by A. L. Tyler
“This isn’t your home, Ember,” her mother explained, pulling the shawl around her shoulders a little tighter to keep it from touching her younger girl. The girl was shivering; she didn’t belong on Tulukaruk. “This is Thalia’s home. Your home is back in Pennsylvania at the dormitories, and wherever you wish after that. I’ll pay for it. You have the entire world to explore and live in, and I don’t want you to waste your life on this little island.”
They walked a few paces in silence, and Ember wondered if this forced conversation was going to be the highlight of the next three months. Her mother’s tone wasn’t unfriendly, but Ember noted that she hadn’t smiled at her once. She wasn’t happy to see her.
“So why don’t you ever visit me at my home?” Ember asked meekly. She looked down and noticed that the shirts they were wearing had the same stitched hem around the cuffs; it wasn’t a regular pattern, like something that could be bought at a store. They made their own clothes.
“My home is here, too,” she said, as if this point were obvious.
“But maybe you could go on vacation or—“
“I don’t vacation.” She said curtly. “Neither does Thalia. You’ve done fine without us—everyone says so—and I’m sure you’ll continue to do so.”
Continue to do so. Even being young and naive, Ember had grasped her mother’s meaning immediately. She wasn’t staying, so her plan to ask to stay was pointless. Her mother only required one daughter, and she had her, and Ember would just have to do without them, elsewhere.
As Ember looked back and forth between the two women at her sides, she realized that they felt nothing for her, and as strange as it was, she felt very little for them. They were strangers, and a small twinge of disappointment struck in her heart as she mourned the family she had imagined in her mind.
The house was different than Ember remembered it, with a forgettable grey pigment slathered on the wood siding and a roof made of worn, waffled metal of some sort. Gina directed Ember her bedroom, and told her they would call her when dinner was ready. She could hear Thalia downstairs, talking and banging the pots around as she helped to fix the meal.
Ember hadn’t expected them to invite her to join them, because they weren’t the family she had thought they would be. Even looking back, the concise notes around her birthday never engendered much hope that people on Tulukaruk had missed her, or that they had even noticed her absence. She sighed and shook her head, wondering why she had ever wanted to come back.
She unpacked her clothes, hanging them over the wrought iron bedframe to dry, and hoping that the sea water hadn’t damaged anything. There was a humming in the hall, and Ember opened the door to see her Nan, pacing back and forth, humming a lullaby as she ran her hand along the stair banister.
“Oh,” The old woman whispered in a creased voice, her small eyes staring out from the wrinkled tissue paper of her brow. “And who are you?”
“I’m…Ember, Nan, you don’t remember me?” Ember stuttered. No one had mentioned in those brief birthday notes that Nan was losing it. “You used to read my books?”
“Ember? Ember, Ember, Ember…” Her brow rutted with thought. “Ah!” Her eyes lit up as she acknowledged Ember’s face. “You’re the little girl from the bookstore, aren’t you? Who let you in the house, I wonder?”
Ember tried not to let her disappointment show. Nan had been her only friend. She was the only one who might have been on her side, or at least less than disappointed to see her.
“You look so much like my granddaughter,” she crooned, taking Ember’s face in her hands and turning it right and left, comparing her to Thalia. She pursed her lips. “But my granddaughter is prettier.”
Ember flinched.
Nan walked away down the stairs. “Gina, there’s a strange girl in the spare bedroom!”
“It’s okay, I already know!” Gina called back without further explanation. She wasn’t going bother trying to make Nan understand. She wasn’t planning for Ember to stay long enough to warrant an explanation.
Realizing that the old woman that had pre-read her books was gone, Ember had given a moment of silence to grieve, and then resigned herself to reading alone in her room. It was going to be a long summer with these strangers who didn’t want her.
That night at dinner, Thalia had introduced Ember to her grandmother as a guest staying for a few months. Her mother didn’t say much. They assigned her a set of towels and explained the system for washing clothes and dishes, and asked that she please confine her possessions to her room. Sending things on after the fact might be a problem, her mother said, so it was better if everything stayed where it wouldn’t get lost.
After dinner, Nan had set to work making a quilt out of old, worn out blankets as Gina took a brush from a drawer and sat on the couch. Thalia had dutifully stationed herself on the floor in front of her mother to have her hair brushed out.
Staring at them all from the kitchen doorway, Ember wasn’t sure if she should join them or not; none of them were talking. Thalia’s glazed eyes were fixed on the fireplace across the room as her head steadily bobbed with each draw of the brush through her shiny blonde hair. Her unblinking, obedient expression was almost disturbing.
“Is this—“
Gina looked over sharply, and Ember felt herself blush. She hadn’t realized how loud her voice would sound in the silence.
“I’m sorry…Is this how you spend the evenings? With everyone in the living room?”
Thalia’s unfocused gaze slowly started to turn in her direction, but her mother used a gentle hand to keep her head still as she continued to brush.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Family time. You can go upstairs, if you like.”
Rubbing her palms flat against the stiches, belt loops, and irregularities on the sides of her pants, she quietly excused herself to the stairs to fetch a book to read as everyone sat in silence. Once she was in her room, however, the muted silence of the house compelled her to stay there.
