Darcy is Not Dead

2: Villain origin story that ends with a crowbar

Most doors open to places meant to be exited. Any closet Alice entered, she intended to leave. Sometimes there are alternative exits—like that time her sister accidentally locked herself in the basement and was forced to make her own exit through the window.

But there is always an exit.

Usually.

The roof access door in Alice's dorm room challenged this notion.

Long after her parents left and Alice was forced to undergo the social circus of Orientation weekend, Alice still found herself spooked by the door in the middle of the night. This was to be expected, since naturally, she wanted the curtains over her window at night more than the door.

That was how it started. Now, she much preferred the curtain over the roof door than the window. It was almost laughable now—what fear was there in keeping the blinds open on the window? She was on the second floor, away from student foot traffic, and no window along the north wing could possibly look into her window.

Alice turned over, wide awake, and the image of freshmen-year Darcy called to her from a fictional night here in this dorm room.

From Alice's understanding of Darcy—which may be flawed now, considering she never expected Darcy to voluntarily excommunicate herself from the family—she was night owl. Darcy being a night owl directly contradicted her also being afraid of the dark, which meant that she would leave Alice's desk lamp on all night beside a portable radio they found in their parents basement as kids. The music was rusty, noisy, and only sounded "good" when a cassette was playing.

"What sorts of things do first year architecture students do?" Alice would ask, drowsy with sleep.

Darcy would ponder this for as long as it took to tap her pen three times on her cheek. An ink dot the shape of a dimple would appear. "If I'm hazarding a guess—I think they wouldn't be making a transmitter."

Alice was in elementary school when Darcy first came back from boarding school for the weekend and showed Alice what a transmitter was. It had been at a similar time of night when their ma would absolutely yell at them for being awake. Being known for leaving the desk lamp on, though, made it difficult for their parents to tell if they were awake.

Alice scooted over to the end of her bed. With the mattress so high above the ground, she felt like a kid again dangling her feet over the edge. She stared down at the courtyard as make-believe Darcy showed her a nine volt battery.

"If one tong is negative and the other positive, and connecting them closes the circuit," Darcy explained, holding a quarter over the silver nubs on the battery, "It'll create interference with the radio."

And then, they listened for it. Darcy's quick flicks of the quarter synchronizing with the spark in the static on their radio.

They spent so long practicing Morse code with it that the 9V battery died and the sun came up. Alice, being prone to bags under her eyes, was immediately suspect the next morning by their ma over the breakfast table for not having slept. Darcy took the heat, but insisted that it was all for science.

"Science, my ass!" their ma would say.

Alice reached over to the desk chair. Her book bag was there and inside, tucked beside the textbooks she had purchased just the day before, was the portable radio Darcy gave her as a parting gift.

She laid it on her lap with a sigh. The red paint was fading into black on the edges, and rust was starting to gather on the antenna. She forced the antenna up, though, and began dialing through the stations. There wasn't much luck aside from a Spanish station, classical, and Donnelley's college radio.