EPT“I don't think I'm going to those gatherings anymore,” said Kaitlin, “it's stopped being fun.”
“Never really was. I don't know why we went.”
“Got to go somewhere.”
Amie shrugged in the dark, only half-visible to Kaitlin.
It was almost unbearably hot, the girls sticking to the grass to avoid the radiating hot-plates of the road and the concrete path, still searing at midnight from a full day of freakish heat. The radio had spoken of exhausted firefighters all over the state, but there wasn't a spark within 50 kilometers of their small satellite town.
“It feels like we were out so long. The night's not even half-way through,” said Amie, checking the time on her phone.
“It was too long. I never really think of how long the night actually is. We just sleep through it.”
“Time is just what you remember.”
“Yeah,” Kaitlin murmured, turning it over in her mind. The two girls kept walking, the passing cars growing more sparse with every minute. Before long they stepped off the main road to cut through the unbuilt estate, a skeleton of roads and driveways leading to nothing but high weeds and piles of dirt.
“I'm scared,” whispered Kaitlin, blond and willowy and standing half a foot taller than her red-headed friend.
“We come through here all the time,” said Amie, instinctively whispering to match her friend.
“It looks like a ghost town that hasn't been built yet, at night.”
“Hold my hand.”
The girls lifted their bare brown feet high to avoid dandelions and tufts of grass, the link their hands made stretching and slackening as they maneuvered, leading each other.
“I was never afraid of the dark,” said Amie, “I used to wander off when I was little and go to the darkest places I could find. I'd end up under the house or in the thick bushes in the neighbor's garden. It stopped when my parents found me in a skip though, it took them hours. They were furious.”
“That's disgusting.”
“I don't know if the skip was dirty, maybe it was new or clean or something. I just remember that it was dark.”
“The dark scares me, right down to my stomach. I don't know why, that kind of primal fear I guess.”
“That lizards and lobsters and cows feel, on the way to the –”
“I don't want to think about it,” Kaitlin interrupted.
“Me neither.”
Meeting the series of puddles which counted as a creek they turned and followed the dry bank, single file but still hand-in-hand, which would lead them directly to their road. At their road they would part and sneak back into their respective houses and fall asleep no more than a hundred meters from each other. They stepped softly and skillfully by the creek, remembering every dip and root and rabbit hole by heart despite the near-perfect dark. The moon was high but no more than a sliver of silver against the sky.
“If you're scared of the dark,” Amie asked at last, “what do you see when you close your eyes?”
“Nothing?”
“Yeah, but what sort of nothing?”
“What?”
Amie took a moment.
“I mean, is it like a huge empty space or a wall right in front of your eyes? Is it dark?”
Kaitlin tugged on Amie's hand to slow down while she thought.
“Um. Kind of a wall. But closer than right in front of my eyes. It's like it skips my eyes altogether, like it's right in my head. It's more than dark.”
They kept walking, a lone streetlight illuminating the intersection where the creek slid under the road, steadily approaching the cold light from the heat of the dark.
“I want to show you something,” said Amie. “You have to trust me though.”
“I do.”
“Okay.”
Instead of walking up the embankment from the creek and into the light, Amie led Kaitlin by the hand into the dry creek-bed until they stood at the mouth of the meter-and-a-half high pipe that, when there was water, allowed the creek to bypass the road.
“Oh god, no way,” hissed Kaitlin urgently.
“It's fine, I promise. I'll walk ahead. Don't let go, please.”
Amie felt Kaitlin tremble as they began hunched into the pitch black. The pipe curved so that at its midpoint neither end was visible. Kaitlin took small, hesitant steps. Amie brushed a few cobwebs out of her hair but said nothing. Their feet were still bare, and they could feel the cool damp of the concrete.
“Here,” said Amie, stopping halfway.
“I can't see anything.”
“Exactly.”
The girls crouched with their backs curved to fit the pipe's rounded sides. Their breath, Amie's deep and slow and Kaitlin's sparse and shallow, was the closest thing to sound.
“It's dark,” said Amie.
“I can see that.”
“Yeah, but it's just as dark as having your eyes closed, except different.”
“Yeah.”
They were both still whispering.
“When I say, close your eyes.”
Kaitlin took a sharp breath. “Okay,” she replied unevenly.
“Okay?”
“Okay,” steadier.
“Don't worry. Face me,” whispered Amie.
“You'll close yours too?”
“Yeah, I will too.”
“Hold my other hand too.”
“Ready?”
Kaitlin breathed out slowly. “Okay. Ready.”
“Alright. Three, two, one.”
