Ember Burning

by Jennifer Alsever

  I spin back around and, without overthinking it, swing my right foot up and into a small opening no greater than the width of my body. With a big heave, I pull myself into it. I look up. It’s steep. Doubt creeps in.

  “No problem,” I whisper to myself. “No problem at all. Just a forty-foot wall and no ropes. No big deal.”

  My hands tremble. My heart pounds. Another step, another handhold. Again and again. A smile spreads along my face as I rhythmically, systematically climb up and up. Euphoria and strength sweep through me.

  Near the top, perhaps only fifteen feet from the edge of the cliff, things change. The wall is now flatter, the crevasse narrower, the rock slicker. My rhythm falters, and fear seizes my brain. I can’t find another place to grip the wall with my fingers.

  Frantic, I pat the rock wall blindly with my left hand, searching for something to act as leverage. My fingertips scrape against the rock. My breath and my voice intermingle, turning me into some weird kind of hyperventilating squeaky dog toy. “Please, rock. Please, wall. Please,” I whimper.

  But the cliff wall stands firm, unmoving—basically it’s telling me to go screw myself. My legs balance precariously, relying on my right foot. It’s like I’m literally standing on one toe. That one awful lime green toenail that I hated so much yesterday could actually be my one lifesaving piece of anatomy today. Super Toe.

  “Hang on, Ember,” I whisper out loud to myself. It comes out of nowhere and surprises even me. It’s what Dad told me the day of the accident.

  I was sitting at the kitchen table, a blubbery mess. “Why won’t she get out of bed anymore?” I gasped, tears clogging my throat, my nose, my eyes. “She doesn’t even want to be with me.”

  Dad rested his elbows on the table, twisted his fingers through his messy hair. “Ember, just hang on. She’ll come out of it. Something happened when she was young, and it comes back now and then,” he said. “Just… just try to hang on, babe.”

  “I heard her say we’re going to lose the house. Are we?”

  He hung his head over his coffee and sighed. “Listen. We’ll go tonight and meet this music exec in Vail. I’ll show him my stuff, and maybe something big will happen for us.”

  Dad thought if he invited Mom to come and asked her to drive, then maybe it would perk her up. I agreed, wiped my tears away. He reached over and squeezed my neck with a callused hand. “We just got to get through the hard stuff. Be patient,” he told me.

  If I had been patient, maybe my parents would still be alive.

  With my hands on the rock, the guilt nearly makes my body collapse. A mournful sob ripples through me. I gasp for air, memories and regret hammering down on me, stealing my breath and cutting at the muscles in my legs, my arms, my fingertips. I pant, unable to calm my emotions, which are bursting like popcorn on a hot stove. I cling to the rock wall. This huge breakdown is swiftly eating away my will and could very well kill me.

  I cannot be thinking this way. The memory of Dad’s voice rings in my ears, and I repeat his words once again. “Hang on, Ember,” I whisper.

  Breathing out through pursed lips, I dive back into the task at hand. My left hand soon finds another handhold higher up on the rock wall. Straddling the crevasse, my feet search blindly for the next tiny crack for leverage, and I heave my body up to take another step, leaning as far as possible into the V shape of the wall. Hang on, Ember. It’s my mantra. My evil cliff wall mantra.

  The steps send tiny pebbles skittering down below me. I watch them thump, bounce, roll and finally, finally, land on the ground. Far. Far. Below me.

  My stomach rolls and my whole world wavers. I think I might throw up. Air fights to get into my lungs.

  I find and grasp one more tiny ledge to the far right. Clinging. Grabbing. Pulling. But as I hang literally by my fingertips, gravity pulls me backwards, threatening to drag me out into the air, and off the rock. I begin to whimper and cry. “Please, God, don’t let me fall. Please. Please. I have too much to do.”

  The irony isn’t lost on me. A week ago, death didn’t scare me like this. It would almost have been a welcome relief from life—or lack of life. And I cannot lie and say that I never thought of ways to off myself. But now, clinging to the wall by my fingertips, I do not want death. Not now. Not yet.

  I must only think of my fingertips. Of my beautiful, miraculous, lime-green toes. Of regaining my footing. It’s like skiing. Or running. Or singing. You can only think of the moment. Turn off your brain, Ember. Hang on.

