Before I Disappear

by Danielle Stinson

        His hair.

          CHARLIE.

  Once upon a time I read the words and the words were magic. They belonged to him and he belonged to me.

  Because, Rosie, THIS is all there is.

  The Noise stops.

  The Roar goes quiet until there is just

  THIS.

  Charlie and I floating in the Black Nothing.

  A golden thread between us.

  My brother hangs behind a wall of darkness just like all those times before. His light fading. Almost gone.

  The golden thread shimmers. I have to follow it to Charlie. I have to break through this wall and reach him. I have to

  Remember

  that without the dark there are no stars.

  His voice winds through the darkness, and a light turns on somewhere in my head.

  This wall. I recognize it.

  I recognize it because it is mine.

  I built this wall, and I know the secret it is hiding. There. At the base. Shadow creature crying in the dark. I hear her sobs. I see her rocking with her arms wrapped around her knees. The gun clenched in her bloody hand.

  Broken thing.

  Shadow girl trapped behind a wall.

  I feel what she feels. The sorrow. The anger. The guilt of not being there when it counted. For everything that happened after.

  The thing I couldn’t forgive her for. People would never understand it. They’d assume the worst. Hadn’t they done it to my mother? Over and over again? They’d take me away from Charlie. I couldn’t let that happen. I tried to push her out. To erase what she did, but I couldn’t. So instead, I made her small, and I tucked her away behind the wall to keep her hidden.

  All that time, I never realized.

  All this time, I didn’t understand.

  The shadow girl was not my darkness.

  The choice she made was never my crime.

  My crime was the wall I built to hide it.

  The last wall now standing in my way.

  I crouch beside her. Sad, broken shadow. I pry her hand from the handle of the gun.

  Don’t cry, I tell the shadow girl. You don’t have to hide. Not anymore.

  We made the only choice we could.

  And we would do it again.

  We would do it again.

  I hold out my hand.

  The shadow girl’s grip is weak, but mine is strong enough for both of us. I pull her through the wall until, finally, we stand facing each other on the same side.

  The shadow girl stares at me, and I stare back. All the things I’ve done. All the scars I’ve tried to hide are right there on her face. I look at them all, and I don’t flinch. I don’t run away.

  Not this time.

  I close my eyes and step into the last few inches of space between us. The darkness spins, sending us crashing into each other. Everything goes still.

  When I open my eyes, they stare at the Black Nothing from her face.

  When her heart beats, it beats in my chest.

  Together, we smile with one mouth, and the wall of darkness falls like a curtain.

  And then there he is.

  Charlie.

  I forget everything but THIS.

  I reach for his hand.

  FORTY-ONE

  CHARLIE

  Shooting star.

  Her light burns through the Black Nothing.

  She sings my name and she reaches through time and space and a thousand doors to reach me. Our hands brush, and our heartbeats join through our fingertips.

  The Black Nothing screams. It pushes her out.

  Four colored threads are there to catch her. Spools of light.

  Pink.

    Green.

      Orange.

        Blue.

  They pull her.

  Away from the dark.

  To the place between.

  But first, I invite her into my head. I let her see the things I see.

  Two thousand two hundred thirteen silver threads weaving between my fingers.

  Two thousand two hundred thirteen stars resting in my hand.

  So beautiful. So precious. What makes everything worth it. Even the ugly. Even the beauty and the terror and the pain.

  Do you see it, Rosie?

  Do you hear the song it’s singing?

  Always the same and forever changing.

  Golden thread.

  Reach for it.

  Reach for it.

  She hears me.

  Her face lights up the dark.

  She finds the golden thread between us.

  She pulls and our song turns to fire.

  It burns a hole through the Black Nothing.

  The colored threads carry Rose, and she carries me.

  Together, we carry the stars.

  Two thousand lights in a silver net.

  Silver net on a golden string.

  It leads out of the dark

  Back into the Light.

