“Come on now,” she says. “The night is still young.”
I stand slowly. Maybe I’ll stay, just for tonight. I glance behind me, and Tre and Chris move slowly, begrudgingly. Together, we walk down the hallway to a large empty room with wood floors. It looks like an empty ballroom, smelling of dust and stale air. A dusty black grand piano hides in the corner.
Barefoot, Lilly scampers across the room, turns the lights down low, and clicks a button on the wall. The room fills with the thumping beat of dance music, transforming the space into an impromptu dance club. Lilly begins moving her body, hips swaying, fingertips painting the air overhead. She smiles and shuts her eyes. Pete stands there, grinning and reaching his hands out to touch her.
I wonder if they’re dating or in love. They have a strange connection. I watch them dance, slightly jealous of their carefree happiness. A little like a third wheel.
Zoe appears next to me in high heels, holding a silver tray of champagne flutes filled with pink cream. She holds the tray up to me.
I wave my hand and pat my stomach. “No, thanks,” I say.
“A little fun in a glass,” Zoe says, waving her hand, as if describing some sort of delicacy.
“Oh.” I reach for the glass but then pull my hand back by my side.
“It’s not alcoholic,” Zoe says, reading my mind. She lifts the tray again toward me.
I stare at the drink, debating. I don’t know if I want to be under the influence of anything anymore. She smiles, tilting her head. Her golden earring catches the light. She’s so cool. So sophisticated. “It’s just like a strawberry smoothie. Strawberries are your favorite, right?”
My favorite. Yes, they’re my favorite. Next to chocolate lava cake. I can’t remember if I told her that.
Lilly dances up to us, grabs two of the glasses, hands one to me and then takes my free hand with hers. Pulsing with the music, she backs us onto her dance floor, swaying with the rhythm. In Leadville, I never go dancing. The closest I came was prom sophomore year, when everyone stood around the edges of our school cafeteria while lights blinked and Mrs. Gund, the gym teacher’s wife, played her favorite CDs on the loudspeaker.
Lilly gently pushes my hand up so the glass touches my lips. “Sip, girl,” she says. “You’re not in Leadville anymore.”
The drink touches my lips. I take a small sip. The cool, sweet flavors swirl in my mouth. A fluffy strawberry cloud. Amazing.
The music thumps in my ears and spins like ribbons in my mind: Silky violet. Black leather. Blood red. Intoxicating. Maybe I’ll let go. Just maybe.
Lilly twirls around me, dragging her finger along my hair. Pete offers a huge grin and rhythmically dances toward me in the dark. Zoe smiles and sways.
All of it—the mood, the colors, the music, the people, the sweet taste of the drink—pulls me in. It’s similar to the way I felt with JT and Zach. But this time, it’s with way cooler people. And no drugs.
Pete juts his chin in a goofy way that reminds me of Dad—the way he’d do those stupid air guitar solos just to make me laugh. Come to think of it, Lilly’s happy-go-lucky attitude reminds me of Mom and the way she’d sometimes pull out the cartwheels in open fields on our hikes.
As the four of us dance, the beat and the music overtake me, and slowly, a low fog moves across the floor. A fog machine? Whatever it is, it’s the coolest. It swirls around us, and then the color of the lights begins to shift. Hazy pinks, oranges, blues, and purples meander with the music. I’m overtaken by thoughts: I love this place, and for some reason, I may never want to go home.
I move my body, drifting like I’m on a cloud. I glance to my left, where Chris sits in a wooden chair by the window, facing the black night—as if we all weren’t here. And there’s Tre, splayed over a lounge chair along the wall, staring intensely at me.
I don’t get him. I’m fascinated by him, but he’s so cold—practically willing me to leave. I shake my head like I’m shaking him off. Who cares? I like how this place delivers a buzz inside me. I like being here, and if he has a problem with that, he’s going to have to say something to my face.
I deliver a wicked glare and turn away from him, lifting my glass to my lips to down the rest of the strawberry dessert drink. I sway with the beat. Raise my hands in the air. And dance.
