THIS BOOK WILL KILL YOU

9_nightnight_

I don't even stop to find Flint, I just barrel down the stairs, through the choking black smoke of the firecrackers, through the lipless grins and the barking laughter and the unblinking eyes and the endless, numbing beat of the music. I run down flight after flight after flight of stairs, surely too many, like there's another three storeys beneath the building, until I see the main door and throw myself out onto the street.

Ask him about the witch.

Her words have literally taken my breath away, there's no air here. The clouds seem even lower, full of night, smothering. I have to put my hands on the top of a car and force my lungs to inflate, but even then it's like sucking in carbon monoxide until after the fourth breath when I feel the oxygen hit my veins, my brain. I rest my head on the cold metal, close my eyes, and just breathe, breathe, breathe until the giant's fist around my ribs grows loose.

"You okay?" somebody asks. I grunt a reply, but I don't have what it takes to lift my head.

"You're too slow," somebody else whispers into my ear, and this time I look up, squinting at the girl who's walking away from me.

"What?" I say, and she stops.

"You okay?" she asks. "Just checking, there's some real assholes up there, they're spiking drinks. Be careful is all."

"I'm okay," I say, realizing I'm still holding Flint's bottle. I put it on the top of the car, pressing my hands into my eyes until more firecrackers erupt inside my skull. When I look again the girl is halfway down the street, her arm looped through a guy's. Inside the apartment the people still rise and fall like they've melted together, like they're being churned in some vast oven. I look at the windows of the third floor but they're utterly blind, they may as well have been painted black.

I can't leave Flint, but I do. Nothing will make me walk back inside that apartment, and besides, once Flint's on a rail it's impossible to make her stop. I should never have come in the first place. I set off, heading back for the subway, stopping when I realize I've left the bottle on the car. It sounds stupid, but I go back for it. There's some of me in that bottle now, and I don't want it anywhere near the house, anywhere where the darkness at the top of those stairs can reach it. It's only when I get to the subway station that I chuck it in the trash, and even that leaves me worrying for the whole ride home.

It's only just after nine when I close the front door behind me, and I'm happy that mom and Donnie are still up. I holler out a hello, heading for the kitchen and pouring myself a juice. The sink is clean, not even a smudge of blood, but the counter is still covered in breadcrumbs. I look for a towel so that I can clean them up myself but before I can I hear mom thumping down the stairs. She's in her bathrobe, a towel wrapped around her hair, and she's going so fast she misses the last step, cussing as she limps past me.

"You okay?" she says, and I can see her lip trembling. "What's wrong?"

I'm not sure why she's so worried, it's not like I've been gone long. She stops by the island, her hands on the back of a stool, strands of wet hair hanging down the back of her robe like seaweed. Her skin's puffed up like she's been floating in the ocean for a week.

"Were you in the bath?" I say. "All this time?"

She looks at me like it's the stupidest question in the world, but her brow's creased the way it is sometimes when she's stressed. She looks at her hands, picks something out of her nail, then shivers.

"Helps me relax," she says after a moment. "Where have you been?"

"Out, with Flint," I say. "Some stupid thing. She wanted to stay, I didn't. Pretty tired after today."