Monsters

The moon feels cold despite the relative warmth of the night. 

It bathes our skin in a sickly, blue-gray hue, turning us into the walking dead. Our flashlights dance ahead of us, laughably small guides through the maze of trees. Noises proliferate from every side, and yet they are strange, almost muffled, as though they are coming from behind a wall of glass. It is as if we exist in a bubble of silence where only our own sounds can break the thrum of nothingness.

Leaves crunching beneath our feet.

Short, sharp exhales as we walk.

They are deafening in the blackness of noise.

“I think we’re close.” Her light swings left to right in an arc, then back again. 

“How d’ya know?”

She flips the beam to the trunk of the nearest tree, by far the largest within sight-which, to be fair, isn’t too far. An “x” has been crudely carved into the wood, large and jagged. A smile plays on her lips.

“Straight west off the trail directly from the marker--”

“A half mile north of the big tree with the X,” I finish. She grins wider.

“Look.” Her light is aimed at the forest floor, but her arm is outstretched, pointing at something just visible in the distance: a small pinprick of orange dancing through the trees in the direction I gather to be north. My stomach constricts, my throat suddenly too tight to swallow. “Come on,” she urges, setting off ahead of me. My feet begin to move of their own accord, in a weird dance with my heart which seems still to be rooted in front of the marked tree. 

All too soon we are standing just outside the glow of orange, the burnt-earth smell of smoke drifting to my nostrils. Several figures sit bathed in a dance of firelight and shadow around a small pyre, clinking bottles, talking raucously. The flashlight next to me suddenly extinguishes. She is moving ahead, making herself visible in the clearing. A small roar greets her entrance.

“Ey, you made it!”

“Starting to think you got lost!”

“Hey Nat!”

I shrink back a little, feeling conspicuously left out of this show of camaraderie. Natalie is being pulled into the circle, melting into them as though she is a natural part of the strange flame-shadow waltz. It takes almost a full five minutes for her to at last look up and spot me. Her eyes spark as though she has just remembered I am there.

“Sammy, c’mere!”

Sammy? Since when?

I walk into the firelight, suddenly catastrophically aware that I have nothing to do with my hands. “Hey.”

There is some general shuffling, more clinking of bottles. All faces are pointed up at me. I am acutely aware of my own presence, feeling it expand and stretch until I feel that I am huge, taking up the whole of the space, shutting out the light of the fire and the moon, and still I have nothing to do with my hands. What does one do with their hands normally? I can’t seem to conjure a good answer.

At last someone to my left says, “Here,” and scoots just far enough on a makeshift log-bench for me to sit. Nat is across the fire to my right, two vaguely familiar boys pressed against either side of her. She gives a small squirm, but not, it seems, of discomfort. 

“Hey, you’re that chick that does the plays and shit, right?” 

One of the boys next to Nat. I can’t place his name.

“Um, yeah. Sometimes.”

“Cool. I don’t know how you do that, man, memorizing all those lines and shit. Crazy.”

“Not all of us have pea-brains, Brian,” say the girl next to me. I give her the briefest of glances as Brian roars and the others howl with laughter. 

“Aw, you can’t blame him, Jess, it’s all those tackles he gets on the field.” Another boy, sitting next to a girl at the third point of our triangle. I recognize him almost at once-Harvey is his name-from the student council. He takes a chug from his bottle, then tosses it into the fire and grabs another from behind him. To my right, I see that Nat has also picked up a bottle, and is currently popping the top and giggling at something the second boy has whispered in her ear.

I feel something brush my arm and turn to see that the girl next to me-Jess, apparently, I don’t recognize her in the slightest and think she must go to school in the neighboring town-is offering me a drink. My cheeks flare, and I am thankful for the shadows.

“Oh, um, no thank you. Thank you.” Idiot.

She raises an eyebrow. “You sure?”

“Yeah, thanks though.”

“Aw, come on Theater Nerd! It’s all for fun.” Nat elbows Brian in the rib. “Hey, she knows I’m messing,” he says. “It’s a compliment.” She raises an eyebrow and grins.  

“Here,” says Jess, and pops the top for me, pushing it into my hand. “First few will taste nasty, but you won’t notice much after that.”

I grip the brown glass in my hand, heart fluttering. I’m not a complete prude. I’ve had wine on occasion, though mainly at home with my parents. I’ve tasted beer once before too, though only because my dad, slightly buzzed, had offered me a sip last Thanksgiving. My face had rendered him momentarily speechless as he doubled up in laughter. 

But that won’t do here. I screw up my insides and take a swallow. My stomach instantly heaves into my throat in an attempt to make me force it back up. I cough, rather loudly, and curse myself as I hear more laughter. 