13
The next morning, I sit on the bench by the door lacing up my boots, my foggy head hanging down by my feet. I heave my backpack onto my shoulders.
“Where ya headed?” Lilly asks, standing a few feet away in silk pajamas.
“I’ve got to get back.” I have school today, plus Gram has no idea where I am.
“Don’t go!” She sings the words in a high-pitched voice. “Stay! Stay!”
I shake my head. “Can’t. It was… fun…” Weird. Intoxicating.
Lilly puts her hands on her hips and leans back against the heavy door. “Pleeeease don’t go.”
“Sorry, Lilly,” I say. As soon as the words leave my mouth, I think about changing my mind. But I can’t hide out in this forest forever and ditch the rest of high school. “Are you online much? Maybe we can connect again.”
“Don’t go.” The tone of her voice shifts to something else. It’s not threatening exactly, but it’s serious for the first time since I’ve been here. “It’s a bad idea,” she says.
“Why?” I ask, leaning around her to peek through the window.
“It just is,” she says.
Tre stands on the stairs above, watching us. I don’t know how long he’s been there. The whole vibe marks a strange end to a really great time. “Well, tell everyone I said bye,” I say before turning and walking out the door.
Lilly leans her head on the open doorframe and watches me walk down the hill, saying nothing.
My truck races around the tight curves of Tennessee Pass, and my stomach begins to churn as I think about heading back to school, back to Gram’s house. Graduation is coming up, and it looms before me like a massive cliff. There’s nothing after graduation, nothing stable or normal to look forward to, nothing at all. And then there’s Gram. Would she be pissed that I’d left without telling her where I was going? Or, worse, could she not have even noticed? I could just go to school—it’s the most appealing of the options… but I cringe thinking about the pity in my classmates’ eyes. And my teachers’ eyes.
I press on the brakes a little and consider turning around and going back to Trinity Forest, but instead I make a pit stop at JT’s house without giving it a second thought. I need to be numb.
I pull up to the pristine purple house on the hill—the one with the rounded turret and rose garden out front. It’s the biggest, nicest house in town. He’s home, of course; he doesn’t really come to many classes in the mornings anymore.
“Ember the legend,” he says when he opens the screen door. He’s wearing oversized jeans and a gray hoodie. “Come to party?”
I nod. He knows what I want. I pull out my wallet, hand him my cash, and he puts the three little pills in my palm. I swallow them without water. Without thinking.
“Wanna hang out?” he asks. I sit down on the blue sofa and let the numbing begin. A baseball game plays on TV, and I wish I were in Trinity Forest.
I must have passed out because I wake up to JT’s mom screaming at him in the kitchen for not being at school and lying around the house. I spring off the couch, trip over a laundry basket and a pile of shoes on the floor, and quietly sneak out the front door. I climb into the cab of my truck and exhale. I feel good enough to drive, right? It’s pointless to go to Gram’s arctic-cold house, and with school, at least there is normalcy. There is routine.
At school, I move through the suffocating tunnel of the mint-green hallway and notice people slowing their movement. They stop. They stare. Two girls whisper, their eyes following me. God, I hate this town.
I glance down at my jeans to ensure my fly isn’t down and that my red hoodie doesn’t have stains. Tossing my hair to play it cool, I discreetly wipe drops of
drizzle off my face.
With each squeak of my wet hiking boots on the linoleum floor, the air becomes more silent. As if one single breath or movement would ignite an explosion. The stares grow more intense, burrowing into my skin. In my peripheral vision, a girl stands unmoving until I pass, and then she bolts off toward the office. My heart thumps in my head, my face sizzles red hot, and my brow leaks sweat.
I don’t get why everyone is looking at me. Did JT take some photos or videos of me when I was out of it? Or maybe he and Zach have been dishing on my new habit. The worries prod me with a hot iron, and I consider running back out the doors to my truck.
I get to my locker and bend my head so my hair covers my face to avoid the piercing eyes. But my fingers fumble the combination, missing and overshooting the correct numbers several times. I blow a loose strand of hair out of my eyes and attempt to pretend everything is fine. I give up on the combination and set my books down on the floor to tie my shoe. A fine distraction.
