In school they teach you a lot of things, but they don’t teach you how to apologize. I need to find the courage to call Billie, but I don't know what to say. I go through the motions the rest of the week, stealing cardboard boxes from work to take home and help Grams pack for Omaha. She keeps saying that I should sell some things, but none of it’s mine to sell.
“Nonsense, it’s all yours. Or it’ll be the banks,” she adds, folding an afghan to pad between her fine china plates.
“I don’t want to sell anything.”
“But you won’t be here, either—this house’ll be empty!”
I purse my lips. I don’t argue, because she’ll just persist until she wins. That I don’t think will ever change, even when she loses what my face looks like and the sound of my name on her tongue.
When my radio show rolls around again on Saturday, I don’t know what to do for the topic. The latest celebrity gossip is the “surprising” divorce of some golden couple, and it’s not something my listeners want to engage in. It isn’t something I want to talk about, either.
It’s either that or the upcoming vigil for Roman Holiday’s Holly Hudson. And I don’t want to talk about that either.
“What do you want to talk about?” I ask them. “What do you want me to?”
“You sound off, Niteowl,” Dark replies. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know,” I reply lamely. “We’re not here to talk about me—”
“Actually, we are. We can talk about whatever we want to.”
“And a whole lot of people are listening in,” I say, then laugh to try and bat him away. “And I’ve talked about myself for two weeks now and it’s midnight and—”
“You’re right. It’s midnight, and almost everyone we know is asleep. Why do you think we’re still awake? Listening to you? We’re the same kind of people—the ones who tell secrets, and kiss the people we aren’t supposed to, and make the art no one’ll see, and cry into our pillows after all is said and done. The daylight is for all those other normal people. For all the blunt, round edges in life. But the night? We own the night.”
His voice is soft and warm like a blanket I want to snuggle into and stay. I want to get lost in who he is, whoever that might be, because I’m tired of all these airwaves and all these walls and secrets and silence.
So I talk. About Grams, how I’m afraid to lose her in more ways than one. About Micah, who has already left me all alone. About LD, who is braver and stronger than she gives herself credit for and who will go on to do better things than she’s ever done before. And when I get to Billie—the Boy Wonder, so high up on his pedestal I’m afraid I’m too small for him to see anymore—I talk with Dark and Brooding about how much I don’t want him to go, and how I miss how he smiles and miss how he calls me “North” and how with him I feel validated and special.
Dark stays on the line the entire time, with his “hmms” and “ohs” just to tell me that he’s still listening. That what I feel is important—that I am important.
“You remind me of him,” I tell the voice on the radio.
“And what would you say to him if I was?”
“I’d tell you how much I’m going to miss you.”
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, so long I think he hung up, but then he says, “I . . . think you should tell him. If you mean it.”
I grin into my mic. “Oh no, remember our deal? I’ll tell mine when you tell yours.”
Then he laughs—a real laugh, not the cynical one I usually get—because obviously it’s a lot funnier on his end. “All right then, Niteowl. It’s a deal. And, Niteowl?”
“Yeah?”
“If you have nothing left to lose, then I hope you get that internship. If Grams is going away, then why don’t you, too?”
I shake my head, even though he can’t see. “I don’t think I’d be that good at—” But then my words freeze in my throat. “Wait. I never told you about that! Hey, Dark—Dark?”
A dial tone buzzes through.
I sit back, perplexed. Had I told my listeners about the internship? And if I hadn’t, who did I tell? But then, does that mean I know Dark? Does he live in Steadfast? Do I know him?
Suddenly, I’m trying to puzzle out who it is. Not Micah, not LD, and Billie isn’t even in town anymore—who would call? I go home that night with all the questions rebounding in my head, taking long looks at every person I pass on my way home, wondering if they’re Dark, but I can’t help but think that I’d know him when I saw him.
I’d know Dark, like my hand knows to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.