Before I Disappear

by Danielle Stinson

  An exhausted smile splits my face as I nudge Ian. “You can get off now.”

  He doesn’t move.

  I try again, but Ian doesn’t stir. Something hot and wet seeps into my back.

  My heart skips like a stone across a pond. “Jeremy! Help!”

  Jeremy has Ian off me in seconds. The first thing I see when I turn over is Jeremy’s terrified face.

  The second thing I see is the ten-inch sliver of bloody wood sticking straight out of Ian’s chest.

  TWENTY-NINE

  We stumble into the cave an hour after dark.

  Blaine is on us the moment we come into sight. His knuckles gleam white around the handle of Jeremy’s gun. His face appears to have aged two years since this morning.

  “Where have you been? We were hit by a crazy storm and we thought—” His expression transforms from relief, to anger, to fear once he gets a good look at Ian, hanging between us.

  “Quick,” I say. “Get some water boiling and as many rags as we can spare.”

  Blaine sprints ahead while Jeremy and I half carry, half drag Ian into the circular room at the back of the cavern.

  Blaine builds the fire back up while I grab the scissors from Jeremy’s kit and kneel beside Ian’s motionless form. He regained consciousness a few minutes after the storm passed. Even weak from blood loss, he managed to stay awake for most of the trip back. If he hadn’t pulled most of his own weight, we never would’ve gotten him back here.

  I peel the bloody shirt from Ian’s chest. An ugly wound glares up at me in the firelight. Ian’s shoulder is stabbed clean through by a jagged shard of wood ten inches long and as wide as my thumb.

  Blaine sucks air between his teeth. “What happened?”

  I open my mouth, but words don’t come. All I can do is stare at Ian, lying on the stone floor. His face is so pale, I can trace the blue veins fanning out over his closed lids. He looks more like a ghost than a boy, and it’s my fault. All of this is my fault.

  He told you this would happen. But you wouldn’t listen. You didn’t listen.

  “Tornado,” Jeremy answers when I don’t.

  Silent tears stream down Becca’s face. “Is he going to die?”

  “No,” Jeremy tells her. “It went through his shoulder. He’s going to be okay. He’s going to be okay,” he repeats. Jeremy removes a scalpel from his med kit and moves toward Ian.

  Blaine comes out of nowhere to block his path. “What are you gonna to do?”

  “I’m going to cut that shard out.”

  Blaine’s eyes lock on the scalpel. “The two of you have been trying to kill each other since we first saw you. Why should we let you anywhere near him?”

  At the sight of Blaine’s trembling lips, Jeremy softens. “That’s over. I swear it. I’ll take care of Ian like he’s my own brother.” Jeremy’s voice goes quiet. “He was. Once.”

  Blaine doesn’t back down. He wasn’t in the forest with us when the world was falling apart. He didn’t see what I saw.

  “Let him through,” I tell Blaine softly.

  The younger boy hesitates for a moment, but then he does what I ask.

  Jeremy drops to his knees next to Ian and wraps his hands around the piece of wood. “What do you need us to do?” I ask, joining him.

  “Blaine, can you grab those rags … please?” Jeremy adds gently.

  Blaine returns with an armful of random clothing we picked up at the camp. “This good?”

  “Perfect,” Jeremy says, and Blaine holds his head a little higher.

  “As soon as I get this clear, I need you to put pressure on the wound,” Jeremy tells me.

  It’s happening before any of us are ready. Jeremy yanks the wood out of Ian’s shoulder. Blood spurts. I grit my teeth and press the cloth to Ian’s shoulder, using my fingers to plug the wound.

  Time passes. I’m not sure how much. Jeremy removes splinters, douses the wound with antiseptic, and stitches it up. Becca hands him towel after towel while Blaine removes the dirty rags, for once not feeling the need to comment or give Jeremy shit for being a moron.

  And then the wound is wrapped, and Ian is sleeping, and Jeremy is telling Blaine and Becca about what happened to us. The cave echoes with their voices, but the words are lost in the vacuum around my head. I block out the wind and the cold and focus all of my attention on the rise and fall of Ian’s chest as I match my breaths to his.

