“Maddie, you need to talk your BFF here into going with you,” Jennie says.
My gaze falls to Maddie and my stomach does a front flip. I pushed her away, but it doesn’t mean I don’t still feel the hollowness that comes only when you lose the person you told everything to, the person who was always there. She was like family. I don’t know why I’m doing this to her. To us.
Looking at her, I can’t tell what she is thinking—which is weird. At one point, we could read each other’s thoughts. People even said we laughed the same. She looks at Jennie with a face that is friendly but hard to read. I wait for her to answer and explain that we are not best friends. In fact, I’m pretty sure we’re not really friends at all.
Instead, she just pretends. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll have a talk’n to her, Mrs. Summers. You betcha.” She grins at Jennie but avoids looking at me.
Maddie’s fake promise to take care of me calls off the Summers Attack and her mission to Change Ember’s Life in the Hallway. A moment later, Jennie is gone.
Maddie gives me that Poor Girl with Dead Parents look. She bites her bottom lip, like she’s trying to think of what to say.
I shut down again.
My face burns and I begin to walk down the hallway toward the exit. I can’t see her face, but the tension in her voice is evident. “Emb, why are you still hanging out with Zach and JT? You know what they’re about.”
I don’t answer. I can’t help it. I run for the door.
She shouts after me, her voice floating down the hall. “I know you, Ember Trouvé. You’re stronger than this.”
Her words bounce through me like a ping-pong ball, leaving me shaken and doubting myself. Maddie has known me forever, but right now she doesn’t really know me at all. Heck, I don’t even know me.
I keep running, slamming against the metal door with the side of my body until I’m sprinting into a torrential rainstorm. The weather doesn’t stop me. I run as fast as I can toward Pine Street, where JT will be waiting.
16
JT opens the door, and a waft of burnt toast and sweat overpowers the fresh smell of the rain outside. Lines of rust streak the edges of the flimsy door to his uncle’s trailer.
“You gotta try this new shit from my uncle,” JT says, flashing a grin that makes his eyes look like slits. He tugs on my arm to take me inside. “The. Best. Ever.”
“You came here for a reason, right?” sings Zach.
Oh. My stomach lurches. He’s here, too. Dressed in red athletic shorts and no shirt, Zach meanders over to me and leans on the sofa by the door. His pasty chest looks concave and his ribs show. I see a chipped tooth I’d never noticed before and a few pimples on his stubbled cheek. Seeing him now, after that night, makes me feel nauseous.
Old Ember momentarily flashes in my mind. I remember how I threw up that night in the clearing and let Zach get with me in his truck. I lost four weeks of my life that way. Why am I here, seriously?
“I don’t know…” I bite my cheek and consider turning around and going home. But where is home, anyway?
JT grabs my arm and pulls me inside. “It’s all good,” he says. “Want a cookie?”
I slide in next to him on the nappy tan sofa and accept a crumbling Oreo. I nibble on it and watch him put an entire cookie in his mouth before his burly uncle comes out of the bedroom.
He would be perfect for some Alaskan reality TV show—with that bushy beard and enormous gut. He hands me a blue pill and a glass of water. “This one’s on me,” he says.
The pill feels weightless in the palm of my hand. I gaze at the blue tablet, no bigger than an Advil. I don’t think this alone will kick my elephant’s ass.
“I want more.”
His uncle lifts his eyebrows and smirks. “Why not?” He drops two more pills in my hand. Surely, these will make me forget the graduation cliff and Jennie Summers. I think of my parents. What would they say?
Nothing. They’re dead.
“These’ll take you to another planet, promise,” JT’s uncle says, noticing my hesitation. I look up at him and notice bits of food nested inside the thicket of his brown beard.
I swallow the pills and let Hairy Uncle pull me up to stand, let him press his body against mine, as we sway like an old-fashioned couple, dancing to the rap music. The smell of his stale sweat fills my nose, but I go with the flow, swaying and spinning. The colors of the music swirl in my mind: ink black and suede brown and moss green.
