Ember Burning

by Jennifer Alsever

  “What?” I repeat.

  They finally notice me. “The ground started vibrating and there was, like, deep breathing. Inhaling and exhaling, like the fucking air was alive,” Zach yells, jumping into the truck. He slams the door.

  “You know it’s just a forest,” I call to them. I mutter to myself, “Just trees.” I can’t believe they’re so scared.

  The truck engine roars to life. I look back at the wall of pine trees, swaying slowly in the wind. I twirl the coin in my pocket. I don’t want to leave.

  “You coming or what?” Zach calls through an open window. The engine hums and the tires crunch the gravel as he turns the wheels.

  I reluctantly turn around and jump in the truck, squeezing in next to JT’s enormous squishy frame. Zach hits the gas and we’re off down the washboard road.

  “What the hell?” Zach repeats over and over in a high-pitched voice. JT shakes his head, his eyes bugging out as he stares at the dash. Endorphins are clearly racing in here, and I wonder if they’re just trying to freak themselves out like middle schoolers watching horror movies.

  “That really happen?” I ask.

  Zach nods emphatically. I shrug. I don’t buy it.

  As we drive away from Trinity, the song on the radio switches to one everyone played over and over a couple years ago. I can’t remember the name. But the beat is addictive and shows up a crazy kind of turquoise. I smile because I love this song. With my eyes closed, the color soaks deep inside me. Then I realize. Mom loved this song, too.

  I remember her dancing to the song, shaking her skinny butt around the kitchen and totally grossing out Jared. “Please! You need dance lessons,” he jeered, rolling his eyes. She cut a tomato and shook her hips. Opened the fridge and bobbed her head with her chin jutting out. It was terrible.

  “Hey now. She’s got moves like Jagger,” Dad said, swaying behind her. He wrapped his arms around her waist and nuzzled her cheek with his stubble.

  “Only if you’re blind,” Jared said, shaking his head and covering his eyes. “Brutal, Mom. Can’t look anymore. Please!”

  She did dance like a freak. I loved it.

  The color of the music suddenly makes me nauseous. I killed them. The elephant. He’s back.

  “Aw, no,” JT says. I open my eyes to see the truck is now stopped in a clearing off the highway. “Ember, you’ve got that look on your face again.”

  “What look?”

  “That resting bitch face.”

  Zach reaches into his pocket and pulls out a sandwich bag. He gives it a little shake before leaning over me to address JT. “I think she could use a friend.”

  It takes a second for me to see what’s inside the baggie. Some white pills. I knew this was possible when I got in the car. But I’m still a little shocked. “These friends make all the difference,” he says. “Perc takes all the pain away. Not to mention, it’s fucking awesome.”

  I gaze at the baggie, the way the pills pile up together in the corner. My family never even took Advil, so the idea of putting any drugs in my body is ludicrous. Zach must see the shock in my still-buzzed expression.

  “Dude, doctors prescribe this stuff all the time. It’s legit. Made by real companies. It just helps smooth things out.”

  I turn his words over in my mind. If I went to a doctor, maybe he’d prescribe this. Maybe this is what I should have had a long time ago.

  Zach shakes five pills out of the bag and bounces them in a cupped palm. I half expect him to push them in front of my face and try to talk me into taking them. But he doesn’t. He pops them in his own mouth and swallows them with a gulp of beer. “It’s cool. You don’t have to party with us,” he says.

  He hands some to JT and then begins to shove the baggie back into his front jeans pocket. My mind fights between rational and irrational, and my nerves bounce wildly around the heavy elephant on my chest.

  “Wait!” I whisper. I desperately want the elephant to go away. The beer helps some, but not enough. “I want some, too.”

  A grin climbs up his hollow cheeks. “Awesome.”

  My vision sways and bounces, and my skin itches. I scratch my shoulders and arms vigorously and jerk around in the seat while Zach and JT laugh at a donut video on Zach’s phone. The smell of the Burger King bag on the car floor has gotten ten times stronger.

