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Warren Cave had never been afraid of the dark. Instead, he’d found it the best way to travel. As a kid, he’d stuck his head out the window and put a walkie-talkie to his ear at night, talking to Lanie. It was usually Lanie, though sometimes Josie joined in.
They would talk away into the night about anything they could think of, questioning anything that they thought about and anything that they wondered.
He would talk until he heard the sound of his parents stepping against the floorboards of the hallway, and he would dive under the blanket and pretend to be asleep. Sometimes they would walk by arguing; other times, it was just one or the other, making their way to the bathroom or to check on him.
To make sure that he wasn’t doing any of the things that, at any given time, he was always desiring to be doing.
He dreamt about it sometimes at first, sneaking across to the Buhrmans’ house and taking a look around. There was something so beautifully forbidden about it, especially in the way that, in the dreams at least, he was one-hundred percent sure that Lanie would open the door and let him inside.
If he could build a tunnel between their houses, that would solve the problem. Then he could run away whenever he needed to, whenever he needed to get away from things.
He didn’t pay attention in schools, much – his mind would drift to the second that something brushed across it, teased it – he would follow it out the window and down the street, across bridges and down streams.
He didn’t know what he wanted to do after he graduated high school. He figured he would go to college for something. Maybe he would figure it out then.
He didn’t know that he never would get the chance, because doors would close and lock in his face so fast that he had no chance to catch his breath or his grip.
By the time he was twenty-six, he didn’t recognize the reflection he saw in the glass. If someone had asked him, he would have told them that it was somebody else.
That it couldn’t be him. That it was some kind of Nightmare-Him who he could chase away, maybe if he ran the tunnels at night.
But now there were no tunnels left. Only bars.
***
The first time he ever saw Poppy Parnell, he hated her. He had read the articles, the ones that had described him as a monster and as a devil child, but he hadn’t known what she looked like at the time. He didn’t really know what he had pictured.
He hadn’t expected her to look like somebody who would be leading a church bake sale in the middle of a Sunday, and maybe that was even more why he decided that he needed to scare her off. Because if something in her – something warm in her – spoke to him, then there was no way he could survive in here. He would remember what it was like to be sixteen and alone again, and the fact that he hated being one of them – he couldn’t even really say it, not with any sort of a straight face, not without laughing hysterically on the inside or beginning to cry and never being able to stop. Kuvney would have gotten a hell of a kick out of that.
And so he had tried to push Poppy away.
But she had refused to go, until she had, and then he had been left splayed open all over again, for people to pick at.
And he should have been used to that by now.
Then she had come back.
And then he was free.
Whatever that meant.
***
Everyone that Warren Cave had ever loved was dead.
Well, not quite. Lanie was in jail, and she would probably stay there. Maybe he would write her, using the secret code, and read the letters she wrote back with a flashlight under the covers.
It was all right to take back the two years, he thought. Two years twenty years too late. To do the things he had always wanted to do, the things he had loved to do.
To sneak away.
To run free.
He found that he was flickering the flashlight on and off, but that he wasn’t really looking at anything, because there wasn’t really anything to look at. His hand was empty.
There was a knock at the door, and he jolted up – hands at his sides, the old instincts kicking in, pointing his flashlight at the wall like he can use it as a weapon.
“Warren? Everything okay?”
He blinked as he settled the light on Poppy’s face, then let out a sigh.
“I didn’t hear you at first,” he said, and set the flashlight back down on the nightstand before turning it off in a wobbly action.
“Sorry. Just finishing the last of the packing. What you get in a house, huh?” She shrugged. “Do you think you’ll start decorating the place soon? Get your own… look around here once we head out?”
Warren shrugged.
“I’m not really sure what my whole vibe is… yet. As long as there aren’t any prison bars, I think I’m good with any kind of… décor.”
“Sounds good,” Poppy replied, and turned to walk out the door.
“Poppy?”
“Yes, Warren?”
“Can you…” He shifted back in the bed and looked away sheepishly.
“…Sure. Of course.”
She moved through the night and climbed into the bed, draping an arm around Warren’s middle and pulling him close. He leaned his head on her shoulder and breathed in, letting the scent trickle down through his nostrils to rest in his chest, just above his heart.
She smelled like light, after all.