We Come out at Night

Aden and I stood at the kitchen counter glaring at each other. It had been a little over a month since we had found out Katie was pregnant, and my god, was she getting on our last nerve.

Within the last month we had also moved in and set up our new house. Mine and Zacky’s room along with Aden and Brian’s room were in the same hall as Katie and Johnny’s. We heard all the moaning and complaining that came from Katie throughout the night, and we sympathized for Johnny. We couldn’t imagine how bad she was going to be when she got huge.

Today Lucy and Lexi went out with the guys in the studio. Aden and I had wanted to go but they left before we even woke up. So here we were, stuck with tending to Katie’s every want or need.

She was calling for someone, anyone, but we were not volunteering. Aden squinted at me. The way we looked would probably make someone think we were in an old western movie. It was ridiculous, but neither one of us wanted to help her at the moment. She was driving us insane.

I was about to give in but I heard the door bell ring. My eyes lit up and I put on a smile, “Oops. I have a package to tend to.”

She rolled her eyes and flipped me off, “Fine, but YOUR ass is making her dinner if they’re not back by then.”

I skipped to the front door to get my package. Earlier in the week I had bought a punching bag and some boxing equipment because I had gotten angry with Katie for being so needy that I flipped out and she ended up crying. I felt terrible, so I resorted back to a stress reliever I used in high school, which was boxing.

I opened the door and saw a delivery man standing there with a huge box along with a couple of other boxes. I signed for them and he put them downstairs in the studio/practice area we had set up. I screwed a clip into the ceiling, and with great difficulty, lifted the bag onto it. I decided to try it out.

I ran up both flights of stairs and into my room. I pet Dribblez and Majesty on my way in before I reached the bed where I ripped open the box and laid everything. I picked up one of the boxing glove and turned it around over and over again in my hand, looking back on some old memories from high school. I was pulled out of my thoughts when my bedroom door flew open and smacked into the wall.

I turned around the sight before me frightened me a little. Aden almost looked like she was about to foam at the mouth. “I’m. Going. To kill her.”

I held my hands up and started walking towards her. “Whoa whoa whoa, what happened?”

She held up her hand and my hands went to my mouth, “SHE FUCKIN BIT ME! Who the fuck does that?!”

I grabbed her hand to inspect it. She bit her pretty good, didn’t draw any blood though. We heard footsteps coming down the hall, and they were coming fast.

“Aden! Aden where are you?” we heard Katie yelling. When she came in Aden and I starting doing our version of karate moves with our hands, trying to ward her off. She held out her hands and shook her head.

“No no no, Aden I am so sorry! I didn’t mean to bite you. You just have no idea how hungry I am!” she said pleadingly.

“HUNGRY? You eat like every 30 minutes!” she yelled back.

This went on for another 5 minutes and I shoved them out of my room. I was highly agitated and figured it would be best to try out the equipment I bought now.

I put on a pair of boy shorts and black sports bra, a Black Architecture Heart t-shirt, a pair of Adidas boxing shorts and Adidas boxing shoes. I grabbed my boxing gloves off of the bed and headed for the door and downstairs.

Aden was in the kitchen sipping on iced tea when I walked through. She looked at what I was wearing and playfully wiggled her eyebrows. I winked at her and hit my ass with one of the gloves. She laughed and I grabbed my iPhone off of the counter along with my headphones and headed downstairs.

I stood in front of the punching bag, eyeballing it hard. “Imma fuck you up.” I said, laughter following immediately at how ridiculous I was for threatening an inanimate object. I put my music on shuffle and Monster by Skillet came on. That song got me pumped no matter what. I tucked my phone into my waist band and started letting loose on the punching bag.

I boxed for a while. My music went through different songs by Disturbed, Avenged, Tool, some dubstep, and then back to Skillet. The song Lucy came on, and my mood immediately changed. I went from agitated, to enjoying myself, to straight depression. This was one of the songs that would bring me to my knees, which it did.

