Before I Disappear

by Danielle Stinson

  I realize the truth before I read it in his eyes.

  From here on out, I am on my own.

  I lift my gaze to the shadow where it waits, and the small part of me that isn’t afraid knows that this is how it was always meant to be. That every twist and turn in the map of my life has been leading me to this moment. This one wall I have to conquer.

  I take a step toward it.

  “Rose, don’t!” Ian says from down below. “I’ll figure out a way. I just need a little more time.”

  I crane my neck to watch the shadow where it stands on a ledge thirty feet above my head. Somewhere, behind that shadow, my brother is waiting for me. Alone. Scared. Almost out of light.

  He has been waiting long enough.

  “I can do it.” I force the words through my closing throat. “I can make the climb.”

  Ian’s hands bunch at his sides. “Your last attempt didn’t work out so well.”

  As if I needed the reminder.

  “I can do this,” I call out. “But I need you to coach me. Please, Ian.” My voice cracks. “I need your help.”

  Ian knows exactly what those words cost me. The knowledge is right there on his face.

  His jaw sets in a hard line as Ian pulls the harness from his body and tries to toss it up to me with his good arm. It hits the side of the dirt wall a few feet below the mark before tumbling back down to his ledge. Ian attempts the throw again. And again, but the harness is heavy, and with his bad shoulder, the throw is beyond him.

  Ian stares at the harness in his hands before raising his eyes to mine. “You’ll have to free climb it.”

  My chin trembles as I nod.

  “You won’t have a safety line,” Ian says. “I’ll try to spot your holds, but if you get stuck, don’t force it. Better to come back down than to fall from that height.”

  The bottom drops out of my stomach.

  “Rose.”

  I tear my eyes away from the wall and look at Ian.

  “You’ve got this.”

  I force my knees to unlock. With one last nod at Ian, I approach the wall.

  Flashbacks of Devil’s Tooth run through my head. That wall was not nearly as high as this one, and I didn’t make it.

  I didn’t make it.

  The tugging flares to life inside my chest, flooding me with a strange sense of calm. This time will be different. This time, I am different. Unlike Devil’s Tooth, I am not facing this wall alone. I have Ian down below. I have Becca, Jeremy, and Blaine on that strip of burning sand by the river. And Charlie. I have Charlie waiting for me somewhere at the top.

  I refuse to let them down.

  A network of roots lies exposed in front of me. I study the interconnected system like it’s one of my maps. I chart my course up to the top.

  I reach for the wall. My toes dig into the earth, making a solid groove. When my weight is securely braced, I reach up again.

  Moss and weeds cling to the side of the rise along with a few clumps of grass. Bits of sharp wood cut into my fingers as I work my way up, using the roots as anchors. Ian coaches me through the first few holds, but as I make my way higher, he goes silent.

  Hand by hand. Inch by inch the ground falls away. The thoughts in my head go quiet until it’s just the wall under my hands, the breath in my lungs, and the tugging in my chest, coaxing me higher.

  After a few minutes, I make the mistake of checking to see how far I’ve come. The small ledge where I started swims twenty feet below. Fear slams into me with a vertigo that sets the world spinning. It’s another minute before I get the shaking back under control.

  No more looking down.

  The last few feet are the slickest. The earth is all topsoil. It’s almost impossible to get a good grip. There are fewer roots—no more easy holds, so I have to make them, carving them out with the tip of my sneaker. I’ve finally glimpsed the ledge above me when a familiar shudder runs through my limbs.

  Aftershocks echo through the ground, sending clumps of grass tumbling from up above. Terror clogs my throat as I hold on for dear life. More dirt falls past me in brown sheets. A scream leaves my lips. The earth under my hands gives an inch before jerking to stop.

  Blood pounds in my ears. I can barely hear myself think, but somehow, Ian’s voice cuts through. “That wall is caving in! There’s a solid root at your two o’clock. It’ll hold you. But you have to let go and reach for it.”

