But she sees me.
“Hey, Ember!” She waves, flapping her fingers up and down. “Morning!”
“Hey,” I say. My feet stay planted on the stone floor, staying at the edge of the kitchen hall, still wary that she will bring out Psycho Lilly. To look casual, I lean on the cherrywood wall. “What’re you doing?”
“Washing my feet, silly,” she says, flipping her silky white-blonde hair over her shoulder.
“Why not in the bathroom?”
“The water feels better here. It’s softer.” She pulls on the arched faucet with an extendable sprayer—the kind they have in restaurant kitchens. “And it’s got this hose thingy. So much fun.”
She waves me over, splashing water with her arm. “Come, eat breakfast.”
“No, actually…” I say, taking a deep breath, readying to tell her I’m leaving. I’m not sure how she’s going to take this after yesterday.
A hand rests on my shoulder, and I turn to see Zoe, smiling and guiding me farther into the kitchen. She gently pushes a hot cup into my hands. The smell of fresh coffee fills me. “Oh, thanks.”
“So what are we doing today?” Lilly asks. She pauses and points to the stainless steel refrigerator. “Hey can you get me the Tabasco sauce, Ember? I want to put some more in my coffee.”
“I’m going to head home,” I say. It’s more of a blurt, and I punctuate it with a bobbing head. Keeping my gaze glued to Lilly, I clench my fingers around the ribbed mug. After a moment, I remember her request and move carefully to retrieve the Tabasco, handing it to her. Tabasco in coffee? Certifiable nut.
Lilly pours a couple tablespoons into her coffee, stirs it with her finger. “Yum,” she says, licking her fingernail. She glances up and then bats her hand toward me. “Go home? Bah… What’s so great about home anyway? Home schmome.”
Zoe moves delicately next to me like a butterfly, her kinky dark hair forming perfect spirals around her face. A stream of sunlight from the kitchen window descends on her, like she’s some sort of unearthly being. “Would you like some eggs? Maybe some toast or cereal?” She stops moving and stares intently, as if she’s taking inventory of me.
I gaze back, unable to break away from her liquid gold eyes. Intense. Pulsing. Mesmerizing. When she takes her eyes off me, I twirl my hair, feeling uncomfortable, and take a tiny sip of the coffee. “No, thanks.”
“So, Ember, what’s home like, anyway? Leadville, I mean,” Zoe asks. She touches my shoulder, and that humming energy from her palm is like a button that involuntarily relaxes me.
“Leadville…” I say, half paying attention as Tre, Pete, and Chris flow into the kitchen.
I don’t want to chitchat, but they’re all waiting expectantly for me to answer. Pete saunters to a silver metal stool next to me, facing Lilly, who is still perched on the countertop. Tre’s hair looks disheveled from sleep, and he leans a shoulder against the wall at the far end of the room. He probably wonders why I’m still here. So do I.
“Small,” I say finally. “Leadville’s really small.”
“Good small? Or bad small?” asks Pete.
My mind wanders, questioning what the story is between Tre and Pete and Lilly.
I bite my lip and shove those thoughts down in my head and instead answer the surface question. “Well, good small—for a while. But then… it’s like the town is kind of claustrophobic—to me at least—because everyone knows your business. Kind of a weird, backwards place,” I say. It’s true: after my parents died, the whispers—in school, in the grocery, in restaurants—made the walls and ceilings, even the sky, seem to cave in on me even more.
“It seemed like such a cute little town to me when we passed through,” Lilly says. “It had all those little brick buildings that made it look just like an Old West town or something. Charming.”
“Yeah, well, it kind of is. I mean, it’s a mining town,” I say. Memories of my brother and me play in my head. How we’d laugh and count and argue as we’d play hide-and-seek at the old train depot. “Lots of history,” I say. “There are old railroads, the Matchless silver mine, and nineteenth-century houses. When were you there?”
Water splashes as Lilly swings her feet out of the sink. With one hand, she drains the water while she hops to the floor. The sink groans and gurgles. A crease appears on her forehead like a fold in delicate paper. “Oh, it was 1990,” she says.
