It was 3 am.
The darkness was gentle--the soft, safe
nighttime of the suburbs. Stars and crickets pulsed together, weaving a subtle symphony. Olive was lying in bed, watching bars of moonlight sliding over her freckled arm, listening to the quiet in the air and the static in her head. She had kicked back the smothering sheets, splayed her limbs out under the cool current of the whirring ceiling fan. She closed her eyes.
She liked the darkness. As a child, she had been averse to its secrets, but now she valued its intimacy. It was unsearchable. Even with eyes closed, one could feel the serene pressure of cosmic questioning. The peace of knowing you will never know. Olive appreciated questions with no answers, because then she couldn't be wrong. And she could write her own solutions.
Dimly she remembered a glowing day in autumn: Macy's graceful brown fingers churning the dirt in search of earthworms, Olive's pale ones scooping fallen maple leaves to shower in the air. If only she had known what kind of gold those leaves were. If only she had held on.
Green numbers glowed, segmented like inchworms, on the digital clock. 3:12.
In two hours and fourty-five minutes, she would have to get up for work. Olive closed her eyes again and wished for sleep. The cavity in her chest was swelling with emptiness. She lay on her back, waiting for it to collapse her ribcage, to tear her lungs and sink into her marrow and feast on her flesh. She was floating, drifting away. Drifting in deep, black water, bottemless molten glass. The sun struck copper in her hair, auburn tendrils undulating like kelp; she felt the heat on her closed eyes, her dry lips. Her fist tightened around the waxy stems of white lilies (she knew without seeing them) and she heard, far off, the thunder of fallen battlements. The cold water lapped in her ears, collared her throat, flooded her mouth. A voice above the surface wailed a name she had forgotten.
Ophelia.
She jerked awake, choking on the illusion of death, and switched off the blaring alarm clock.