Before I Let Go

by Marieke Nijkamp

  Kyra closed her books, one by one. “What should be enough?”

  “All of this. I have you and Luke and Mom. Astronomy and home. I don’t want to be as restless as I am. I don’t want to care about him anymore. All of this should be enough.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged.

  She sat down on her bed and invited me under the blanket. “You’re allowed to be angry. You can be hurt. And more than that, I don’t think you should ever settle for ‘enough.’ Enough by whose standards, anyway?”

  I leaned into her. My hands were cold from the night air, but she didn’t flinch. She pulled the blanket up higher.

  “Mine, I guess?” I said. “Or Lost’s?”

  “Hopefully those aren’t the same,” she teased. “What do you dream about?” And then, after a beat, “What would you dream about if it weren’t for Lost?”

  Because she was right. Those weren’t the same. If not for Lost, I would go off to college to study astronomy. Work at one of the observatories around Fairbanks. Maybe study the aurora borealis.

  But having Kyra next to me made me feel even braver. “Work on the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile, to study the evolution of galaxies,” I answered. Once it was completed, the GMT would be the largest optical observatory in the world, ten times stronger than the Hubble Space Telescope. “Or on the E-ELT, to study the evolution of dark matter in high redshift galaxies.”

  I stole a sideways glance at Kyra, who blinked at me owlishly. “I didn’t even understand those words separately, let alone together.”

  I giggled and it bubbled into laughter. I didn’t know how Kyra did it, but she focused my restlessness like a telescope, away from the dark energy of Dad’s absence and toward the exoplanets of possibility.

  “I’ll come to visit you in Chile,” Kyra said. “And then I’ll drag you with me to Antarctica. We’ll see what the other side of the world looks like. See the southern lights together. I’ll tell you stories about them.” A smile tugged at her lips. “What if they’re upside down?”

  I scowled. “That’s not how science works.”

  She grinned.

  I punched her softly in the arm. “What will you do until then?”

  “Travel too, if I can. Study narrative culture around the Arctic.” She motioned to one of the books on her desk. “I don’t want to collect and claim stories like Granddad did. I want to be respectful to Indigenous cultures. But I want to understand how our stories came to be. I don’t want them, and our histories, to melt along with the ice.”

  “Do you think you’ll be able to?” I asked, wondering, Will Kyra get out of here? Pursue her dreams? Be well enough to do so?

  She recoiled, as if I’d hit her. “Yes. Somehow or other, I’ll find a way.”

  “Then we’ll have to find a good college for both of us,” I offered.

  Kyra rested her head back on the pillow. “We’ll go farther than anyone in Lost ever has. Adventurers, looking for stories and stars.”

  “But we’ll always come home, right?” I asked.

  She looked up at me. “Maybe. Maybe I’ll get lost on the ice instead.”

  Unpredictable

  A Year and a Half Before

  Kyra didn’t keep her head down. She didn’t fit in.

  She’s crazy. The words followed her wherever she went. In the conservative, white world of Lost, standing out was a mortal sin. When she came to school, the other juniors and seniors in our class would slide their desks away from us. They’d invite me over for hot chocolate after class, but never her. They’d steal her books. They’d throw her homework—and sometimes the essays she wrote on storytelling—into White Wolf Lake.

  She kept her head held high. She never let me yell at them. And she never let anyone but me see how much their cruelty hurt her.

  She’s crazy. Batshit. Insane. Nuts. A freak.

  The people of Lost Creek had a particular affinity for that last word. Freak. It floated around her, spoken in hatred and whispered in fear.

  And fear was the worst part. Too often, people who’d known her since she was a baby, who’d watched her grow up, would talk about her as if she were a threat. And they weren’t even subtle about it.

  They wanted her gone.

  “Joe, I’ve heard about a good residential treatment center in Fairbanks. It might be better for your daughter there,” Mr. Lucas would say.

  “We’ve been over this a million times. No,” Mr. Henderson would reply.

  “You have to understand it from my point of view. Kyra goes to the same school as my daughters.”

  “And she has since they were all toddlers.”

  “But now she has this diagnosis. What if something happens? What if—”

  “What could possibly happen?”

  “What if she sna—what if she has one of her episodes?”

  “When she has one of her episodes, she paints. Do you think your daughters are in danger from Kyra’s crafts?”

  But that, of course, wasn’t Mr. Lucas’s point. It was never anyone’s point. They weren’t worried about the creative ways Kyra burned off energy; they were worried about her escapades. When her manic episodes overwhelmed her, she became unstoppable. She could lose herself in the woods for days. Once, she snuck to the river and dumped the fishermen’s catch back into the water. Another time, she ventured down the closed mine, and it took our parents the better part of a day and a night to find her.

  The people of Lost were worried because they had seen her vanish. They were convinced that she’d drag one of them along, and that they’d stray too far. That they, too, would disappear in the dangerous terrain outside of Lost. But she wouldn’t do that. Kyra pushed everyone away during those episodes. Even me.

