Rise to the Sun

by Leah Johnson

  It takes everything in me to focus on the voice in my head from this morning, Olivia repeating soothing words over and over until I came back to her. It’s enough to get me moving. I’m carried with the rush of people headed toward the exit, and the only thing I want to do is get back to camp. That has to be where Olivia is headed, where Peter and Imani probably are.

  So I run.

  SATURDAY AFTERNOON

  When I get back to camp, sweaty and sad and so, so scared, the first thing I do is yell for Toni. I lost her; I can’t believe I lost her, it’s my fault I lost her. I should have held on tighter, but then I couldn’t see, couldn’t do anything but move with the current of people, and I couldn’t find her. She was right there, I had her hand in mine and everything was good, it was so damn good, we were making it work, everything was fine, and then nothing was fine at all. The entire world around us exploded into madness. I’m screaming myself hoarse, but standing still, like my voice alone is enough to undo all the damage that’s happened.

  “Olivia, Liv, please.” Imani is in front of me, her hands gripping my shoulder. “Liv, you’re okay. Stop screaming. You have to stop screaming.”

  Over her shoulder, Peter stands, looking at his phone like it holds the secrets of the universe. His face is so young and so clearly terrified as he repeats, “My phone isn’t working. I can’t get a signal. There’s no way to get a damn signal!”

  I try to breathe, try to follow Imani’s soothing voice as she pulls me tight against her. Imani. She’s always so solid. Her grip is almost crushing, but it’s enough to get the fog in my head to clear. I’m able to gauge my surroundings a little more clearly.

  Everyone at their tents and climbing into their cars and looking stressed and frantic. People crying. Farmers throwing their camping gear into the beds of their trucks and the trunks of their cars carelessly, ready to take off.

  You think you know chaos—you think Black Friday shopping at Walmart or trying to get the new Xbox on release day is the peak of madness—until you’re in the middle of the real thing. Until the people around you are screaming for their friends, asking questions that no one can answer, hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.

  “Imani, they’re already on the station,” Peter says, leaning out the open window of Toni’s truck. Imani looks at me and runs a hand over my face quickly before saying, “I’m going to listen to this really quick, okay? Just stay here. I’ll be right back. Everything will be fine.”

  I don’t know how long I stand there, dazed and lost, before Peter shouts, “Toni! Jesus Christ, you’re okay.”

  Toni limps toward us, and I don’t even think before I run straight to her and wrap my arms around her back. I tuck my face into the space between her neck and shoulder and only then do I allow myself to start crying. I’m so glad she’s here, that she’s okay, that my letting her go didn’t end in something terrible. She’s still here.

  “I thought I lost you,” she whispers. It sounds as fractured as I feel.

  “I’m here.” There’s so much I want to say but can’t bring myself to get out right now.

  She pulls back and wipes at her eyes.

  Peter barrels over and kisses Toni square on the forehead. I step away to give them some space as he throws his arms around her neck and she holds on to him for dear life.

  “Don’t scare me like that again, dude,” Peter says.

  Imani hops out of the truck and even she reaches out to squeeze Toni’s shoulder. The gratitude that everyone is safe is almost strong enough to feel like a physical thing. Maybe we didn’t know one another before this weekend started, but now we’re a unit. The Farmland spirit: As long as we’re here, we’re family.

  “They said there’s no active shooter.” Imani puts on her serious professor voice, the voice she uses when she has to tutor me in calc. She closes her eyes, and when she speaks again, her voice wobbles “A single shot was fired. This isn’t another—”

  Sandy Hook or Pulse or Charleston or Route 91 Harvest festival or or or

  The list goes on. Even a place like this, the first place I’ve felt free and safe and completely at home in the longest time, isn’t immune to the fear of guns and what they have the ability to do. Even if it didn’t touch us this time, the proximity of what could’ve just as easily been is hard to shake.

  “Yeah,” Toni answers quietly. “Lucky.”

  “What did they say about the rest of the festival?” Peter asks.

