Those Who Fall

by Rachael Arsenault

  There was only one backpack. My backpack. The little blue bag that carried all the stones was gone.

  I grabbed my phone with shaking hands, unlocked it, and looked through my texts. Sure enough, there was a whole conversation with Emily from the early hours of the morning, only I definitely hadn’t been the one texting.

  “Farida!” I took off running through the house.

  “What?” Emily yelled, trying to follow.

  The bedrooms upstairs were empty. So was the barren room that should have been a bathroom, judging by the plumbing awaiting a sink and tub. I doubled back, heading for the basement, still calling out for Farida.

  “What does that mean?” Emily demanded as I rushed past.

  I ignored her, taking the stairs so fast I nearly tripped down them. When I got to the basement, I scanned the area frantically, even though it was open and empty enough to immediately realize the truth.

  Nothing. She wasn’t there.

  Farida had left.

  Our fight from the night before replayed at triple speed. ‘You’re useless!’ The tears on her cheeks. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’

  Woozy, I sank to the floor.

  Emily was beside me. Hand on my shoulder. Her voice — questions — questions warring against everything I was already asking myself. I knew, distantly, that I was crying, but it seemed irrelevant.

  Farida had left.

  I had failed her.

  She had taken all the stones and she was going to—

  “Oh, god,” I choked out. She had all the stones. What if she tried using more? She was going to kill herself, whether she wanted to or not.

  I had to find her. I had to stop her. Not just because the thought of losing her — completely, irreversibly losing her to death — was unbearable, but because the world needed her to continue protecting the stones.

  “Farida,” Emily said slowly, snapping me back to the present. She was studying me with eyes that were both cautious and sad. “That’s a name, isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “What happened to you, Amber?”

  I drew a shaking breath. How did I explain? I wasn’t sure how much I could or should tell. Emily was my best friend, but this was an ancient secret far bigger than us or our friendship. And even if I could tell her everything, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to.

  There was a long pause. Hesitantly, Emily said, “You’ve been on the news a lot. I know you wouldn’t actually do any of the things they suspect you of, but… Does this have anything to do with all that?”

  I opened my mouth, then shut it. I couldn’t even bring myself to nod.

  “… Did you know your parents went missing last week?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, hyper-aware of hot tears sliding down my cheeks and the taste of salt when they reached my lips.

  When I didn’t answer, Emily reached over and pushed some of my greasy, matted hair from my face. “How about this? We’re gonna drive to a truck stop, I’m gonna pay for you to have a shower, and we’re gonna get some food. And you can explain to me what the hell is going on somewhere along the way.” She paused, which was enough to prompt me to open my eyes. The beginnings of a smile tugged her lips. “Well, except during the shower. ‘Cause I might be gay, but not for you.”

  The old joke managed to coax a brief flicker of a smile from me.

  “Come on.” Emily nudged me with her shoulder. “Say your part.”

  Rolling my eyes, I wiped away some of my tears before saying, in a voice too shaky for it to be truly funny, “You should know ‘bi’ now how I feel.”

  “Very friendly,” she said, expression completely serious. Then she burst into a grin, laughing at our very old, very overused joke. It was good to hear her laugh.

  God, I had missed her.

  A new wave of sobs overtook me, but this time I leaned into Emily, letting her rub my back and soothe me as I cried it all out. How had it been barely more than a week since this nightmare started? It wasn’t right that anyone’s life could have this much go wrong in such a short space of time.

  “Come on,” Emily said softly once my tears had subsided. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  Chapter Four

  At some point during the drive, my brain clicked back into gear and I realized that showering at a truck stop might not be such a great idea for me. I was, after all, suspected of terrorism and wanted for several crimes I had committed during a high-speed car chase. The more time I spent in public places, the higher the risk of someone recognizing me and calling the cops.

  Emily was a heavy-footed driver, the needle on the speedometer hovering about 20km/hr above the speed limit. The woods rushed by outside. It was strange not to be trekking along through those trees, keeping just out of view of the highway, and I had to wonder if Farida was still hiding among them.

