He glances up, then locks eyes with me, delivering a zing to every vein in my body. His demeanor shifts to something more optimistic. “With you and me together, who knows?”
35
The little lake looks like a piece of glass. I sink down along the shore in the waist-high grass, which whispers and sings in the breeze.
I clasp my Missing Persons notebook in my hand. But I’m not going to dwell on those faces. I’m going to write music again, something I haven’t even considered since the elephant arrived.
A familiar call from a bird breaks the silence, and the sound rains down in my Crayon Brain as sparkling diamonds from the sky. That black bird with the red splash on its feathers. It feels like it’s following me. Unlike my annoying alarm clock bird, this guy makes me feel hopeful.
I touch the ankh cross necklace on my neck. I will find a way out of here. I have to.
Inspiration overflows inside, and I dig out a pen, roll over onto my stomach, flip to the back of the notebook, and scribble my emotions out onto an empty page.
There’s a secret in this candy-covered place
And we’ve eaten up the lies to be erased.
In this prison, there is frustration
Keeping us here ’til we break.
We’ve been dining like the food would never end,
Played in beauty made of lies to be best friends.
I say that something’s gotta change.
I need it but I only seem to bleed.
Then I scream out loud/ Oooooh
They’ll pay the world for it/ Oooooh
Yet I must get out/ Oooooh
Oh, I’m in the trap
And it steals from me.
I can feel me slip now
But I will be tenacious.
Trinity will tempt you
By promising to help you.
Beauty and lies run thick as thieves,
That’s what I’m learning this time.
It may try to steal me
But oh, my light will heal me.
Yeah, fire is tenacious.
I sing the somber tune out loud as I write. Deep magenta, gold, and orange circles and pulsing lights play in the corner of my mind.
“Incredible voice.” I look up from my paper to find Tre standing there, the sun shining around his tall frame like he’s an angel. The sight of him gives me a happy buzz.
“Thanks,” I say. “But it’s no punk rock.”
“Can’t have everything. But really, it suits you,” he says, sitting down next to me. He hangs his arms casually over his knees.
“What do you mean by that?” I ask. “It suits me? How?”
“Your voice. It’s got that low, rich sound. It’s like… sandpaper dipped in honey,” he says. “Like you.”
My face heats up. “Sandpaper, huh?”
“No, it’s good. I promise. I’m no music critic, but I know when something is good.”
“Thanks… I think.” I smile, biting my pen and keeping my eyes trained on my paper. His presence distracts me, and my hand scribbles arrows and circles instead of words.
After a moment, he moves closer to me, touching the edge of my notebook. He catches my eye. “Can I read it?”
“It just came into my head. It’s not finished.”
He tilts the edge of my notebook and reads with his head close to mine, his breath warm on my throat. My pulse quickens.
“I like it,” he says finally, leaning back into his own space.
The melody continues to play in my head. “Well, it’s just what came out.”
“I like people who’ve got some fire in them.” He leans forward toward me, pulling up the sleeve of his black T-shirt, and points to his tattoo on his tanned shoulder. There is an image, drawn in exquisite detail, of the Berlin Wall, and a sledgehammer next to it, with the words reißen Sie diese Mauer. “It means ‘tear down this wall,’” he explains, grinning.
His tattoo makes him even sexier, and I’m not sure I can take much more of this. “Fight the authority!” I say, making a fist and thrusting it in the air.
His face breaks into a smile, dimples and all. He shakes his head, biting the corner of his lip. “You’re a fighter, too,” he says.
I roll over, sit up, and sigh. “I don’t know. I have a hard time keeping things in when I get mad. My mom always told me I had no self-edit button when I was pissed. My dad had a nicer word—willful.”
He laughs. “You talk about your dad so much. He must’ve meant a lot to you.”