Footsteps clomp on the floor, and a pair of red cowboy boots stops in front of me.
“Oh my God!” Maddie’s voice rings in the nearly silent hallway. “You’re alive!”
I look up past the boots to a jean skirt, to her contorted and crazy emotional face. Tears well up in her eyes. I stand up slowly, warily eying her and my audience of maybe fifty people, who are craning their necks to watch us.
“Where have you been?” Maddie says. She urgently embraces me.
I hug her back, patting her shoulder lightly with one hand, so utterly confused by her reaction. I’ve blown her off for long enough that surely we’re not friends anymore. How long can a girl like Maddie hold me up before she breaks in two?
“Hey,” I say. For some reason, I’m dying to tell her about Trinity—how it was so light and colorful there. How Lilly somehow reminded me of the good days with Mom, and how Pete’s laid-back style reminded me of Dad. The house, the food, the dancing, the intoxicating aura—I can’t let it go. And then there’s Tre and all his dangerous weirdness that makes my heart beat faster. I keep replaying the memory of his icy-blue eyes gazing at me across the dinner table. He woke up a piece of the old Ember. I wonder if I will ever see them all again.
“Mads,” I whisper quickly, falling back into our old rhythm, “you won’t believe where I went this weekend. I met these people in Trinity, and it’s not scary. There was a mansion, these beautiful people, this gorgeous meadow with flowers—”
She shakes her head and her brows knit together. She keeps a palm on my shoulder. “This weekend? What the hell are you talking about, Ember?” The words spill out of her. “Are you okay? What in the world happened to you? Did someone take you?” Her free hand inspects me, touching my face and my hair. “How long have you been back?”
“Oh, um, I got back this morning.”
Emma Buckskin passes us and pulls out her cell phone and snaps a photo.
I frown. “Why is everyone being so weird?” I whisper.
Maddie’s mouth becomes a letter O as she inhales, and she raises her eyebrows. She looks at me like I have four heads. “The whole world has been looking for you,” she says, putting her arm around my shoulder and guiding me toward the office. “Let’s go tell Principal Pake.”
She is treating me like the Girl with Dead Parents again.
I stop after a couple steps and shake her hand off my shoulder. “Tell me what the hell is going on.”
Her eyes flit from me to the people moving slowly behind me in the hallway. The bell rings. Her gaze falls on something behind me, and then she gently touches my arm. “Listen, I gotta go. But—” She hugs me, quick and tight. Her books jab my throat. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Ms. Trouvé, everyone is glad to see you again,” a deep, unfamiliar voice rings from behind me. I turn around and a uniformed police officer, a seven-foot brick wall with a buzz-cut head, stands at attention with his legs spread and his hands locked behind his back. “I’d like to have a moment with you.”
14
The slow ticking of the clock inside Principal Pake’s office makes my head throb. The room is a giant smiling emoticon with its vanilla-scented air fresheners and wall-to-wall posters of sunsets, furry animals, and inspirational slogans. Very Mr. Pake.
Except the mood of the office is not cheery, and Mr. Pake is not his upbeat self. He rubs a thick hand over his bald head and stands next to me. His other hand feels sweaty on my shoulder. “We’ve been so worried,” he whispers. The brick wall policeman moves through the doorway, and Mr. Pake immediately drops his hand from me.
The policeman points to a plastic chair, and I shuffle to sit. Panic squeezes me like a vice. It’s got to be the pills. They know about the pills. They’re prescribed by doctors. That’s what I’ll say. “What’s going on?” I ask the policeman.
“You’re home now. Everything is going to be okay.” His voice is smooth, as if he’s talking me off the ledge of a building. His enormous frame squeezes into the small chair next to me, and he leans in with a notepad in the palm of his hand. His name is Officer Wagner, according to the thin silver clip on his shirt.
“Are you hurt in any way, Ms. Trouvé?” Officer Wagner’s question is a statement.
The weight of Mr. Pake’s gaze from across the room drills a giant hole into the side of my head. I take in another waft of the milky sweet smell of his vanilla-scented air freshener. It makes me nauseous.
