Dark Places

35 | anywhere she goes, i go right now

❝you are calm and reposed,
let your beauty unfold, pale white,
like the skin stretched over your bones.❞

☽

DESPITE OUR COMPROMISE, it's a silent ride, suggestive of an intimacy I remember. It lingers in the little things, the painstaking details that always wore me down after I fought with him—rubbing my hands together to keep warm in the icy air spilling from his broken heater, listening to his breathing and wishing I'd never cut the wires to his radio, trying to separate strings of smoke from frosty breath, resenting cold shoulders... and cold looks... and cold silence. It feels like us, animosity festering into an aggressive attempt to hate each other. I'd cross my arms over my chest, glare out at Portland to avoid his gaze, and let him take me home, and Drake wouldn't say anything when I slammed the door and stormed away from his shitty Volvo. 

Sometimes, I'd get a phone call ten minutes later. Sometimes, I'd stay up all night, waiting for it, just to ignore him. Sometimes, Drake would tap at my fucking bedroom window, apologizing quietly for things I'd already forgotten. Sometimes, Drake would kiss me, and I'd just let everything go.

It's different now because I know that Drake Medina is a fucking liar.

His expression is unreadable.

Coasting over York Bridge, from Saco to Biddeford, he spares a glance at the low-lit sign that brings my heart to an abrupt standstill. Saco Transportation Center. Its empty parking lot, cast into that ghostly ambiance, giving way to the set of tracks that could take us away from here. Amtrak Downeaster. I'd leave now, if I could, go to Dover, or Haverhill, or Boston, but I just... can't.

Saco River rushes and swells, sputtering beneath us in a gush of arctic noise, from an abandoned textile mill that leads us into the hollow heart of Biddeford. Main Street is a reel of foreclosed storefronts, darkened windows dancing in the darkness, as if haunted by a lingering presence.

Anxiously, I tap my fingers against my knee, trying to cling to an escape plan, an interrogation, a threat for Corey Davis. It's more than him. It's more than a string of disappearances in Portland last year. It's more than Sophany, Nikki, Delilah. It's so much more, and I don't know where it began... or where it ends.

It's more than Drake. It has to be.

Just ask him, Jess would groan, rolling her eyes in exasperation. It's not that difficult, Luz.

Jessica Montero doesn't know Drake Medina like I do.

"I saw that... symbol on their hands," I say quietly, letting it fester between us for a moment. It felt like a part of them, tethering them to a singular goal, in front of a restless mass of MECA students. He doesn't say anything. "LePage and Strimling. The Mayor. The Governor."

"Mmm."

Oh, that's it? What is este cabrón thinking?

I'd always wanted to just... crawl into his head and live there, for a day or a night, to understand what Drake thought about in those shared bouts of tense, tight silence. Jess had always left her heart on her fucking sleeve, but Medina masked his emotions with layers and layers of bullshit.

"You had it, too." I tread cautiously, sneaking a glance at his stiff expression, his clenched jaw, his bone-white knuckled grip. Drake hasn't told me why. "I saw it, Medina." I'd always had to take what I could get, and if I could find the crack in his facade, I could ruin him. "I mean, you had that symbol on your hand... both Saturday mornings, after, uh, Sophany and Nikki... died."