  I force my gaze up and there it is: a thick root bent like an elbow about a foot above my head and slightly to the right. Just below the ledge.

  Far. It’s too far.

  The wall under my hands slides another inch, and my heart jumps right up into my throat.

  “You can make it, Rose.” Ian’s voice comes at me through a long, dark tunnel.

  “I. Can’t.”

  “You can.” Ian’s words hold no doubt. “You have to believe you can.”

  We can do it, Rosie.

  We can keep them safe.

  We can.

  Charlie’s voice echoes through my head. The earth trembles again, and then the world fades away piece by piece until there is no ground and no sky. No up and no down. There is only me, and my brother, and this wall standing between us.

  The tips of my sneakers dig into the cliff face as I push up with all my strength. The surface gives out beneath me. I close my eyes, let go of my hold, and reach.

  My fingers close around the root. The side of my body hits the wall with a THUD.

  My feet scissor air for a terrifying moment before they make contact with the wall. Every muscle in my body screams as I use the root to pull myself up that last foot of dirt and scramble over the side, onto the ledge. I lie there on my stomach, panting. When I can finally move, the first thing I do is crawl over and look down at Ian. He grins at me from sixty feet below, his face streaked with sweat and so much pride, it makes my heart hurt.

  Something calls to me over my shoulder. Slowly, I shift my attention to the shadow.

  I’ve taken a few stumbling steps toward it when I feel a familiar tingle in my bones.

  No. Not again.

  The pain is a wave, towing me under.

  Agony has me collapsing in on myself like a dying star. When I fall, the darkness is there to catch me.

  Dimly, I hear someone screaming. Ian. In the vacuum of the pain, every sound is magnified: The beating of my heart. The scrape of Ian’s nails as they dig through dirt that won’t hold his weight. The silent laughter of the shadow as it watches me writhe.

  And then I can feel him. Right there in the center of my chest.

  Charlie.

  When I force my eyes open, my brother is hanging directly in front of me, suspended behind a wall of darkness just like he has been in every vision. Only now, I know exactly what I’m looking at.

  Charlie in the Black Nothing. The dark pulse bleeding him dry of the light that makes him different. The light that makes him him.

  My hands ache to stroke his face, but I can’t move. Can’t do anything but watch the darkness eat another piece of my brother.

  Until there is more wall than boy.

  More shadow than light.

  I’m afraid that if I blink, he’ll disappear completely. I can’t let that happen. I won’t. Because he is mine and I am his, and if he disappears, I want to disappear with him.

  Please, Rosie.

  Remember.

  The words echo through me, and then I’m back in the park at Glory Point, making my brother a promise through the driver’s-side window. I remember the moment. All the things I said, and all the things I didn’t. The vow I made.

  If I want to keep it, I’m going to have to figure out a way to get up.

  The pain is a nail, driving me into the ground. My bottom half is on fire. So I do what Ian does. I let my mind go somewhere else. To a field of blue wishing flowers. And I drag myself forward with my arms. Inch by painful inch.

  Under my chest, the ground starts to tremble again.

  The Fo
ld. It’s collapsing.

  And Charlie. Charlie is fading.

  His light. The light inside of him is almost gone.

  I drag myself forward until I am lying at the bloodstained feet of the shadow.

  Pain steals my breath. It feels like I’m fighting the weight of the entire universe as I force my head up. My eyes lock with the shadow’s. The darkness ripples and moves until it isn’t a blank void wearing a familiar green hoodie staring back at me. It’s a person.

  I meet her faded blue eyes. Study the familiar brown hair and the sallow skin, streaked with blood and tears. The mouth wide open in a silent scream of rage.

  The shadow wearing my face reaches down to me.

  With the last of my strength, I take my own bloody hand.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Falling.

  I am falling through shadow, into a tunnel of darkness and light. Tiny spots of brightness streak past me. I wonder briefly if they’re stars before the thought dissolves in a blur of motion.

  Fast. So fast it wears me down to specks of dust that scatter across the universe. I can feel it all around me. Everything that was. Everything that is and will ever be. It hangs there in front of me, and for a moment, I can almost see it.