As the song continued, I slowly fell to me knees, and immediately started to cry. There was no build up to crying, no slowly tearing up, then the little sniffling; this was straight to the bawling level of depression. I couldn’t bring myself to change the song, instead I hugged and held on to the punching bag and cried my eyes out.

As the second verse ended, I felt arms around me. I looked up and saw Lucy and cried even harder. Yes her name had a lot to do with it. She laid me down on the floor and ripped the headphones out of my ears and looked me over frantically. I couldn’t breathe yet, I was still working on that. I saw Zacky run up on the other side of me and took my boxing gloves off, throwing them across the room. After that, Aden was sitting behind me pulling my head on to her lap. I leaned towards Zacky and gripped and pulled his sleeves so hard I probably could have ripped them, I just wanted him to hold me.

They all kept asking me what was wrong, and I still couldn’t answer. Instead, I grabbed my phone and gave it to Lucy, she looked at it sighed in relief. “Ugh, shit.”, she whispered to herself, “We heard you screaming from upstairs and because of the song?”

“What song?” Zacky asked.

“The song Lucy by Skillet. It breaks her down every time.” She said aiding him in rubbing my back, trying their best to calm me down. Aden tried to help too by playing with my hair.

It took a few minutes, but I finally calmed down. I sat up and took regular breaths, sucking up snot in the process. “Aden, let’s go get her some water and tissues or something.” Lucy said. Aden nodded and followed her up the stairs.

Zacky looked at me, still rubbing my back, “You okay now?” he asked.

“Mhm.” I said nodding.

“You know Brian, Lucy and I heard you from outside? You’re a loud crier.” He said chuckling, trying to lighten my mood.

I laughed in response as I pulled my legs in sitting Indian style, “I don’t normally cry like that. It’s extremely rare.”

“I would hope so; I don’t wanna see you like that again. So, please refrain from doing that ever again.” He said kneeling next to me.

“I’ll do my best.” I said grabbing his hand. He kissed the top of my head and helped me up leading me upstairs.

When we walked into the kitchen, Aden was sitting on a stool at the island counter with Brian, Matt and Lucy standing around her. They were watching something on her phone and cheering at it, letting out a “Holy Shit!” or “Oh DAMN!” every few seconds. I walked over to the other side of the counter and tried leaning over to see what they were watching. They all looked at me with smirks on their faces.

“I recorded you downstairs for a few minutes. You haven’t lost it at all. Still swinging like you did in high school.” Aden said smiling.

I watched a few seconds and smiled, going upstairs to shower. I was sweaty and couldn’t stand it. I grabbed my phone and instead of making the same mistake and putting it on shuffle, I put on a playlist that didn’t have Lucy on it. The first song that came on was Dear God by our boys. After tugging the brush through my hair really quick, I stepped in.

When I got out, I put on a Crash and Burn v-neck t-shirt, a pair of blue and white checkered pajama pants and blue and white striped socks. I went downstairs and saw everyone sitting at the table getting ready to dig into some Chinese food. I took my seat next to Zacky and took a sip of Mountain Dew as he kissed my cheek. I smiled at him before digging into the food with everyone else.

While we ate, we decided it was a movie night. We settled on watching one of Zacky’s favorites, House of 1000 Corpses. That being decided, after everything was cleaned up, everyone else got changed into their pajamas and met up in the den.

The animals joined us as well. We were all sprawled out and cuddled up on this huge sectional couch with multiple ottomans. Majesty, Dribblez, and Lolly were lying by Zacky, Brian, Aden and my feet. Icky lay in between mine and Zacky’s laps while Pinkly sat on Brian’s lap. Pudding was curled up by Lexi and Jimmy’s heads, Nightmare was on Lucy’s lap while Bella lay at Matt’s feet. And lastly, Katie and Johnny were curled up on the end with Cindy at their feet.

I fell asleep at some point. I woke up to the music from the credits and felt a pair of arms go around me. I opened my eyes and saw Zacky situating me so he could carry me. I tapped his arm and he let me get up. He walked me to the bedroom and we laid down in the bed, just as Majesty and Dribblez lay down on theirs.