  And I do. My left foot finds a tiny hole no bigger than two quarters. With a final grunt of power, I raise my right foot to share the same space. It’s enough to let me reach the grassy top of the cliff. The finish line. Grunting and pulling. Hands, elbows, armpits, waist, hips, leg, other leg—they find the top, too. I did it.

  I lie on my stomach on top of the cliff, my cheek pressed flat into the dirt, pebbles poking into my wet skin. A delirious smile stays plastered on my face. With eyes closed, I sigh, laughing, almost hysterically, like I’m slaphappy drunk. I breathe hard into the ground. “Thank you. Thank you,” I mumble.

  When I stand to take in the vast canyon that nearly kept me prisoner, the beauty is breathtaking. A giant rocky cavern surrounds what looks like a tiny green garden and a tiny dollhouse tucked into the hill. I cannot believe I climbed that. I really did it. Pride envelops me. If anyone can do it, Ember, you can. My brother’s words.

  I envision Jared’s face, smiling with those crinkling eyes. I want to see my brother. I need to see my brother.

  Behind me, a sea of evergreen trees awaits, like an endless rolling dark carpet. Dense. Welcoming. I beam.

  I’m back in the forest. Home.

  27

  I’ve come so far, tramping through the forest with no sure path for hours tonight. The sun fell. A muffin became dinner, and I climbed into my sleeping bag on the ground.

  Lying here in the cool air, I can hear sounds ripple through the shadowy forest. The wind’s moaning. The steady, high-pitched orchestra of crickets. The faraway, biting howl of a coyote. The sounds show up as a jumble of color. Jagged neon-orange lines, dots of murky gray, and blotches of dark, ripe cherry. My Color Crayon Brain shows something more than color, too. It’s metallic gold and it’s a triangle—a pyramid—spinning, slowly then faster, before becoming drenched in blood red. The vision delivers a sickening wave of nausea to my gut.

  I think of the house in the canyon below, of Lilly and Zoe talking about keeping me here, promising a new life. Everything about that place is candy-covered wickedness. It’s beautiful. Relaxing. Indulgent. Evil. A shiver runs down my spine. I need to go home. I need my life. I need to live a full life. For me. For my parents. I know this now.

  Through the slit in my sleeping bag, I can make out the vague outline of a slow-creeping fog moving across the forest toward me. Electricity ignites the air. I’ve seen this before—and it’s not normal. The hair on my neck stands on end. Blood thumps heavy in my ears. Fear snakes across every inch of my skin down to my toenails, and I tuck my head down deep in my sleeping bag, hoping whatever is out there in the dark doesn’t find me.

  28

  An alarm clock. Someone turn off the damn alarm clock. Bright neon green and hot pink bursts flash in my Color Crayon Brain.

  I open my eyes and bright morning light blinds me. A plump gray-and-white bird slowly comes into view, sitting on the ground next to me. Black wings, white body, large rounded gray head. Its eyes are coated by what looks like a black feathered mask. It’s watching me—and it’s making the most horrible sound. Aak-aak, it repeats over and over, followed by a whistle and clucks. A horrible, uncontrollable alarm clock. Make the noise and the bright stabbing orange color stop. Please.

  I stretch to grasp for a rock to throw at the bird, anything to get it to shut up. As I extend them, my calves and thighs scream, a gift from yesterday’s long hike. That’s when something white catches my eye just beyond the bird. It’s long and cylindrical. With tiny silver stars. I re
ach out to touch it. My water bottle. My favorite eleven-thousand-foot star water bottle that I dropped yesterday. I’m thrilled—because it means so much to me. Then instantly confused. Then flustered. I bolt upright in my sleeping bag and take in my surroundings.

  Everything is different. But yet everything is the same.

  I am not in the forest. I’m in the exact same spot I was when I started climbing yesterday—the red dirt, the scrub oak, the sandstone and limestone rocks. The bottom of the canyon floor.

  “What?” I whisper, jumping up from my bag as if I’m on fire, flipping my head around. My mind twirls in confusion. I want my forest. My lovely, welcoming forest. I cannot see how I could possibly be back to square one. I am losing my mind. I am truly losing my effing mind.

