by Amy Reed
New details suddenly seem more visible than before—long, straight dark hair, skinny jeans, a tank top with a logo just barely out of focus that looks shockingly similar to my high school’s. And the face—it’s so tiny I can’t be sure, but the proportions are exact. The figure in the photo is Camille.
“What the fuck?” I say out loud.
I look at the picture again. The figure is still there. I don’t know if I am imagining the smirk on the gray, smudged face, but it seems to be taunting me, laughing at my fear. Camille never smirked in real life, but there she is, in two dimensions and less than a centimeter tall, daring me to come find her.
I turn to the page with the map of the park. Just a short hike from here to the top of the quarry. I am aware of a small voice inside shouting for attention, wanting to talk some sense into me, but that voice is distant and out of focus. The only voice I hear clearly is the one that says I have no choice—I must see what’s at the top of that ridge. I must find Camille.
I shove the brochure in my pocket and get up. As I trudge through the mud to find the trailhead, the leaves shiver above and around me, filling my ears with a glassy hum. I just keep walking, barely seeing anything except what’s right in front of me, as if everything else is out of focus, as if the only thing that’s real is the path that will take me to the top of the quarry.
The trail gets steep and I feel my legs burn from disuse. A couple of weeks ago, I could have probably run up this hill without breaking a sweat, but now my body feels suddenly old and weighed down. My legs are heavy and slow. The sky rips open and the rain starts again, even heavier than before. I am wading through a lake, an ocean. Lightning flashes and the whole sky is on fire for a split second. My ears pop with the electricity.
I am drenched and panting when I reach the top. I didn’t bother to look anywhere but in front of me on the way up, so I only now notice the dramatic view. I lean against the wooden fence and look down. My knees wobble with vertigo as I scan the sharp shelves cut into the cliff, the lonely stranded trees that took root in the eroded piles of rubble, the pool of collected rainwater at the bottom, all made eerily more sinister by the gray blanket of rain dancing in twisted formations, pushed this way and that by the wind. I step back and close my eyes, put my hand on the fence to steady myself, take a few deep breaths to regain my bearings. The voice I ignored earlier is suddenly crystal clear:
What are you doing here? What do you hope to find?
I hear movement.
I hear spongy footsteps in wet leaves.
I feel the breath of air as something passes by me.
I open my eyes and there is nothing.
“Camille?” I call out. The wind blows as if in response, and every bone in my body shudders with the certainty that she is here. The rain dances in the open sky in front of me; a gust of wind sends it swirling into a circle, a semblance of a face, and then it is gone. The sky rumbles and darkens and gets closer to night.
I hear the leaves again and feel the air shift around me. I look down at the ground and am paralyzed by what I see.
Indentations. Foot shaped. Coming toward me.
I can’t move. I can’t scream. I close my eyes again, squeeze them tight. If I shut the world out hard enough, maybe it will go away. Maybe it won’t scare me.
A breeze inside my ear whispers, “Kinsey, Kinsey.” A gust of wind blows the leaves against my bare legs and arms, and they feel like wet fingers scratching their way across my skin.
When I open my eyes, the footsteps are gone.
The leaves flutter in slow motion down into the quarry like sad confetti, like the afterthought of a party no one came to but me.
A few last leaves follow the others, but these ones take their time, swirling in dizzy circles around my ankles before taking the leap, like they’re pulling on my leg, begging me to come play with them. I look out across the quarry, this giant man-made scar, and am impressed by how completely it’s been reclaimed by the trees and grasses and pooled water, how it looks almost natural now, as if it is meant to be here. There must be some meaning in this, and I feel so close to figuring it out, something about how something wrong can turn into a right, something bad can be really good.
I am so close to the truth now, just on the edge. I have been brought here to find it.
There is a reason the leaves were blowing around me. There is a reason this fence is so easy to climb over. There is a reason I am standing here now, on this thin lip of solid ground, looking hundreds of feet down, no barrier between me and nothingness.