  Then it hits me. A tingly rush of hot bathwater floods my insides—from the nerve endings on my scalp to my fingertips. I melt into the smooth leather seat in Zach’s truck. I am the seat. I am leather, I think. No—softer than leather. A feather leather. Is that a real thing?

  Outside the window, I can make out the dark curves of the abandoned train tunnel and the faint lines where the grass meets a swath of willows leading to the creek. The elephant who sits on my chest every day is not out there. He’s gone, carrying away with him my insecurities and my doubts, my guilt and that god-awful black pain. I smile and touch my cheek. It doesn’t feel like my own skin. Did my skin disappear with the elephant? Maybe I’m not in my own skin anymore. I shut my eyes and allow the warm love of the universe to seep into me.

  “Are you feeling it?” Zach asks.

  I roll my head to the side to see him. His face bounces around in my vision. I shut one eye. From this angle, his curled-up lip looks even more like a ski jump. I don’t understand what he just said or what he just asked me. The words float through my ears and around my head, a kite moving through a fluffy cloud.

  “For sure,” JT says. The tinkling music from the donut video on Zach’s phone moves through my Color Crayon Brain like a twirling pink wave.

  I don’t know how long I stay like that, staring at the dashboard, feeling floaty, before my stomach crunches and my warm paradise is interrupted by a terrible wave of nausea. Zach must see my body and face change because he shouts, “Aw, shit!”

  Two rough hands grasp my armpits and drag my limp body out of the truck. My shoulders drop on the ground, my face hits the cold dirt, and my foot catches on something. Biting metal. I move my eyes to follow my leg down to my foot. It’s caught in the car door. On the ground, the willows move up and down like an amusement ride.

  My hair sticks to my sweaty face, pressed into the grass. Another cramp punctures my stomach. I want my paradise back. I want that escape hatch on life—the place farthest from my sumo-wrestler elephant companion. I want to be numb. I want to disappear. A thought tumbles in my mind. I need to disappear.

  And then, my body heaves and wretches, and I throw up.

  6

  The room smells like cardboard. All these stupid unopened boxes clog up the air and the floor space. I glance at my clock: 1:30 p.m. and I am still not out of bed. Just like Mom. Those last months before the car accident, she just wallowed around the house in a stained old T-shirt, sleeping all day, never wanting to eat, paint, or talk. She just cried.

  I never want to be like that. Yet in a way, I am. For the past week, Zach and JT have set me up with some more of their little happy pills. I learned how to stop puking, and they’ve been a gooey blessing to me ever since. Hours pass with no elephant, just a happy, fuzzy mess. Perfect numbing.

  Lying here on the bed, my elephant has returned. I take a deep inhale and stand up. My head pounds and my mouth tastes like metal. A memory with indistinct shapes and boundaries comes to me now—a sense of revulsion and a faint memory of a tongue in my mouth. I grasp for the full memory, but it slips away, replaced by a dull ache in my head and soreness between my legs.

  A wave of anger hits me. I hate myself. I hate that my parents are gone. I hate that I killed them. I even hate that I take those pills just to get through the day. I know full well that something has just slipped inside me, a crank that’s stopped working and is cutting off the circulation.

  I grab a pen from the desk and hoist it overhead, thrusting it into the seam of a nearby box. I stab another box, and then another as a frustrated growl rises in me. I gasp and sob, yelp and cry out, gouging and tearing and shredding every box within reach, a
s if this could somehow undo everything that’s gone wrong in my life. All I want is to disappear.

  After a few moments, I’m breathless and the craziness subsides. I slide down onto the floor next to one of the mangled boxes. Curiosity piques and I poke my head inside the musty box and find a pile of books. They’re Mom’s.

  On top of the books sits a red notebook covered with pen-drawn Egyptian symbols. I spin the pages and see it’s filled with Mom’s scribbled writing and sketches of Mayan and Egyptian symbols. I study the sketches: an all-seeing eye, like the kind you’d find on a dollar bill; a pyramid; a sphinx. Ancient cultures once created charms to ward off the evil eye, Mom wrote.

  I run my finger over a drawing of a sphinx with the head of a pharaoh and the body of a reclining lion. The sphinx guarded secrets. Another picture shows a cross with a big looping top, and the notes below say it’s an ankh cross, a symbol of life to ancient Egyptians. The book says they believed that Hathor, goddess of death and life, carried the cross and gave life with it.