  Imani says they don’t know yet, but we should keep the station on since that’s the only way to get information right now, given how clogged the cell towers seem to be. Everyone at the campsites nearest us are complaining about the same thing as they pack up.

  None of us moves. We just stand in a circle, close to one another, silently.

  “I think we need to leave,” Imani says. She directs it at me. “It doesn’t really matter what they do next, I don’t think there’s any reason to stay at this point. The festival is over.”

  What she’s saying makes sense. The thought of that though? The idea of leaving here and not knowing what could have been with me and Toni or Imani and Peter or even with the scavenger hunt feels unimaginable. Like taking the key out of the ignition before you’ve even stopped the car. I’m not ready to go. I’m not ready for the real world. I’m just not ready.

  Though there are plenty of people packing up, there are a lot of people staying exactly where they are. There are just as many cars filing out of the campsite right now as there are that remain parked. Some Farmers are still shaken, despite the reality that things aren’t as dire as we initially thought, but they’re not going anywhere yet. We need to be the ones who stay. At least until the morning.

  “We’re in no condition to drive back to Indianapolis tonight,” I say. I hold my hands out in front of me, palms up, for emphasis. They’re still shaking. “We should at least stay until morning.”

  Imani bites her lip and looks toward our campsite in the distance. I know she wants to say no. I know her rationale is winning out, but I can’t go. I just can’t.

  “We’re gonna stay too,” Peter says, his voice serious. He looks to Toni and she nods her head in agreement. “We should be safe for now.”

  Nothing is safe, I want to say. I think of all the people I’ve felt safe with before who turned out to be unsafe in their own ways. The places I’ve gone that I expected to be a refuge that only turned out to make things impossibly worse. But there’s something soothing about the idea of staying together tonight, the four of us riding out the storm. Maybe not safe, exactly, but closer to it together.

  Imani sighs.

  “Fine,” she says. “For tonight.”

  I chance a look at Toni, and her eyes are right on me. I want to reach across the circle that we’ve created and make a home inside the circle of her arms instead, but I don’t. Not yet anyway. Because whether I’m holding on to her or not, that look counts for something.

  I think it might count for everything.

  SATURDAY EVENING

  The four of us sit together at Olivia’s and Imani’s campsite all night. We listen to the Farmland radio station, waiting for more updates, and light a fire in the grill we brought along.

  Everyone is coping differently; between chancing looks at Olivia like she’s afraid she’ll disappear if she takes her eyes off her, Imani has been checking her phone religiously, trying for a decent enough signal to get some more information from major news outlets about what’s happened. Olivia sits in the chair near me, legs tucked underneath herself and a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. I’m plucking at the strings of my guitar, trying to find a melody that will pull us all out of this space for a second.

  But it’s Peter whose reaction scares me the most. My best friend, who usually has no shortage of smiles or positive anecdotes, sits silently off to the side.

  “This is crazy,” he mutters. It’s just gotten dark, and still no one knows anything new. The Farmers at the campsite next to us pa
cked up in a hurry an hour ago, leaving nothing but a stray bottle of some locally brewed beer behind. He looks around at the three of us and repeats, louder, “This is crazy. I wanna know who did this.”

  He pushes himself off the ground and runs a hand through his hair. He took it out of his bun earlier and hasn’t pulled it back again. He looks frazzled, the curls sticking up in every direction with how often he’s pulled at them tonight. He even switched out of his crop top and put on an old black hooded sweatshirt. When I catch his eyes over the fire, I realize he doesn’t even look scared. He looks furious.

  “Are we really just going to sit here and let this go? We should be doing something.” He clenches his hands into fists at his side. He paces back and forth. “You know, Andrew Jackson never backed down from anything. He was in over one hundred duels. That’s—”

  “Oh my God, would you give it a rest, Peter?” Imani snaps. “Enough with the presidents, for the love of God. Dead white slave owners aren’t going to help us right now.” She stands and throws her hands up. “We don’t know anything. Don’t you get that? We have no facts. There’s nothing we can do.”