  FORTY-TWO

  I jerk back to consciousness to the smell of rain and motor oil.

  The world flies into focus.

  I’m staring at a patch of green framed by the curve of a muscular arm. Ian. He’s cradling me to his chest, rocking me gently back and forth. The wind blows through the clearing that lies at the top of the drop-off, bringing with it thick clouds of grayish smoke.

  Fifty yards over Ian’s shoulder, the wormhole lurks, trapping us in this clearing at the edge of a cliff. Every second eating up more ground.

  “Rose?”

  Starburst eyes scan my face. “I’m sorry. I had to pull you back. I couldn’t wait any—”

  When I smile, he crushes me to him. We sit like that for a moment before I feel it. A soft tug on my insides.

  Balloon on a string.

  Golden thread.

  My heart skips in my chest as I glance around Ian’s wide frame. There. In the grass. An egg lies on the ground beside me. An egg identical to the one I’ve been carrying. But I gave my egg to Becca, which means this one must belong to—

  I look up. A person is walking toward me through the smoke. I know that walk. I’d know it anywhere.

  A gust of wind cuts through the clouds of gray, and then Charlie is standing in front of me.

  I scramble out of Ian’s arms and face my little brother.

  Black hair tumbles over his forehead and into his closed eyes. I trace the familiar lines of his face. The scar across his chin. The shape of his ears.

  “Charlie.” His name is a prayer. The only prayer I know.

  “Hello, Rosie.”

  The wormhole. Ian’s dazed expression. This patch of earth suddenly filled with the noises and movement of two thousand people. All of it falls away.

  I throw my arms around Charlie’s neck. We drop down to our knees in the grass, and the universe shifts like a kaleidoscope with us at its center.

  It isn’t until Ian clears his throat that I realize something’s wrong. Charlie’s hand hangs uselessly at his side. His legs give out even as I hold him in my arms. I lower him gently to the ground and search his face, but his eyes. His beautiful eyes don’t open.

  “The Black Nothing did this to you?” I force the words past the lump in my throat.

  Charlie nods. “I gave it most of my light to keep the dark from drowning the stars. I … I don’t know if I can walk, Rosie.”

  “I’ll carry you.” Just like I did when he was a baby and we were alone in an empty trailer. Or from that playground the day he fell from the slide. The way I’ve wanted to carry him so many times.

  I’m reaching down to grab hold of him when a figure fights its way toward us through the sea of people groaning and stirring. A flash of pink and white.

  “Mom!”

  She launches herself into the island Charlie and I have made in the middle of the clearing. I return her hug with an unrestrained joy I haven’t felt since I was a little kid. The kind of joy that sends roots shooting throu
gh you deeper than any foundation, because they’re anchoring you to something more solid than earth and infinitely more precious.

  “Mom, it’s okay.” I say the same words I’ve said to her a hundred times. Only this time, it’s different. This time, I’m saying them without the walls between us. And I know it doesn’t matter where we are, or what we have, or what problems we face.

  My brother’s heat, and my mother’s arms.

  More than a word.

  More than a place.

  More than four walls and a roof to keep out the rain.

  Everything I need, right here in this shrinking clearing.

  “Such … a good girl.” Mom’s voice is barely a whisper. “My Rosie.” Her arms fall away from my waist as she slumps. Ian catches her at the last second. Together, we lower her to the ground.

  “Mom!” I lean over her. Fear burns through my guts like acid.

  “The Black Nothing took most of her light,” Charlie says. “I gave her some of mine, but she’ll need to find the rest on her own. You’ll have to help her, Rosie.”

  Ian pulls me to my feet beside him. “We may have to shelve that for another time.”

  His comment brings my attention back to the commotion around us. A glade full of dazed, disoriented people, struggling to their feet. Some are crying. Most of them don’t know what to do. There must be thousands of them—every single one tired, and scared, and barely holding on to their calm.

  People call out the names of their loved ones. Families find each other in the chaos. So many stars, each with their own worries and loves written all over their faces.

