whispers traded in the dark {Cait}

olete bene

I’m an expert in secrets.

They’ve lived around the corner from my bedroom all my life, eventually infiltrating their way into my bones, my blood, my heart. I’ve swallowed down echoes in the hallway of last hopes and broken souls with nowhere to turn except the blank white canvas that is a psychiatrist’s lair. Mum and dad always tried so hard to keep the brokenness behind locked doors. What they never realised is that I crave the mess.

There’s not a single spot of dust in my room, but my head and my home couldn’t be any more different. Where my carpet has been vacuumed clean, the floor of my closet is a mess of scattered pieces of paper. They resemble the drawers upon drawers locked away inside my skull, home to lost secrets and tear-stained pages. In them lies a quiet understanding that the world will never be perfect. That even when things may seem put together, beneath it all, they’re already collapsing.

My parents always knew that, insisted on passing those lessons down to me as soon as I could speak. And so we hid away in a castle of perfection as they held me up on a pedestal with no room for error. Even still, I’m just a mistake in waiting. A porcelain doll they’ve spent years carving out of moonstone –

– even still, crystals break.

I wonder just how disappointed they would be if they saw me now: Olete After Dark. Underneath the stars, I feel all the parts of myself come together, but they would never see it that way. Things couldn’t be so simple, and even being your true self isn’t as easy as I wish it was.

My heart sits in my throat, thudding in time with the weight of contraband slamming against my thigh, tucked safely into a too-big pocket of my too-big jacket. Too heavy. My lungs exhale, but I don’t feel any lighter. Too cold.

This wasn’t what I meant when I said I wanted to see more of the world.

This doesn’t feel like me; I remind myself, time and time again, I’ve never known what being me even means. If it’s not solitude and smoking mirrors, and it’s not secrets and selling snow, then what is it?

I’m just a fool with words for weapons – a collector. I know more than I should, yet somehow it’s still ¬not enough. When I search the hidden faces around me for tonight’s companion, all I see are drawn hoods and sealed lips. I can’t see their eyes. In the madness and beauty of it all, I tell myself every time –

– there has to be more of the world to uncover.

All of those secrets, walking right by me and only existing in noisy heads, never to be freed. All of the world nobody gets to see.

What a waste.

Instinctively, my footsteps start to slow, whilst the night swirls around me in hyperdrive. There’s an intersection at the back of District Nine with two crossed streetlights I’ve made my meeting ground. Intertwined, the spotlights form an ominous yellow “X” on the sidewalk; I feel the warm glow hit my face immediately, burning brightly on my retinae. It feels like home, upside-down and sleeping in an unmade bed.

Through the amber mist, beneath the bent metal poles, I see a small figure with nervousness crawling through her veins, tiny hands stuffed into a cardigan to fight the cold that’s surely creeping up her spine; I feel it too.

She lifts her head – a sudden jerking motion – and finds my face with searching, hopeful eyes.

They shouldn’t stop me in my tracks, but they do.

Don’t judge a book by its cover. Isn’t it true, the most broken souls and tragic backstories are often the most innocent looking, put together humans? I’ve seen enough ordinary misfits walk through the back garden door to know this better than most.

This feels different, though.

She’s not broken all the way – not yet, at least. There’s still a third of a girl who believes in the world settled beneath the surface of her skin. Funny, how we couldn’t be more different, yet I feel the dampness of her palms like they’re my own. As if our minds are linked and we’re breathing the same frozen air down our lungs.

And that’s my problem – I see too much of myself in all the people I meet. My heart’s too soft; I’m too fickle. Things like that don’t fit with cruelty and injustice. I’m certain my parents knew this from the very first moment they saw me, and so they hid me away from everyone. Even themselves.

Is that what happened to her, too? I can’t help but be fascinated by the ambiguity of a new face, a new night, a new mystery.

I want to ask her: Why are you here?

What’s your cross to bear?

But I can’t save the world – that’s not my job to claim. So instead, I settle on business.

“What’s the password?”