  “Some of us aren’t built like robots, Imani!” Peter’s voice is angrier than I’ve ever heard it, and the sound of it makes me flinch. “Some of us care about action. Some of us are able to make decisions based on feelings, not facts.”

  Imani sucks in a breath, and for the first time all weekend, I see her face betray how she feels. Instead of snapping back though, she retreats into herself. She sits down next to Olivia and the two lean against each other for support. Peter turns his back on the circle, on the fire, and closes his eyes. His comment was way out of line. The Peter I know doesn’t snap at people, especially not like this, accusations laced with innuendo and ire.

  “You need to relax, okay?” I set my guitar down and move to stand beside him. I run my hands over my face and lower my voice so only he can hear me. “Imani is right. We leave or we wait it out. Those are our options.”

  I understand his frustration, I can feel it too, gripping and twisting at me. How dare someone take this place from us? This weekend? All evening, all I’ve done is replay the moment after the gunshot earlier. Every bone in my body was attuned to Olivia. All my thoughts oriented toward her safety. What if I lose her? What if she doesn’t run fast enough? Why did I decide to let another person into my heart when that only ever leads to more pain?

  Peter nods but doesn’t sit back down. He breathes out once, slowly.

  “I’m gonna call it an early night,” he says, his voice flat. He doesn’t seem to be speaking to anyone in particular. He doesn’t make eye contact as he grabs his A’s cap off the grass and silently marches back to our tent. “See you in the morning.”

  After that, it feels like there’s nothing left to do but call it a night. Eventually, the fire flickers out, and everyone drifts off to their tents, all of us tired by the events of the day and preparing for tomorrow. Maybe we’ll be leaving in the morning, maybe Kittredge will still perform tomorrow night. Maybe this is the last Farmland we’ll ever have. Nothing is certain.

  But as I change into my pajamas and climb into my sleeping bag on an air mattress next to an already-snoring Peter, I know one thing for sure: I don’t think I’m strong enough for this.

  For a life that leads me toward the music, for falling in love with Olivia—for any of it.

  I lay there in silence for an hour, long after the last voices of people around me quiet to nothing. Until the zipper on our tent goes up, and I sit up quickly to squint at the intruder in the low light. Olivia’s braids are pulled into a low bun and wrapped up in a leopard-print silk scarf. Her face is completely makeup free as she pokes her head inside. She doesn’t say anything, just waves me out.

  Peter is snoring steadily beside me, so I grab my shoes and go without a second thought.

  The air has a chill, but it’s not exactly cold. I pull on an old flannel before I follow Olivia away from my tent, just in case. She doesn’t speak right away and neither do I. What is there to say when you feel like the foundation of your world has been shaken? There is no balm to make it better, no magical phrase I can offer that would provide either of us any comfort. So I just walk.

  Our arms brush against each other enough times that eventually we link our pinkies together and allow our hands to swing between us. There’s something about it that feels more intimate than holding hands. The thought of it makes me want to cry.

  The festival is mostly asleep. All the acts that were scheduled to go on this evening were canceled as the organizers decide what to do next. Even though we know it wasn’t an attack, all of Farmland feels like it’s shifted on its axis. Right now, the all-night party in the dance barn should be raging on, the bass loud enough to be heard from just about anywhere in the campground. The lights from the rides in the Core should be shining so bright we’d barely be able to see the stars.

  We should be doing the Farmer wave to everyone who passes us as we walk down the gravel path, but instead there’s nothing—no one, barring the occasional person walking to or from the port-o-potty bank. All I can hear is Olivia’s small puffs of breath and the sound of our shoes as they crunch along the walk.

  “Olivia,” I finally say after we’ve been walking for about fifteen minutes with no end in sight. “Where are we going?”

  She stops and places her hands on both of my cheeks. I expect her to kiss me but she doesn’t.