  That thick, tar-like black dread drowns me, moving up from my gut to my forehead. My throat begins to choke off air in my lungs, and my head feels as if it’s going to roll off my neck and onto the ground. Everything I accomplished yesterday was for nothing. Nothing.

  Tears clog my eyes, distorting the trees and rocks around me, and devastation collapses me to my knees. Throwing my head down, I bury my screams into the nylon sleeping bag and tear at my hair.

  “No. No. No! No!” I cry. It’s a tantrum. A full-on Lilly-style tantrum. “What the hell?” I repeat it over and over and over. I wail. I cannot believe this is happening.

  I stay like that, sobbing into my sleeping bag for the longest time. Then Dad’s voice echoes in my head. Hang on, Ember. Almost immediately, my body stills itself, my sobbing hushes, and I sit up. The damn bird watches me from a branch. I glare at him and wipe my face, feeling an irrational embarrassment that he saw me fall apart. His head moves in fits of jerks.

  “This place won’t keep me,” I say to him. Forceful. “You’ll see.”

  Collecting my things, I gulp some water, shove a muffin into my mouth, and start to walk. Determined.

  I still don’t know how I got back to the canyon floor. Perhaps there’s an omnipresent force working against me.

  I can get out. This time, I go toward the west.

  29

  Several hours later, I’m smiling again. I wish I thought of this route yesterday. The top of the canyon isn’t far away. I’ve taken a far smarter path today, this time climbing through the uneven yellow rocks instead of the vertical red sandstone cliffs. This side of the canyon offers more outcroppings that are easier to climb. Like little jagged stairs.

  My thighs scream and shake, as if they’ve endured five hours climbing stadium stairs—something Maddie and I talked about doing before cross-country season sophomore year, though the conversation never went beyond the futon.

  Now, as I take a rest to catch my breath, it’s clear the top of the cliff isn’t too far. The walls are shorter there, maybe thirty feet tall. Sweat streaks down my face, stinging my eyes and my sunburnt skin. My hands tremble as I take a giant suck on the tube of my hydration pack. I’m almost out of water.

  I sit on a rock to rest, staring so hard at the open field of greens, purples, reds, and yellows below—looking like a scarf blowing in the wind—that it makes my eyes go fuzzy. Not far away, a bird with oily-black feathers sits on a tree branch watching me. Small splashes of firey orange and red feathers dot its shoulders. It is not my alarm clock bird. This one watches me, swaying up and down, before leaning forward and puffing its chest to make a high-pitched call that’s shimmery like angels’ wings.

  The breeze blows my hair over my face, cooling my skin and calming my emotions. Turning around to face the towering rock wall, I know I have to keep trying to get out. Now. I cannot stay here and give up hope.

  I sing Willie Nelson’s “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” Mom’s favorite song. My voice fills up the quiet canyon around me, and colors dance in my vision. Warm golds, browns, olive green. They soothe and inspire me. I’m going to get out.

  Later that day, I climb the damn cliff. I hike to the woods. I hike almost all night long. I sit down to rest. Just to rest. No sleeping bag. All with the intent to keep going and hike until I get to a road. But I fall asleep. I must have.

  In the morning, my face feels tight and dry when I open my eyes to the bright sun. It’s too bright. I shut my eyes again and cover them with my hand while I squint. I’m almost home. My cracked lips turn up in a smile, and I slowly rise from the ground.

  I inhale and stretch as my eyes adjust to the light. A familiar squawking rings in my ears, jagged neon orange spikes. The color sends an electric panic flapping through me. My annoying alarm clock bird is in my face. The bottom of the canyon wall. I’m sitting up against a rock. Dirty, hot, tired, completely exhausted, and entirely freaked out.

  This is a cruel game. A pawn that gets taken back to the start when the wrong card is drawn. Back to square one.

  I’m shaking uncontrollably. Tears pool in my eyes, and my breathing becomes ragged. I don’t understand how it could be two days of the same thing. The same circle. The same pattern. Climb, hike farther, walk until I can walk no more, drift off to sleep. Wake. Back to the start.

  The bird keeps up its annoying call, and the pounding neon colors accumulate in my mind, banging in bright reflective-orange starbursts. I grasp a small jagged stick and chuck it at him, missing by just a couple inches. He keeps squawking. I cover my ears and squeeze my eyes shut. I hate that bird.