“That’s it, Theater Nerd! Now it’s a party!”

I look up, tears stinging my eyes, and see Nat take another long swallow, tilting her head back in such a way that her chest juts out absurdly. Brian and the boy whose name I don’t know make no attempt to hide their glances. 

Across the fire, the Harvey has started nuzzling the girl’s neck as she playfully pushes him away. Chatter has resumed. I tune it out, staring into the flames. I can feel the heat lapping at my arms, my legs, my face, but still I seem cold. Naked.

A while later-it could have been a minute or thirty, I can’t tell- Jess says something from beside me that attracts the attention of the others. I blink, the ghost of the firelight imprinted on my eyelids. She is holding a small bag with something inside, something that looks like snow.

“Oh shit, Jess, how’d you score that?”

“That’s for me to know and you to never find out,” she replies, winking. She tosses the bag over the fire-for one exhilarating minute I think it is going into the flames-and then Brian catches it, barely hesitating as he rips it open. He whistles.

“I could kiss you, girl.”

“Maybe later.” She winks again.

Suddenly things are happening too fast. Though I’ve only had the smallest sip of alcohol, the world suddenly seems off kilter, my brain unable to process everything at once. Jess is saying something I can’t make out. Harvey is back to nuzzling the girl's neck, though this time while watching Brian out of the corner of his eyes. Brian himself has produced a small rectangle of cardboard, probably from one of the beer cartons, and then just as quickly is face down and inhaling. He sits up, blinking rapidly, and is shouting.

“Woo! Shit! I’m feelin’ like trash in the morning, guys!”

Then he’s passing it to Nat, and I know she won’t, of course she won’t, there’s no way, a beer is one thing, but this--

And then she is bent over and she’s snorting a line, and then she is up and blinking and laughing. 

A million images flash through my head at once. Nat and I on bicycles in her parent’s driveway, our knees skinned. Nat pulling me into a looping twirl during the stupid line-dancing lesson in P.E. Nat stepping between me and a towering girl who has just shoved me to my knees on the walk home from school. Us lying in her room in our makeshift fort, and she has dared me to kiss her, and I’m laughing like it’s a joke, but then I wonder if she means it and I feel a flutter in my stomach--

“Hey, no holding up the line Theater Nerd!”

The baggie is in my lap, and I stare at it as though it is a particularly challenging problem on a math test. It seems to weigh a million pounds. 

“Um...no. Thanks.” I start to pass it, and then Jess shoves it back.

“No passing on this one!” Laughter.

“Just like the beer, Theater Nerd. Quick. Don’t think!”

Brian is rubbing his nose. The couple is watching me, the corners of their lips turned up. I look to Nat, pleading. 

But I don’t see Nat. Someone is in her place across the fire, someone who looks like her, who is a near perfect copy. But her eyes are all wrong. Nat’s eyes have never looked at me like this, with that glint of pitiful amusement. 

Before I can stop myself, I am on my feet. The bag spills to the ground. A roar breaks out around me and Jess makes a grab for it, righting it before more of the white gold can spill. Nat is the only one who doesn’t make a sound. She just keeps looking, her eyes never leaving mine.

“The hell you doing, man!?”

“What’s your problem?”

“Not cool, Theater Nerd.”

At last I break my gaze and find Brian.

“My name’s Sam.”

It’s stupid. They care little and less what my name is, but it feels important somehow, something small, the smallest of weapons in my arsenal. I turn back to Nat.

“I’m leaving now. I’m...I’m not comfortable here.” I hear a snort of derision and ignore it. I stare at her, begging her to say something, anything at all. And she does.

“Okay. Bye.”

The smoke is suddenly overwhelming, and I turn, heading into the thicket of trees. My ears hear the comments behind me, but thankfully my brain doesn’t let them register. Smoke still stings my eyes. At least I think it is smoke. 

I blunder blindly for a way before getting my bearings. The moon is still holding strong overhead, and I notice that shadows dance here too, ones of blue and black. A slight wind moans through the branches and leaves dance underfoot, making the softest scratching noise. I don’t know how long I stand there before it occurs to me-rather absurdly-that had I been a child in these woods, I would have been terrified. I would have been cowering in this ocean of moonlight and whispering noises, sure I saw gangling phantoms around every trunk, hulking shadows waiting just beyond the light, eyes that followed my every move peering from the webs of branches.

Instead, I see only the moon, only the trees, only shadows. 

I pull in a deep, hitching breath and allow myself to rub one hand across my eyes. It comes away wet.

Then I start forward and away, wishing longingly for all the familiar monsters.