Before I Let Go

by Marieke Nijkamp

  “At least you’re there to say goodbye.”

  “Yeah…”

  “Would you rather not have gone?”

  “No, I’m glad to be here. I just… They say she was happy. That it was ‘her time.’”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t her time. It wasn’t. But everyone accepts her death as if it were inevitable.”

  “It’s not uncommon for someone with bipolar disorder to be suicidal.”

  “In that case, shouldn’t they have tried to help her? She told me that she was lonely. In her last letters, she was upset, but she didn’t say why. But I didn’t think… I didn’t even write back to her. I was too preoccupied with finding my place at St. James. But she promised to wait for me. She was waiting for me. I have to believe that. I need to believe that.”

  “Do you think her death could’ve been an accident?”

  “White Wolf Lake is frozen solid in winter. There are few holes and even fewer weak spots. We both grew up here. Kyra would have known what to look for. And I…”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.”

  “Corey?”

  “Even at her darkest, Kyra was so curious about the world. There was so much she wanted to learn and read. She was scared, and lonely, but she lived fiercely.”

  “Even people who love life can be depressed, Corey. You don’t know what happened after you left.”

  “I have four days to find out.”

  “What do you think you’ll find?”

  “Her side of the story. She cared so deeply about stories. I owe it to her to find and protect hers.”

  Foreseen and Foretold

  After dinner, I wander back into town. Calling Eileen helped settle the heartache a little, but I need some fresh air. I cross to the other side of Lost. It takes me less time than it would to cross St. James’s campus. On Main Street, I pause in front of Claja.

  This place belongs to the adults in the evenings, but I sneak in anyway. Maybe I’ll find someone who is happy to see me.

  The pub is dimly lit, but I spot Piper sitting at the counter. Next to her sits a boy our age with spiky black hair and dark, golden skin. I’ve never seen him before.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Piper waves me over. The boy turns and his eyes flash in recognition.

  I make my way over, passing the handful of tables. I glance around to see if Sam is anywhere, but there are no other teens here. Only Mr. Lucas, the manager. Jan from the grocery store. Old Mr. Wilde, one of the miners who retired here. Three empty glasses stand in front of him, and he’s working his way through a fourth. No one calls out in greeting, but the buzz of voices grows quieter.

  I sidle up next to Piper and the boy. “Hi?”

  “You must be Corey. Come, join us.” His voice is tinged with an English accent. “I’m Roshan.”

  “Have we met?”

  “I feel like I know you. She spoke of you often.” His face is solemn, but he ventures a smile.

  I sit on the stool next to him, while Piper orders me a hot chocolate. “You knew Kyra?” I ask.

  “We were friends, right at the end. Like you were.”

  I muster a broken smile and some weight falls off my shoulders. “You’re the first to acknowledge that I was her friend. Everyone else seems to think I’m an intruder here.”

  Piper scoffs, but Roshan ignores it. “That seems to be the way of Lost. It does not take kindly to changes, whether it’s people going”—he gestures to me—“or coming.” He points a thumb at himself. “Give them some time. They will grow used to you once more. They will remember how much Kyra meant to you, and you to Kyra.”

  It’s weird to have a stranger tell me about the town where I lived almost all of my life, but I take his words gladly. Still, “I won’t be staying long. I’m only here for a couple of days. To say goodbye—and find out what happened.”

  Piper hasn’t said anything so far, but now she finally bites. “Find out what happened? What, like an investigation?”

  I shrug. “Kyra and I, we had an agreement. We would always, always wait for each other. No one else looked out for her—and she looked out for me. Nothing would have changed that.” Except my leaving. And every letter I ignored. I wrap my trembling hands around the mug of hot chocolate. “No one was kind to her while she was alive, and now everyone sings her praises.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?” Piper asks. “Not speak ill of the dead?”

  “She deserved the truth, not hypocrisy.”

  “What is the truth, then?” she asks, mildly.

  “I don’t know,” I admit.