I smile and shake my head quickly. I want to wrap this up and leave. “Right. When was it, seriously?”
“Summer of 1990.” She finishes off her coffee like a shot of tequila and rinses her cup in the sink.
I blink and frown. She doesn’t make any sense. “Ha,” I say. “Right. You weren’t even born in 1990.” My eyebrows climb higher on my forehead, waiting for her to laugh. She doesn’t. She lifts a few strands of hair off her shoulder and studies them, as if she’s more interested in looking for split ends than in this conversation.
My eyes scan the others. Pete’s clearly focused on taking a giant bite of a chocolate donut, studying it before opening his mouth wide, as if it has hinges on it. Tre stays put, his jaw tense, as he nervously looks around the kitchen, almost unsure of where to let his gaze fall.
Dishes clink. The coffee maker whirs. The sound shows up as dusty, jagged brown lines in my Crayon Brain. I wait a moment for Lilly to realize her mistake. But she doesn’t. She says nothing, turning her back to get a bowl from a white cabinet.
“Maybe it was just last fall?” I offer.
Lilly stops moving, places the bowl on the counter, and then pivots, leaning her backside against the counter. She glances around the room for a moment, as if looking for a cue or direction. Shadows and light dance on her face through the long windows. She walks toward me. She stops just a foot away from me. I wait, unsure of what she’s doing in this unbearably long, awkward moment.
“No, Ember,” she says quietly, gently, as if she’s talking to a child. She touches my shoulder and puts her face close to mine. “It’s like this. I came to Leadville in 1990 when I was seventeen and then found myself in Trinity Forest. I’m still seventeen. And yeah, it was like forever ago. That’s just how it is here.” Her voice is gentle. Careful.
A salty laugh comes from Chris, sunk back in a metal chair across the room. I glance at him and he gives me a small headshake and rueful smile. Last night, we understood each other, but right now, I don’t know what he’s trying to tell me.
Lilly’s hand continues to rest on my shoulder, and when my gaze returns to her face, her saucer blue eyes are gazing deeply into mine. She doesn’t look crazy. She looks serious. I swallow, not sure how to take this, what to say. I look up at the others again.
Tre shakes his head and juts his jaw, letting out a little laugh from his nose. He runs a hand through his hair. “Lilly was a child actress,” he says. “You might have heard how she disappeared here—”
“Yeah, I was an actress,” Lilly says, nodding and leaning back into her own space. “You know the TV show Beehive Diaries? Me. That’s me. I played… uh… who did I play again?” She looks around the room, a hopeful smile bouncing onto her face.
They offer shrugs and headshakes in return.
“And I was in a couple of commercials… I think,” she says trailing off. Her eyes search the corner of the room.
“You think? Wouldn’t you remember if you were in a commercial?” I ask, trying hard to keep a condescending tone from seeping into my voice. I don’t buy that she is this actress from decades ago, that she hasn’t aged. That’s ridiculous. And frankly, I’m a little tired of her—and of this place. It makes no sense and really is starting to freak me out. We still don’t even know whose house this is. My stomach clenches, and my knee bounces nervously.
I sigh, so annoyed and ready to leave. “Thanks for the coffee,” I say quietly to Zoe, walking past her to place the heavy mug in the sink. Avoiding eye contact with them, I struggle to keep myself from sprinting across the kitchen to get out of here. “I gotta get going. But you gu
ys have been so awesome. Thanks for everything.”
My hiking boots thump on the hard floor in what has become a completely silent room. Pete keeps his head in his hands on the counter and follows me with his gaze. Chris, who has been eating from a bag of Cheetos, stops mid-crunch, cheese powder on his cheeks, and watches me.
I take another two thumping steps, when Pete begins talking. “Hate to tell you this, girl,” he says. I spin around, thinking he’s speaking to me, flipping my hair dramatically. But he’s addressing Lilly, placing his hands in a solemn steeple in front of his face. Then slowly, he opens his hands like a book to her. “You were a terrible actress. Whenever the reruns came on as a kid, I always turned it off.”
Lilly’s whole body stiffens, the light falls from her eyes, and her mouth disappears into a tight line. Perhaps she really, actually might be telling the truth about being an actress.