Maybe this is what I’ve been looking for all along. Maybe home is at the bottom. Maybe that is where I’ll find Camille, the real Camille of my memories, not this cruel one who’s been following me. Maybe home is where I can be with her again, forever.
“Yes,” Camille says. “You are supposed to be with me.”
“You’re the lucky one,” I say. “You were always the lucky one.”
“Come with me,” she says. “Let go. You’ve been working so hard your whole life. Aren’t you tired?”
“I’m so tired.” I feel my eyelids droop. My legs are weak. The wind blows raindrops against my calves, pushing me gently forward.
“Take a break. You deserve a break.”
“I deserve a break.” The rocks under my toes crumble and fall slowly away.
“You can stop now. You can rest.”
I could fall asleep right here, standing up. I can barely keep my eyes open. The wind is so strong now. I sway with it.
“Come with me,” Camille says, her voice so clear up here, away from the noise of the world. “There’s nothing left for you here. We can be together forever, like we always planned.”
I close my eyes, feel the wind nudge me toward the edge.
“I miss you,” I say.
“Come with me.”
The wind gusts.
Thunder shakes the sky and earth.
Rocks crumble and I am airborne.
I am whisked away by strong arms. The ground is gone.
I have been rescued from this pain by somebody who loves me.
But I am not falling.
“Dammit, Kinsey! What the fuck are you doing?”
The world comes screeching back into focus, all sharp lines and hard edges, a sharp pain on my shin from knocking into the fence, arms tight around me, the smell of poison sweat.
“Kinsey, say something.” Hunter’s sour breath, frantic.
“Oh” is all I can manage.
“I was screaming at you. You acted like you didn’t even hear me.”
His arms are still around me, rescuing me again. We are still so close to the edge.
I blink my eyes as I look around. None of this looks familiar. I am groggy, disoriented, like I was just woken up in the middle of a dream. What is this place? How did I get here?
“What were you doing? Why were you on the other side of the fence?”
I say nothing. I am shaking now, uncontrollably, but I am not cold. It comes from somewhere deep down.
“Kinsey,” he says, this time more gently. Our eyes lock and I am steady. “Were you trying to get yourself killed?”
I look away. I can’t look him in the eye. I don’t know the answer to his question. I don’t want to know the answer.
“Oh fuck.” He grabs my arm. He squeezes too tight. He pulls me to start walking. “No. No way.”
“Ouch,” I say. My voice tastes strange in my mouth. “You’re hurting me.”
He stops and looks me in the eye. “Fuck you, Kinsey. You cannot kill yourself on my watch.” He turns and keeps walking down the hill.
“I wasn’t,” I cry after him. “It wasn’t me.”
“I can’t believe this shit.”
“I have nightmares,” I blurt out. I don’t know what I am trying to say. I don’t know how
much I want to tell him.
“Nightmares? Like, what, you were sleepwalking?”
“No. Nightmares. About Camille.”
“What do nightmares about Camille have to do with throwing yourself off a cliff?”
“I wasn’t. That’s not why I came up here. I was . . . looking for something.”
“What could you possibly have been looking for at the edge of a cliff?”
“I don’t know.” I know that’s not the answer he wants to hear, but it’s the only honest one I can think of.
“Why did you go over the fence?”
“I don’t know.”
We’re both quiet for a few moments, the only sound our footsteps muted on decaying leaves, the low roar of the rain. Somewhere beyond the rain, the sun is setting. The sky is almost black. Hunter turns on his flashlight.
“What a fucking pair we are,” he says with a hiss of disgust.
“I’m sorry” is the only thing I can think to say.
Hunter turns around so quickly I bump into him. “At least I don’t try to blame my shit on Camille,” he shouts. “At least I’m honest about how fucked-up I am. I don’t pretend I’m perfect. I don’t try to act like I always know everything.”