  Piper shakes her head. “Walk around Lost tomorrow. Not to investigate, but to listen. Because we changed, and the truth is that Lost is doing better than it has in a long time. We have hope.”

  “You can’t have hope with grief,” I say.

  Roshan shakes his head, and a shadow passes over his face. A distant memory. Then one corner of his mouth curls up. “You can. They’re not mutually exclusive. You can grieve and still hope. You can mourn as you celebrate.”

  “We don’t mourn,” Piper cuts in, serenely. “We just celebrate. That’s what Kyra would have wanted.”

  I turn the mug in my hands, so I won’t reach out and shake her. “How can you possibly know what Kyra would’ve wanted? Did she foresee it?”

  “She foretold it,” Piper replies. “Come.” She grabs my hand and pulls me off my stool, toward the back wall of the room. A group congregating by the bar steps out of the way to let us pass. When Piper turns up the lights, I’m overwhelmed. The entire wall is covered with Kyra’s drawings, paintings, and sketches. Maps of the mine. The spa, covered in flowers. Sam standing at the edge of town. Mr. Sarin and Mr. Henderson walking down Main.

  And in the farthest corner, a colorful rendition of tonight. Three teens, sitting at the counter, drinking hot chocolate. Piper. Roshan. And me.

  “With her art, she showed us the future. And once you understand that, you’ll find Kyra’s truth.”

  Whispers in the Night

  That night, the floorboards on the other side of the wall protest. Kyra’s room is locked and empty. But I recognize her gait.

  I sit up.

  My heart skips, jolting against my rib cage. The closet door moves in a breeze, and the sound of laughter swirls around me once more. It’s closer now.

  It’s in Kyra’s room.

  I wrap a hoodie around my shoulders and climb out of bed.

  Outside, the wind picks up and hail pelts the windows. I consider switching on the main lights because the lamp on the nightstand barely illuminates the bed, but I don’t want to break the spell.

  Corey. The voice sounds distant, twisted, as if we’re standing on opposite sides of the lake’s dark waters. The air is cold as ice.

  I know, I know, the next time the door to the closet inches open, Kyra will step out. I draw in a breath and my hand edges toward the door.

  I open the door and stare into darkness. The wooden planks that form the back of the closet are gone, but there is a doorway to Kyra’s room.

  A chill settles into my bones. Kyra loved horror stories, but I do not. I’ll take good old rational science over horror any day. When the wind roars along the cabin, it’s all I can do to keep from screaming in fright. I snap on the lights before I can talk myself out of it again.

  Science doesn’t explain why the passage to Kyra’s room is open. Why I’m crawling through it. As soon as Mr. Henderson finds out that Kyra’s room was breached, he’ll board it up again. This may be my only chance to get in.

  The darkness feels oppressive. The silence even worse.

  I grab my phone from my hoodie and toggle to the flashlight mode. My heart is beating out of control. The beam of light is both a comfort and a terror.
I’m not prepared for what I’ll see—or for what lurks just beyond the light.

  Someone laughs. Low and far away. Or maybe it’s the wind.

  Slowly, I pan the light from one wall to the next. My hand trembles.

  On my far left, the wall is covered with the very same drawings and paintings that decorate Kyra’s door. Superheroes and comic-book scenes among panoramas of Alaska. Another wall is covered with faces. Half-drawn portraits. Ink and paint and pencil. A hundred eyes decorate the wall, and they are all watching me.

  We sat on this floor for hours, doing our homework.

  I move the beam of light along Kyra’s bed. The covers are thrown across the mattress haphazardly, as if she just got up and could return any moment. Or as if someone or something is lying underneath them.

  I hold my breath. I could crouch down and look under the bed, but my hands shake. My courage doesn’t extend that far. I can’t fight off monsters and nightmares. I never could.

  I step back and settle the beam on Kyra’s desk. A bright red shirt hangs across the desk chair. It’s the same shirt she wore the last time I saw her. I take a measured step closer and run my hand over the fabric.