The blood rushes in, followed by a mini explosion that lights my nerves on fire. We spin in circles, and the echo of laughter ripples through my mind—a bright, neon-pink ribbon.
With each turn, I catch tiny glimpses of JT and Zach sitting on the sofa, eating Oreos, spacey looks on their faces. They watch me twirl, watch me being handled by this stranger. Dizzy, I eventually sit down on the floor, near a lone slice of pizza left overturned on the blue carpet, and then after a while, a sickening blow comes over me.
The laughter in the room becomes warped, bouncing off my skin, an itch I can’t scratch. Maddening. The noise and music send sharp, steely bombs through my Crayon Brain—so painful I cover my eyes.
I lean back against the wall, and that rush of warm bathwater fills my veins, sloshing against the deep recesses of my mind. The voices on the TV drift away. The skin on my fingers, my legs, my face disappears. Nothing. I feel nothing.
At some point, Mom and Dad stand before me. I watch them with mild curiosity, with no feeling, no thoughts, just a numbness as if they are unfamiliar faces. Wallpaper.
Slowly, a thin dark line trickles down the temple of Mom’s face. Hmm. The line gushes crimson red, sprouting from the top of her head, running in thick, sticky globs across her hair, over her forehead, clogging her eyes and mouth. Blood. Dad smiles with only his mouth—not his eyes—and one side of his head looks dented. Crushed.
Oh. I feel nothing.
My parents become indistinct and frayed at the edges, before disappearing entirely. Zach and JT sit on the couch eating Oreos. Drowsy, I yearn to sleep. My heartbeat thumps in my ears, my breath echoes. Everything slows. Until… Silence. Beautiful, golden silence.
A door slams shut. A ceiling fan thumps overhead. The musty carpet becomes thick quicksand, sucking my immobile body down deeper into the living room floor, suffocating and drowning me. Slowly, inch by inch.
I’m at Gram’s house. I know that. I can feel it. I can smell it. The mildew and the dust in the carpet.
Above me, the fan thumps again and again. A marching beat to death. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. Sinking farther into the carpet, I am going to finally disappear and dissolve into the darkness.
17
I open my eyes. Everything is a swirl of white. White curtains. White walls. Bright sunshine. Maybe I’m dead after all.
No. I’m in a hospital bed. With a thin white blanket, a blood pressure cuff, a brown wheelie tray, a vase of bright orange and pink flowers. I shift and a stabbing pain pricks my arm. An IV needle is taped to my arm.
My head sinks back into the pillow. My eyelids feel so heavy. Strange dreams intermingle with my consciousness: Running from a flood. Weaving through a forest made of enormous blue pills. Drowning in an ocean current.
When I open my eyes again, my brother stands at the foot of the bed, dressed in a black hoodie and jeans. He shifts his weight between his feet. “Hey.”
I grimace. Usually, being with Jared is like slipping into an old pair of jeans. I feel like my old self with him. Or at least I did.
“Gram found you on the floor.” His voice is hard.
The memories come back: Flashing red and blue lights. Someone in a white uniform huddling over me, saying my name.
“What’d you take?”
I shrug. “Blue pills.”
He inhales and nods. “Doctors said your heart stopped and they thought it might’ve been heroin pills.”
Maybe. I don’t know what it was.
My brother nods, disbelief and disappointment clouding his face.
He shakes his head. “Heroin. Unbelievable.”
Later, Maddie shows up in jeans and a too-tight pink T-shirt. She doesn’t look like Maddie.
“Hey,” I say, looking out the window. I don’t want her here. I don’t want her reminding me of what a total fuck-up I am.
“How are you?”
“What does it look like?”
I can’t see her, but I feel her move around the hospital room, pulling up a chair. “So, we got measured for graduation caps and gowns today.”
“Great.”
“I brought a tape measure, you know, so I can tell them your head size.”
The thought of graduating under these circumstances makes me nauseous. I can’t get out of this hole. I can’t even look at her. “No thanks.”
She moves to the counter. “Oh, look at your flowers.” She admires a vase of colorful flowers. I don’t know who they are from. “Love the daisies. Well, you know that, right?” She looks over to me. “Remember how we used to steal them from your mom’s garden and try to sell them on the corner?”
