Afraid of the Dark

When I had slid the last book into place on the antique bookshelf I had bought for three dollars at a flea market the day before, I sat down in the middle of the living room floor with the box and a bottle of champagne and looked around my new home. After three weeks of planning, four days worth of plane rides, and two weeks of unpacking, I was finally here: in a quaint little house in Brooklyn, ready to start my new career in freelance writing.

As much as I loved New York, I had never thought I would be able to afford to live here. My article on Fall Out Boy was a flop, but the Coldplay article was the most successful full-length piece the magazine had ever seen. The magazine gave me a huge bonus as a reward, and a few days later I was offered a huge promotion. I declined the position.

And the next day I quit.

My leaving the magazine came as a shock to everyone but me, and when I came back to my office one last time to retrieve my things, the whispers followed me. Some people thought the Coldplay article wasn’t my work, and I had quit out of guilt, or because I was afraid I would be found out; some said I knew the article was just a stroke of luck and I wanted to quit while I was ahead; some said the pressure was too much for me. But no one could really understand why I wanted to quit when I had just achieved more success than I had ever thought possible. No one knew the truth.

The truth was that I couldn’t get Pete’s words out of my head. I printed the letter out and hid it away in a drawer in my old apartment, but I couldn’t hide from the truth. I knew deep down that as long as I stayed at the magazine, I could never face myself again. Maybe no one but Pete and I knew what I had done, and maybe Pete was willing to forgive me – but I would never forgive myself.

And if I had learned anything from him, it’s that the only forgiveness and acceptance and respect and love you really need in life comes from yourself. So I did what I had to do to earn that love: I changed my life.

I quit my job and put my apartment up for sale. I flew out to New York to look at houses and fell in love with the first one I toured. Two weeks later, here I was.

When I went to the office to pick up my last paycheck the day before I left town for good, my old secretary stopped me just before I slipped out the back way. She said a package had come for me the day before, which was strange because they had stopped all my work mail since my resignation, and I had never received a package at work before. My stomach churned and I wondered if my bitter editor was trying to get back at me and there was a flaming turd inside the box or something – but then I saw the writing on top and I knew instantly who it was from.

Now I sat in the middle of the floor and poured myself a glass of champagne to celebrate my new home as I stared down at the package. It was just a plain brown cardboard box with a note scrawled on lined yellow paper taped haphazardly on top. To help light your way in the dark, it said. And then down at the bottom, in smaller writing: Sarah, don’t be afraid. You’re gonna be just fine.

I put the champagne aside and carefully removed the note, then used a pocket knife to cut the box open. And when I opened the box, all I could do was stare.

Inside were countless magazines ripped to shreds and wadded up together. And it wasn’t just any magazine – it was my old magazine. As I reached in to pull out a torn piece of paper, I saw a sliver of Patrick’s face and I knew that this wasn’t just any issue, either – it was the Fall Out Boy issue. Pete had bought fifteen or twenty copies of the magazine, ripped them all up, and mailed them to me in a box.

What was the meaning of this? Was he angry? Was this some kind of threat? But the letter he had sent me through the magazine hadn’t seemed bitter at all, and neither had the note attached to the package. If anything, his notes were reassuring. It didn’t make any sense.

Disappointed and hurt, I pushed the box away with so much force that it slid all the way into a dark corner of the room. My eyes burned and I pressed my clenched fists against my face, as I could hold in the tears and crush all these awful feelings somehow. But as I started to cry, I looked up at the box sitting all alone in the corner, I realized something: it had taken quite a lot of strength to push the box so far away…because it was heavy. Too heavy to be full of just a bunch of ripped up magazines.

The tears stopped as curiosity took over and I crawled on my hands and knees across the floor, moving slowly and quietly, as if the box were a dangerous creature I had to be wary of. When I finally reached the box I plunged my hand inside, and sure enough it encountered something solid.

I pushed the magazines aside and laughed out loud at my own stupidity. Pete hadn’t sent me a box full of ripped up magazines – he had just used the magazines to buffer the real present. When I pushed all that useless paper aside, what I saw took my breath away.

It was a beautiful black porcelain globe with tiny star-shaped holes cut out of the sides. When I pulled it out of the box, a solid wooden stand and a cord with a plug followed. I plugged it into the wall and trusted Pete one last time as I turned all the lights off.

And when I flipped the switch on the bottom of the globe, all the constellations were projected across the inside of my new home. The globe rotated slowly and the stars moved all around me, and all I could do was stare as tears ran down my face again. It was the most beautiful nightlight I had ever owned.



It was early July and New York City was hot and smoggy as I caught a cab to LaGuardia Airport. I was exhausted, but I was on my way to my first freelance job, and I was too excited to drink the coffee I had picked up.

I wasn’t sleeping well lately. I hadn’t been since the whole Fall Out Boy debacle, but things were getting so much better lately – what with my new house, a new job that gave me more freedom to be myself, and the sense of being at peace with everything that had happened between me and Pete growing every day – that I couldn’t understand why I still couldn’t cure the insomnia.