  God, Mom was weird. I shut the notebook, deciding that ancient mystic crap is ludicrous and a waste of my life. If I had a life to waste. I toss the notebook on top of the Missing Persons notebook in my backpack, out of my line of vision.

  I stare wide-eyed at the nappy moss-green carpet until my eyes begin to burn. The pyramid coin I found the other day is there, sitting across the room on the floor. It must have fallen out of the pocket of my jeans. Curious, I stand and pick it up off the carpet, running my fingers over the embossed image on the coin. It matches the pyramid depicted on the cover of Mom’s red Crazy Woman Notebook. Somehow, it’s as if the coin in my hand is screaming at me. It tugs on me like a magnet.

  7

  Inside Trinity Forest, the fog is thick around my feet, and the velvet-black sky has collapsed around me. The ground feels light, as if the dirt itself is made of sponge, and the musty scent of mushrooms and soil fills my head. This was a big mistake.

  My heart pounds inside my chest as if someone is inside me, banging to get out, and I stumble over dead logs, the branches cracking loud like bones under my feet. I climb over moss-covered rocks, trip on roots, and squirm through bushes that block my path. But I still have no path.

  I am lost.

  I keep moving with panicked gasps and sobs, a freak-out rising like molten lava inside me. Something scampers across the ground to my right, igniting a flashing array of pink and yellow light in my Crayon Brain. Why does my synesthesia keep getting triggered by sounds other than music?

  I spin around so my headlamp can offer some clarity, but it lights up only a small sliver of the forest. I see nothing. Yet that doesn’t calm my nerves. Tears start to trickle down my cheek.

  I am so screwed.

  I’m not even sure why I came here, alone, without telling someone. I could have asked Maddie to come. She would have for sure. She’s always up for an adventure. While I’m standing there panting, a breeze blows my hair and brings with it the faint scent of damp, musty leaves— and burning wood. A campfire. Someone else is here. The realization fills me with a weird combination of comfort and dread.

  I had assumed I would be alone tonight when I drove in. I remember how the dim light of dusk fell on the rusted barbed-wire fence, and a dirty metal sign dangled in the breeze like it was alive. It marked my destination with words that were barely legible. Trinity Forest: No Trespassing. Keep Out. I paused when I saw that. Most people probably do keep out.

  Maybe whoever’s lit that campfire is really the owner of this property and they’ll be cool when they see me. Though, more likely, they’ll be ticked off that I’m trespassing. Or maybe they’re someone else just like me: curious and freaked out and alone and a total head case. I decide it’s better to know.

  I walk with my nose in the air like a dog, sniffing and trying to figure out where the smoke is coming from. After thirty yards or so, I see a small light dancing ahead.

  Next to the fire, I can make out a figure sitting with its back to me. I quiet my nervous breath. The closer I get, it’s clear the person is a woman. She’s wearing a puffy parka, and two braids dangle onto her slumped shoulders.

  “You came to say hello,” she says with her back still to me. Her voice is light, as if she were expecting me.

  I laugh a little. “Hi.”

  The woman turns around to see me. Her face is smooth, round, and friendly. “Well, come on over and sit down,” she says, waving her arm toward the fire.

  The smell of burning wood and the warmth of the fire draw me close. Yet still I perch on the edge of a rock not far from her, ready to make this a short conversation. The last thing I need is to get stuck talking to some lady about her life story.

  I will my last ounce of friendliness out of my body. “Hi,” I say. “I’m Ember.”

  She stands and takes my hand in both of hers, like a grandmother might. It’s not a true handshake, but a comforting clasp in soft, warm hands. Dotted henna lines climb around her fingers and up her wrists. “Ahhh, Ember,” she says, nodding. “Yes, of course.”

  Unsure of what to say next, I gaze into the fire’s bouncing light. She’s a little weird, but it beats being alone out here.

  “Ember…” she says thoughtfully. She glances up at me, and the light flickers on her face. The corners of her eyes turn up like a cat’s. “Like a campfire ember… So beautiful. So much potential. Doesn’t flaunt its strength but demands respect.”