“No?” My statement is a question.
“Please tell me exactly what happened. Start from the beginning.”
I don’t get it. The beginning? I don’t understand what he wants or needs to know. I am not going to tell him about my regular trips to Ruby Gardens with Zach and JT or about Trinity Forest. Maybe those guys are getting arrested and the cops want me to snitch. I look for direction from Mr. Pake, who flashes a nervous smile, uncrosses his arms, and clears his throat.
“Got here as soon as I heard,” Gram says, bustling into the room. The scent of chilled air and sweat hangs around her head like a cloud. She sees me and covers her mouth before reaching a rough hand out to touch my face.
“Ember,” she sighs. Her face is drawn, and her collarbone pokes out from the neckline of her plaid shirt. She looks so skinny and gaunt. Worse than I’ve ever seen her. How had I not noticed it before?
“Where the hell have you been?” Emotion catches in her throat. She pulls away, boring her milky eyes into mine.
I run my fingers over the bumpy divots in the plastic chair. “Sorry,” I mutter, glancing at the policeman and Mr. Pake. I can’t believe this was such a big deal. “I left Saturday night and didn’t tell you.”
She and Mr. Pake exchange worried looks. They don’t believe me. My chest tightens.
Officer Wagner asks, “Did an individual harm you? Hold you against your will?”
I shake my head furiously back and forth and scrunch my face up. “What? No!”
“Ember, can you start at the beginning?” asks Officer Wagner. The top of his head looks neat, like a freshly trimmed hedge.
I frown. The beginning? I’m surprised Gram even noticed I was gone. “I went to Trinity Forest and met some kids for a little campout.”
The three of them exchange looks. “No one hurt you,” Officer Wagner says. “No one coerced you into going somewhere.”
I shake my head no. Emphatic. “No, it was just a little campout. I guess I should have said something, told you I was going but…”
“Dear,” Gram says. Her voice cracks. “Maddie says she heard that you were with that Zach boy. That he does drugs.”
“No…” I fumble, glancing at Mr. Pake and Officer Wagner. I’m horrified she knows about the pills and that she’s outing me here in front of them. “I just had to get out of town.”
“So you ran away,” Officer Wagner says, scribbling in his notepad.
“No,” I say. My voice nearly shrieks. I don’t want him writing that down.
“Do you feel depressed, Ms. Trouvé? Do you feel lik
e you wanted to end your life?”
I don’t know how I’m supposed to answer when their eyes are burning holes into my head. The whole school is watching me. The whole world sees me falling apart. Of course the answer is yes. Yes, I want to die some days. Yes, I want to run away. But I didn’t. I just went… exploring.
I plaster a fake smile on my face. “I’m fine, guys. I’m fine. A simple misunderstanding.” That’s an understatement. Even I don’t understand it. But the last place I want to be is in this room with the air as thick as old oatmeal, these taunting yellow smiley faces plastered on the walls, this awful sauna heat, and too many questions.
Gram’s voice falls on me like a bucket of ice. “I had the whole damn town looking for you. Search parties. And now you say everything is just goddamn fine?” Tiny white specks of spit gather in the corners of her mouth. Her eyes slide into small slits.
Her tone slashes me. “Uh, sorry?” I say, indignant sarcasm coating my voice. Half the time she doesn’t even know I’m alive, and here she is trying to pretend that she’s some kind of super grandmother who is so in touch and so caring.
“Please, Mrs. Granger,” Mr. Pake says softly to her, undoubtedly trying to yank her off me with his expertly trained principal voice. “I know we’re all relieved she’s home and she’s okay. We’ll explore this further and line up some counselors who can work with Ember on… whatever issue may be at play here. We have the school psychologist as a resource, too—”
“We need her to make a public statement,” Officer Wagner says.
“Statement?” My eyes dart between the three of them. They’re seriously overreacting.
Mr. Pake furiously pats a round pig eraser against his palm. Pat. Pat. Pat.
“Well, for God’s sake, you’ve been missing for four weeks,” Gram snaps.
“Amber Alerts went out. Search parties. The news has been all over this.”
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