“Yeah,” I say, pushing away the heaviness that settles over my chest. “He taught me guitar and used to sing me to sleep as a kid. He was a really good musician and could have done big stuff in the music world, but he stayed in Leadville because my mom really loved it. Plus, Gram was there. And I think my mom really wanted to fix their relationship.” I stop, embarrassed for dumping all this information on him. “Sorry, TMI.”
“Huh?”
“It means ‘too much information.’” I giggle, offering a sideways glance and a bump of my shoulder.
“Oh…” He nods slowly, turning a blade of grass in his fingers. “Well. I’d say TSS.”
I frown, confused. “And that would be…”
“‘That sounds stupid,’” he says with a grin. I shove him with my shoulder again and laugh.
After a while, I hug my knees. We watch as a breeze moves two leaves across the water, weaving silver ripples into its smooth surface. The leaves bounce and bump and turn into the edge of the lake. They’re little boats in a harbor. Just like us. Stuck.
“You know,” I say, “my mom had a picture of a lake that looked like this. It hung in our bathroom. It had this mixture of light and dark. From one angle, it looked so serene, as if you were looking at heaven itself. But on other days, I looked at it and it creeped me out. It was all darkness and ominous shadows. It’s hard to explain.”
“Sounds like she painted this very lake,” he says, not taking his eyes off the heart-shaped leaves swirling in circles, going nowhere.
“She did tell me she could paint the future.” I laugh a little at the thought. I remember how I asked her to paint a picture of me as a world-famous singer, bathing in money.
“Yeah? Good artist?”
I nod. “She painted really beautiful stuff, like big abstract canvases. Ambitious stuff.”
Back then, I used to get so annoyed with her marathon painting sessions because she would get into this place, this enrapture, and nothing could break through.
“You have a brother, too, right?”
“Jared. I should have graduated and gone to live with him in Boulder.” Everything would have been different if I did.
“Why didn’t you?”
I shrug. “I just froze up. Plus, Jared is so busy. He partied all the time after my mom and dad died.”
“Wait—both your parents died? How? When?” Tre turns to me, his face full of concern.
I swallow, knowing it’s been a conscious effort to kick shut the closet door to my life story, never wanting to share it with anyone.
His eyes look earnest, and he leans back to take a really good look at me, placing a hand on my shoulder. The touch melts me like butter. Maybe I can open that door, a tiny bit.
“It was a car accident. We were all driving down Tennessee Pass my junior year. Icy roads. We were headed to Vail to meet some record company executive when we spun out of control and went off a cliff.”
The memory rushes back like a barreling semitruck. How I clawed the snowy hill, slipping, screaming madly as if my skin were on fire. Then, the sound of tearing metal ripping through the winter air and the enormous shadow that moved overhead, the breeze that fluttered my hair. Instinct threw me to the ground, and through squinted eyes, I watched another car flying, soaring off the cliff—the same spot we’d gone over—graceful, a giant black raven in the inky-black sky. The SUV whistled, its wheels spinning, before it crashed directly on top of our car. With my parents inside.
I scre
amed “No!” over and over, racing back down the hill to the wreckage, hoping somehow my voice alone could rewind what had just happened.
Something in me collapses inward at the memory, and I gaze up at Tre’s face. The sunlight brightens his clear eyes, and his thick, dark eyebrows wrinkle in empathy.
“I climbed out to get help”—my voice cracks—“and another car slid off the cliff and landed on top of ours. I lived. They didn’t.”
He shakes his head before dropping it into his hands. “Oh my God, Ember.”
The fact that I’m talking about it now stuns me, but for some reason, Tre makes me feel more relaxed than anyone has in so long. Still, I can’t tell him the other part of story, the part that haunts me, weighs me down with guilt. Maybe I’ll never open that closet door for anyone.
Tre, just an inch away from me, lifts his head slowly and grimaces before leaning in toward me.
“I miss them so much,” I whisper finally.
He encircles his arms around me, pulling me in for a hug. He smells fresh, like a cool stream, and for a moment, his arms hold up my entire world.