  I let out a little laugh from the middle of my throat. It’s not my normal laugh but an embarrassed one that kind of even surprises me. I do like what she says about my name, though.

  “Yeah,” I say. My parents named me that after sitting at a campfire one night. Dad never let me forget the story of them sitting amid the towering red spires in Moab, where he and Mom learned she was pregnant and talked about who I would be.

  “No one wants to leave the campfire before its ember has gone out,” the woman continues. My parents used to tell me the same thing. It sends goosebumps down my arms.

  “Well,” I say, standing from the fire. I haven’t eaten yet and I need to set up camp, so this is a good time to break off our conversation.

  “You’re welcome to share the fire,” she interrupts.

  Then she shakes her head and apologizes. “Oh, oh,” she says. “Forgive me, my name is Lodima.”

  I offer a polite laugh. I’m actually glad she’s finally snapped into a conversation instead of thinking out loud. “Oh, nice to meet you,” I say.

  “Stay at my fire, please,” she says. Despite her long gray hair, Lodima looks like she would be the same age as my parents today. Her face is sweet and somehow open, inviting, drawing me in. And her offer is tempting. It would be a big pain to build my own fire, and my rumbling stomach agrees with her. It feels like forever since my last meal—a bag of chips while I packed.

  “Um, okay,” I say, sitting back down and opening my pack to get a hot dog from my cooler. In anticipation, she hands me a long, thin stick to roast it.

  “Soda?” she asks, reaching into her backpack. She pulls out a can of root beer, dripping with condensation. I thank her again.

  I watch the fire and roast my hot dog, becoming more relaxed. The fictional Red Bull has worn off. I can’t remember the last time I sat in a quiet forest like this at night, and never with a total stranger. I’m glad she is here.

  “So where are you from, Ember?” Lodima asks. She pops a piece of cheese into her mouth and chews slowly.

  “Leadville,” I say.

  “Close, easy drive.”

  “Yeah, super close,” I say, remembering how I pressed hard on the gas, winding way too fast around the mountain curves, and cranked up the volume on my phone. Blaring the powerful, dark drumbeat and guitar riff of my music fed something dark inside me with pulsing colors: Ink black. Chocolate brown. Shiny silver. My truck kicked up dirt and bumped along the washboard road when something jumped out on the road ahead of me. My heart stopped as my brain attempted to register
what it was thirty yards ahead. So fast. So graceful. A mountain lion.

  The cat had stretched out from the side of the road, lightly touching down at the center like a dancer before shooting off into the shrubs and pine trees.

  If Maddie were here now at this campfire, I’d tell her the story, and she’d shout, “No effing way!” and push my shoulder. I want to tell someone.

  “Funny. I almost hit a cougar on my way in.”

  Lodima slowly nods with her eyes locked onto the sky behind me. “Ahhh… mountain lions are the symbol of self-assurance and courage to stay on course. To find your personal journey—your own terrain.”

  I thought it just meant that a wild animal barely missed death and being plastered across the grill of my pickup. She is so deep—it’s like she lives in another world.

  “Yeah,” I say, not knowing exactly how to respond to her.

  “Where are you headed, Ember?” she asks.

  I shrug. “I just wanted to check out the forest.”

  A few beats of silence. “Is this the right place for you?”

  I’m a bit unsure if it’s true. I offer a fake laugh that’s higher than normal. That jittery sensation begins to come back. “Yeah, sure. I think so.”

  “It’s private property,” she says.

  My stomach rises in my throat, wondering where she is going with all this. I set my roasting stick down and tear at my fingernail. “Do you own this land?” I ask.

  “Oh no,” she says, shaking her head. Relief relaxes my shoulders. “I just felt the calling to be here.”

  My soda gone and three hot dogs devoured, exhaustion takes hold of me. It’s got to be early still, but sleepiness comes on strong and heavy, making my head foggy. The flames shrink into a red glow and charcoal ash.

  “Ember,” Lodima says softly. “I need to get some sleep. I’ll put out the fire.”