Mezzanine

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The windshield wipers whipped back and forth, screeching as they fought off the storm. Lola leaned over the steering wheel and squinted through the streaks of water exploding like starbursts against the glass. She was the only one of us with a car, and even though the maroon hatchback was a hand-me-down that was probably older than she was, I was grateful we didn't have to walk.

She fiddled with the radio, but it only picked up static and whips of distorted voices and music. Most of the town got decent signal, but for some reason, this stretch on the edge near Ninth Street was nothing but disjointed thoughts pounding through the ethers.

A man whined about his pickup truck, followed by a guitar wailing over a thunder of drums. Finally, the noise cut to jazz broken up by someone muttering incoherently in a foreign language.

"I'm sorry the CD player's broken," Lola said.

"It's okay." I pressed the power button and shut the noise off. I wasn't in the mood for listening to anything right now anyway.

Lola chewed on her bottom lip, her lipstick leaving a small line of red on the front of her teeth from how hard she was biting down. In the darkness of the night, it looked like blood. Her eyes caught mine for a second before she shifted her gaze to the rearview mirror, looking at Carter in the backseat.

He leaned with his head against the window, staring out into the night as he thought about how fucked we were, how we were probably making the last mistakes of our lives, and how if we somehow made it out of this, he'd really needed to do his algebra homework.

"It's going to be okay, Carter," Lola said.

"You don't know that," he replied. "I still have no idea how to take a derivative."

"Don't worry, I'll teach you," I said. I laughed lowly, but it felt hollow and forced. Even Carter's humor wasn't enough to ease the nerves firing through my entire body.

The memory of what happened in the basement of that factory last night flashed through my mind on repeat—the woman screaming, the cloaked figures pacing around the fire like the hands on a clock, and finally the voice of that man as Lola and I fled for the door.

The car slowed to a stop as Lola pulled over to the side of the road. The dim yellow headlights shone through the rain, illuminating the Renson Factory in the distance. It loomed above the small houses like a fortress, its stacks reaching up to the lightning-streaked sky.

She parked further away than was necessary, but I couldn't blame her. The idea of stopping right in front of it set all of my nerves on edge. Even being this close, something felt off, like the atmosphere's pressure had increased. The heat blasting through the car's vents felt too hot, but at the same time, not warm enough.

Lola shut the engine off, and the headlights dimmed until they faded completely to black. My breath crystalized like frost against the back of my teeth.

"Let's do this," Carter broke the silence. He grabbed the backpack with our equipment from the floor next to him. As he pushed the door open, the rage of the storm amplified to a roar.

"Fuck, it's really picked up," I said as I got out of the car. I crossed my arms in front of myself, trying to keep warm as the rain soaked me. My not-at-all-waterproof black jacket was by no means cut out for any sort of heavy weather, but at least it was stylish, and I looked edgy as hell in it, so I could suffer through being cold. It was also the only jacket I owned, so it wasn't like I had another option anyway.

Lola got out and locked the car, her hair rushing around her face as the wind whipped it up into a tangle. She threw the hood on her sweatshirt up to cover it and nodded to Carter and me.