  We have to get them out of here.

  “Everybody, listen.” My voice barely makes a dent in the mayhem around me.

  I wish I had some of Rowena’s attitude. Some of Jeremy’s magnetism or Ian’s quiet strength. But I’m not Rowena or Jeremy or Ian. I’m just me. And it’s going to have to be enough.

  I whistle between my teeth. A shrill sound that cuts through the pandemonium. Every head turns toward me. A handful of men approach. I recognize a few of them from my shifts at the Dusty Rose. They all start speaking at once.

  I look out over these people, all that is left of our town, and I know that I can’t hide anymore. I can’t be afraid to speak or be seen, because if I don’t lead these people out of here, who will?

  “If you want to get out of here, you need to follow me,” I say, raising my voice above the din. “This drop-off is too steep. We’ll have to find another place to climb down. There isn’t much time. Some people will need help. If you can lend a hand, do it.”

  They all look from me to Charlie. My brother doesn’t say a word. He just wraps his arms around my neck when I lift him to my chest. He’s light. Much lighter than he should be. My stomach twists. It’s as if the Black Nothing took more than his light.

  It took some of his substance.

  “The aftershocks caved in part of the wall,” Ian tells me. “The incline isn’t so bad there. It’s how I was able to reach you. We should be able to make it down.”

  I nod and let Ian lead the way to a more gentle part of the wall. The men from earlier come forward to help. Charlie rests his head against my shoulder as strangers help us slowly work our way down and back toward the river.

  The noise two thousand people make clomping through the brush blocks out even the roar of the rapids. There’s no warning. One moment we are cutting through dense forest, and the next, the river is right there in front of us.

  Ian carries my mom over the edge while I lay Charlie on the ground and help him slide down the ravine side and onto the beach.

  “Rose!” Jeremy sprints across the sand toward us. His wide eyes move from Charlie to the dozens of people lining up on the beach. “You did it.” A grin breaks across his face.

  “We knew you would,” Becca says, peeking around his shoulder, her smile an exact replica of her brother’s.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Jeremy scans the crowd of people pouring into the ravine, probably searching for his parents.

  I study the wildfire blazing across the river. The wormhole making its way through the trees. My mind scrambles to come up with a way out of this trap, but there’s nothing but dead ends in every direction.

  It hits me that I might’ve brought all these people here just to die, and the thought fills me with fury. At myself. At the universe for being so fundamentally unfair.

  “I don’t have one.” I keep my voice low so that we aren’t overheard. The last thing we need right now is a panicked stampede.

  “Maybe we could get around the wormhole somehow,” Jeremy offers weakly.

  “We can jump into the river,” Ian says. “Let it carry us out of the ravine and past the fire. Buy ourselves a few hours.”

  I study the ragtag crowd of people on the beach. Young. Old. Every stage between. All of them weak and terrified out of their minds.

  “Most of them won’t make it,” I say.

  “But some of them will. At least it gives them a fighting chance,” Ian insists fiercely.

  It isn’t a perfect solution, but right now, it’s the only solution we have.

  I’m about to say so when I notice Charlie is no longer beside me.

  For one agonizing moment, I’m back in that Illinois park, searching for my brother in a crowd of strangers. Panic claws its way up my throat until I see him, kneeling on the beach beside Blaine and another man. A man with long hair and sharp, kind eyes. A taller, older version of Blaine.

  Arthur Jackson.

  He and Blaine are both staring at Charlie with matching expressions of wonder.

  Oblivious, Charlie keeps his head bent, his ears cocked as he listens to something the rest of us can’t hear. Calm. Quiet. Unafraid.

  My brother. The eye in the center of the storm.

  I kneel beside him.

  “Charlie?”

  He turns toward the sound of my voice. “I feel it,” he says.

  “Feel what?”

  “The door back to our world.” Lashes fan out against his cheeks. “I can hold it open, but not for long.”