  I gaze down at my legs and the red dirt still painted on my skin. Mom always said I’d won the genetic lottery with my olive skin, but every uncovered inch of me looks raw from days of direct sun.

  There’s no rain. No cool 3 p.m. breeze. No rolling gray clouds. No rumbling distant thunder. No refreshing afternoon shower. Just blazing sun. Hot. Intense. Relentless.

  Digging through my pack, I find a banana and a bar—the last of my scavenged food. My stomach growls. As I eat my breakfast, my face grows slack. This terrain looks like any other place in Colorado. I still don’t see how it’s keeping me here, or rather, what is keeping me here. It’s possible, I suppose, that this is just one big hallucination.

  The alarm clock bird swiftly flies to a branch on a pine tree twenty-five yards away, its black wings vanishing behind its white body upon landing. Behind him, the evil rock wall looms. The grass in the meadow shifts in the wind, like it’s calling me to come back.

  In an almost visceral response, I shake my head swiftly. “No,” I whisper. No, I’m not going back to the meadow and that house. I stand, gather my things, and head back up toward the cliff. “Rock wall, you’re not getting rid of me.” But in the back of my mind, I wonder how long this will last. How long I will last.

  “Hang on, Ember,” I whisper.

  I continue to hike toward the cliff. Trees. Rocks. Dirt. Pine needles. Sticks. Branches. It’s all blending into one. My mind escapes the terrain with memories. Dad strumming the guitar. Mom humming and laying lasagna noodles in a pan. My weird feminist English teacher feeding almonds to her pet black crow sophomore year. Me eating an entire tube of cookie dough under the slide at the park with Maddie. Pushing so hard I was going to throw up at the finish line in the state cross-country meet. Dancing in my plaid pajamas in front of the mirror to songs on the stereo—and Jared throwing dirty socks at me from his bunk to get me to shut up.

  Finally, I stand at the wall again. Day number three.

  “Hello, Mr. Wall. Nice to see you again,” I say. Same spot as yesterday. I dive in. Climbing, grabbing, pulling, stepping, grunting as my pack and sleeping bag thump along my back. Thoughts of Lilly and Zoe and the dark weirdness of that place make me move faster.

  But perhaps because I’ve done this too many times. Because I’m too eager to get home, I move too fast. I’m too cocky. I’m too rushed. About twenty feet off the ground, the two-inch ledge that holds my right foot falls off. Literally breaks off. I gasp.

  Before I can even comprehend what’s happening or try to recover, I’m careening off the wall. My ankle hits something sharp, my back and my arms hit something else hard, and my body
free-falls and half-spins. My world is a dizzying mix of cliff, sky, and ground.

  Within a couple seconds, I’m on the ground. The world fades away.

  30

  I cannot breathe. My face is pressed to the ground, and dust and pine waft up into my nose and mouth. The bright sunlight pounds down on me like hot acid eating through my skin, making it almost impossible to open my eyes. I have no idea how long I’ve been lying here.

  Squinting, I slowly try to sit up. Stabbing pain shoots down my ankle, followed by a searing pain in my ribs and a throbbing in my head.

  Dizziness overtakes me, causing me to sink back down to the ground, where I lie on my comfortable bed in the dirt. It’s so much better here—yet I’m miserable. My skin is blistered, raw, and aching. My stomach cramps, then gives way to waves of nausea, and each breath sends sharp stabbing pains into my ribs. My cracked lips taste salty from the blood, and my throat is parched, like I’ve swallowed dust itself. I’m a mess.

  And so, so thirsty. My mouth grasps for the tube on my hydration pack hanging near my face, and I suck on it for water. One or two drops, then nothing. My head doesn’t leave the ground while my mind flashes delicious, torturous images. A rushing cool stream. Pools of water. Tall clear pitchers of it with floating ice cubes. Ice-cold lemonade in glasses dotted with cool perspiration. The turquoise lake from the first day here.

  From the ground, the terrain appears to blend together again. Rock after rock, cliff after cliff, tree after tree, mountain after mountain. I need to find that lake, I decide. I need water, even if my logical mind tells me unfiltered lake water will make me sick. I don’t care. Give me water.