Maybe it was because I was so alone here. I didn’t ache for company and I didn’t feel lonely; I felt more like an adventurer on an expedition, the hero who has to go it alone in the end. I accepted my fate willingly. I was brave. I wouldn’t be afraid anymore.

And it wouldn’t always be like this. I was just in a new city full of new strangers. I had cut all ties back home and out in L.A., and I didn’t know anyone here yet, but I would make new friends soon.

Still, it was hard living alone, waking up alone every day and going to sleep alone every night. It was hard, having no one to tell about my day, to discuss politics or the news with, to go see a movie with from time to time. I was utterly alone and it stung.

But at least I still had my words. I still had my memories and the future that lay before me. And I knew things would get better.

I should have known that Pete would be the one to give me the answer again, one last time.

I saw him in the airport that day. We were walking opposite directions. I was alone, just one girl in a sea of faceless travelers, in a brand new dress and heels, dragging my one suitcase behind me. He was with Ashlee, holding Bronx in one arm and a suitcase in the other while a swarm of bodyguards and paparazzi surrounded them on all sides.

I don’t know how he saw me, because like I said, there was nothing to set me apart from the crowd. But he did. Through the angry bodyguards and the camera flashes and the yelling of the paparazzi, he picked me out and we locked eyes for a moment. And even though our lives were completely different, even though we would probably never see each other again, in that moment I knew exactly how he felt. And I knew that I would never love another person the same way. And I hurt for him, and for me.

And I don’t know what I was thinking. It was so stupid, but I just couldn’t stop myself. I stopped and took a step towards him.

“Pete…”

“No pictures, no autographs,” said one of the bodyguards, a huge black guy with tattoos winding around his neck. He thought I was a fan. He had no idea. I almost laughed in his face, but I was too shocked and heartbroken to make a sound.
And he and the rest of the entourage just kept moving, with Pete and Ashlee and Bronx in the center of the ring. They never even missed a step. Ashlee just kept staring straight ahead; she hadn’t noticed a thing.

But Pete didn’t look away until he had to, and even from a distance, with all those people between us, I could see the pain and the apology in his eyes.

I stood there and watched them go. I saw the way Pete pulled Bronx closer, pressing his face against his little blonde curls, and I knew just as well as he did that he had made the right choice. No, he had made the only choice he could. He was right: everything would be okay, in time.

And without saying a word, Pete had given me the answer. All at once I knew without a doubt what I had to do to make things right. As I ran down the airport corridor in the opposite direction, towards the payphone by the bathroom, they called my flight over the intercom. I was going to miss my plane but I didn’t care. This was more important.

The payphone receiver was cold and greasy and the metal buttons were rusted and worn, but none of that mattered as I dialed the familiar number. After all these years, I still knew it by heart. My heart pounded in my chest as I listened to the phone ring, and when I heard that familiar voice, I got so choked up I could hardly speak.

“Hello?”

“…Mom?” The tears were hot on my face and some feeling, a feeling so old it felt brand new again, bloomed deep inside of me. “It’s me…Sarah.”



“I’m falling apart at the seams,
pitching myself for leads in other people’s dreams, now
buzz…buzz…buzz,
Doc, there’s a hole where something was,
Doc, there’s a hole where something was…”

Pete stood at the edge of the stage staring out into the darkness, where a million faces stared back at him, and he closed his eyes and imagined that this voice – Patrick’s voice, reverberating through the sold-out arena – came from inside of him. They were his words, after all, and he felt the music vibrating somewhere in his ribcage. This night was a part of him and there was no better feeling.

When he opened his eyes again everything was dark still, and Patrick kept singing. He was on the piano now, but no one was watching him. Everyone was watching Pete, wondering what he was doing. Why he was just standing there, staring. Why there were tears running down his face.

He couldn’t explain it if he had to. He figured it had something to do with all the lighters everyone was waving back and forth through the dark, like tiny beacons of hope. Like the stars in the sky.

He slipped a hand into his pocket and felt the smooth plastic of the lighter there. The lighter she had left behind that last day. His touchstone. In times like these, it was the only thing that could comfort him.

He wiped his eyes and looked out at the crowd and he knew there was no reason to cry. He looked out at all those faces and imagined that one of them was hers, and it made him smile. He pulled the lighter out of his pocket, held it up and lit it, and all the faces smiled back at him because he was a part of them.

And in that moment he knew it would be okay. He and Sarah weren’t together; hell, he probably would never see her again. He had known that from the start. But that didn’t matter. Their story was no fairytale, but they didn’t really need a happily-ever-after anyway. They had their memories and they had the stars above them, and that would be enough.

The important thing was that she changed him and he loved her. That was something no one could take from them. And who knew? Maybe they would be together someday. Until then, he had her lighter and she had his nightlight, and they would keep their monsters at bay and find their way through the dark – together in spirit, if nothing else.

All he had to do was look out into the crowd and see three thousand people waving lighters in the dark to know that she was with him. All she had to do was look up at the stars in the sky. Even if they weren’t together, they had found each other, and from then on they would never be alone.