“I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been for you.”
I breathe into his cotton T-shirt, finally letting myself be. His hug pushes more broken pieces back together.
After several seconds, he pulls back and looks at me, hesitating. An electrical current buzzes around us. He glances down to my mouth, and his eyes linger there for a moment. His lips part. I’m entranced by his bottom lip, the way it’s slightly bigger than the top. His body is like a magnet pulling me in.
Without even intending—without thinking it through—I turn away quickly and look at my hands, rubbing my chipped black nail polish. I have no freaking idea why I did that. Why I turned away from this boy who I most definitely want to kiss, the boy who might really understand me, the boy who might really, truly see me. Why?
Bitchy Ember answers my question. Because he won’t ever understand the real you, the whole you, the one who does terrible things. A kiss won’t erase that or the guilt, it won’t rewind the past, and it won’t get you out of here.
We’re quiet for a few minutes before Tre stands up and takes his T-shirt off, revealing that yummy tanned skin again. “You know, I’ve been thinking about this for a while,” he says. “While we’re here… you really need to work on your form on the rope swing.”
I smile, appreciating the lightness. “Hey now, you are not one to judge.”
“Let me demonstrate the flaws.” He strides confidently to a worn rope that’s dangling off a lodgepole pine tree. I hadn’t even noticed it.
Grabbing hold of the rope, he wraps his entire body around it, as if clinging to it for dear life. His eyes grow huge in mock fear, and his mouth opens into a totally overdone grimace.
“What?” I jump up and hobble-run at him. “No! Way! I so did not look like that!” His impression, complete with flaring nostrils, is hysterical, and I cannot help but laugh out loud.
He nods. “Oh yes. Oh yes. No, wait, it was more like this.” He presses his cheek to the rope and then opens and shuts his mouth like a fish.
I run at him hard and with a grin use two hands to push him out over the lake. My laughter ripples loudly and becomes uncontrollable as he spins out over the glassy water.
On his way swinging back to the shore, he reaches out and, with one swift swoop, grabs my waist and pulls me off my feet, Tarzan-style. The move completely blindsides me, and I screech and cling to him. My body presses up against his, and he joins me in a deep, low laugh.
“Put me down!” I shriek.
He shakes his head and smiles with both his mouth and his eyes. We spin together on the rope as one, flipping in a dizzying circle. His hand wraps around my waist, and the warmth of his entire body presses against mine. I’m aware of every part of us that touches. The scent of his sun-drenched skin. I squeeze my eyes shut, and when I open them again, his mouth is just an inch from mine.
“Ready?” he whispers, grinning.
Breathless, my heart races. Then he lets go of his grasp.
I try to cling on to him, but gravity wins and I fall into the ice-cold water, plunging in past my head. When I come up, I’m shrieking and busting out with a bold loud laugh again. In between, I try to catch my breath.
He’s swinging over me still, hanging by two hands, his legs dangling loosely, like he’s not working hard at all to hang on to the thick twine. His muscles flex from above. When he passes by me again, I reach up and grab his foot and yank him hard, pulling him down into the water with me. He yells and splashes next to me.
When he emerges from the water, his blue eyes shine and the sound of his deep, genuine chuckle fills my vision with gold and pink swirls. We yank on each other, pulling each other down, as we make our way to shore.
“Great, Tre. We’re going to get hypothermia,” I say in bursts, pulling away from his grasp.
On the shore, dripping wet, Tre shakes his hair. My teeth chatter as I wrap my arms around my wet T-shirt to keep any ounce of warmth inside my body. We lie on our backs in the tall grass, our stomachs shaking from silent laughter.
“You suck,” I whisper-laugh.
“I think that was a good start for an amateur,” he says.
He’s so different than he was when I swam the first time in the lake. “You know, that first day, I thought you hated me,” I say.