  The light hits the curtain on the window over her desk. I gasp. The curtains have been cut to shreds—and they sway in a nonexistent breeze.

  My cell phone light flickers. It takes everything I have not to turn and bolt. There must be an explanation for all this, although I can’t seem to think of one. Instead, I step closer to her desk, but what I see doesn’t make me feel any better. Shredded essays. Unfinished scripts and storyboards. Crumpled papers. A broken pen. A book soaked in paint.

  I touch the paint. My fingertips come back pink.

  I hold up the light to the bookshelves adjacent to the desk. Most of her books are gone. What’s left has been shredded too. Her entire collection of folktales and legends. Her treasured copies of the Edda, prose and poetry. The books her grandfather wrote. Her collection on the history of storytelling. All destroyed.

  This isn’t right. Even in her darkest moments, Kyra would never be so careless. She wouldn’t be concerned about the curtains, but she was meticulous about her stories and her studies.

  This isn’t right.

  I edge forward and pick up one of the papers. When I brush the bookshelf, my fingers get coated thick with dust. Upon closer inspection, I see that the floor is covered in a layer of dust too. I can see my footprints behind me. If Kyra was alive a few days ago, she wasn’t here. Aside from the fresh paint, this room hasn’t been lived in for weeks, maybe months.

  There might be more clues here, but the curtains move and the papers rustle again in some imaginary draft, and I’ve had enough.

  Corey. A whisper tickles my ear.

  I swirl. My phone nearly slips from my fingers. The beam of light streaks across the wall. Nothing. Emptiness.

  This room used to be the safest place on earth. Not anymore. I beeline back to the passage and Kyra’s studio, locking the closet door behind me for good measure.

  Only when I’m huddled in my bed, safely under the covers, do I look at the torn page that I hold, written in Kyra’s uneven hand.

  Dear Corey,

  I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared.

  I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared.

  I’m waiting.

  Day Two

  Astronomical Twilight

  The cabin is dark and still when I wake from a restless sleep. The deep silence settles into my bones. Back at St. James’s, there would be the sound of fifteen girls getting up and starting their day, arguing over the bathrooms, sharing each other’s clothes. I miss the laughter. I miss the smell of freshly brewed coffee. I miss Eileen’s pen scratching in her notebook as she plots the next great Canadian novel, while the rest of us are barely awake enough to figure out breakfast.

  I miss Kyra.

  She would’ve liked Eileen and her stories. Eileen would’ve liked Kyra and her fascination with narrative.

  I was going to introduce them when Kyra came to visit me over the summer, like we’d planned. Before…

  She died.

  Her loss hits me anew. I still can’t accept it. I want answers.

  So I snuggle into my jeans and bunny boots and pull on a sweater with long sleeves I can hide my hands in. It’s early, and I’m sure Mrs. H will be preparing breakfast, but I don’t want to go inside the main house yet. If Mrs. H can’t give me answers, maybe Mrs. Morden, at the post office, will. Or Mrs. Robinson, who took to Kyra more than anyone else in town did.

  I grab my parka and hat from my backpack, then wrap a scarf around my neck and pull on my mittens. It’s a quiet ritual, this creation of another layer of skin, and for the first time since I’ve been back, I feel Alaskan again.

  At my desk, I grab Kyra’s letter and stare at it.

  I’m waiting.

  Where were you waiting, Kyr? If you weren’t here, where do I find you?

  I stuff the letter into a pocket. It’s a tangible reminder of her. I want to keep it close.

  Lights are on in the Hendersons’ kitchen as I slip through the garden. It’s almost eight, but I can just start to make out the difference between the trees and the sky. Back home, this is the time classes start.

  Back home.

  I shrug my parka higher. This is back home.

  It’ll be another hour or two before the sun will tease the horizon. Real sunlight won’t happen until almost eleven, but Lost doesn’t shy away from the darkness.

