I picture Heathcliff hunched in one of the counselor’s undersized plastic chairs, an anger-management brochure crumpled in his hands, and feel a weird twist of sympathy. Mr. Cole is a nice man, but he doesn’t know what to do with people raised on the underside of the rules, where the world turns dark and lawless, where only the canny and cruel survive.
Jasper isn’t canny or cruel, which is only one of the several hundred reasons I have to get him out of here. It ranks right below the air quality and the Confederate flags and the bad luck that slinks behind us like a mean dog, nipping at our heels. （I don’t believe in curses, but if there was such a thing as a cursed family, it would look a lot like us.）
that’s not a thesis. My fingers snag on the cracks that spiderweb across my screen.
i’m sorry what did you get in 10th grade english again??
My laugh hangs in the air, ghostly white. i graduated with a 4.0 from the School of Fuck You
A tiny pause. chill. it’s job fair tomorrow, nobody’s collecting essays
I despised the job fair when I was at school. There aren’t really any jobs around here except breathing particulates at the power plant, so it’s just an AmeriCorps booth and somebody from the Baptist mission group handing out flyers. The main excitement comes at the end, when Don Gravely, CEO of Gravely Power, takes the stage and gives an excruciating speech about hard work and the American spirit, as if he didn’t inherit every cent of his money from his big brother. We all had to shake his hand as we filed out of the gym, and when he got to me he flinched, as if he thought poverty might be contagious. His palm had felt like a fresh-peeled boiled egg.
Imagining Jasper shaking that clammy-ass hand makes my skin feel hot and prickly. Jasper doesn’t need to listen to any bullshit speeches or take home any applications, because Jasper isn’t getting stuck in Eden.
i’ll call miss hudson and say you have a fever, screw the job fair
But he replies: nah I’m good
There’s a lull in our conversation while I leave the river behind and wind uphill. The electric lines swoop overhead and the trees crowd close, blotting out the stars. There are no streetlights in this part of town.
where are you now? im hungry
A wall runs beside the road now, the bricks pocked and sagging with age, the mortar crumbling beneath the wheedling fingers of Virginia creeper and poison ivy. just passing the starling place
Jasper replies with a smiley face shedding a single tear and the letters RIP.
I send him the middle-finger emoji and slide my phone back in my hoodie pocket.
I should hurry back. I should keep my eyes on the painted white stripe of the county road and my mind on Jasper’s savings account.
But I’m tired and cold and weary in some way that’s deeper than muscle and bone. My feet are slowing down. My eyes are drifting up, searching through the twilit woods for a gleam of amber.
There it is: a single high window glowing gold through the dusk, like a lighthouse that wandered too far from the coast.
Except lighthouses are supposed to warn you away, rather than draw you closer. I hop the gully at the side of the road and run my hand along the wall until the brick gives way to cold iron.
The gates of Starling House don’t look like much from a distance—just a dense tangle of metal half-eaten by rust and ivy, held shut by a padlock so large it almost feels rude—but up close you can make out individual shapes: clawed feet and legs with too many joints, scaled backs and mouths full of teeth, heads with empty holes for eyes. I’ve heard people call them devils or, more damningly, modern art,but they remind me of the Beasts in The Underland,which is a nice way of saying they’re unsettling as all hell.
I can still see the shine of the window through the gate. I step closer, weaving my fingers between the open jaws and curling tails, staring up at that light and wishing, childishly, that it was shining for me. Like a porch light left on to welcome me home after a long day.
I have no home, no porch light. But I have what I need, and it’s enough.
It’s just that, sometimes, God help me, I want more.
I’m so close to the gate now that my breath pearls against the cold metal. I know I should let go—the dark is deepening and Jasper needs dinner and my feet are numb with cold—but I keep standing, staring, haunted by a hunger I can’t even properly name.
It occurs to me that I was right: dreams are just like stray cats. If you don’t feed them they get lean and clever and sharp-clawed, and come for the jugular when you least expect it.
I don’t realize how tight I’m gripping the gate until I feel the bite of iron and the wet heat of blood. I’m swearing and wadding the sleeve of my hoodie against the gash, wondering how much the health clinic charges for tetanus shots and why the air smells suddenly rich and sweet—when I realize two things simultaneously.