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Her face is dry, she’s all cried out, the song she hums is an upbeat little tune unrecognisable to her own ears until it’s apparent it’s the Twin Peaks school song. She punches the air as she kicks the dirt, uncoordinated cheerleading, free and easy. She has something that nobody else has. Even those that were there, the connection, her universe, nobody has that but her.
For the moment she understands it. Her foot catches and she stumbles just a little, enough to stop skipping. Nobody saw it, she’s not close enough to the Double R just yet.
Laura looks down to the scuff on her black velvet shoe, just a pair of little slip-ons that she borrowed from someone. It could have been Maddy, or Audrey, and now whoever it was is going to be pissed at her for one little mark on the right toe. The wrong one. As if it makes a difference.
Hate comes with the sick feeling that rises in her, she desperately crouches to try and scrub the mark away with her thumb. A striation on the velvet, a peeled square as if a knife has been taken to it. Was it the gravel? An eager hand? Had she been wearing these shoes that same day?
She can feel the stony ground beneath her wool skirt as she heavily sits, stretching her legs out, pushing two furrows into the dirt with her heels. It doesn’t matter at all who they belonged to if she’s had them this long. And they would only let her have them, all the same.
Laura, you’re so sweet, you keep them. Call it a birthday gift.
If only they knew where she’d been on that night. She starts to laugh, kicks the shoes off and resumes her walk, sharp rocks and dry grass cutting into her flesh, it just gets funnier and funnier.
Flashes of pain aren’t enough to distract as her thoughts become darker. If only they’d known where she was that night, why didn’t they know and follow her? Would they have been angry with her? They definitely wouldn’t have understood, they never understand. They just see her as they want to see her, and if she needs to be that for them, she will be. Silly kids.
The diner and this side of the world no longer occupy her mind, she hurries right past the back of the building, its shadows, and into the woods.
Lost time leads her to a chair in a warm, cosy room. Streaming eyes land on the boarded up fireplace, that’s the only thing she needs to allow relief to wash over her. Belatedly, she realises there’s a cup of warm green tea in her hands, resting on her lap. Some of it has spilled onto her woolen skirt. Lifting the mug to her face, it smells deeply herbal but she’s not sure of any specifics, sets it down without a sip. Her legs are two dead weights. The shoes she thought she’d left behind have been placed near the hearth.
Margaret steps into view with the log in her arms, carrying a plate of leaf-shaped gingerbread cookies that are set on the sidetable. The room is enclosing, even if she closes her eyes and lets them roll up in her head, she imagines she can hear the voices of every tree that make up the walls of the cabin, every stick of furniture ringing with painful screams. She makes believe that she can hear all of these things, except for the log in Margaret’s arms. Laura would never be so lucky as to hear that.
There’s a creak from the armchair as Margaret sits across from Laura, she doesn’t say anything until their eyes meet, and even then Laura beats her to it.
‘I remember this place. It wasn’t so long ago. The stories you told, I wish I could remember those.’ Blinking, she sniffles and wipes her face with her sleeve.
There’s a noticeable pause before Margaret speaks, a thought being processed, ‘we spoke of owls, then. An owl the size of a man with staring eyes.’ She lifts a hand from cradling the log to touch the back of her knee with three fingers, Laura recalls the motion, as specific as it is. A tattoo, it had looked like, three points, three triangles. Three peaks.
She nods as if she has to urge Margaret to continue, and Margaret mirrors her, affirming, ‘that was then. When the mind is troubled, we could consider it separate and outside of the body. The self, wrapped in memories, tries to understand itself, and everything is cancelled out. If only we could all disappear that way. What’s on that other side, the side of understanding? Does kindness live there? Is that our conscience?’
The rate of questioning has Laura becoming clearer by the moment. ‘Sometimes, sometimes I feel like I know myself better than anybody.’
‘There’s nobody you could know better than yourself. Even in love, the only person you wake up with every day is yourself. If minutes matter, then those minutes do.’
‘--So, what doesn’t matter?’
Margaret draws her hand over the warped grain of the log, petting it, letting it speak through her, ‘in the matter of mind over matter, matter in its eternal state exists whether we do or not. The mind in comparison seems so fragile, and human life on this tiny planet therefore irrelevant in the grand scheme. It would be, if it was all attached in that simple framework. A grand scheme must be truly grand. Anything we would apply to awe, even that small word, is not enough. The mind again tries to understand itself and its place. This constant searching, self-searching, could be a struggle if the truth is avoided. Truth can be a source of fear. Awe causes fear and fear causes awe. Do not deny that everything is connected and you’ll see reality’s true face.’
Laura shifts in her seat, resisting those words with her own logic, ‘reality-- it’s like an itch I can’t scratch.’
‘Close your eyes.’
A warm and urgent grip of her hand. Gingerbread leads to a smoky smell, as if a fire has just died down somewhere close by. The hand in Laura’s leads her further on, the trees around them more familiar than the person holding on to her. The whispering, wordless voice of the wind rushing through the leaves more reassuring than the darkly suited man who won’t look at her.
Her eyes bore into the back of his head, and then he’s disappeared.
All that is left is Laura in the moonlight, hand outstretched. No fear in her mind.
She could turn around and head back the way they must have travelled, but she wants to find the end of this non-place. It must be somewhere.
The forest gets closer, the trees start to drag their fingerlike branches against her face and she only moves them aside gently, no harm caused. The moon is her guiding light, filling her eyes as two pools. It could hold her, this forest, keep her forever in safety.
Her thoughts should turn to owls, and they would if it felt like there were eyes on her. She feels the same freedom she had felt earlier, in the waking world, more defined. She would never stumble in here even if she walked endlessly.
When she wakes, as she had fallen seemingly into a dream, Laura immediately reaches for a gingerbread cookie. The time she’d spent in that other place, so real, really real, had emptied her. Margaret hasn’t left her seat.
‘Perhaps the knowledge of an ending isn’t to cause us distress,’ her eyes drift over the log, ‘to acknowledge an ending is to look for the simplest answer of all. We could say it stops, but the truth is that life goes on, transformed energy.’
Laura hears her speak her name and with great reverence, Margaret sets the log aside, reaching for Laura’s hands, who kneels out of the chair she’s in, bridging the short distance between them.
Behind her glasses her eyes are like two laser beams fixed on a point somewhere beyond Laura.
‘No matter what, there will be some essence of our selves in this universe, whatever form it takes, even in a billion years. Even when the sun dies and there’s nothing but endless darkness. In endless darkness, we can still reach for each other, the self that remains, and in that find the existence of love. Love can be like light, but love cannot be touched or extinguished. Perhaps that is the energy of life.’
Laura feels the tears fresh on her cheeks, running into the corners of her smile.