I felt Zacky kiss my cheek, “I’m going to get a drink, I’ll be back.” I groggily nodded, but before he even walked out the door, I fell asleep.

Zacky’s POV

I was still shaken up from the site I saw before, and I wanted to stay up as long as I could to make sure Joanna was going to be okay. To make sure I was going to stay awake, I decided to get some caffeine in my system.

I walked into the kitchen and saw Lucy standing at the counter sticking a straw in a juice box. She put the straw to her lips and looked at me. Without moving the straw away from her mouth she began to speak,
“Don’t tell them. I’ll behave, I promise.”

I chuckled, “Why would anyone care if you had juice?”

“I go psycho on this shit.” She replied drinking more of it.

I shook my head and laughed while I set up the coffee pot and turned it on.

“Why are you making coffee?” she asked me.

“Eh, I just wanna stay up and make sure Joanna is going to be okay. That whole thing,” I said waving my hands around, “it freaked me out.”

I saw her expression change as she began to look around the room. “You alright?” I asked.

“Uhm. Yeah I’m okay.” She said. “It’s just, I haven’t seen her get that upset in such a long time. I don’t know why she even has that song on her phone. She knows it upsets her and brings shit back to her mind.”
I looked at her for a second, “Bring shit back?”

She looked at the floor and to her juice box, then to me. “I don’t wanna talk about it in here. Wanna go out on the deck?”

“Yeah, just let me grab my cigarettes and a sweatshirt.” I said gathering those items. She grabbed a hoodie and we headed out back.

We sat down at the table and I lit one of the candles that were out there so there was some form of light.
We sat there for a minute or two and I took a few drags off of a cigarette. Finally she began to speak.

“Okay, I know I’m not the one to tell you this but, she gets extremely touchy on the subject and I hate seeing her upset about it.” She paused for a moment, “Have you ever listened to the song?” she asked me. I shook my head. “Well I’ll play it for you.” She said before pulling out her phone and playing it for me.

It was quite a beautiful song. It was very sad though, I didn’t know what specific reason Joanna had to be upset by this song but reason or no reason, the song could upset you. “That’s a beautiful song.” I told her.

“It is. The story behind the song though is a true story about a young couple who find themselves expecting a child. They aren't ready to be parents; so, they decide to have an abortion. Some months later, after dealing with depression and sadness, they decide to seek a counselor. The counselor then tells them that instead of treating the abortion as some sort of operation that they need to treat the abortion as a death in the family and grieve as such. After the counselor gave them that advice, the couples bought a casket, a headstone, and a cemetery plot and held a funeral, which they do for the baby. And then there is the name of the song, which is what they decided to name the baby, Lucy, who they hope to someday meet in heaven.”

I sat there for a moment, taking it all in and processing it. The lyrics to the song fit the meaning very well. And the story was in fact a very devastating one. But still, I was wondering how this was at all related to Joanna. “That is a sad story,” I said flicking my cigarette, “but what does that have to do with Joanna?”

She sighed, “Well, Joanna’s story isn’t exactly the same as said couple. When Joanna was 17, she got pregnant.” I felt my breath catch and she looked over at me. She nodded before she continued, “she told the asshole she was dating, and at the time, none of us had not one negative thought about him. He was an amazing guy, always there for her when she needed someone. Always checked on her when she was sick. He was just an all around good guy, even to us. But then she got pregnant.

“I was there when she took the test. She was scared shitless, hell, I was scared for her. We were just about to graduate in a few months and she had all these plans for college and plans with the band. But when she saw that positive sign on that test, she had the opposite reaction I was expecting. Instead of breaking down and crying thinking her life was over and whatnot, her eyes lit up and she smiled. She seemed rather excited. So, she texted Trent, yes that’s the assholes name, and said that she wanted to hang out tomorrow. Of course he said yes and they made plans to meet at the skate park where we all used to hang out.

“When we left out last period class with Aden, we each gave her a hug and two thumbs up before she headed over. She said after they talked she would come over since the skate park and the school were right behind my house. Well, about an hour later, Aden and I were messing around on our laptops when we heard her banging on the door. When I opened it, Joanna was standing there shaking, tears streaming down her face. A few seconds later, she fell to her knees in my doorway. Aden and I helped her up and into my bedroom. She sat down on the bed and curled up into a ball and cried.”

