The Way Back to Midnight

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. And every night, as a doughy-faced youth, I greeted them as many people welcome the light of morning. Not me; I’ve longed for the blush of midnight for as long as I can remember.

For me, darkness came in the day; nights were my refuge. After my daytime demons fell asleep, I would slip out of my window onto the rough shingles of our roof and wait for midnight. I’d wait hours for those clouds to roll in and bring with them the raspberry-scented shadow of my only friend. For her to pull me into the puffs of grape-flavored bliss. A padded landscape to skip through with the distinct lack of repercussions and reality I endured during the daytime hours.

I kicked puffs into the air and let them float to my mouth, catching them between my teeth and dissolving into sweet sugar on my tongue. Above the purple clouds we walked through, stars bobbed, teasing us until we caught them and popped them in our mouths, where they fizzled like cosmic candy and left us giddy. Together, the shadow and I played until that dark hour before dawn when I would return to my bedroom and await the torment that day would bring, once again longing for midnight.

On the night I turned sixteen, the sky never brightened, and the purple clouds never rolled in. Like the time the dimmer switch in our living room stopped working, but no one remembered to fix it, I was left in darkness. Midnight came and went, and the only thing I held out any hope for never appeared. My only friend was gone after that, and I sank into a spiral that pulled me further into the darkness than I had ever been.

The week after I turned sixteen was the first time I dared to rummage through my parents' supply. The one thing I said I’d never do. A dangerous night when memories of my parents using in front of me served as a tutorial instead of the cautionary tale I had always taken it for. A messed up life, sure. But I didn’t have a kid. I didn’t have anything. And what was I but the extension of their disordered existence? Born of them, I became them.

A year later, I wondered if they had been looking for a route that might lead back to purple clouds and if they, too, had gotten lost along the way. Maybe all they ever wanted was a way back to midnight in the blushing sky and a way to escape their versions of darkness. By the time I realized I wanted something more, a way back to my friend and myself, I was already in the clutches of addiction, and I couldn’t find the way—the way out of darkness or the way back to my friend.

The following four years were a blur of bad decisions. If leading by example had been the goal, my parents had certainly succeeded as I walked in their unsteady footsteps. Although, I doubt they had put much thought into raising me at all.

Instead of searching for my friend, I was swallowed by the search for my next score. Consumed by the search for the veins in my too-skinny arms. I was as miserable as I had ever been. But after four years, something changed.

“Are you okay?” A small voice asked.

I looked up from my slouched position, sitting in the filth next to a trashcan on the boardwalk, waiting for someone to throw away something edible. There stood a chunky little girl in a pastel-yellow shirt that read Shoot for the Stars and rode up over her belly button, grape cotton candy in hand and all over her face.

I stared at her, struck silent by memories of myself as a pudgy five-year-old and the wavering effects of the drugs. “What?” I managed.

“Are you okay?” She asked again.

No one had ever bothered to ask me that. Not as a child and certainly never as the adult I had become. “No, I’m not okay,” I said, glancing around for any sign of a parent and hiding the case that contained my shame. “Are you lost?” I asked, noting the streaks of dried tears running down her dirty face.

“Yes,” Shoot for the Stars said, “Mom said to find a place to wait for her if I ever get lost. Can I wait with you?”

“I’m not sure your mom would like that idea.”

“Why? Are you mean? Will you hurt me?”

“No.”

“Do you want to share my cotton candy? Cotton candy makes me feel better when I’m sad.”

The girl plopped beside me, crossing her legs, and I took a piece of the fluffy, purple candy and let it dissolve on my tongue. The sweet grape essence brought back the years spent lounging, dancing, and playing in the clouds. I closed my eyes against the tears that welled at the corners.

“Thank you,” I said. I’d never meant anything more in my life.

“Oh my God, there you are!” A frantic voice rang across the boardwalk.

I forced my eyes open. My vision blurred to anything further than a few feet in front of me before the world came into focus. A woman with a messy bun, crystals dangling from her neck, and a shirt that said Namaste darted toward the spot where the girl and I sat.

“I was so worried,” she said, lowering to her knees and tugging the girl onto her lap in a tight hug.