  The order behind the chaos.

  The reason and the meaning.

  The answer to every question.

  It’s right there. Until it’s not.

  The tunnel takes a sharp turn into blackness. My body comes to a screeching halt.

  An ocean of solid black stretches out in every direction. A vacuum of Light. Color. Life.

  The Black Nothing.

  It’s the same as it was before, only different, because this time I am not looking over the edge. This time, I am deep inside its belly.

  All around me, the dark pulse jangles in the air. The pitch is painful. The notes jarring through my bones. Beyond it, the emptiness beckons with crazy force. I can feel the dark pulse picking at the strands of my mind, slowly unwinding them one by one. My thoughts slip away from me in bursts of notes. Glowing drops of light. Too many. Too fast.

  Help.

  The word is a scream yanked from my mind.

  I’m lying on a ledge carved out of the darkness, illuminated by an anemic light that grows dimmer the more light-drops float away from me. I watch them go. Tiny lanterns floating up, up, UP. They’re almost gone when they smack into something solid. A hundred drops of light fan out against the barrier, giving me a vague sense of its shape.

  A globe.

  A golden globe stretches around me like a shield. It’s small and getting smaller by the second, but at this moment, it’s the only thing keeping me from being pulled apart. There is only one person who could have put it there.

  Charlie.

  The globe shimmers. More drops of light crash into it, awaiting their turn to escape. If I could figure out a way to slow them down, if I could just find a way to reach for them, maybe I could—

  A handful of light-drops pass through the globe. The Black Nothing rips them away. Pain floods my nerve endings. The agony stops everything, even time. In that frozen moment, I see it. A single light floating right in front of me. A note of happiness in the gloom. A still shot of a memory. Charlie last Christmas. Grinning and wearing the hat I knitted for him. Happy. We were happy that day. The trailer smelled like cinnamon and Mom’s perfume. We were sitting around the miniature tree decorated with her costume jewelry and eating French toast. She smiled as she moved around the kitchen, and for a second, things were the way they used to be.

  The memory starts to float away with the others. Desperate to hold on to it, I focus on Charlie’s face like it’s the only thing that’s real. The shape of his brows. The scar across his chin. I say his name in my head over and over. It becomes a song. One to drown out the dark noise all around me.

  Slowly, almost shyly, the drop of light reverses course back to me.

  I push myself to recall more details about that day. The tunes on the radio and the sweet lilt of Mom’s voice as she hummed along.

  I concentrate harder, and my whole being vibrates with a different type of music, one coming from inside of me. More light-drops drift back to me.

  The furrow on Mom’s brow as she sewed.

  The sound of laughter through thin walls.

  The smell of violets and sugar mixed with the taste of butterscotch, and the way Charlie’s baby leg would jerk right before he fell asleep.

  They are my memories. They are my Light. My Color. My Sound. All the beauty and the joy and the bittersweetness, and I refuse to give them up.

  With the last of my strength, I pull in my memories. The drops of light fall around me like armor. A hundred pins and needles stab me as my nerve endings flare back to life. I home in on the pain because it’s real. Because it means I am more than a spool of unraveling thoughts. I am skin and flesh and bones on fire. I let the fire fill me, and then I will those bones to move.

  I rise to my feet.

  Space is strange in the Black Nothing. I can’t tell if I’m standing or floating. There is no ground and no sky. No up and no down. There is only blackness, and pain, and the light inside of me, fighting not to go out.

  Charlie is here somewhere. He’s using whatever power he has to shield me, just like he shielded all the others. But he can’t keep it up forever. The globe is still shrinking, which means I have to find him. Before there’s nothing of me left.

  A spot of color pops to life in the distance. Brilliant gold against the dark. Siren song. It calls to me, and the tug inside of me—the one I’ve felt since I fell into the Fold, returns with a vengeance. Gritting my teeth, I move toward the distant light.