“But I can’t stop thinking about her,” I say. It’s an explanation for nothing. He looks at me like he doesn’t even know me, like I’m some crazy stranger he found in the woods. But I keep talking. I need him to understand. “No matter how hard I try, how hard I try to block her out, she keeps coming back.”
“Maybe that’s your problem,” he says. “Maybe you’re not supposed to block her out. Maybe you’re not supposed to stop thinking about her. You can’t control your feelings like that.”
We stand in the drenched, black forest, two crazy people with a death wish staring each other down. I know there is some truth here, something important that’s been revealed, but we are both too blind to see it.
“Let’s get out of here,” Hunter says as he turns away. “Let’s get out of this fucking state.”
“But you’re sick,” I say.
“Look who’s talking.”
The rain lets up to a drizzle as we pack up the car in silence, everything wet and musty, staying as far away from each other as possible. I try not to think about how just a few days ago we were in Chicago with Eli, Hunter was sober, I was happy, even relaxed, and everything seemed so full of promise. Now we’re both miserable and crazy and on our way to a city I don’t even know I want to go to anymore.
I get in the driver’s side, where just last night Hunter sat with poison racing through his veins and slowly killing him. He gets in next to me, slams the door, pulls his phone out of the glove compartment, plugs it into the charger, and puts his earbuds in. He has made it clear that he doesn’t want to talk to me.
As I pull onto the freeway, Hunter’s phone buzzes back to life. Just before he presses play, he says, “We’re even now.”
THIRTEEN
Nebraska is the worst place in the world. It is silent and flat and desolate. It is heartless and lonely. It is miles of identical nothing. Hunter and I do not speak unless absolutely necessary. The car is cold with air-conditioning and anger.
I drive into the night while Hunter sleeps. I don’t wake him, even when I’m nodding off from exhaustion, even when it’s clear I should no longer be driving. It’s not safe. I’m a hazard. But it’s better than the alternative. It’s better than not moving.
Even though I’m inches away from Hunter, Camille keeps trying to break through. But it is not the Camille of the nightmares, not the Camille of the hauntings. It is the real Camille, the one I remember loving for practically my whole life. Hunter cannot protect me from her.
Her face keeps flashing in front of me, lit softly, turned up to the sun, smiling her ecstatic smile. I try to fight the memories, but my mind is weak and exhausted. I’ve worked so hard fighting the ghost of Camille, now I’m no longer strong enough to block her memory.
She comes to me in short, painful bursts. She pulls at my ribs, worms her way through my throat, up into my brain, where she flashes pictures of our innocence—sleepovers on her bedroom floor where we’d tell each other our benign secrets in the dark, her few laughable attempts at teaching me to ride a horse, walking the country roads for hours just for something to do, sitting at her favorite table at the coffee shop while she made hilarious commentary about everyone who passed by, Camille and her parents cheering at my soccer matches when neither my mom nor grandma ever showed up.
But then other memories come, blank spaces where she should have been, holes in the months leading up to the crash, when she started leaving even before she left. These memories are the worst, the ones where I can’t see Camille at all, where there is darkness where her face should be, where there is just me, alone, missing her.
I squeeze my eyes closed to stop the tears, to stop the barrage of images like machine gun fire in my gut. The steering wheel is in my hand but it is connected to nothing.
I am driving air. I am not in control. Sleep seeps in like warm water, filling me up as I float away.
“Fuck, Kinsey!”
Hands on mine, squeezing.
Wheels screaming. The world tilting.
Red and white lights blur by as I try to focus.
The night is too dark.
“Pull over!” Hunter shouts, his body heavy on mine as he leans over from the passenger side, his hands on the steering wheel. “Fucking pull over right now!”
My eyes and brain are able to focus enough to bring us to the side of the freeway. We are so still now. And I am suddenly so awake.
“Get out,” he says. “I’m driving us to the next rest stop.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I think I fell asleep.”
“Why didn’t you wake me up if you were getting tired?”