  * * *

  The fire has burned down to embers when something wakes me. A cry in the dark.

  I crawl out from under my blankets and pad toward the circular room at the back of the cave.

  Cold air drifts in through the single skylight. Ian is propped up against the wall, his long legs sprawled out in front of him. With his head tipped back and eyes closed, he looks almost peaceful. I allow myself a few seconds to study him like this before I turn to leave.

  “Don’t go.” When I glance back, Ian’s eyes are wide open.

  He’s awake. My shoulders relax. I should let him rest, but there’s something I have to say, and this might be my only chance.

  I join Ian against the wall. We’re close, sitting side by side. Not close enough for our arms to touch, but close enough that I can feel his every breath. His chest is bare except for the mass of white bandages across his left shoulder. The firelight turns his skin a warm honey color.

  I keep my gaze fixed on the far wall. Words tangle on my tongue, but I take a deep breath and force them out. “I’m sorry. Charlie is my responsibility. I had no right to ask you or Jeremy to risk—”

  “Do you regret it?”

  There are many things I regret, but going after Charlie isn’t one of them. “No.”

  “Then save your apologies.” Silence. “You’re not in this alone,” Ian says quietly. “As soon as the sun rises, every single one of us will help you look for your brother. All you have to do is ask.”

  He makes it sound so easy.

  I press back against the cavern wall. Its cool dampness sinks into my skin. Ever since Dad went missing, it’s been just me, Mom, and Charlie. I’ve been so focused on carrying the extra weight, maybe I forgot that the world was bigger than the three of us.

  My gaze runs over Ian, sitting beside me. The pale hollows of his cheeks. The dried blood still crusted to his muscular chest. The scars he tries so hard to hide.

  With a lurch, the walls I’ve built around myself push out a few feet in every direction.

  I take a steadying breath. This isn’t just about my family anymore. Other people are involved now, and one of them almost died today because I was too busy looking ahead to spot the danger about to sideswipe us. Just like I was too obsessed with getting to that Hands for Hearths meeting to hear Charlie’s warnings when they could’ve made a difference.

  I can’t change any of that now. But maybe I don’t have to keep making the same mistakes over and over.

  “How are you holding up?” I ask, to distract myself from the unwelcome thoughts in my head. Like the memory of Ian’s blood, soaking the back of my shirt. Or the way my heart stopped when I saw the stick jutting out of his shoulder.

  When he doesn’t answer, I shift sideways. The firelight glints off a strip of seared flesh spanning the width of his forearm. A burn so fresh it’s still glistening.

  Everything inside of me goes deathly still. “What happened?”

  “Same thing as before. I could feel myself getting angrier until I was burning. And then I woke up and that was there.”

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “It’s—”

  “It’s just pain, right?” I look up into his eyes. Mistake. His breath brushes my cheek, and then I’m staring at his mouth.

  “Pain comes from here.” Ian taps my temple. The callused tip of his finger skims my skin. “You can block it out if you have to.”

  “How?” I don’t recognize the thin sound of my own voice.

  “By going somewhere else.” Ian studies the inscription on the wall, and suddenly I’m back
in the Black Nothing, watching two brothers jump off a waterfall into a hidden pool. The sunlight glinting off the scars covering their bodies. A topography of violence years in the making.

  As if sensing the direction of my thoughts, Ian stiffens. I wish I could leave it alone, but there are greater things on the line right now than his privacy. The dark pulse is going to keep wearing him down. Building 101. Everything has a breaking point.

  Even Ian.

  I angle my body so that I am fully facing him. “When you went into the Black Nothing after Jeremy, I touched you. I … saw things.”

  “I know.”

  “How?”

  Ian runs a hand over his naked scalp. “I felt you like a light on somewhere in my head, and it … helped.” He draws an unsteady breath. “Rose—”

  “I have scars too. Ones I wouldn’t want anyone to see.” My words trip over themselves in their rush to be spoken. “Everybody has a right to their secrets. Yours are safe with me.”