  So Mr. H would willfully misunderstand the community’s remarks. Eventually, out of respect for him and his status as the owner of the mine, they’d concede that, of course, they were only worried about Kyra’s welfare.

  But every time she overheard one of those conversations, Kyra would stare at me with tears in her eyes. The first time it happened, I tried to explain the town’s fear, but she challenged it. We were sitting in her window seat, and she tensed all over, her cheeks turning pink with frustration. The second time, she ran away.

  I’d lost count of the incidents since then, but this time, she was still in flight mode when she asked me, “I’m not enough, am I?”

  “You should never settle for ‘enough.’” I hoped that hearing the same words she’d told me would make her feel braver.

  “You know, a couple of centuries ago, I would’ve been called a witch.” She clung to her windowsill, as if to stop herself from running away from all of us, and all of this. “They would’ve burned me at the stake.”

  “I wouldn’t have let them.”

  “Do you think I should go? To the treatment center in Fairbanks?”

  “Only if you want to. Only if you think it’ll help. But not because the rest of the town has forgotten who you really are. If that’s the only reason, I’d rather you stay here with me.”

  “I want to feel better. I want to get these episodes under control.” Her shoulders drooped. “I want to belong here, like you and Luke do.”

  I stared at her for the longest time. The setting sun cast her face in an orange glow, making her hair look auburn and her hazel eyes almost green. I loved Lost, because it was the only home I’d ever known, but I hated how the town had treated her since she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder a year before. It was as if, overnight, they’d decided that she was no longer the girl they knew, but a danger. “I want you to feel better. I want you to belong too.”

  “Why is everyone so afraid of me?”

  “Because you’re unpredictable.” Like spring storms and inaccessible mines. “In Lost, unpredictability has never been good.”

  Strangers, Traitor
s, Ghosts

  I open the door and jump out of the plane as soon as we land on the narrow strip. The concrete shocks my knees and I stretch in the freezing cold air. I expect to find Mr. Henderson’s 4x4 waiting for me, or Sheriff Flynn, maybe. Instead, a lone figure stands against the rising sun. With the light at her back, I can only see her silhouette—a tall, gangly figure whose long hair dances in the wind. She raises a hesitant hand.

  My heart skips a beat. Kyra. Without thinking, I start toward her, her name on the tip of my tongue.

  Then the light clears. Her nose is smaller. Her hair lighter.

  And the shout of recognition dies in my throat.

  Piper Morden.

  Not Kyra.

  I forgot. Now I ache to forget again.

  Behind me, the pilot disembarks. He grabs my backpack and hands it to me. “Your return flight is booked. Be here on time. See you in five days.”

  So little time, but it has to be enough. “I’ll make sure of it. Thank you.”

  The man hesitates, then says, “Be careful in Lost Creek. Not everything is as it seems here.”

  Before I can reply with a simple, I know. We’ve always gone our own way, he turns on his heels with military precision and stalks back to the plane. I head toward Piper, who smirks. Plenty of people don’t understand our closed community, our way of living. We’re all used to odd comments like these.

  Piper wraps her arms around me. She’s never done so before, but I cling to her. She’s strong and familiar. She smells of winter and home. “Hey, big city girl.”

  “Hey.”

  “How was your flight?”

  “It was good. Quiet. Early.” Strange.

  “I can only imagine.” Her smile fades. “Mr. H has a business meeting, so he asked me to pick you up. We’re glad you’re here. Kyra would’ve liked that.”

  That’s new. These last few years, Piper never considered Kyra’s feelings, and now that she’s dead doesn’t seem like the right time to start.

  I sling my backpack over my shoulders, wondering how to phrase this question without sounding accusatory. “What can I expect here, Piper? I know Kyra wasn’t exactly…loved.”

  Piper stiffens as if I’d slapped her. Then she flicks a wayward lock of hair out of her face. “Do you think us so cold that we wouldn’t mourn her?”

  “No, but—”

  “Things changed after you left.”

  “Nothing ever changes in Lost Creek,” I say, out of habit. The only way to mark the passage of time here is by the aging of the children. They grow older, as they’re meant to, every birthday the start of a new year. The adults somehow appear to stop aging, and the elderly stop counting the years altogether.

  Piper’s mouth quirks up, twisting her face into a harsh grimace. “Never mind. You’ll come to understand.”

  “Understand what?” I ask, but Piper has already turned away from me.

  “We take care of our own here. You ought to know that.”

  I trek after her and regret not changing into my bunny boots. My sneakers are fit for traveling, but not for withstanding miles of snow. The cold bites.

  At least I’ve arrived with the sun. When Piper and I turn away from the airstrip, toward Lost, bright light peeks out over the horizon. Anticipation takes over and the churning in my stomach settles. I breathe. This is home. The zingy smell of ice in the air. The snow, layered over the permafrost, that crunches beneath our feet.

  Amid the gentle hills and pine tree forests lies the town of Lost Creek. Our small, private universe. From our vantage point, it looks tiny, like a collection of dollhouses rather than a place where people live.

  But it is home.

  Welcome home.

  Piper leads me as if I didn’t know my way around. We walk along the single road toward Main Street, one of a grand total of five streets in Lost Creek. It’s also the town’s busiest street.