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
“Luckily there aren’t that many cars on the road. Jesus, Kinsey, you could have killed us. You may have a death wish, but you’re not taking me down with you.”
I nod because I can no longer speak. I am shaking too hard to acknowledge the irony of his statement. The car is still now but I feel it on replay, the car drifting out of its lane and into the next one over, the jarring tug of Hunter steering it back.
“Get out,” he says again. My hands shake as I unbuckle my seat belt. My feet are unsteady as I walk around the car. A semi truck barrels by and I am nearly grounded by the force. I put my hand on the side of the car to steady myself. Hunter is in front of me, the night loud with insects and the rumble of freeway. The ground does not feel solid. I do not feel solid. I slide against the car and fall to the ground.
My head is in my hands, my shoulders shaking, the sound of my cries absorbed by the deafening night. “I’m sorry,” I say.
He doesn’t say anything. He remains standing. Solid. Stone.
“For everything,” I continue. “I’m sorry. I’m having a hard time.”
“That’s the understatement of the year,” he says, and I can’t tell if his words are tinged with cruelty or kindness.
“Are we okay?” I say, barely audible.
He’s quiet for too long. I can’t remember why we’re fighting. I can’t remember which of us screwed up more. All I know is there’s a hole in me now the shape of him.
“Get in the car,” he finally says. He turns to walk to the driver’s side, but stops and stands there for a moment. He looks up, deep into the night, then turns back around and offers me his hand. I take it, stand up, and brush the dirt and gravel off my legs.
It is only a few more miles to the next rest stop. Hunter pulls in and parks and we head to the restrooms without speaking. I stand outside the ladies room and wait for someone to walk in before I enter to make sure I won’t be in there alone. I can’t deal with Camille anymore today.
&nbs
p; When I get back to the car, Hunter is laid out in the backseat, eyes closed. I get in front and recline the seat as far as it will go without crushing him. Despite the sadness threatening to consume me, at least I feel safe, and I fall quickly into a dreamless sleep.
* * *
I wake up suffocating in the trapped heat of rolled-up windows. I can’t get out of the car fast enough. The backseat is empty. Maybe Hunter left, maybe he walked off into the night, maybe he finally figured out I’m more trouble than I’m worth.
I fish through the trunk for my toothbrush and a change of clothes. All of his stuff is still there, his cardboard box half full of liquor bottles. I know he wouldn’t leave without those.
The bathroom is full of chattering women. As I awkwardly change my clothes in a stall, I find the crumpled brochure for Old Quarry Historical Site in my pocket. I’m just about to throw it on the floor when I have the sudden urge to open it, to look at the photo of the quarry one last time. There, nestled among text about geology and mineral deposits, is the image of the massive cliff face. And there, where there used to be a tiny figure in the shape of a teenage girl, is nothing.
I squint my eyes and look closer. Still nothing. No girl. No Camille. Nobody.
Did I imagine it? Did the figure magically get erased? Is this the same brochure? Can ghosts be so tiny and fleeting and made out of ink?
I squeeze my eyes tight, shake my head hard, and say, “No,” loud.
“Excuse me?” someone in the bathroom says.
I tear up the brochure before I open my eyes. I tear it into little pieces. I make the pieces so small there’s no quarry left, no photo, no fence, no place where Camille should be. I throw the paper in the toilet and flush.
I exit the stall. I brush my teeth and wash my face. It is so strange to think I must resemble a sane person to all these strangers in the bathroom. They must think I’m some young woman on a road trip just freshening up in a rest stop. I’m not someone unraveling, unraveled. I’m not someone who has lost her mind.
When I get back to the car, Hunter is standing there with a guy not much older than us—tall, pale, skinny, and kind of twitchy; with thick glasses, stringy black shoulder-length hair, thrift store jeans, a colorful top that may be a woman’s, and a thick knitted scarf wrapped around his neck even though it’s already pushing eighty degrees. He’s leaning against the car next to a giant backpack. I have a very bad feeling about this.