvous with Medina on top of the Spring Street Parking Garage.
Drake and I had a very loose plan. Everything forgotten. Truce. His windows up. His seats back. Lounging. Reclined. Smoke fogging up around us. My stomach is roiling. Each drag eases it a bit. I pinch, hit carefully, hand it back to him, glaring at his stained-dirty, smoke-yellowing ceiling. Jess. Weed softens edges of my memory, and I hear it again, in a gravelly low voice, Jess rasping: There's a body on the Maine State Pier.
"You know it wasn't really her, right?"
I nod. It's groggy, slow. "Sí."
"They mimick," he says quietly. "They're imitating her."
YOU ARE READING
Dark Places
Mystery / Thriller[UPDATES ON FRIDAYS] It's been three years since Luz Melo left Portland, Maine... and Drake Medina. ☽ When her "borderline" alcoholic lifestyle in NYC falls apart, leaving her girlfriend in rehab, her grades trashed, and her scholarship revoked, th...
