by William Ludt
This isn’t how I pictured my night ending, lying on Isaac’s floor, listening to my heart pound through my ears, my chest physically jumping with each beat. I could feel my lunch climbing its way back up my esophagus.
Isaac was calling Aaron over and over, but the only answer he received was the automated voicemail. He calls again, and my focus averts to a soft, continuous vibration coming from the backpack shoved in the corner. Again, he is answered by the voicemail. I make my way to said backpack and open it up. Staring back at me is a phone’s backlit screen, stating there was an incoming call from “Isaac.”
“He left his phone here, Isaac.”
“Shit!” he says. “I’m going to have to go back out there and find him.”
#
We all wore black for the sake of camouflage. Isaac’s folks were passed out a couple hours before, and the sun was well below the horizon.
Aaron, Isaac, and I set out down the street. Walking along the side of the road, below the orange hue of street lamps, I kick up the dust and gravel adjacent to the pavement.
“Hey, Aaron,” I say. “We should sneak over to Mackenzie’s.”
“Ha.”
“Her dad would kill us,” Isaac says.
“Yeah.”
We hang a right at the first road we meet. A white house to our left is dark inside, but has a porch light on. We approach, and Isaac goes up the steps. Aaron and I sit at the ready. He looks back at us, finger on the doorbell, and pushes it in ever so tenderly. An audible “ding-dong” reaches our ears, and we turn. Isaac leaps from the porch as we sprint to the nearest line of cover.
I feel the corners of my mouth pull toward my molars. Warmth inhabits my chest, and settles in my extremities. Flecks of seeds from the grass I trample clings to my shoes. A chorus of laughter bellows from my mouth, and Isaac and Aaron join in. We take short refuge behind a row of shrubs in a neighboring home’s yard. The sky is a chalky yellow on the horizon, but the stars are glaring up above. We regain our breath and continue walking.
#
I stand up and walk to the bathroom. I assume that the adrenaline is what’s stopping me from calming down. I can still feel my heart beating at record speed. I picture a heart with arms and legs, standing in a scarlet cell, encased in a rib cage. It grasps the skeletal bars and pounds its head against them.
I reach the bathroom and flip the light on. To my right are three mirrors, set in place like a halved hexagon. I see myself at all angles, my legs bleeding through a layer of dirt, eyes flushed. I walk calmly to the toilet, put the seat up, and vomit the hotdogs and fries I ate earlier that day into the pool of water inches from my face.
I hear the door to the garage open behind me, and there stands Isaac.
“There’s a cop out there,” he says.
We make our way to his computer room and peer out the window. Standing in the cul-de-sac is a portly policeman, flashlight in hand, shining it into Aaron’s car.
“Oh fuck,” I say.
“I walked halfway down the driveway, and noticed him there,” Isaac says. “I don’t know how he didn’t see me.”
We stare at the cop, sitting on the floor, nothing moving in the house. He stands at the crest of the circle, walking around the car, occasionally pulling the walkie-talkie on his chest to his mouth: speaking inaudible words into it.
Isaac moves out of view of the window. He leans against the wall and looks at me.
“I’m going to go through the back door and back through the woods,” he says. “Where’s my phone?”
#
Dangling from the rim of a basketball hoop, I try to pull myself up. The weight of the hoop leans toward me, and my feet touch the ground. I guide the rim to the cement and let it go. The backboard and the rim meet, and we run on to the next house, laughing.
Aaron takes the cement steps up the porch and stands at the door. He presses the doorbell, and we run in different directions. Aaron runs through the backyard of the neighboring home. A man sitting in his living room watches as he runs run through the yard.
I run through the front yard, and hang a left at the next house’s driveway. I don’t see the group of people sitting around a fire in their yard, and I double back just as I spot Aaron running behind them. Isaac is ahead of me, running through the front yard, laughing.
We ring another doorbell and ditch the house, working through every home on the street—both sides. At the final home on the street, we quietly step toward the door.
“Guys!”
Isaac and I turn to see Aaron pointing to a knee high, poorly carved, wooden bear. We laugh tired laughs and walk over to it. Isaac and Aaron pick the wooden beast from its place in the garden, and we walk back to where the road intersects. In the center of the “T” that the streets form, we stand the bear up and walk away from it.