He shakes his head and closes his eyes, turning his face up to the sky. “Nope. Thought you were beautiful.” His words fill me like a hot-air balloon.
His hand is near mine, centimeters away. We don’t touch. But an electric energy hovers between us. We’re magnets wanting to connect. Needing it.
Finally I turn my head toward his. I can see every single eyelash, wet and dark. He glances at my mouth and this time, I don’t turn away.
“I love the fire inside you, Ember,” he whispers. His face just inches from mine.
I smile. I’ve never wanted to kiss someone so badly.
Slowly, he rises onto an elbow and runs a finger down my jawbone with the touch of a feather. I gaze up at him, just inches above me. His touch is tender and what I’ve needed for days, months, years. Someone who really sees me and the strength inside me. Someone who tries to understand me. Someone who could look into my eyes and genuinely see my pain, see it written there and not look away. Not look at me with pity but with a knowing, an understanding of what it means to be separated from the people you love.
Tre leans in slowly and touches his lips to mine. I kiss him back, soft at first, reveling in his sweet, gentle mouth. Stars explode in my mind, and a golden rush makes its way through my entire body. Our kiss becomes more intense, consuming every vein in my body and every synapse in my mind. I clutch his neck, letting myself go, wishing I could soak into his skin.
After several effing amazing seconds, maybe minutes, he slowly pulls back. “I’ve wanted to do that for a while,” he says, grinning.
“Me too.” I blush.
36
My face hurts from smiling. We spend another three days together at camp, talking, swimming, kissing. Tre shows me how he jerry-rigs the alarm clock, and I write another song. He whittles sticks while I nap.
We sit cross-legged across from each other on the sleeping bag, trying to play cards and talking about everything under the sun. He tells me about the day he puked up blue cotton candy at the county fair, and I tell him about the time Jared convinced me to make a smoke bomb with sugar in the kitchen and it exploded, melting the countertops and making big black marks up the walls. We talk about our favorite movies, books, classes, and anything else that comes to mind.
Eventually, Tre puts down a trio of aces and then casually says, “We should probably go back to the house tomorrow. Almost out of food.”
My body stiffens. “I’m not going back.” I pick up an eight from the deck and discard a jack of hearts.
“Well, I am not much of a hunter,” he says, laughing. He picks up a card from the
deck.
“So.”
“And I don’t know jack about which mushrooms or berries will kill us,” he adds, raising his eyebrows. “So… I’m just saying.”
“You’re just saying,” I repeat, pausing on my turn to look him in the eye. “What if I’m pretty good at, like, making spears or rabbit traps or something?”
He smirks. “Somehow I doubt that.” He draws another card. “The house is our best bet.”
The house. The Trinity house. Cold stone-slab walls. Delectable, enticing meals. Watching the world spin by waiting for a creepy fate. If I return with him, I can’t become just like Lilly and Pete, simply accepting, pretending we’re at some sort of playground, willing to give in, willing to succumb to whatever force plays with my life.
Tre hasn’t just given in exactly. That’s clear. He’s simply a realist. He knows what we’re up against. He knows the house is the best bet for survival.
“I have to try to climb the cliff again,” I say. “One last time.”
37
The cliff doesn’t work. It doesn’t freaking work. With my hands on my hips, I pant, squinting to gaze up at the limestone wall. It’s pocked with tiny holes and ledges, crevasses and roots hanging out from bits of dirt. This should be doable. The cliff is so tall, maybe thirty feet high, but it’s filled with tiny ledges that could be handholds and footholds. I see them. Stair steps. They could get me out.
But after five attempts, I keep falling—and failing.
I squint in the sunshine to the top of the cliff, where little bits of grass peek over the edge, calling to me. Up top, there’s hope.
“Ember,” Tre whispers, his voice riding on a gentle current. “Your ankle can’t hold you.”
“I thought you liked perseverance,” I say without looking at him. I’m pissed again, wiping my sweaty palms off on my shirt. “One more time.”
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