9 Is the Darkness Scary, or Thrilling?

My room is dark. Black. There's no sound in the house. I'm laying in bed, under the quilt, with my laptop on my chest. Headphones on. And asking myself what I was thinking getting into this.

On the screen of my laptop, a large, dark room with old-fashioned rafters and rough, stained walls is dominated by a skinny girl with black hair who is kneeling on the dusty, wooden floor in a circle of candles that flicker and threaten to go out. She's being folded in half. Backwards.

I don't know how Hollywood makes these things look so realistic, but there's nausea in the pit of my stomach, and my shoulder cramps in sympathy.

A tortured scream tears out of her while the faces of her four former-friends, alight with ecstasy and rage, surround her. As the music builds, and the sense of impending chaos increases, they argue over whether to kill her on the spot or let her suffer more. As yet another bone in her body gives, and she snaps, the camera zooms in to penetrate the shadows behind them, and reveal another girl secretly watching, wide-eyed.

The music is a sickening, discordant stumble, chilling.

When one of the women turns her fingernails into knives and eviscerates the guy she's arguing with, I slam the laptop closed and shove it off my lap, breathing too fast.

Then I shakily laugh at myself.

It's after eleven. The house is dark and quiet. I slide the laptop onto my beside table.

My heart's roaring. I pull my covers up to my neck and stare at the ceiling, trying to figure out what I believe.

I walked through the day after school distracted. And then, because I couldn't take being around my family—and I have no other source of answers—I made the very dumb mistake of downloading that movie, The Knife of Shadow, to watch it again.

Eerily, it tells the story of a girl who meets a group of people who can . . . do things. Magic things. They're cool and she makes friends with them, learns a few tricks—including how to stop their power touching her. She falls for one of the guys.

But her parents are too protective. They keep her home a lot. And after that gets in the way of her fun, her dad is in a horrific accident, torn apart by wolves (the Police say) in a freak attack when he's leaving the construction site he works on.

Cue rolling of eyes about ridiculously unrealistic horror movie plot points.

But that scene kicks off a massacre. People around the girl keep dying in weird ways. And always when they're alone. And there's these people walking around town talking like prophets, telling her she'll die if she doesn't win.

It's so dumb. But I can't deny, it's terrifying too.

The scene I was watching is halfway through the movie. She's secretly followed her new friends and watched as they made a circle of power to kill someone with their magic.

Of course, they're about to figure out she's there, and when she doesn't join them, they'll turn on her. Then she gets saved by some girl they call The Shine.

By the end she'll be tortured, her family brutally murdered, and these awful shadows chase her around that cut her skin if they touch her. And some unexplained force that's appearing in the shape of another—who ends up being her in another life or something? I don't know—saves the day at the very last minute. But then before the credits roll she looks right at the camera and says "It's not finished." And ominous music starts.

It's ugly, terrifying, and fascinating.

Aiden said this isn't the truth. That they're not like that.

But I saw the impossible today. So if they aren't doing that, what are they doing?

I want to get close enough to find out.

Or do I?

#

The next day at school, Friday, I'm tense with anticipation. But Aiden's a ghost—not even in art. The questions that plagued me last night, and again this morning as soon as I was conscious, leave me frustrated and determined to get to that bonfire tonight and make him answer.

And the cravings, that were so wonderfully soothed yesterday, have returned with a vengeance this morning. I need him to help me make them go away, at least for a little while.

By the time Amy and I get home, I'm wound so tight I don't notice Mom's already there until we reach the dining room.

Her knife thunks on a cutting board. My stomach sinks.

She smiles at Amy when we walk into the dining room to drop our bags on the table. Her hair's pulled back in simple ponytail, and she's wearing leggings with one of Dad's flannels.

I reach across the breakfast bar to grab an apple from the fruit bowl, but when she looks at me, her face stiffens and she goes back to the vegetables she's cutting.

"How was your day, girls?"

Amy shrugs. "Fine."

Butterflies tingle in my stomach. "Good, I, um, got invited to go out with some people tonight."

A'v' of disapproval appears between Mom's brows. "You've got group this afternoon, right? That's the deal."

I curse under my breath and she gives me a sharp look.

Dammit. I forgot.

Part of the agreement about this fresh start for our family, the move, and Mom and Dad allowing me the freedom of a relatively normal life, was me taking part in group therapy for teen addicts. Today's the first meeting I'll attend with a bunch of underage, suburban tweakers.

Kill me now.

Back when I made the contract with my parents, giving up a couple hours a week to listen to people's stories seemed like a pretty good exchange for having a normal curfew and being allowed to keep my car. But now it feels like a chain around my neck. Firstly, it's on a Friday—hello, fun way to end the week. And secondly, I already know I'm a screw up. I don't need fifteen other people to point it out to me. But I have to get to that bonfire tonight.

I bite into the apple with a juicy crunch and Mom sighs, grabs a napkin from the dish at the end of the counter and hands it to me. "It starts in twenty minutes. You better get moving. And don't forget curfew." Her knife goes thunk, thunk, thunk on the cutting board as she dices onions.

Teeth gritted, I grab my phone and wallet from my bag, and stomp through the house mentally cursing her.

She couldn't even smile on the last day of our first week at school—which I got through without relapsing?

Well, she can go to hell.

Rolling through the suburban streets, turning wherever the GPS tells me to, I remind myself that I've fulfilled my end of the bargain and earned my freedom this weekend: Home by midnight on Friday and Saturday, eleven o'clock on Sunday.

When I get home I'll have to breathe on one of my parents so they can make sure I haven't been drinking. And I have to pee in a cup if they ask. But other than that, I get to do pretty much whatever I want before curfew. And today I want to get to the bonfire and demand answers from Aiden—beg him to do that thing that eased off my cravings. And maybe channel through me again?

I scratch my arm. Every time I picture that power, my nerves kick in. There's something dangerous in Aiden—or his friends. That alone is a reason to avoid him. But he's my only source of that power . . . that delicious surge . . . I haven't felt anything like it—not even when I was high.

But I'm nervous about what it'll do to me. So I need to talk to him about it, right?

But what if it's all a trap? Or they offer me drugs?

That thought makes me blink.

I don't want to go back to that life. I can't.

The GPS breaks into my reverie and tells me to turn into an oval-shaped parking lot with a handful of cars in it. Well, shit. I'm here.

The Youth Center is only a couple miles from school. Does that mean some of my classmates will be here? I hope not.

I pull the car into a spot right near the doors, nerves fizzing in my stomach, skin crawling. I really, really don't want to be here.

The building is red brick with a gray roof, the windows and doors glazed with shadowed glass so you can't see in from the parking lot. The sign on the front lists a dozen different meetings and activities. I know I'm in the right place because a chalk sandwich board on the sidewalk announces "Teen AL-Anon / NARC-Anon meeting, 4pm today!"

Like it's a club kids would want to join.

Swallowing back nausea and a surge of dry-mouthed desire for opiates, I get out of the car and walk inside.