  When I make it to the town square, where Main Street intersects with two smaller roads, the fishermen have already left, but the handful of stores—the post office, the grocery store, the doctor’s office—are still closed. The street lights shine dimly. And the only sound is that of the wind whistling past the buildings. Lost looks like a ghost town.

  Even in a small town like this, the quiet feels out of place. I pause at the corner where, one summer, Kyra decided to settle on one of the benches in front of the grocery store, a notebook in hand.

  She told me she wanted to record the stories of Lost. The first day, people stared at her oddly. The second, most gave her only passing glances.

  By the third day, everyone in Lost had passed her at least half a dozen times, and they seemed to have forgotten about her entirely. “It gives me a chance to look at Lost from a different perspective,” she said. “When people forget you, you hear—and see—all sorts of things.”

  But when I quizzed her about what she’d discovered, she wouldn’t tell.

  I lean against one of the street lights, and I feel like an observer now too. Though I’m not sure what to observe, except for the magenta ribbons that dance in the breeze.

  But the longer I look, the more I notice.

  First, the mural on the side of the post office. Even in the dim light, I recognize the muted colors of spring. The first bright sunrise. The promise of ice breaking up and the weather warming. It’s so hopeful that it makes me want to cry or rage at the unfairness of it all. This is clearly one of Kyra’s paintings—and she won’t see another spring.

  I look away, and cold pricks up my arms.

  Silhouettes darken the windows of almost every single house. Everywhere I turn, everywhere, they stare. Yesterday I thought that Lost Creek looked like a collection of dollhouses; today I’ve found the dolls.

  A shiver runs down my spine. I take a step back toward the Hendersons’. Someone out of sight starts humming like the girl at the airport. A few bars into the tune, a scream interrupts the song. The sound is shrill and angry, like the screeching of an eagle. But is it a bird or a human? I can’t tell.

  I freeze and Lost falls silent. Waiting.

  I take another step and the shrieking starts again. My heart pounds. I stop. For the fir
st time in seventeen years, I understand what Kyra meant when she said that she felt claustrophobic here.

  Inside the post office, a light switches on. Mrs. Morden, Piper’s grandmother, steps out to hang her fake potted plant next to the door. It’s as if she breaks the spell. The shadows retreat from the windows.

  My balled fists relax, and I roll my shoulders, fending off the cold. My movement startles Mrs. Morden. She squints into the early dawn. “Who’s there?”

  I come closer, my feet scrunching the freshly fallen snow. “It’s me, Corey. Morning, Mrs. Morden.”

  “Corey.”

  “I wanted to come say hi.” I smile, but she offers no friendly return.

  After a moment, she nods toward the door. “Coffee’s brewing. Make yourself at home.” She sounds resigned, and I deflate. Mrs. Morden is always happy to see everyone. I thought she would be happy to see me.

  I follow her into the post office. From the wood paneling on the walls to the old-fashioned service windows, it looks—I imagine—exactly like it did a hundred-something years ago. Of course, Lost Creek never needed more than one clerk in the post office.

  Even the coffee machine, brewing inside the small office, looks like an antique. It sounds like one too. I grab a chipped mug and a cookie from one of the shelves and wait for the coffee to finish brewing.

  My gaze settles on the desk. This used to be Mr. Morden’s desk. He passed away seventeen years ago, but Mrs. Morden never cleaned it out. It looked like he simply stepped away for a moment. She kept his books stacked next to his mug and his coat draped across the chair. She would dust it and mind it and pretend he was still here.

  Whenever Kyra and I visited, we would surreptitiously check to see if any of his belongings had moved. He still had such a presence that we were convinced that his ghost haunted this place.

  But now, the desk is empty. The only evidence of old Mr. Morden is a portrait that hangs over his desk.

  “That’s one of Kyra’s too,” I blurt from the office doorway.

  Mrs. Morden fusses in the main room—straightening the priority box display and readjusting the stamp machine. All the while, she manages to avoid looking at me. “It was time for a change.”