  My muscles quiver with effort, but one step at a time, I push forward. The picture in front of me sharpens, and I see it isn’t one big light up ahead. It’s a thousand little lights shining like stars in the distance. And right in the middle of the cluster, the brightest light of all.

  Charlie.

  The Black Nothing beats down on me, sucking a little more of my light through Charlie’s shield.

  Pain brings me to my knees. Unable to get up, I crawl.

  Charlie’s globe shrinks until it is too small to hold me. More light-drops fly away into the void, and then I can’t crawl. Can’t move. Can’t even breathe.

  No.

  Even as I think the word, I know it’s useless. The word is just like me. Too small a thing to stand under the weight of this crushing darkness. My song stutters in the dark. My light gutters around me, a candle about to go out. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

  I’m sorry, Charlie. I’m so sorry.

  The words shoot out from me in a blaze of gold. They shimmer through the darkness, down a winding line to the light ahead. The one that shines more brightly than all the others. My thoughts travel down the golden thread between us, and then something travels back.

  Charlie’s familiar song fills me. Warm and sweet and pure. It reaches inside of me like an electric prod, waking parts of my mind I didn’t know were sleeping. And then I’m not looking at the Black Nothing through my eyes.

  I am looking at it through his.

  A network of delicate threads stretches out around me in more colors than I have words. They form an intricate tapestry that reaches out in every direction, weaving through folds of time and space stacked on top of one another like accordion rings. They sprout from my chest and my fingertips, strings of energy that connect me to the past, the present, and a million other realities I can’t see but can somehow feel. The sheer number of threads makes my head hurt, so I focus in on the handful that spring out of my core in a blazing river of color. These threads are thicker than the others, and they glow with an intensity that puts the rest to shame.

  I reach out and touch one in a dazzling pink.

  There’s a sensation of falling sideways as part of me is conducted down the thread like electricity through a wire. At the other end is Becca, huddled on the sandbar, her hand tightl
y gripping Blaine’s. The picture is so clear. So real. I can smell the smoke mixed with the antiseptic Jeremy used to clean Blaine’s wounds, feel Becca’s worry and fear as if it were mine. But there’s something else, too, something buried deep under the uncertainty and the pain of not knowing. Something warm and bright and …

  My breath catches when I recognize it.

  Faith.

  It sets the globe around me ablaze with rosy brightness. I let Becca’s light fill me, and then I let go of that thread and reach for another. This one neon green.

  I plummet straight down until I’m hovering over Blaine lying on a strip of burning sand. Flames dance in his eyes as he turns to his friends. He says the word that scares him most, but he doesn’t regret it. Go. Because he can’t run, but they can. Because what’s right and what’s easy aren’t always the same, and because it’s the choice that makes us.

  Courage.

  It travels up the thread and into me, and my light burns a little brighter.

  The next thread, bright orange, sends me crashing sidelong into Jeremy. His lungs are raw, and his arms tremble, but he lifts Blaine to his chest. Because there are a million things that separate us, but none of them will ever be as strong as the ties that bind us together. And those ties don’t allow us to leave one another behind.

  Friendship.

  The next thread glitters in the corner of my mind, a steady blue. My fingers brush it. The world shifts gently until I’m hovering over Ian. His hands are dirty and bleeding as he pulls himself over the ledge those last few yards toward me. His head bows as he cradles my limp body against his. The wormhole is a hundred yards away and closing fast. Next to it he looks impossibly small. His handsome face contorts with effort. It’s taking every ounce of his control to fight off his own darkness, to keep from touching my hand and coming in here after me. But he’s doing it.

  Because I asked him to.

  Emotions swell inside of me as I watch his lips move. Every word he speaks is a promise that sets the thread between us blazing. I let it touch me, and then I send it back.

  Trust.

  Reluctantly, I shift my focus to the last two threads.

  I touch the one that glints of copper. A song weaves through me. One that brings tears to my eyes. It tastes like butterscotch and smells like sawdust. It sounds like laughter and feels like the weight of a callused hand as it cradles mine against the handle of a hammer.