I can feel her gaze on me from across the room, but I keep my eyes trained on the foot of the bed. “Um, so,” Maddie says. “Sydney’s having a big party after graduation. Her dad is renting out the Tabor Center, getting a DJ, ordering ice sculptures, everything. I’m half expecting pony rides.” She laughs. “You should come.”
I don’t respond. A long awkward silence moves between us. I jiggle my foot and grit my teeth. I want her to leave. I’ve seen her face before when she’s tried to be cheerful, be normal, and I couldn’t. My own sadness wilts her.
I don’t want to be around her perky normal and the way she tries so hard. I don’t want her sad, worried eyes hanging on me. I can’t stand this looming rubberneck stare I get from everyone in Leadville.
Her body snaps. “Ember, what the hell is going on with you?”
“I’m in the hospital…” I say, turning to look at her finally. Pure bitch.
“I’m so freaking disappointed in you.”
Her words surprise me, like her disappointment is supposed to be my greatest worry. I repeat the word slowly. “Disappointed. Sounds like disgusted might be the word you’re looking for.” My voice is icy and my heart beats faster because I know what I’m doing. They’re quiet words but they’re also fighting words. I’m fighting. I know I did all this, caused it, and pushed her away. And I’m doing it now.
“I told you not to start hanging out with Zach and JT. They’re total jackasses who will pull you under,” she says. “They don’t care about you.”
That’s clear now. Leaving me for dead is a pretty good indication. I glance at her. I can’t drag her down with me. That’s what I’d do, really. Drown her.
I lie there stony-faced staring at the wall. My eyes sting with tears but I blink fast, determined to keep them from falling out of my eyes.
“Why didn’t you listen?” she whispers. I glance at her, brown eyes soft and sad. “You just shut down. I’ve tried. I’ve invited you to do stuff. I called. It’s like no matter what, you just can’t be happy, Emby. It’s like you almost enjoy being… lost. Like you… thrive on it. And no one can help you… but you.”
Her eyes glisten and her bottom lip quivers. “I miss you,” she adds.
Those last words feel good. She was my person, my go-to person for so long. For the old me. I now have a choice in this moment. I could put the past in the past and just run to her. Or not.
I look at the IV bag hanging next to me. I’m a disaster. Maddie’s face pleads, and my heart aches. “I need to get some rest. You should go.”
The rest of the day is a blur of needles, consent forms, and judgmental stares. But before I know it, I’m being wheeled out to the hospital lobby in a wheelchair. Flanked by people who have no idea what to do with me next.
On the way home from the hospital, Gram drives my truck while I stare quietly out the window, the sunlight bursting in waves of dark and light through the passing trees.
“You could have died… The doctors say I have to take out the household cleaners, pain relievers, everything from the house. How can I live like that?
“They have a spot for you Tuesday at Children’s Hospital near Denver. A week of inpatient therapy. You can’t bring anything in with you, but I’ll visit…
“You can probably still make graduation, but afterwards, you’ll need to stay with me so I can watch you.”
When we get to Leadville, Gram stops in a coffee shop while I wait in the car. It must be afternoon because clumps of kids with backpacks scatter the streets. I watch a group of girls, sophomores, pass my truck. One glances at me, straightens, then leans her head to a shorter girl, whispering. The girl’s eyes flit to me for a fraction of a second before landing across the street. I turn away, my face heating up and tears pricking the backs of my eyes. They know.
Through the windshield, I see Maddie and Sydney’s posse rounding the corner onto Harrison Street together. Sydney talks to the group, flopping her hands and dramatically nodding her head. Maddie tosses her head back in laughter. She doesn’t even look like old Maddie anymore.
I slide down on the leather seat so my head hovers near the bottom of the window. I can’t take any more of this town. I catch a glimpse of a woman leaning against a black Mercedes across the street. With snow-white skin and red hair, she’s the same woman who dropped the coin outside the gas station. She gazes directly at me.