Oh. My. God. The actress who went missing years ago.
The stories of the missing people play in my head. When I was little, Mom sat on our brown sofa, her hands covering her mouth, enrapt by the TV. It was playing an Unsolved Mysteries special that talked about a missing actress and some guy who had disappeared around Leadville. I remember being so put out that I couldn’t watch Rugrats.
Mom looked at me and shook her head and told me, “That actress should never have gone there. No one goes to that forest, Ember.”
Another memory surfaces: a black-and-white photo on the Missing poster of the teenaged boy who disappeared in Trinity, and Mom talking to a store clerk, a hunched woman with a permanent frown. “He stopped in for Cheetos,” the cashier told us. “Sure as heck, I warned him about that place. But he just laughed. Sounded like a sheep. He laughed like a goddamn sheep.” Then she mimicked his staccato laugh. “Baa-aa-aah.”
The face in the black-and-white photo didn’t mean much to me when I was little because it had been up there since the ’90s. But now I see it. That snapshot was of Pete: the shaggy blond hair, the unbuttoned flannel grunge look, his stupid pothead grin, and his arms held way out wide like he was going to hug the cameraman.
Another flash: a coffee shop I went to a couple years ago. The Denver Post on the table had a headline about a missing oil worker. Chris. That’s him. That’s them. The Lost. My vision becomes even more rippled, watery, and I dig my fingers into the cherrywood wall just to keep my balance. This must be what happens here: people just hide out from the world in this house, undiscovered, for years.
“You,” I say quietly to Lilly, almost in a whisper. Mom became fascinated with her disappearance. I should have seen it, who she was. “You’re the actress who disappeared in Trinity.”
She looks sullen, almost pouty. “Yeah, that’s what I just said.”
I wave my hand loosely across the room. “You guys are those missing people…”
Tre’s nod is imperceptible, his face melting into a wrenching sadness before gazing at the floor.
Zoe hops up to sit on the counter, kicking her legs, looking at me with… what is that? Some sort of attitude. Her eyelids hang like half-drawn shades, almost bitchy. “Welcome to the club,” she says.
23
My backpack hangs over one shoulder. I never filled up my Camelbak with water, and I have only a couple bars to eat. But there is no way I’m staying here. For sure, I’m getting away from these strange people who disappeared in the woods and are living as squatters in this mansion.
The five of them follow me to the front door, which is weird—but typical of this place. I reach for the steel door handle, but Lilly steps in front of me.
“You can’t leave,” she says. Her lips form a straight line.
I want to shove her perfect little body out of the way. I sigh. “What?” I overenunciate the t and swing my hair for effect.
“I mean,” she says quickly, changing her tune, as if she’s playing a role, “you’ve got to come back and eat breakfast first. Can’t leave on an empty stomach.”
She starts to walk to the kitchen when Tre reaches out to touch her arm. “Come on, Lil, she’s going to figure it out,” he says.
“What now?” I ask, exasperated. So tired of this guessing game. “Beyond the fact that you’re all crazy hideaways who faked their disappearances?”
“You can’t go home,” Tre says.
“Right, right,” I say with sarcastic nods.
Zoe moves away from the curving banister. “You’re in a place that is like no other.” She blinks with large, serious eyes, a doctor delivering a fatal diagnosis. “It’s a place where time stands still. Or at least it moves at a slower pace. So out there in the real world, back home in Leadville, for instance, it’s July. More than eight weeks later. Your friends are in the midst of summer, getting ready for college. But here, in Trinity, it’s today. Just two days after you left. You get to live here in this life of luxury without any pressures or expectations. Think of it as… a vacation.”
Tears sting my eyes and my chest tightens. I fully ran into a bunch of lunatics, and now they’re holding me in this house. Telling me lies. This cannot at all be true. The seconds tick. She taps her fingers on the banister. Pause. She taps again. The air grows heavy, thick, as if it’s wrapping itself around my nose and mouth. Suffocating.
“I’m leaving,” I say, pulling on the door.
Lilly gently places her hand on mine. “You don’t want to do that. Look what happened because you left the first time.”
