He shakes his head and sighs before lifting me by my waist up onto the wall. My fingers sting, my quadriceps quiver as I try to suck my abdomen tight to the wall. I reach my right foot high, my knee coming up into my armpit, and I heave and groan to stand on it. Now comes the tricky part, the part that always screws me: my bad foot, my mangled ankle, must find its own foothold.
I find a tiny little outcrop and poke my right big toe into it and stand. But once again, the tendons and bones and tissue seem to scream, cry, and crack. And once again, I careen back onto the ground, flat on my back. My back and that fist-sized knot on my head throb, screaming at me to finally freaking stop. Give up.
“You okay?” Tre asks, extending a hand to help me up. “You can’t keep doing this. You gotta call it.”
I slowly take his hand. “You should at least try again, Tre. At least one of us should get out. Leave me behind. Seriously.”
“Naw, Ember,” he says. “I’ve had my fill. So have you. Even if you’re like the Energizer bunny.”
I stand with my weight on my good foot, leaning with my back to the wall. “You think I’m obsessed.”
“Of course not,” he says with sarcasm, taking a step toward me. “But… it’s time to wave the white flag.”
I exhale dramatically and push my head back into the wall.
“Close your eyes. I have a surprise for you,” he says, grinning.
Confused, I smile and shut my eyes, wondering if maybe he found a stash of food that would keep us from having to go back to the house. “Okay…”
He places a stick in my hand. It’s silky smooth like the surface of a table. I open my eyes and see a blonde-colored walking stick with my name carved into the side of it. “Wow,” I whisper, glowing from the handmade gift. In my hands, the handle feels cool and solid to my aching and cut fingers. “You whittled this?”
He nods proudly.
“I can’t believe you got it so smooth. And really, it looks like something you could actually sell. Like, nice,” I say.
“My grandpa taught me,” he says. “And to sand it, I just rubbed it with a chunk of wood since I obviously don’t have any sandpaper.”
Impressive. “Well, thank you very much,” I say.
He casts a bashful smile and gazes at the ground. “I had to figure out a way to get your bony butt out of here, right? Couldn’t find a crane.”
“Watch what you say there, boy.” I hold the stick like a bat and give him a wide-eyed look before dissolving into laughter.
“Oh yeah? Whatcha gonna do about it?” He leans into me, careful of my ankle, head, and ribs, and I giggle as he gently tickles me and burrows his head into my neck. After a few moments, he puts his hands on the rock wall, framing my head, his face just inches from mine, and his lips purse into a tiny smile.
I smile back at him, glowing, as something unfurls inside me. Strength. Hope. Relief. Joy. I find myself wishing I found Tre long ago. This is more than a crush, more than a fling. This is something special. I can feel it in my heart, deep in my flesh.
A glimmer of sunshine pours through my personal Ember armor and into my heart. Something is happening here, and it’s like I’m waking up from a deep, deep sleep.
38
Lilly’s moon pie face eviscerates all the euphoria. Dressed in a bright yellow flowery dress, she grins at us as she swings opens the front door to the Trinity house.
This place that once looked so inviting and so luxurious now feels sterile and hollow. I taste a pungent chemical odor as we step into the foyer. A television plays in the other room. The sound is brown mustard dots.
“Whoa, sugar pop, you look terrible,” Lilly says. Too cheerful. “Tre-boy, you are super filthy, too. I should really take those clothes off you right now.”
My hackles go up. Is she offering to undress the boy I am so unbelievably into?
Tre shakes his head. “Yeah, we need to change,” he says. “But I got her back alive.”
“Alive,” I repeat. Invigorated. Terrified. Falling for a boy in the midst of a life-threatening mind fuck. Tre squeezes my shoulder, and I glance up at him. He offers a small secret smile.
“You were out there forever, Emby. But I’m glad you’re home,” Lilly says, turning away to walk into the living room.
The word falls on my head like a bucket of cold water. Home.
Pete comes running into the foyer. All I see is the huge ketchup stain on his T-shirt.
