When the Road Darkens

“Ana, what’s wrong?” Jeremy asks, crouching beside her. She’s on her knees, a cry of pain fading to a silent exhale despite her wide-open mouth. 

Her hands clutch at her rounded womb. “I think it might be the baby.” 

It had been a night like tonight when he’d left his old life behind and started this new one. A clear sky, though you couldn’t see the stars for the light rising from Santa Fe. The sparse ornamental shrubbery and trees cast dark, thick shadows. No wind, or even a breeze, stirred the hot air. Car fumes hung heavy. 

Smells have been making Ana sick lately. Jeremy wonders if that sick feeling could somehow have become this pain that is doubling his friend’s sister over and dragging her to her knees. Her cries cut him to the heart.

Anastasia looks up at him, face contorting in pain and fear. “I think it's coming right now.” 

“Don’t worry. Just…I don’t know, take a deep breath maybe, and we’ll try to go somewhere not so public.”

“Neither of us knows what to do! Maybe Devland was right…”

“No,” Jeremy says vehemently, “everything’s going to be fine. We’ll figure this out.” 

But he really doesn’t know what he’s going to do. Figuring things out was so much easier when Devland was still here. Devland had been the one who did most of the figuring out. 

Anastasia wishes her brother was with her. She remembers how he told her he thought of Jeremy as another sibling, a little brother, like he’d always wanted. That’s why he invited Jeremy to stay with them, and treated Jeremy the same as herself. At first, Jeremy had tried not to take the food Devland and Anastasia got, saying he could find his own. Devland finally shoved the food at Jeremy and told him he’d better eat it. 

Tears burn Anastasia's eyes as she thinks of how they found Devland. Upside down in a dumpster. No heartbeat, no breath. He'd gotten stuck while trying to get more food for them.

“We could take the baby to a drop box,” Jeremy suggests. “I heard there’s one north of the city.”

“No,” Anastasia says, remembering the dark inside of her closet. 

The lightbulb had burned out. All Anastasia could see was the yellow light leaking between the door and the doorframe. She tried to twist the slick, worn metal doorknob, but it barely moved—locked. She cried quietly as she kept turning it back and forth, wishing the door would magically open, and her father wouldn’t be there.

“No,” Anastasia says again. “I’m not putting my baby in a box.”

“What about the Emergency Room?”

“We’re homeless. They might take the baby away if we do that.”

Jeremy nods, trying to be comforting and supportive. “Right, right. My mom was a midwife. She helped people have babies right in their houses. You can have the baby anywhere. Just tell me where you want to go, I’ll even carry you there if you want.” Even as he says it, Jeremy knows the answer will most likely be no. She has never wanted him to touch her, and he never will, unless she asks him. 

“Hey, Dad, catch!” As his father turned in his chair, Jeremy underhand tossed one of his twin dart guns at him. Then Jeremy fired a shot at his father’s chest. 

His father leaped up with clenched fists, his shoulders hunched. He looked at Jeremy, and the panic in his face turned into an inferno of rage that overwhelmed him.

Both of the dart guns went into the garbage, the bright-colored plastic smashed to pieces.

His mother said his father had been startled, that was all, and Jeremy just needed to try not to scare him again.

He won’t touch Ana without being asked.

She cries out again.

“Can I do anything to help?” Jeremy asks. 

“I don’t know; it hurts. I’m scared.” 

“Well, I’m pretty sure the more it hurts, the sooner the baby is going to come, right? And then it won’t hurt anymore.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had a baby before.”

“Well, I think it works something like that, but my mom never told me exactly how that stuff works.”

They find a more sheltered spot, next to a dumpster behind a shopping center, a spot that has a working light above a business’s back door. Ana staggers to it in between bouts of overwhelming pain.

Jeremy has pulled off his hoodie and put it on the ground for her to sit on, and maybe lie down on when the time comes. He knows you need something to clean a baby with, and he’s thinking about possibly offering his shirt for that, but if he does, he won’t be allowed into public places to spend the money he begs off of people. 

Ana starts crying.

Jeremy gets up and walks away from her. 

“Jeremy.” Anastasia’s voice is so quiet. “Where are you going?” 

He turns around. “I need to go see if someone will let me use their phone. I’ll be right back, I promise. You have the thing I gave you, right?” 

Anastasia nods, one hand going to her pocket. Jeremy’s pocketknife is inside, a hard lump pressing against her leg. 

It’s hard for Jeremy to get anyone to look at him. “Please,” he says, “you don’t even have to hand me your phone. Just, please, I need you to call someone for me.”

Finally, a man stops and makes eye contact with Jeremy.“What is it that you need?” 

“I need to call a family member and tell them where I am. Wait, actually, a text would be better. They don’t answer calls from unknown numbers.”

“Alright,” the man says, and pulls his phone out.

Jeremy notices how the guy keeps his fingers clutched firmly on the smartphone, and his eyes on the strange young man begging him to send a text.

Jeremy doesn’t care. Anastasia needs help.

“What’s the number?” 

Jeremy recites the number slowly, half amazed he remembers, half amazed he thinks he could forget. He dictates the message. The man sends it. Jeremy can hear the little high-pitched vwoop sound. 

“Thank you so much.” Jeremy breathes out, realizing he's been holding his breath. 

The man nods and walks off.

Minutes pass. Jeremy paces. He wants to go back to Ana, but if he does that, he might miss the people he’s waiting for. Will they even come?

Anastasia’s tears have stopped. She doesn’t want to attract attention. Jeremy hasn’t come back. Maybe he isn’t coming back. 

She hears quick footsteps approaching, and she’s scared. Anastasia pulls the knife out of her pocket and flips the blade open, then hides it in a shadow against her body. 

“Ana, it’s me! I’m coming!” 

Jeremy comes around the side of the dumpster, with two people following him: a woman, and a man who strikingly resembles Jeremy.

The woman kneels next to her. “Everything’s going to be okay, darling. I’ll help you. Do you know how far apart your contractions are?” 

Anastasia doesn’t answer the woman, instead looking at Jeremy. “Who are these people?”

“We’re his parents,” the man says, the concern on his face looking exactly like an older version of Jeremy's. 

The way Jeremy has talked about them, she thought they were dead.