  “If this is the last night of Farmland …” she says. Her voice is low and serious and I hate it. I hate what’s happened here and that this girl in front of me—this girl who has the best smile, who should always be smiling—is urging me to cling to what’s left of this with her. We shouldn’t have to cling. “I don’t want to waste it.”

  She says she wants to go to the Farmland sign to take a picture, a rite of passage for any first-time Farmer, just in case she doesn’t get a chance to do it tomorrow. Or, today, technically, since it’s already after midnight. But once we get to the gates that would normally take us inside the Core, there are barricades in front of them. And a sign that says NO ENTRY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

  “Shit.” Olivia’s voice is a whisper, even though there’s no one around to hear us, and not that anyone would care if they did. She finds a gap in the barricades near where they meet the fence and slips between them and into the Core. I look around for any lingering security before I do the same.

  Once we’re inside, we head straight to the sign. Everything inside the Core has been powered down for the night, something I’ve never seen at Farmland. Even the sign, in all its legendary glowing glory, is off—its big, gleaming bulbs at rest. She stops to snap a photo of it—the flash briefly disorienting in the low light—but doesn’t seem to want to be in it anymore. I don’t ask what changed her mind.

  She keeps walking until we’re at the Ferris wheel. It’s also powered down, ghost-like, but in for a penny, in for a pound, Olivia jumps the low barricade that blocks the entrance.

  She settles into the bench of the rocking gondola and pulls her knees up to her chest. She’s dressed in nothing but her sleep shorts and an oversized T-shirt, so I pull off my flannel and drape it over her shoulders when she shivers a little. She pulls it tight around her body as I sit down next to her.

  “Should be more security,” I say. Short, emotionless, easier than what I really want to say.

  She nods and leans her head against my shoulder. We haven’t had any quiet moments between us since we met—not slow, honest-to-God quiet moments like these—and part of me wants to sit with this stillness for a long time. This space where it’s just the two of us, no distractions, while the air around us vibrates with an electricity only we create. But I know it’s fleeting. This moment, like everything, will be here and gone.

  “I’m sort of an old pro of getting into situations I’m not supposed to be in.” She laughs, but it’s sad.

  We rock back and forth in the gondola for a second, and I let myse
lf imagine a normal night at Farmland, being three hundred feet above it all, looking down on the neon madness below next to a girl I like so much it scares me. A girl I like so much I was willing to forget my own cardinal rule. A girl I’m already sharpening myself against because this can’t last. I can’t—I won’t be hurt by losing someone I love again.

  But I decide to let myself have this moment. This snapshot.

  “Toni?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I have to tell you something.”

  SATURDAY NIGHT

  Toni doesn’t rush me to say anything when she realizes I’m struggling to speak. I don’t look at her as I try to figure out the words to allow her to see into the worst of me.

  The problem with being the type of person who is good at falling in love is the fact that eventually people catch on to it—especially in a school as small as Park Meade. They see a revolving door of boyfriends and girlfriends and start to make assumptions about what that means about you. Or what it means you’ll be willing to do, I guess.

  I didn’t know that when Troy asked me out though. I didn’t understand until it was too late.

  We’d been together for a grand total of two weeks before he leaned up against my locker after third period and tugged at my uniform tie so that I was standing close enough for him to whisper over the sound of our classmates rushing around us and shouting at one another down the hallways.

  “You should come over to my place tonight,” he said, lips brushing against my temple. There are rules at Park Meade against public displays of affection, but I didn’t mind. It felt good, and bold, that Troy would so blatantly disregard the rules to be close to me. “After the football game.”

  Troy’s house was almost always the spot for parties on Friday nights in the off-season. I’d never needed a formal invitation before, not even when we weren’t dating. He was the epitome of the high school heartthrob stereotype: handsome, a little dumb, a sense of humor that was meaner than it was funny, and absolutely, unbelievably good at basketball. He’d been on every all-star team and “players to watch” list since middle school and had gotten the school its first 2A State Championship last year.