“Hey, guys,” he says. His voice is urgent. “You might want to come take a look at what’s on TV… Come on in.”
Tre inhales and his jaw tenses, as if he’s bracing for something bad, and hesitantly, I follow him to the living room. We stand in front of the sofa and watch the TV.
It’s like déjà vu. The anchors again talk urgently about some breaking news. This time, there’s a shooting at The Kitchen, a restaurant in Boulder—where my brother happens to work.
“Four injured and two dead. We don’t have names of the victims yet, nor information on the shooter.” Blood red lines. Mustard yellow smudges. It clouds my vision.
“My brother. He works there.”
“Shit,” Tre says, putting his hand on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Ember.”
My knees give out and the room spins. Tre moves quickly enough to catch me, slowly lowering me to sit on the sofa.
“Why is this happening again?” I ask the room, wailing in desperation.
Chris squeezes my neck before taking a seat in a chair nearby. “Hang in there, kiddo.” He leans forward over his knees and watches the TV with a gaping mouth.
On-screen, the blonde reporter stands solemnly in front of the restaurant on Pearl Street. Police lights flash nearby. “The shooter turned the gun on himself, so we don’t know much about the motive. But we’re following that story,” she says.
Tre wraps his arm around my shoulder, buries his head into my neck, and whispers, “I’m so sorry.”
My mind races. I remember how Tre came back from his unfruitful hike to news of a bombing at his dad’s office.
He stands after a moment and leaves the room to get a glass of water for me.
That’s when Zoe floats into the room. I don’t even see her, but I can feel her presence. Her two hands rest gently on my shoulders, light as feathers, as she stands behind me. She says nothing.
The room wobbles, and my mind grows dizzy. Her touch is a helium balloon that lifts all the pain, all the fear, all the worry from me. Sucking it out, leaving me this gooey mess. The most awful thing is that I want to be near her. To envelop myself in her buzz.
After a moment, she lets go and walks around the sofa to sit on the cushion next to me. She turns me, holding both my shoulders like a mother talking to a child. Her presence is like an ocean, deep, vast, drowning me.
“You will find your gift here,” she says, her voice emitting lovely white silver ribbons. “Surrender.”
I’m lost in the sound and color of her voice, buzzing in my ears, dancing through my veins. Everything moves in slow motion. Sounds slip underwater, becoming muffled and distorted. My body feels weightless.
Zoe gently puts her arm around my shoulder, holding me. “Let’s get her something to eat,” she says to Lilly. “Put your ankle up, Ember. You must be so exhausted.”
I sit with my bad leg up on the glass table. My swollen ankle looks like a mishmash of yellow, blue, purple, and green. Right now, it’s not connected to me. Maybe it’s someone else’s ankle. Perhaps I could whack it with a bat and not feel a thing. Zoe is the best painkiller ever.
I wait for my water. I sip it. I eat a cracker, the crumbs falling onto my lap. I don’t pick them up. The words from the TV jumble together like bumper cars in my mind.
Eventually, everyone leaves except Tre, and I fall asleep on his shoulder on the couch.
39
I zero in on the kitchen TV, desperately looking for any news about my brother and what happened in Boulder yesterday morning.
Nothing. The time difference is excruciating.
Yesterday, the news covered the shooting and March Madness basketball. Today, it’s weeks later in the real world and the topic is Cinco de Mayo. I get no updates. Life is slipping by out there, and I don’t have a full picture of what has happened. It kills me.
A skinny guy with blond hair and glasses talks on the TV screen. Below his name, Steve Shanzowski, is a title: Director, US Food & Drug Administration. I can barely hear him over the sizzling bacon. “That’s ridiculous,” the man says. “There is no link between genetically modified foods and some dark secret society.”
I’ve seen that guy before. I’ve heard him before. It takes a second, but then I recall he was on the TV behind the cashier stand at the convenience store last year. He looked familiar then, and now I remember where I recognized him from: some missing guy’s picture in the 1975 newspaper story I saw on a microfiche in the library. That picture looked slightly different somehow than the guy talking on TV now—though I can’t put my finger on how.
