The Darkness Before the Dawn

The air is cool on her face as it flits about her like a friend, nudging her as if to keep her company. Vrina’s toes flirt with the edge of a sharp drop off and she thrusts her arms out to either side much like a one-man version of Titanic. Something about dancing with danger and teasing it makes her feel so much better when the fighting starts so this cliff on the edge of her property has been her go-to spot for years.

Always the fighting.

Her mother and father have never exactly been close but they refuse to separate on account of being so deeply in love. According to them, love is where you fight a lot and scream but overcome it and stay together. Vrina never wants to love if that’s all there is to it.

Her hair picks up and dances about her face and she heaves a heavy sigh to revel in the burn of the cold air in her nostrils. Peace. Silence. Out here in the darkness there’s no yelling, no objects launched across the room. Out here she’s alone.

Vrina’s eyes flash open for a moment and she settles down on the ground with her knees hugged to her chest. Her long white nightgown rides up around her legs and flutters around her legs but there’s nobody out here to see anything so she ignores it.

She’s pledged never to love. But that leaves her alone.

Alone is so dark.

A light sparks in the distance on the horizon and she knows that her dad will be out in a little to apologize and coax her back to the house and there’d be love and kindness around the breakfast table until sometime about midday when it would start all over again. It’s like a cycle. Even with all the lights on, that house is so dark. So dreadful. So empty.

A hand slips onto her shoulder and something shifts beside her as another presence appears.

“Dad,” she starts, expecting the fingers to be the calloused digits of her father, “I just need a few minutes.”

“Good. I was hoping you’d stay out here a little longer with me.”

Vrina nearly jumps out of her skin as her head whips around to face a smiling boy with short blond hair and wide brown eyes that sparkle in the mix of dying starlight and growing sunrise.

Trane.

The boy who’s a mystery to their small town.

The boy she swore she’d never hurt with her love.

The boy she loves regardless.

“Trane” She murmurs under her breath as a light blush spreads across her face.

He knows the situation in her house and knows better than to muddy the air with words so he falls silent and keeps his hand pressed against her arm until she slips her own fingers between his.

The air was so dark before, but with this new form by her side they sky bursts into light like nature’s cliché way of sending sparks flying between the two.

He stays there till her father appears and calls her to breakfast and he tags along to sit at their table and keep the unspoken peace that has to occur when one has a guest. Vrina tries to get him to leave when her father starts yelling at her mother but still he stays to wrap his arms around her and hold her as it starts to get bad. And he’s still there when she runs back to her cliff to stare over the edge in solemn silence just to get away from her house.

“Trane, go home. It’s late.”

“Do you love me, Vrina?”

“What?”

“Do you love me?”

“No. We never fight so I guess I don’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, Pa said that love is fighting and being strong enough to overcome it. That’s why he loves Mama so much.”

“Vrina.” He turns her to look at him and creases his brows in confusion “that isn’t love, that’s some sort of weird obsession. Like they hate each other but don’t want to let the other go. I love you. I’d never hurt you like that.”

“Trane…”

Vrina never thought she’d get the fairy tale ending her father had read to her about when she was little. Then again, after a month running around with Trane she didn’t. Her father was as obsessed with keeping Vrina around as he was her mother and when Trane asked permission to date Vrina, her dad put a round in his chest and threw him to the birds.

In a town like theirs nobody asks questions. Especially not about a boy with no apparent family.

And nobody asks questions about the poor little schizophrenic girl on the hill. The one whose father went crazy and killed her mom and himself when she was three and was left to raise herself under the strange fantasy that her parents were still there taking care of her. The girl who shot her lover.