Ember went to bed early. In the sitting room below, she heard her mother comforting Thalia that it was only for the summer—after that, she was hopeful that Ember would find somewhere else to go. Somewhere where she would be content, and safe, and where she wouldn’t trouble the community anymore.
Ember knew it wasn’t a normal thing for a mother to say about her child, or even a complete stranger. She wasn’t sure how she felt about any of them. Her mother, sister, and grandmother had hardly been present in her life; she was a foreigner now, and the people she remembered were only memories.
Nan was gone for good, and Ember’s last moments with her had been stolen away by one untimely fit at the book store. Gina had taken away the relationship she should have had with her sister, and Thalia had grown into the awkward adult-child downstairs who stared warily at Ember, as though she were a thief come to rob them.
Ember had figured that she would always come back to visit, but at the same time, her mother was right that the island would never be her home. She had assured her that there was no room for her here. Ember squeezed her eyes shut, trying to push the unpleasant thoughts away and look for a bright side.
She assured herself that she was okay with the arrangements her mother had made. She didn’t feel sad about losing her family or her home, because she had never had them to begin with. They were imagined characters to her; people she made up stories about to appease curious classmates. Sometimes, she didn’t know if they were real or just made up; she was forgetting which parts of them were the lies she told and which were actual memories.
She had done fine without them, as her mother had said. She would continue to do so.
Even as she bit her tongue to stop the tears, she knew what it came down to. It was better for everyone if they made a clean break. When she left, she would never come back again, and this time there would be no letters.
It was better to be alone in the world and know it than to rely on a support system that was sure to fail.
Sixteen ye
ars old, lying in bed that night—or evening, as it was, because she had gone to bed so early—there came a light tapping at her window. She was listening to her would-be family talking in the living room. At first, Ember thought it was raining; the light, steady tapping of drops hitting the window pane. Then a rock the size of a large walnut sent tinkling shards of glass across the wood floor like a horizontal waterfall.
Ember felt herself bounce on the bed as she leapt in surprise. The sound made by the exploding window was louder than she had ever imagined it would be. Even as her heart went racing, no one in the living room missed a beat of conversation.
Cursing under her breath, Ember slipped on her shoes and walked to the broken window to gaze out at a group of teenage boys trying to stifle their laughter. She slid the empty window frame open and leaned out.
“Excuse me!” She bellowed, her voice echoing around the forest as she took stock of the situation. There were three of them, and they weren’t even slightly embarrassed.
“The prodigal daughter returns!” The one closest to the house called at her; he was wearing a red sweater. Pacing lightly from foot to foot, he fingered a small stone in his hand before letting it drop to the ground. “We just wanted to introduce ourselves and invite you out for the evening!”
Ember cocked her head in confusion and then checked herself and closed her mouth. She searched her mind for an appropriate response, but her learned manners failed her. Three boys had just broken her window, and were now attempting to ask her out to dinner? “And your name is…?”
“Isaac!” He called, stuffing his hands into his pockets.
“Do you have a problem with front doors, Isaac?” Ember yelled, but she had lost her force. Her voice trembled with doubt, but she was too polite to call them out forthright. They laughed off her implied accusation.
“Ember…” said the one with the dark hair; he was wearing a black suede jacket that had worn down to a soft grey around the elbows. “I am sorry about the window. Come out with us so we can make it up to you. Let us welcome you home. We’ve waited for years to meet you.”
Ember stared them down. Boys like these were the gateway drug to cussing and sloppy dressing. However, as she looked down on them like a princess in a tower, she felt that to deny them her presence was somehow so rude and pretentious that it would make her a horrible person for refusing their offer. They wanted to welcome her home—at least someone did.
She pursed her lips in indecision.
As if on cue, a girl with shining blond hair walked out from behind a tree to greet the group, filling the summer air with ringing laughter as she rested a hand on the shoulder of the last young man. His hair was a similar color to hers, though they obviously weren’t related. She leaned in to kiss him politely on the cheek before he turned his easy, amiable smile on Ember.
Placated by the presence of another girl, Ember found herself with no excuse to decline joining them for the evening. Without even pausing to tell them her plan, she ran from the window to grab her coat and clamored down the stairs so loudly that the noise almost broke the spell she had come under.
“Stop!” Her mother yelled from the living room as Ember’s hand hit the knob and wrenched open the front door.
Ember froze in place.
“Turn.”
Her hand left the handle and she turned towards the living room. Her mother strode forward, arms crossed and confusion clouding her expression.
“Explain.”
Perhaps it was the influence of the house where she had been a terror of a child, or maybe she was angry that her grandmother and sister were gone forever; Ember rolled her eyes at her mother before her grooming took over.
“I’m going out with friends.” Ember said; she immediately wished she would have paused long enough to make up a lie.
“You have friends here? Who?” Gina’s tone was as calm as ever, but the way she twitched when her daughter said “friends” was a definite sign to Ember that she had caught her off guard.
“Isaac.” Ember said once again, closing her eyes in regret; she was used to lying, but only about her family. Maybe that was why it was so difficult.
Her mother cocked her head. “And?”