“What?”
Pete and Chris cast their eyes to the floor, and Tre nervously moves his hand to his face, squeezing his mouth with his fingers. Zoe casts a blank gaze at me, blinking slowly and observing me. The room feels as if it’s collapsing in on me.
Lilly begins to lead me back to the living room. My feet stay planted, but she pulls until I almost fall over. Numbly, I shuffle to follow.
She clicks on the TV. The baritone voices of TV anchors fill the vaulted room. They sound dire. Scenes flash onto the screen beneath a banner: Breaking News: Virus Takes Down Small Colorado Town.
“What’s happening?” I ask. It takes a moment before I tune into the words the man on the screen is saying.
“The virus has wreaked havoc on this small mountain town,” the anchor says. “At least fourteen are dead, and thirty-four have been hospitalized. The Center for Disease Control is issuing a travel alert for anyone within fifty miles of Leadville and asking all residents to stay indoors…”
The words slug me with a sledgehammer. “Leadville? My Leadville?”
“I tried to tell you there was a price,” Lilly says.
The newscaster’s voice becomes a distant murmur in my mind as I attempt to make sense of it. “What’s this virus?” I dig my fingers into the back cushion of the sofa. My throat closes and my stomach drops. “What’s happening? Oh God. Gram! My friends!” Each word comes as a gasp, a flustered sigh.
“I know, Emby.” Lilly pouts. “Scary. Hope it’s all okay.” She leans on an elbow over the back of the sofa next to me, chewing gum and twirling her hair. It infuriates me that she acts like it’s no big deal. Like she isn’t just watching some virus wreck my hometown.
The TV continues to show images of a reporter with people in white hazmat suits in the background. Ambulances. People carried off on stretchers. Dread flattens me, stealing my breath and sucking all feeling from my fingers and hands. This can’t be real.
Zoe floats into the room behind us. “It’s called HT55,” she says. Her voice is cool and detached. “It spreads like a cold and slowly collapses your lungs, making it so you essentially suffocate internally. Like drowning or being buried alive.” The sharp angles of her jaw look more severe today. Each of her blinks is like an invisible hand gripping my throat. Squeezing. Tighter.
My stomach turns, my knees go weak, and I grasp the sofa for support. My town. My town.
“How did this happen?” I ask.
She tilts her head with pity and condescension and purses her lips into a frown. “Just remember the physics
of all things, Ember: every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”
I don’t understand what she means. All I can think of is getting back home to ensure everyone is safe. I need to get home. Now.
I turn toward the door, and Zoe reaches an arm out to gently hug me, and for some reason, I let her. In her embrace, the sweet smell of lavender strokes me, and my mind grows fuzzy.
My hands hang limply in her hug, and over her shoulder, I watch the images on TV. The shuttered red schoolhouse. The Silver Dollar Saloon. The pink and blue Victorian houses. They look somewhat foreign to me now. Thoughts move through my head slowly and then break up, shredding like pages floating in the air. Virus. Zoe. Hike out. Emergency. Home? Maybe this is home now.
She pulls back slowly and then slinks back to a wall just a few feet away. She watches me as if I’m a zoo animal.
The TV switches to a commercial for a Fourth of July concert tomorrow.
My mind begins to clear again. Summer is halfway over, according to the TV. A couple days ago, it was May. I laugh kind of crazily—it doesn’t sound like me. “I’ve been here two days,” I say, but it comes out more as a mumble.
Lilly’s face is solemn, her big eyes serious, her hands clasped in front of her stomach.
The blood falls away from my head, and I shuffle back to the foyer in a daze. The faces in the room become wobbly. This has got to be caused by some sort of hallucinogenic—maybe from the mold in Gram’s house or the coffee Zoe handed me. I touch my skin, slyly pinch it—just to see if it’s all real. I feel the burning pain of it. Real. It’s real.
Tre steps toward me, touching my back gently. I glance at him. “Hey…” he says quietly.
This is why everyone thought I was missing for four weeks when I first came into this forest. It wasn’t the drugs, wasn’t a hallucination. This explains that time gap. Except, why is there a time gap?
Ember Burning Page 12
