was back out into the moonless night in seconds, cursing myself for ever stepping foot inside that building, cursing Galway for playing that guitar, and it wasn’t until I was far from the Dining Hall that I realized I had no flashlight and only a vague notion of the direction I should be heading. ‘Abby!’ I called, but even the dog had abandoned me. I told myself not to think about vampires. The crunch of my feet on gravel was a good, if small, sign I was going in the right direction.
The Dining Hall was out of sight by the time the light glanced toward me. The beam flashed over me a few times, and I stopped, like a deer in headlights, grateful for the flashlight if wary of whoever might be bearing it. It was just as I feared – Galway, alone. He was winded.
He handed me the flashlight silently, and I was forced to thank him. There were two of us, and only one light. One of us would have to walk the other home. Since we were halfway to Bittersweet, we continued in my direction.
He cleared his throat. I thanked god for the darkness. We walked on together into the night. Finally, he said, ‘I’m not going to tell anyone.’
I said nothing.
‘It’s kind of funny, actually, when you think about it,’ he went on. It sounded like he was smiling.
I kept my eyes on the beam and prayed he was done.
‘I was looking for Ev that morning,’ he said, ‘and I thought she might be sleeping and—’
‘Okay,’ I said, wheeling toward him, shining the light at his face, ‘good.’
He put his hand up to shield his eyes. ‘I just wanted to say—’
‘I get it.’ I kept the light pointed directly at his face, unable to restrain my anger at the oblivious, blithe way these people went about their lives. ‘I get it, it’s hysterical, and now you can hold it over me and humiliate me all you want, you saw me … doing that … but it isn’t lost on me that you were the one spying on people, that you’re’ – I searched for the right word – ‘a Peeping Tom, a pervert’ – and with that, I left him. Didn’t care that I had the only flashlight, or that he was the one who’d brought it to me.
Abby met me a few steps from a pitch-black Bittersweet, the night filling with her clacking tags and panting tongue. She licked my hand faithfully. I went straight for the crawl space below the porch, easily finding the one bag of recyclables I’d set aside, grabbing the three magazines on top. I listened for Galway’s footsteps, but I could hear only the night.
We crept into the sleeping house. The bedroom door was closed, a relief, since Ev, who’d abandoned me for the evening, was the last person I wanted to see. I clicked on the lamp in the living room, pulled the pair of nail scissors from the medicine cabinet, grabbed a notepad and roll of tape from the supply basket, and settled before the cold hearth, letting myself open the September 1, 1961, issue of Life,
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