The Gift of the Darkness by Valentina Giambanco

inside was lined in red silk. Alice ran her fingers over the smooth fabric: her mother’s rings were gone, her pendant earrings, the necklace with the S-shaped clasp, and the diamond butterfly.
    Alice did not know how much they were worth, but she knew they were gone, and her father had not turned on the lights. She stood there for a minute, then gently replaced the box where she had found it, went back to her bedroom, and picked up the baseball bat.
    She had never felt such clarity before—it was dazzling. The first blow hit the bookshelf; she swung hard, and it came off the wall. The desk was next. Alice worked her way methodically around her room until her arm ached too much to lift the bat; by then she had cut herself on the glass from her mirror, and she was out of breath. Her father would be home before dawn. She picked her way carefully back to her bed and lay on top of it, still gripping the bat. She was going to close her eyes for just a moment, she would rest for just a second, and when he got home, she would make him take her to whoever had her mother’s things now. She fell asleep with the streaks of dry tears on her cheeks.
    Her eyes snapped open, and the Mickey Mouse clock read 6:47 a.m. She looked around the room and shivered. Everything broken, everything torn. She slipped her bare feet into her sneakers and padded to the door, then opened it a little. She could hear her father’s deep breathing in his room.
    He lay on his front under the sheets, his clothes in a pile by the bed. Alice knelt by the shirt and the jeans as she went through his pockets. She found $12 in small bills and a switchblade knife with an ivory handle she had not seen before. She put them back.
    His breathing was slow and steady. She went back to the dresser and checked the jewelry box. For a moment, as her hand was reachingfor it, she allowed herself to hope. Nothing happened this time, no tears, no rage, no pain. In the cold light of day she knew enough about the world to know that what had been lost would stay lost, and that was all there was to it. She sat in the wicker chair and watched her father’s back rise and fall. She sat and watched him until every good memory of him had drained away; it didn’t take long.
    The tip of the handle of the switchblade knife stuck out of the jeans back pocket. Alice reached for it, and the blade came to life. She stood over her father. It seemed as if there was nothing at all between his back and the blade in her hand. She was empty, and the one thing that made any sense was that he should not draw another breath. Nothing else mattered much, not the brown paper on her schoolbooks or her solid grades. Let’s see the counselors get me out of this one , a thin, dark voice said inside her.
    Then, like a gunshot, loud, the dog in the yard next door barked, twice, and Alice saw the room and herself in it, every detail so sharp, it felt drawn on her skin.
    Her father would wake up late on a heavy August morning, the house empty and his daughter gone, the switchblade knife buried two inches deep into his bedside table.
    One week later, when the state troopers found a little girl hitchhiking north of Anacortes, they were surprised that her father didn’t seem to be in a rush to get her back home. In fact, he looked downright relieved when her grandfather took her off his hands. “She looked like a nice kid,” one trooper said to the other afterward, “but you never know.”
    Her grandparents watched her from the kitchen window as she sat for hours looking at the water and Vashon Island; they watched her on their quiet hikes up Mount Rainier.
    “Let the girl be,” her grandfather said. “The only thing that matters is that she’s finally safe, and she knows it.”
    Madison didn’t know whether she had adopted the city or the other way around; all she knew was that the dark woods around it had accepted her as their own. It didn’t bother the mountains and therivers that she had almost killed