  On any given day of the week, Main would be crowded. Even in the middle of winter, this is where the gossip gets shared and the grocery store and the physician’s pharmacy are stocked, where fishermen return from their camps along the creek with their catch.

  But today is different.

  The grocery store is closed. The street is abandoned. Well-kept houses are the only assurance that people actually live here. Fresh paint makes the town look newer than I’ve ever seen it. When I left, the houses were weatherworn and lived-through, perennially smudged with sleet and mud. Today, they are pristine. A dash of color sidles up the wall of the old post office, though from this angle, I can’t make out the design. It’s as if, with Kyra gone, Lost had painted over all its cracks and creases.

  “What happened here?” I ask.

  “Hope,” Piper says quietly. She reverently touches a ribbon tied around a gate. “And remembrance.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “What does that mean?”

  Piper doesn’t answer, but now I notice the ribbons are everywhere, tied around every flagpole and every door handle. Bows in magenta and black—Kyra’s favorite color and the color of mourning. It’s like Lost is demonstrating its sorrow. But we’ve never made our grief public, beyond memorial gatherings. When Kyra’s grandfather passed away, the town honored him with a somber service. And he was liked by everyone.

  It must be a coincidence.

  “Look, I’m sorry if you thought I was being harsh before,” I try. “I just want to understand what happened to Kyra.”

  Piper shakes her head. Her gaze searches Main. I have no idea what she’s looking for, but I glance surreptitiously over my own shoulder. We’re as alone as we were the moment we stepped into town. The street is empty, and the sunlight isn’t as bright here. The shadows are longer and darker.

  “You’ll find out,” Piper says. “Someday, you’ll understand.”

  The wind picks up, weaving around the houses and whispering.

  Stranger.

  Traitor.

  Outsider.

  The words float in the same tune as the girl’s at the airport, soft and out of reach. I swirl around, but no one’s there.

  I pull at the straps of my backpack to cinch it closer and fall into step with Piper, who keeps a firm pace. She doesn’t seem to mind the wind. Or maybe she doesn’t hear it.

  At the turn that leads to my old house, I pause. Piper grabs my hand and pulls me in the other direction.

  “I promised Mrs. Henderson I would take you to her as soon as you arrived, but once you’ve settled in, you should walk over.” Her voice is neutral.

  We follow a side street until we reach a large, nineteenth-century town house on the edge of the creek. It’s the biggest plot of land in Lost, barring the spa outside the town’s borders. When settlers arrived in Lost Creek, Mr. Henderson’s great-grandfather was the first to find gold here—and his grandfather, the last. Over the years, the Henderson family had built a legacy of industry and investment. And although Mr. Henderson hasn’t been able to reopen our mine, it’s only right that their house reflects their status.

  But while the house may appear imposing to outsiders, to Kyra and me, it was home. And now it’s in mourning. I drop my backpack and gape.

  The gate and flagpole are covered with black ribbons. On either side of the driveway, small flowers lie strewn across the snow. Bright pink salmonberry flowers. They’re the same flowers the girl at the airport held. They’re the same flowers Kyra used to scatter around town.

  I squint. No, not blossoms, but flowers made of magenta ribbons, like the ones that hang on Main Street. They remind me of Kyra’s paintings from her manic periods—not quite real enough, but still too close for comfort.

  Maybe, just maybe, life is still a little unpredictable here.

  “He was right, you know.” Piper’s words are so soft, they don’t immediately register.

  “Who?” I ask.

 
“The pilot. Not everything is as it seems. I’ll see you at the service, if I don’t see you before then. Come find me if you have questions.” She starts back toward Main.

  “Piper?”

  She pauses and turns. “Yes?”

  My stomach roils. Wait. Don’t leave me. I can’t face Kyra’s absence yet. Let me cling for one more moment to the world I used to know.

  I hesitate. “Tell Tobias that Luke said hi?”

  At this, Piper smiles again, but I know it’s not for me. “Of course.”

  Although Piper and I were friendly, we were never as close as our brothers. When Mom spent long days in Fairbanks and the surrounding towns seeing patients, I would often stay with Kyra, and Luke with Tobias. Luke had been furious when he found out that I’d made plans to come back to Lost to see Kyra without him. To see Kyra.

  Before.

  She knew I was coming. How could she not wait for me?

  Note from Kyra to Corey

  sent, unanswered

  Can you see the stars at your new school? I can’t imagine that the night sky there is as clear as it is in Lost. When you’re back, let’s go camping near the springs. Just you and me and a campfire and the northern lights. We’ll build a bridge. A bridge between us. I miss you, Corey.

  Framed Moments

  I push open the gate, which squeaks against the cold, and hesitate.

  The steps leading up to the Hendersons’ front door are the same steps where Kyra used to wait for Mr. H when he came home from his business trips. Where she would wait for me those rare times when Mom, Luke, and I would go visit my uncle in Nome. She would sit on a stair, with a book or a notepad, which she’d drop as soon as she saw us, racing to meet us at the gate.