  Ian relaxes against the wall. His good shoulder presses against mine. The fire crackles, and the wind howls outside, and for one moment, I’m less alone than I’ve been in a long, long time.

  “You look like him. Will, I mean. I saw you two swimming in the pool where we found Becca.”

  “My old man hated it when we took off like that.” Ian stares at his hand. “It was worth the punishment. Most of the time.”

  A shiver runs through me. “Ian, I didn’t mean—I wasn’t trying to—” But I kind of was.

  He grips my knee. “If something like that happens again, you should be prepared for what you might see. I don’t want you to think—” He swallows. “There are things I need to tell you.”

  The tortured look on his face almost undoes me.

  “It wasn’t always like this. I don’t know why I feel the need to tell you that. It’s just…” He meets my eyes, pleading. “I need you to know that there were good times, too. Times I wouldn’t trade for anything.” His expression turns fierce. “So don’t feel sorry for me.”

  “Okay.” We both know it’s a lie.

  There are no words for how sorry I feel.

  “When Dad was drafted into the minor leagues out of high school, my parents practically left Fort Glory on a parade float. Then Dad threw out his shoulder, and it was all over. They came back. Dad got a job as a mechanic, started drinking. Things weren’t great, but they were okay. For a while.”

  “What happened?”

  “Will.” Ian rubs his eyes. “The kid was superhuman. He could do anything. Anything. But the only thing he really loved was baseball. He never left home without his hat and a glove in his back pocket.” Ian pulls off the Mariners cap and runs his fingers over the faded blue fabric. “Scouts were sniffing around him when he was still in Little League. My dad saw Will heading for the future that should’ve been his. It made him ugly.” Pain flashes across Ian’s face. “Will took the brunt of it. Maybe it was easier for him because he knew it wasn’t permanent. Baseball was his ticket out of this shithole—the one thing he had that nobody could touch, and that bastard knew it.”

  Cords bulge at Ian’s neck. “One night, Dad came after me. I don’t remember why. Will got between us. It wasn’t the first time he’d stuck up for me, but it was the first time he did it with his head held up.” Ian swallows. “So our father crushed Will’s future under the heel of his boot. Seventeen bones in his right hand, one by one.”

  When Ian looks at me, his eyes glisten with a sorrow that dares me to look away. “Broken bones heal. Broken dreams are the real killer.”

  It’s a moment before I can speak. “What happened to him?”

  Ian stares at the writing on the wall, his gaze unfocused, and I know that his brother is here with us in this cave, inscribing their names on a rock while Ian laughs beside him. Two lost boys hiding from the world.

  “He started hitting Jeremy up for pills. Painkillers, mostly. They both hid it from me, but I should’ve seen the signs. Will stopped going to school. Stopped doing his PT. Stopped giving a shit. And then a week before my parents died, he asked Jeremy for something harder.” Ian shrugs. “I guess he got tired of waiting for my father to kill him. The next day I found him facedown in a pool of his own vomit with his glove in his good hand. He’d been dead for hours.”

  Ian’s words gut me. I don’t tell him I’m sorry. I don’t ask him to be strong, or brave, or to forget, because even though forgetting is a break from pain, it’s only a way to defer it with interest. So I sit quietly while grief runs through him.

  When Ian’s breathing evens out, he shifts so that his face is inches from mine. “I was so angry at Jeremy. When I found out about the drugs, I lost it. If the police hadn’t shown up, I would’ve killed him, and then I would’ve hated myself, because it wasn’t his fault. He looked up to Will. Idolized him. He would’ve done anything he asked, but he never would’ve given him the drugs if he knew what Will was up to. And it wasn’t his job to figure it out because Will wasn’t his brother. He was mine.”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” I agree. But it wasn’t Ian’s, either. The person responsible isn’t around anymore to take the blame.

  As if reading my mind, Ian’s expression grows taut. “Do you think I set the fire that killed my parents?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes,” Ian says, and my stomach does a sharp flip-flop. “What you think matters. To me.”

