Nocturnal (The Noctalis Chronicles 1)

“Now do you want to keep the same number?” he says as he's setting up my account.

“Uh, no. I don't want some wacko picking it up and making calls on it.” Cough, cough.

“Well, we'll keep it active for the next thirty days, since you've paid your bill. If you end up finding it, just let us know and we can disable it.” I remember to add unlimited texts to my plan and leave. It's still too early to go home, so I head to Dunkin' Donuts and grab an iced cappuccino and a croissant to give me a little jolt. The sleepless nights are catching up with me. I wolf down the croissant and call Tex.

“Can you hear me now? I'm talking to you on my new phone.”

“Did you get the one with the touch screen?” Her voice is muffled, as if she's holding the phone with her shoulder while she's doing something else.

“No, I got the free one.” She sighs. I can hear her eyes rolling.

“You are so lame.”

“You weren't the one who had to pay for it.” I shiver from the iced cappuccino. I should have gotten something hot.

“True.” There's a crash and she swears. “I hate my job, I hate my job, I hate my job,” she whispers. She especially hates it when I'm not there. She'd wheedled her parents into hiring me for a few after school shifts at their bookstore. I get to keep my job as long as we don't goof off, which we do, but not when they're watching.

“Hey, how's your mom doing?” Oh, we are going to the land of I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it. Words choke me as they try to come up, as I try to think of something that doesn't sound like total crap. I could chuck the phone and run over it with my car, but I just bought it, so that's not going to work.

“She's good. Well, I'll let you get back to that. I gotta go home, but I wanted to give you the maiden call.” Another crash. More cursing. Thank God for Tex being pissed and distracted. My mother is going to die.

“I'm touched. Listen, I have to get back to work, Toby is giving me the evil eye.” Toby is the weird guy with a unibrow that works part time at the bookstore and has an inflated sense of his own importance. He takes his job extremely seriously.

“Ohhh, sexy. Better get back to work.” I fiddle around in my backseat for a sweatshirt.

“What are my parents going to do, fire me? You're so lucky your parents don't have a business.” Her voice is muffled as I pull the sweatshirt over my head. I finally get my head through the opening and pull it the rest of the way down.

“True. Hey, I'll see you tomorrow.”

“Bye.”

I drive around for an hour before I have to go home. It takes a lot of energy to pretend you're fine when you're not. A bit like being in a play that never ends. I get an intermission, but I always have to go back on stage.

***

My house is filled with the smell of homemade macaroni and cheese when I walk in the door. My mother thinks macaroni and cheese from a box is some sort of sacrilege. I've only ever eaten it at other people's houses.

“Hey, baby. How was school?” The soft sound of James Taylor greets me from the kitchen stereo.

“Fine.” I drop my bag at the door, shuck off my shoes and try to make my voice sound as bright as I can. I'm not mentioning that I skipped class. I'm not mentioning the phone. So many secrets.

“Oh come on, it has to have been better than fine.” She's dolled up for something, her sassy reddish-brown wig done up with pins that have little pearls on them and she's wearing a cocktail dress that looked better on her when she'd had something to fill it out.

I grab a cucumber from the salad she's making, but she slaps my hand when I go for another.

“Hands off. What did you learn?”

“That the periodic table is really stupid and that parabola is a really cool word.” We do this routine every day. I give a sarcastic answer most days.

She bends over to put the casserole dish in the oven to crisp the top. She's crumbled Ritz crackers on it, just how I love it. The knobs of her spine are like a row of giant pearl buttons down her back.

“What did you do today?” I say to distract myself from spewing my secrets. She has this way of looking at me that makes me squirm and want to tell her anything and everything. I'm pretty sure she uses it on five-year-olds who've told lies about pinching each other. It's very effective.

She's been a kindergarten teacher for twenty years, but she had to quit when she'd gotten sick. It was strange seeing her without glue and crayon marks on her skirt, a happy and tired smile on her face and a story about how she'd quelled three tantrums and taught the letter S.

“Your father took me to the beach. It was freezing, but we went for a walk in the water and I found the prettiest piece of seaglass. Look.” She holds it out to me. It's a large bluish-green. I run my fingers over the smooth edges. It's very old.

“It's lovely.”

“Your father had to go in to work for the afternoon, so it's just us tonight.”

“What's with the outfit?”

“I just felt like dressing up. All women like to look pretty.” She's even put on mascara. It makes her green eyes look huge. Looking at her is starting to make my throat hurt, and I feel the panic building. My secrets are threatening to explode.

“I'm going to take a shower.”

“Okay, sweetheart.” She puts a kiss on my cheek, leaving a tiny bit of lipstick. I get a whiff of her perfume. It smells like home.

I listen for a moment as she hums along with one of the songs before I go up the stairs. Her voice is sweet and soft. The voice I've heard a hundred thousand times, but in less than a year, won't hear anymore, except in memories or on home movies.

Six

“Hello? Ava? Are you dreaming about making sweet love to Colin Firth in the Mr. Darcy outfit again?” Tex snaps her fingers in front of my face.

“What?” I'd phased out.

“Ha, I knew that would get your attention.” Tex and I are doing inventory after hours at the bookstore, her punishment for coming home late from a party the week before. I'd declined going, and she told me all I'd missed was a bunch of people getting wasted and passing out and getting her boob grabbed by some guy she'd never met. She'd only had one beer, but her parents acted like she'd done a keg stand naked and posted the pictures online. I volunteered to stay late with her to avoid going home.

“Just thinking about stuff.” I'd picked up my phone last night a hundred times to call her and talk. To tell her about my mother, or the cemetery incident, but I hadn't. I couldn't seem to find the right words to say, so I hadn't.

“And things?” Creepy cemetery guys are the things to my mother's stuff.