  “You can access the door between the Fold and our world?” Dr. Jackson’s eyes go wide.

  Charlie nods.

  “How?” Blaine asks, without an ounce of his usual skepticism.

  “There are lots of doors,” Charlie says. “They live behind the curtain where eyes can’t touch.”

  “In the extra dimensions? Like the threads?” Dr. Jackson asks. “The ones you showed me?”

  Charlie smiles. “The in-between places. I can show you the door you need, but you’ll have to walk through it.”

  Quiet descends over us. The only sounds now are the roar of the fire across the river and the occasional rumble of the ground under our feet.

  What Charlie is suggesting is a leap into the unknown. There are no guarantees that we’ll be able to see these doors or move through them the way that he can.

  No guarantees but the word of a ten-year-old boy who can’t even walk on his own.

  “Show me.” Blaine’s voice is paper-thin. Tears of pain and something else shine in his eyes. “Show me the door, Charlie.”

  Blindly, my brother reaches for Blaine. His hand hangs suspended in the air between them.

  A question. A leap of faith.

  Blaine trembles as he clasps Charlie’s fingers. As soon as their hands touch, a light shines across Blaine’s face. Tears leak out of his eyes, and then the Light is all there is. A flash that is nearly blinding. When it goes, Blaine goes with it.

  Jeremy swears. “Where’d he go?” He clutches Becca’s hand, keeping her a safe distance away from Charlie and whatever miracle he just performed.

  “Home,” Charlie says. “Where all of you are going.”

  Every person on the beach stares at my brother. The light inside of him, the one that used to scare the hell out of me—that still does, even now—on full display for everyone to see. I expect them to run screaming. To assume to worst
and tear down what they don’t understand, but I don’t give them enough credit.

  Maybe you never did, says the young girl inside of me.

  The one no longer trapped in the shadows.

  Dr. Jackson moves first. He bends his mouth to Charlie’s ear and says something too low for me to hear. Then he follows in his nephew’s footsteps, taking Charlie’s hand and passing through the door that Charlie shows him. A door like the one Dr. Jackson has spent his whole life searching for.

  Right there. All along.

  One by one, the people of Fort Glory move toward Charlie. Two thousand people who owe their lives to my brother. Two thousand little lights twinkling in the dark. They don’t fight. They don’t jostle. They stand in line as if the Fold isn’t falling apart around them, because my brother asked them to.

  One after another, the people of Fort Glory take my brother’s hand. One after another, they pass behind the curtain and are gone.

  It doesn’t take long. A few seconds to show them the way only Charlie can see. A few more to let them pass through. Still, fewer than half of them have made it out when the strain on Charlie begins to show.

  He starts to tremble. Sweat drips down his face onto the beach. Another hundred pass through him. A few hundred more. He drops to his side.

  “Charlie!” I fall to my knees beside him.

  “His strength is fading,” Ian says. He helps me lift Charlie back up. Behind us, the wormhole has pushed to the top of the ravine. We have five minutes till it reaches us. If we’re lucky. “We’ve got to move faster.”

  “Come on!” I wave at the small crowd of people still waiting. “Take his hand. A few at a time. Hurry!”

  People pass through Charlie in groups. It cuts down on the amount of time, but it doesn’t lessen the toll. When the last stranger walks through, my brother is pale and trembling, curled up on the beach.

  Becca moves to stand in front of him. I think she’s reaching for his hand, but instead, she places something on his palm. The egg I gave her. The one I’ve been saving since that day in the school parking lot. Charlie’s fingers curl around it. He struggles to his knees.

  “Take care of it for me, Bright Light. Can you do that?” With effort, Charlie places the egg back in Becca’s hand.

  Becca’s cheeks glisten as she tucks the egg into her pocket, near her body where it will stay warm. She drops to her knees in front of Charlie. Carefully, slowly she presses her lips to the corner of his mouth. The moment is over and Becca is gone in an instant, but somehow, I know that I’ll never forget it.