  I search his face like it’s a map I have this one second to memorize. “You wouldn’t hurt someone unless you had a reason. But you would do it if you had to.” Not because you’re bad. Because you’re like me.

  Because you are like me.

  Ian sags against the wall. “Right after Will—” He swallows hard. “Dad was passed out on the couch when I left for Rowena’s. I saw a cigarette butt sticking out of his mouth, and I prayed for it to fall so I wouldn’t have to kill him. Because I wanted to. God, Rose, I wanted to. I didn’t feel like I could breathe while he was still alive.”

  The pain in his voice cuts straight through me. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “When I came home and saw the flames in the windows, eating our house, every last memory, I was happy. Then I remembered Mom.” He stares uncomprehendingly at the scars on his hands. “I tried to break out her window. I punched it over and over, but it didn’t do a goddamn thing.”

  “Ian, I—”

  “I hated them.” His head hangs between his knees. He covers it with his arms. “I hated my dad for breaking Will, and her for letting him, and most of all, I hated Will for leaving me alone. And now they’re all dead.”

  My mouth is full of words I won’t say. No matter what he thinks, Ian isn’t responsible for what happened to his family. They made their own choices. But he’s not ready for that truth, and he may never be.

  Ian turns toward me. “You know what burns the most? After everything that bastard did to us, I still turned out just like him. Things got rough and my answer was to almost kill someone.”

  I reach for him without thinking. “It’s not the same. You’re nothing like him. It’s a choice, Ian. Maybe we don’t get a say in the way people see us, but we choose who we are. We build ourselves up out of the scrap around us, and what we look like at the end is on us and no one else.”

  “You really believe that?” His breathing is heavy, his lips parted, his eyes bottomless and beautiful and locked onto my mouth.

  A rush of air. Someone moving forward.

  I turn my head. The way Ian looks at me. Like he sees all the parts I keep hidden, and still thinks I’m worth a damn. It makes me want to show him things I shouldn’t.

  Stop being a coward. Stop running. Say it. Say the words.

  The truth.

  But the truth gets stuck behind the wall inside of me along with the words I can’t say. The only words that have ever really mattered.

  “Rose.” When I look up, Ian is watching me, every emotion safely locked back in its drawer. “I felt Charlie. When I went int
o the Black Nothing for Jeremy.”

  My breath leaves me in a rush. “What happened?”

  “There was a moment. When I first got there. The noise in my head was so bad. I thought I was losing it.” Ian’s fingers probe the burn on his arm. “Then Charlie was there. It was exactly like Becca described. He made the pain stop, and he took me out of the darkness in my head and showed me something else.” Ian glances at me sideways. “A field of blue flowers. They … reminded me of you.”

  I know the exact field he’s talking about. It was lying behind a cheap motel in Tennessee. There were bugs in the carpet and mysterious stains in the shower, but none of that mattered when Charlie and I saw the ocean of blue petals outside. Mom said they were wishing flowers, and that we should make the most of them. So I did. I wished for a house on the ocean for Charlie and a porch swing for Mom. The smell of sawdust and the rough texture of wood under my fingertips.

  “What did you wish for?” I asked Charlie when Mom fell asleep, and he and I were watching drops of moonlight water the flowers outside.

  He smiled and shook his head. I thought he was keeping secrets, but only now am I starting to understand what Charlie was really saying as we lay side by side on a lumpy mattress and stared at an empty blue field. I thought we had nothing, but in that moment, we had each other and our mother sleeping in the bed next to us.

  We had everything, only I was too blind to see it.

  “Where was it?” Ian asks.

  “Someplace we stayed once. A happy place. I’ll never forget those flowers.”

  Ian nods. He looks at the fire and then back at me. “They were beautiful.”

  Of course they were. They were the exact color of my mother’s eyes.

  * * *

  When I was little, every night before I went to sleep I’d kneel and I’d pray: Please, God, make me beautiful. Just like her.

  Just. Like. Her.

  I’d spend hours in the bathroom with her makeup littering the sink, painting myself into a pretty picture. Red lips. Dark lashes. She caught me once. My hair was sticking straight up where I’d coated it strand by strand with mascara.