Pretty Little Bones

Let's Get These Teen Hearts Beating Faster, Faster

Let's Get These Teen Hearts Beating Faster, Faster

Ava was known for being impulsive, but there were times when she was just straight up reckless.

Even though I loved every one of Ava's personalities, sometimes they scared me.

It scared me when I walked out of the gym one night to see her standing in the rain, waiting for me. Her bare feet slapped the pavement in loud thuds as she ran across the parking lot, grabbed my cheeks in a death grip, and kissed me hard until I couldn't breathe.

Looking around, my truck was the only car and only one streetlight burned through the downpour. Every last thread of Ava's coat was soaked, all the way to where it stop at her knees, but she kept smiling.

We were completely alone and she was incomprehensibly excited.

Smudges of mascara lined her eyes as they reflected the streetlight and compensated for the lack of stars in the cloudy night. Her legs peeked out from under the coat; they were flushed as she shivered against me. Only she would find rain in July cold and though I moved to wrap my arms around her, she didn't want to be held.

"C'mon," she said, biting her bottom lip, turning the pale to pink. "I gotta show you somethin'."

Before I could speak, she grabbed my hand and started pulling me around the gym, toward the football field. It was then that I knew Ava was in one of her wild moods. Anything we did tonight was going to be like snow in the summer: so impossibly beautiful that you knew it could never happen again.

Steam rose from the pavement and stuck to my skin like sweat, making everything slippery and sticky all at once. The haze was almost suffocating, but I kept breathing, holding tight to Ava's hand and wondering what had pushed her over the edge this time.

Carrying the weight of being a good girl on her chest suffocated her until suddenly she would just snap. It was like she was flipping a switch and turning everything off until she was only running on cheap lies and bad expectations. She would entertain her every whim and desire with the most amazing smile.

When she got like that, it was best to give in to her compulsions and worry about damage control later. She only ever lost modesty for a handful of hours at a time and her emotions came crashing in like waves before withdrawing like the tides.

If I could hold on to her, we'd be okay. She just needed enough of someone to dull the pain and I needed enough of someone to distract me, so we always swam in our sins together. Those times when she turned off the good girl act, we stripped down to our skeletons and were twins—mirror images of bad decisions and inescapable regrets.

That was when we'd lay in my front yard and play little games with each other. Those were the times when she'd jog to my house at one in the morning just to sneak in the back door and crawl into bed with me. It was flipping the switch that made her want to swallow pain pills until she was either sick or numb—anything different from what she was always feeling.

And on rare occasions, Ava made switching into her most extreme personality an event.

That's what was happening that night. She was tired of playing okay and her impulses were telling her that something needed to happen. Something so bad it was good. So painful it felt amazing.

As we came over the hill, jogging awkwardly hand-in-hand, I saw the field lights twinkling, making the pavement all around glow in a strange glory. It was like afternoon in the middle of the night—some sort of backward eclipse setting the world on fire in the middle of a rainstorm.

She kept smiling and running until we reached the gate. Panting, she threw her hands on the chain link and rattled at the lock. "Look," she said. "They forgot the lights."