Dark Places

10 | i don't think luz knew her

❝everybody wants pretty girls they see;
nobody knows pretty girls make graves.❞

☽

CHARCOAL LIPS.

"No, no, no," I murmur, wisps of breath kissing the smoky darkness. His words flit across the ashy surface. Jonah. "Todo va a estar bien."

Jonah told me that everything would be okay.

But I can feel myself sinking further and further, drowning, drowning, drowning, in drawings of bloodless skin and murky hair, flirting with death in hues of grey, a subtle sketch of someone I never even knew.

"Hey, wait!"

The faint chatter outside of my bedroom stirs me from a tired trance of charcoal. Abruptly, I stand, steady, shift, and as the ocean of newsprint scatters around my bare feet in rising tides of forgotten drawings, I let my gaze linger on the jagged lines that create her chaos. Long, sleek hair, pooling around her, pulsing, flooding the Portland Harbor. Bruises, blackened, roping around her delicate wrists, bleeding into the Portland Harbor. Fingertips, charred, frozen, submerged in the Portland Harbor. Lips, trembling with her last icy breath, vanishing beneath the still waters of the Portland Harbor.

Silvery light. Rain. Silence.

The Portland Harbor swallows her, and I... I just stare. I watch it happen, and I can't stop it.

It's an uncomfortable conversation of nothingness, and yet, it holds an intimate confrontation that I can't abandon. Jess had always been my muse, and I'd memorized her, down to the shadowy veil of her hair, the dip of her hips, or the curve of her lips, where the ghost of a smile lingered eternally, but I don't know... anything about... Sophany.

I only have a single memory of her death.

A string of smoke falls from my lips, sinks, sinks, sink, burns into her charcoal lips, and I can taste her, see her, feel her, thrashing, trying to escape something, desperately crying for help, help, help.

"¡Ay, hermanita!"

The cigarette tumbles from my fingers to the portrait, ashes fluttering over her exposed skin. Fuck. I snatch it and stub it in the ashtray, gnawing on my bottom lip as I catch a glimpse of my dirty hands—palms smeared with soft powder, dark dust crusted beneath my nails, and fingers stained black.

"Luz!"

Okay, Jonah.

I slip out of my room with a defeated sigh, only to still, for a millisecond, stunned by the fleeting weight of his gaze. Dark. He freezes, sorpresa flirting across his expression, but then I'm shoving past him, gasping for air, air, air in the flush light of the morning.

It's too bright, and I can't—

He grunts, lets out a string of Spanish under his breath, and steps out of my way, rubbing a hand up his cheek in exhaustion. "Melo?"

Anxiety floods my throat. Hastily, I tuck my chin and rush to the bathroom, ignoring the nervous flutter. The door slams shut behind me. "Fuck." His voice is tight, protective, pissed off. Jonah. "¿Qué hiciste, D?"

Drake. Drake. Drake.

I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to feel.

Sophany is dead, and Drake... Drake Medina isn't a... a murderer.

"I didn't do shit to her," he rasps. "It's not my fault that tu hermanita is in a fucking mood, cabrón."