Tre sits next to me at the bar and sneers at the TV screen, apparently ticked off about whatever he’s talking about.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “That guy was here in Trinity.”
His words shake me. Does that mean he got out and actually made it back home?
“Who?” Lilly asks before shoving a bite of cereal into her mouth. Her eyes dart manically around the room. Chris is oblivious to the conversation and stares into his coffee cup at the counter.
“Jeff?” Tre tells Lilly. “Uh, the guy you ate dinner with for a couple weeks?”
Lilly shrugs, frowns, and shoves another bite of cereal into her mouth, chewing quickly. “Never seen him before.”
“Come on, Lil, it’s obvious.” Tre throws up his hands.
Lilly is uninterested. “Pete, we doing our bonfire tonight?”
“You betcha. Tradition,” Pete replies, shoving a huge bite of waffle into his mouth. “We can stack the logs like Jenga.”
Tre inhales deeply and then slowly closes his hands into fists and strides out of the kitchen, his boots clomping on the tile floor.
Once he’s gone, the room continues as normal. Cud-chewing Pete. Manic, squirrel-like Lilly. Despondent Chris. Distant, aloof Zoe. Dishes clink.
I zombie-hobble into the living room. Tre looks up and smiles, patting the sofa next to him. I plop down, and he wraps his arm around my shoulder. We sit together.
“So that guy from the FDA was here in Trinity?” I ask. “What’s that about?”
He props his boots up on the glass coffee table, and sinks his head far back into the cushion. “His name is Jeff. He was a doctor and he lived in this freaking house. With us.”
A small string of nerves tightens around my chest and again, that lump kinks up my throat. If I were someplace normal, I would think he was ridiculous. But ridiculous is the norm here.
I nod, encouraging him to continue.
“He and two others were here when I first came. Jeff, Samantha, and a guy named G—don’t ask me why he had a one-letter name. After a few, one by one, they became real weird and then poof—they just disappeared.” He uses his two hands to mimic a small explosion.
“Did they just find a way out to get home? Did they die?”
“No,” Tre says. “They got spacey. When I saw Samantha and G on TV later, they had different identities. Different names. Different personas. I thought it was a fluke. But now there’s Jeff, too. I think it’s part of this rebirthing thing Zoe talks about.”
“I don’t get it. Different identities?”
“Jeff was a doctor, and now he’s called Steve Shanzowski or something or other and he works for the FDA. Samantha was some Iowa waitress, and suddenly she is a broadcast journalist named Megan Snow. Then G, he was some dude from LA who was going to school for astrophysics before he had a mental breakdown and came to Trinity. And, well, you’re going to think I’m nuts…”
“I already do?”
“G is a rapper.”
I laugh out loud. “Should I practice my rapping skills for the day I disappear?”
His mouth twists a little and his eyes smile at me. “You might need some help with that one,” he says. “But seriously. I know it’s him. I’ve seen him flash this sign to the camera.” Tre removes his arm from my shoulder and leans back, creating a triangle with his hands, two thumbs meeting on the bottom and his pointer fingers touching on top. Then he peers through the triangle with one eye.
“Is that a gang sign or something? I don’t get it,” I say. “How would you know they were the same person, that it was really them on TV? I mean, maybe they just got out. Maybe that guy from the FDA just looks like Jeff.”
He shakes his head and points to the TV, as if it’s the box that has all the secrets to this weird forest. “Jeff has this little scar that runs across the right edge of his lip, from a motorbike accident.” He runs his pointer finger along his lip. “And that guy G? He has this weird way of talking out of the side of his mouth. And then Samantha. She was just plain smoking hot and had this face you’d never forget. Really unusual looking, maybe Asian-Indian or something.”
Jealousy pricks my skin. Was he with her, too, when she lived here? I force my brain to return to the important stuff. People in Trinity were spit out into the world with new personas. My nerves run frantic, bumping into each other.
“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier? It seems important.”
“I don’t know. It was nice to, you know, forget.” He tips his head onto mine so our foreheads touch. “I liked just being with you and forgetting why we were here.” He leans in and kisses me softly.