I wonder if that was her coin. Maybe she owns the house in Trinity Forest and knows I was trespassing, sleeping in her house, wearing her clothes. I shake my head at the thought. Of course, Trinity is not real. That memory is just a cloud. Of course, I am still Crazy, Messed-Up Ember. Casting my gaze to my lap, I grit my teeth. Gram must be picking her own freaking coffee beans.
Through the open window, I hear heels click on the pavement. Crap. That lady is walking toward me.
I can feel her presence just a couple feet from my window. Her perfume swirls in the air like a sweet lilac cloud.
“Hello, Ember,” she says in a lilting British accent. “Everyone is waiting for you in Trinity. Won’t you come back?”
Her words stun me. Trinity? Either I’m hallucinating now, or it was all real.
A lovely tingle wraps around my head. I offer a small smile and catch a quick glance at her through my thick hair.
I’m about to ask her to tell me more, but she disappears, and I stare at the tears in the leather of my steering wheel. I have no idea what I’m doing. Gram is going to lock me up in some hospital, make me a prisoner in her freaking house. Graduation will be filled with heavy whispers and stares.
After a moment, I make a decision. Hell, yes, I am going back to Trinity Forest.
Maybe I was still messed up on drugs there. Maybe I am mentally unstable. But something real must have happened in Trinity, because it was the only place where I felt like my old self. The only place where people treated me differently. I have no plan and no place to go otherwise.
I let out a squeal of excitement, scoot over to the driver’s seat, turn the ignition, and drive away.
18
When I arrive at the barbed-wire fence leading to Trinity, a woman leans against a weathered post, as if she’s waiting for me. Two long gray braids hang over her tie-dye T-shirt.
Lodima.
“You back again?” she asks, greeting me through the passenger window as I turn off the engine.
“Do you live here or what?” I ask with a laugh.
She smiles and shakes her head no. “I could ask the same of you.”
“Are you hiking in?”
“No.” She studies me with a look of consternation, and her fingers touch a necklace dangling from her throat. It’s a small golden cross with a looping middle top. It looks like the ankh cross I read about in Mom’s notebook—the Egyptian symbol for life.
“Cool necklace,” I say, turning off the engine and reaching down to grab my water bottle off the floor.
She leans on the
door and sighs. “This is my good luck necklace.”
“Oh,” I say.
“What’s yours?”
I shrug. As if we all have good luck necklaces.
“Well, this loopy little guy here is a supreme protector. To ancient Egyptians it meant life, but I see it as a symbol of awareness. Being able to see through deception. Find your way around. No matter where your life may take you, your true path will be shown to you.”
“Cool.” Actually, that is cool. Mom always looked for meaning in everything, dragging me to summer craft fairs to hunt for symbolic jewelry, rocks, and healing crystals.
I open the door and walk around to get my backpack out of the truck bed, but Lodima already has it gripped in her hands, holding it up high for me to slide over my shoulders. I hesitate, uncomfortable that she is so forward, but then I oblige, pivoting around and letting her place it on my back. “You sure this is the right path for you, Ember?”
What is her deal? She’s like a watchdog for this place. I bite my lip. “Yeah, I’m going to meet some friends.”
“What would your mother say?”
Stunned, I stammer for a moment. What a completely off-the-wall thing to say. Mom would tell me never to go into Trinity. And so what? Mom is dead, and even when she was here, she wasn’t always here. The decision is mine. Not Mom’s. Not Jared’s. Not Gram’s, or freaking Lodima’s. And my decision: I’m going.
I speed-walk to the fence.
“It’s a bad idea,” she says, studying the zipper on her fleece jacket, echoing Lilly’s words when I left.
Lodima’s gravelly voice feeds that unease in me again, like a hand physically grasping at my shoulder. I shake it off and continue walking.
With the skill of a burglar, I move through the barbs of the fence. I can feel her stare as I walk away. Her voice follows me. “Godspeed.”
A couple hours later, I’m lost. I don’t see the gate anywhere. I stop and spin around, and the dizzying scent of damp dirt, mildew leaves, and pine fills my head.
Ember Burning Page 9