Ember looked at the floor, defeated. “Some other guys.”
Gina made a show of thinking over the proposition for a moment, her gaze caught halfway between Ember and Thalia as she started to turn back to the living room. Then her airy blue eyes flicked back to Ember. “You’re staying in.”
Ember and Gina locked stares. Thalia got up to stand behind her mother, gawking at Ember as though she was about to commit a heinous crime. Ember could hear the beat of her own heart beneath Nan humming “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in the kitchen, keeping rhythm like an organic metronome.
But then she heard her new friends laughing outside. They were laughing like normal teenagers with friends and happy homes. She felt the weight that had been dislodged in her brain upstairs give way and drop free of her being, crashing through the soles of her feet. The last moment that her mother controlled her life had already come and gone, and Ember couldn’t remember it. It certainly wasn’t this moment.
“I’m going out.” Ember said with finality. “I’ll see you later.”
Thalia stepped forward and caught her hand on the door, gripping her wrist so tightly that it hurt. Ember glared at her. She was shaking her head. “Mom said no. Don’t go out. Just go back upstairs…”
But Gina had stepped forward, also shaking her head, and pried Thalia’s hand off of Ember’s, shooting each a look of severe disappointment. Thalia was looking to her mother for guidance as she let her grasp go. Gina was looking at Ember with her jaw clenched, but didn’t say a thing. She wasn’t going to stop her.
Ember had a sneaking suspicion that she knew what Gina was up to, and it made her lip curl in disgust. Gina didn’t want her to go out, but even more, she didn’t want her to stay in. She wanted Ember out of her house.
“No.” Gina repeated in a low whisper. “Stay in.”
Ember closed her eyes as her sweaty palm threw the door all the way open, and she bolted. Her feet pounded the dirt pathway and her heart was no longer ticking the rhythm of a nursery rhyme, but pounding like a heavy bass. When she cleared the property line, she turned and looked back; the door was still open, but Gina and Thalia were nowhere to be seen.
The boys were laughing again. Ember could hear their voices drifting towards her as she stared at the gaping hole in the house the open door left. It was like she had ripped a piece out of it.
The blond boy, whose name Ember didn’t know yet, clapped a hand around her shoulder, and she could feel his cold, stony grip through her jacket. “Well done, Ember! I see you have a problem with front doors as well…”
Ember finally tore her gaze from the house and turned to look at the people standing in a circle around her. Isaac was taller than she had expected. He had deep brown hair and a gangly, casual composure, made even more casual by the worn and scraggly red sweater with bits of yarn pulled out at odd angles. His face was angular in a way that made his eyes peak like he was nervous about everything, and the way he pushed his hands down into his pockets made his shoulders hunch up and he looked even taller.
He had a habit of staring mostly at the ground, but he would look up anxiously every few words, as if he wanted to be sure Ember was listening to him.
He introduced the other two boys as his brothers; Asher was the shorter, sturdy, blond one with perfect teeth, and Acton was almost as tall as Isaac, with dark, almost black hair and deep set eyes. He wasn’t gangly like Isaac, but still thinner than average; he was wearing his black suede jacket but Ember could tell he was more muscular than Isaac. He looked decidedly younger than the other two, but there was something in the way he offered his hand, the enigmatic, tight smile curling on his lips, and the way he was wearing newer, neater clothes, that made her think he was the oldest.
“Ember.” He had said, taking her hand and lightly
kissing it, his eyes always on her face. “Our lady of the shattered window.”
“Um, yeah…” She stuttered, trying to think of something equally clever to say back at him. The feel of his lips against her hand was new, and both frightening and exciting. It made her feel adult beyond her years. “Acton. It’s…it’s nice to meet you too.”
Acton smiled politely before turning back to the group, releasing his grasp, but not removing his hand, so that Ember’s still rested lightly atop it. It was as though he was presenting her as a debutante.
He used his free hand to gesture. “And this is Kaylee, Asher’s girlfriend—“
“Vindictive harpy.” Isaac muttered at the ground. He glanced up, first at Kaylee and then at Acton, and then used one hand to cover his mouth as he went back to studying the forest floor.
Kaylee was wearing black leggings and a pink puffy jacket, and she was built like a cheerleader: short, muscular, and perky. She smiled a lot. Standing next to her, Asher’s own muscular build seemed much more graceful; he could have been a dancer.
“Thanks Isaac.” Kaylee smiled sweetly. “You know I love you too, darling.”
What captured Ember’s attention most was their eyes. Asher’s were a light blue, and Isaac and Acton’s were hazel, but they all had copper flecks in them. Once she had noticed it, it was hard not to stare. They were long striations, reaching all the way from the center to the rim of the iris—tiny ruddy brown veins of copper and what could have been little green flecks of verdigris. She had never seen eyes like them before, and the contrast the red-brown made against Asher’s light blue was stunning.
Acton’s patient smile made her realize she had been quietly staring at each of their faces for a conversational turn too long.
“I’m sorry…” She said, laughing nervously and shaking her head.
“It’s okay, they’re used to it.” Kaylee batted her eyes. “The Knox boys have quite a reputation around here. Be careful or you’ll become part of it.”