I felt my eyes wide, my jaw was slack. This was a lot to take in, but she grabbed my arm and took a good look at me, “You want me to stop?” I shook my head, I felt like this was important for me to know.

She continued on, “I’ve never seen her like that. What you saw today, wasn’t even a fraction of what Aden and I saw that day. She cried herself to sleep. I immediately called Caleb and Ray. I didn’t tell them why but I told them there was an emergency and we needed them there right then and there. It took them about ten minutes to get there. Aden and I told them that she was pregnant, and at first they thought that’s why she was upset. But I told them that she was rather excited about it, and they only wanted her to be happy, so they accepted it. However, we never really got the reason as to why she was upset but it was pretty clear that Trent fucked her over and left her. This is exactly what we found out when she woke up. Caleb held her the whole time, as you can see, they are extremely close, they always have been. Caleb went ape-shit. It took all of us to try to keep him at my house and not rip Trent’s throat out, despite all our efforts, we failed.

“He didn’t exactly rip his throat out, but we heard him screaming from a block away. Apparently he didn’t even lay a hand on him. But he told him that when the baby was born that he was not going to see it unless Joanna said it was okay. Knowing Joanna, she would have let it happen. But anyway, time passed and Joanna was growing happier and happier each day. I think it was the baby that kept her happy more than anything in the world. Somehow, I’m still not sure how, but to this day her parents don’t know. She kept it a secret for some unknown reason.

“When she started to show, she was the happiest person in the world. When people say pregnant women glow, Joanna looked like a god damn glow stick compared to other pregnant women. When the time came for her to find out the sex of the baby, she begged for Caleb to go, but he had to work and couldn’t, so she asked for me to go with her, which I happily accepted.

“That day she found out she was having a little girl, she had a name for her and everything. She was going to name her Haylee Marie. She was so ready for her little girl to join us in the world. She signed up for school at a technical school by us, taking a few classes and she was doing pretty well. She wanted to be a pharmacist.” She smiled to herself thinking about one of her best friends life plan. The smile quickly faded, “but a few weeks later, she was starting to have some abdominal pain. We took her to the hospital to get checked out, Caleb posed as her father and somehow pulled it off since she wasn’t 18 yet. We found out the baby wasn’t getting enough oxygen or nutrients. So they gave her some fluids in IV’s and some other medicines, and they told her that everything would be alright. She stayed overnight for observations and Caleb, Aden and I never left. We slept in that waiting room.

“We were woken up about 5 something in the morning. The doctor had news for us. We were expecting something good, but what we found out was far from it. The baby didn’t make it. They told us that the common cause for what happened was stress. We talked in the waiting room, trying to figure out what could have possibly stressed her out, she never really complained about anything. She was doing well in her classes, her family wasn’t having issues, and there wasn’t any drama in our circle of friends, so she must have been hiding something. We found out it was her worrying about the baby growing up without a father. She blamed herself for the baby’s death. Today she probably still does.”

We sat at the table for a long while. I looked at my phone and it was a little after two. “How could she blame herself for that? Stress comes from so many things, things we don’t even notice.” I said.

“I know but, she blames herself. My guess is her attitude towards Katie has something to do with that too. She probably envy’s her for her pregnancy. She wants to be nasty about it but at the same time she helps Katie because she wants her to have a good, smooth, healthy pregnancy. It’s probably the main reason she bought that punching bag and equipment.” She replied.

We sat outside and talked for a while more before heading back in. I gave her a hug good night and turned off the coffee pot and grimaced at all the coffee that was being wasted before heading up to bed.

When I walked in the bedroom, Majesty lifted her head to see who was coming in, when she saw it was me, she went back to sleep. I crawled into bed and wrapped my arms around Joanna, she instinctively snuggled closer to me. I kissed her hair and tried my best to sleep. All I did though was toss and turn falling in and out of a restless sleep.