I stared at my ragged converse and picked at a scab on my knuckle, unsure if I should try to move my body away from their tender moment.

“Mom,” Shoot for the Stars said, “I did what you told me. I stayed in one spot.”

“I’m so proud of you!”

“And I shared my cotton candy.”

“Oh…” Namaste jolted away from me as if I had just materialized from thin air.

“Sorry,” I croaked out; I was used to the reactions. I knew how I looked, barely more than a scabby sack of skin wrapped over bones.

I expected Namaste to drag her child away in disgust. Instead, she said, “Can I get you anything?”

“Uh,” I chewed on my lip ring, so unused to kindness that it made me feel awkward. My itching skin wasn’t helping, either. I wanted to set myself aflame and float away on the ashes before having to answer.

“Dinner?” She offered.

I nodded; I wouldn’t turn away food.

“What’s your favorite?” Shoot for the Stars asked. “I like cheeseburgers or nachos. The kind with goopy cheese.”

My mouth watered. “Mmm, cheeseburger.” I couldn’t tell how coherently I spoke, but Namaste seemed to understand.

“Cheeseburgers it is. The good kind, with all the toppings you want,” she said and took a step away with her daughter. When I didn’t follow, she turned back and said, “You coming?”

I pulled myself to my unsteady feet, hand on the side of the trashcan for balance. “Why are you being so nice?” I asked as I followed.

She smiled at me, and all I could do was blink against the radiance of her sincerity as she said, “There’s always room for one more light in the dark. Wouldn’t the world be beautiful if kindness was the default? If someone was always there to give it when we needed it. So, my question is, why do so many choose cruelty?”

“Mostly, they ignore me.”

“I don’t think those two things are all that different,” she said.

I might have thought about that for a while if I wasn’t fighting so hard to keep myself together.

As we sat at a picnic table on the boardwalk, I held back my desire to devour the cheeseburger. I cut it into four pieces with shaky hands and took tiny bites as I watched Shoot for the Stars giggle about the absurd amount of ketchup on her plate.

When we finished, Namaste said, “I’m Thalia, by the way. This is my daughter Florence.”

I immediately forgot their names. I liked thinking of them as Namaste and Shoot for the Stars, anyway.

“I’m five, but I’ll be six in June,” Shoot for the Stars added.

They looked at me expectantly, and I realized they wanted to know my name. “Oh, I usually go by Nyx.”

I dipped my hand into my pocket and ran a finger down one side of the card I’d shoved there earlier. The one I’d held onto for three months and occasionally pulled out to stare at, only to again choose my addiction over the prospect of getting sober.

“Look, cotton candy clouds!” Shoot for the Stars yelled, jumping around and yanking on her mother’s arm.

I looked up to find the sky blooming with puffs of pink and purple clouds that bubbled up from the horizon. Not quite the magic of those midnight clouds I longed for, but it stole my breath, and I lost my balance. I crashed to the ground pulling my hand from my pocket along with the card.

“Take me here. Please, take me here.” I hadn’t looked up at the sky in months, maybe years. It was a sign; it had to be.

Namaste took the card from my hand and helped me to my feet. The distinct scent of raspberries crashed into me and threatened to plow me over again. I staggered and stared at Namaste.

“Raspberries,” I could hardly get the word out.

“I’m not who you think I am, but I’m looking for her too,” Namaste said. She waved the card around. “I’ll take you here right now. Get clean, and then come find me, and we’ll find her together.”

I nodded.

“Are you okay?” Shoot for the Stars asked again, and I realized the wetness on my face was my own tears.

“Florence, honey, Nyx will be okay.”

“Soon,” I added.

Namaste drove me to rehab in silence. Shoot for the Stars had nodded off in the back seat. I got out and closed the car door, and the passenger window rolled down—Namaste leaned over.

“Call me if you need someone to talk to,” she said, handing me a sticky note with her phone number.

“I’m not sure they allow phones,” I said.

“Then just think of us, and I’m sure I’ll catch your thoughts on the breeze.”

“Okay,” I said as if that was the most normal thing in the world.

Namaste and Shoot for the Stars drove off in a cloud of dust and disappeared into the distance.