The front door opens behind us, and I turn to see Chris and Zoe leave the house together. Her arm rests on his shoulder. I wonder where they are going.
When Tre gets up to go to the bathroom, Lilly and Pete come racing into the room from the kitchen. “Hey—wanna jump off the stairs?” she asks, breathless and glowing like the first day I saw her. “We’re going to pad it really well with more pillows.”
I ignore her question. “Tre says that those people who were here before—G, Jeff, and Samantha—are now in powerful positions in the world with different names, different jobs, different personas. Did you know that?”
“Yeah, that’s what he says,” Lilly says, frowning and nodding, like I’m talking about something as random as how to remove foot fungus.
“What do we do? We can’t lose ourselves like that,” I say, hoping to hatch a plan.
Pete’s eyes flit to the floor and for a half instant, he looks uncertain. But then he pulls out a Pete grin and he playfully shakes my shoulder with his hand. “Let’s just go jump, okay?”
I don’t get it. It’s like I’m talking to someone about the end of the world and they pretend they’re at a gymnastics party. This news makes me want to sprint to find the gate again.
Tre comes back to the room and slumps back on the end of the couch, pursing his lips. He shakes his head. He really is the only sane person here.
“Don’t you guys even care?” I ask Lilly and Pete. Dumbfounded.
Lilly sighs. “Emby, we know it’s unavoidable.” She perks up even more, bouncing on her toes. “But now… you can jump off the stairs with us! It’s way better than last time.”
She continues talking, but I don’t know what she’s saying because the sound of her voice feeds my Color Crayon Brain. Instead of just seeing hues, now I’m seeing something more: blue watery raindrops, like crying. It feeds an intense sadness in me that I don’t understand, making me feel like I want to cry. I don’t know why my synesthesia is going berserk in this place. This was definitely not in the medical textbook about my condition.
Hoping my brain is like an Etch A Sketch toy, I give my head a shake to make the feelings and the picture go away. It doesn’t really work. The colors and images stay, making it hard to see the real world without focusing hard.
I interrupt her, glancing at my swollen ankle. “No, I don’t want to freaking jump
off the stairs with you.”
Lilly and Pete, leaning on each other in some sort of giddy club, offer fake pouty faces.
“Bummer,” Pete says. They run back to the foyer, shouting directions to prepare the mattresses and pillows for the landing, as if they’re a couple of little kids.
“How can they be that way?” I ask Tre.
“They have given in. And Lilly talks about how Zoe wants them to do stuff like jump off the stairs. I’ve wondered if adrenaline maybe facilitates rebirth. I don’t know what happens, but it’s freaking creepy. They’ll do anything she wants.”
I stare at him.
“Plus, they know what happens when you go against Trinity,” he says.
40
On my way upstairs that afternoon, Chris lumbers down. His gray cowboy shirt hangs partially untucked and it’s buttoned wrong, skewed and off by one buttonhole.
“Oh hey,” I say. “What’d you do today?”
“Huh?” he asks. His face contorts into a nasty grimace. He mindlessly reaches up to touch the dark mole on his left cheek.
“You left with Zoe,” I begin. “Did you go to the lake?”
“What?” he asks again, then continues another step down the stairs, looking only at his feet.
I know he left with Zoe. I watched him walk off with her out the front door. I try another approach. “Hey, thanks for opening up about Taylor and Roslyn that first night,” I say.
Just one stair away from me now, he strides past me as if I’m not even here. His footsteps land heavily on the stairs.
I continue talking to him. “I mean, it helped me figure stuff out about me, too, and I really hope Taylor is okay.”
A step below me, he stops and whips his body around angrily. “Who the hell is Taylor?”
“Um, your son?” A nervous laugh bubbles up from my throat.
“I have no son named Taylor.” His stale breath floods the space between us.
His words punch me in the stomach. Did he make up that story? But what about his tattoo? He starts back down the stairs, and reflexively, I reach out to him, grasping his arm as he moves. The gesture halts him, prompting him to swivel around to face me again. His face is cold.
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