We walk three-wide down the road, laughing, breathing heavily. The front door of the white house opens, and we see a man step out onto the front porch. He holds a spotlight in his hand. It flashes on, and he points it in our direction. We run.
We head toward homes on a parallel street, aiming to run through their backyards. I see a lot’s worth of overgrowth in front of me. My legs pump through the grass. The light dances back and forth, a gargantuan circle lighting the tree line and creating outstretched shadows of Isaac and I.
“Get back here, you motherfuckers!”
We’re halfway through the field. The man with the spotlight is chasing us. Isaac is a few feet in front of me.
“Oh my god,” I say.
Automatic lights illuminate entire backyards as we barrel through them. I think about when my brother told me about sneaking out—how he and his friends were running down a back street, when a person shined a spotlight on them. Except for them, the person with the light did not pursue.
“He’s so fast.”
I think about taking our chances if we turn around and trying to take him on. Then the thought passes.
We’re a few yards down the street. I can’t tell whether Isaac knows where he is going or not.
“Let’s go to Bre’s house.”
Isaac doesn’t answer. Her house is across the street. I think: if we make a beeline toward Bre’s then we can possibly throw him off us and have a place to hide out. But we keep running. All I hear three sets of feet, the brush of grass, and our panting.
We approach the final yard. We’re angling toward the tree line. The light hasn’t ceased from passing back and forth across the yards. At the foot of the forest is a large overgrowth. I see Isaac hurdle through the greenery and disappear. My arms instinctively cross, and I do the same. Thorns grasp at my clothes and paint parallel scratches across my arms and legs.
I don’t look back, but the light comes through the trees in fragments. Every step I take is ill fated. I fall, landing with my hands and legs in the leaves and mud. I get up and see the silhouette of Isaac taking small jumps and stumbling. He runs into an upturned stick; his shirt gets caught on it. I hear fabric tear. I take a few more steps and fall again. I call out to Isaac. He’s made it through. I keep moving and jump headfirst out of the trees, landing on my chest.
I get to my feet and look up. We’re standing in Isaac’s dark backyard. We run along his fence line, open the gate to his pool area, and head for the doors. Isaac pulls the first set of sliding doors open, then the second. We bound over his couch and slink down to the floor. Isaac’s bleeding, and his shirt is torn from shoulder to chest. All I can hear is our breathing and the constant thumping of my heart.
Isaac looks around.
“Where’s Aaron?” he says.
#
At the sight of the man with the spotlight, Aaron runs to the opposite side of the street. He continues on until he finds a patch of garden shrubs thick enough to conceal himself. He hears the man calling out for Isaac and me, but does not move until we were all out of sight. At that point, he moves from his place behind the bushes on to the next house. He hides in another garden. Then the police arrive.
The red and blue lights revolve, dancing, running down the street, and twirling on the siding of every home. Aaron hunches over, shoes sinking in mulch, and peers out from behind a bush. The police cruiser drives slowly past, circling in the cul-de-sac, saunters by again and comes to a stop.
Aaron moves down the street from house-to-house, ducking behind all assortment of plant life, avoiding a police spotlight. He makes it to the other side of the street, and hunkers down in the yard at the joining of street and roundabout.
He knows that Isaac and I ran this way but cannot tell where we went.
“Aaron.”
It’s almost a whisper, but he hears it called out to him from the tree line. He immediately stands and runs toward the voice. At the foot of the forest, Aaron slows and pushes in. A light hits his face, and he doubles back, startled. His eyes adjust, and it’s Isaac, cellphone, lit up and in hand.
The two turn from the flashing police lights, obscured by the trees, and Isaac guides Aaron through the woods.
#
The three of us lay on Isaac’s floor. I hear his parents snoring. My legs and arms are throbbing. My heart’s beating slows. My stomach’s empty, but that’s not why I’m shaking.
I stare out of Isaac’s skylight for some time and fall asleep.
William Ludt will keep this short. He is an editor at The Jambar. He is into all sorts of punk rock music. He has a constant hankering for a bowl of ice cream. He is not as cool as you.