  What if leaving that house meant losing track of her? It was a stupid thought — I’d had no way of following her or any inkling of a trail to follow — but it gnawed at me nonetheless. I should have been with her. I should have been making sure she didn’t do anything reckless. I shouldn’t have been flying along the highway with my best friend, blasting Linkin Park on our way to get a hot shower and decent food.

  I reached over and turned down the music.

  “I thought you liked this song,” Emily said, a bit too casually. The straightening of her posture and her grip tightening on the steering wheel told me she was bracing herself for me to finally spill. I was going to have to be a disappointment.

  “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” I said.

  “We can switch CDs.”

  “You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”

  She sighed. “Look, I don’t see how getting you a quick shower and a bite to eat is any less risky than camping out in somebody’s house.”

  “It looked pretty abandoned.”

  “No, it looked like a construction project on hiatus. Someone’s bound to come back to it eventually.”

  “I was fine.”

  “You weren’t and you’re not. Don’t try to pull that shit with me.”

  “Well, sleeping in a vacant house isn’t gonna get my face all over a bunch of security cameras.”

  “Yeah, and? We don’t have to stay there all weekend. You’ll get washed up and we’ll move on. Besides”—she glanced meaningfully at me—“being on the run hasn’t been kind to you. People probably won’t recognize you right away.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to make me feel better. It didn’t.

  I leaned over and turned the music back up. A glance at Emily showed me her lips were pursed with supressed annoyance.

  Thankfully, she didn’t push for the conversation to continue.

  ~

  I’d never been in a position where I’d had to use a truck stop shower before, but Emily knew what she was doing. Before she had gotten into her aerospace job as a turbine technician, she had worked nights at a truck stop on the Island. When we walked into the Big Stop, she went straight to the counter and requested the shower key. The guy behind the counter gave her a form to fill out and she paid him cash, then she grabbed the key off the counter and gestured for me to follow her.

  Emily led me down a hall past the truckers’ lounge. There were a lot of tired looking men sitting in there, eating or watching TV or talking on the phone. A couple of them looked our way, and their gazes lingered curiously. I quickly ducked my head. Had they recognized me?

  “Normally, I would recommend shower shoes,” Emily said, snapping me out of my paranoid thoughts, “but I think you have bigger problems than the slight risk of planters warts.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  We had reached the door to Shower Two by this point, which matched the number on our key. Emily unlocked the door, pushed it open, and handed me the key. “Give this to the person at the counter when you’re done. I’ll be in the car.”

  I stepped into the room. The door clicked shut behind me.

  It was
far nicer than what I had been expecting. I had pictured something like the locker rooms from my high school — the shower was an option, but it was grimy and mildew-y and the only thing standing between you and the rest of your peers was the flimsy shower curtain that was partially falling off its track. Instead, what I found was a room divided into two sections. There was the front area, which had a toilet and a sink against one wall, and a bench and towel rack that stood opposite. Fluffy white towels were already provided. A wall ran partway across the room, separating this front area from the actual shower. I went to inspect the shower, but movement out of the corner of my eye had me jumping and whirling around.

  It was just me. The movement of my reflection in the big mirror above the sink had startled me. I felt stupid, but that only lasted a second as I did a double-take of my appearance. Emily had been generous when she had said I didn’t quite look like myself. I looked awful. My clothes were filthy from sleeping outside in the mud and leaves, and the skin on my arms and face wasn’t much better. I had known my hair was greasy and tangled from lack of washing or brushing, but actually seeing it in full was a different matter entirely. It stood up in odd clumps that, even when I shook my head vigorously, barely moved because they were so stiff with dirt and grease. And my face — it looked horrible. Haunted. Hungry. My eyes looked big and scared, even after I’d calmed down from startling myself, and they were heavy with dark circles.

  I wanted to look away, but it was hard. I was trying to find myself in the person reflected there, but she looked so different. I had never looked that sad. I had never looked that lost. I had never looked that desperate.

  Unbidden, an image of Farida from the day before leapt to mind, her eyes dark with intent I had never seen before, looking unlike herself. Looking more like Imani than ever.

  I shook my head, forcing myself to focus back on the present. I stripped down, determinedly not looking at my reflection again (though I couldn’t help catching glimpses of myself. I already looked a bit thinner, even though it had only been about a week since this all started). As I peeled off my disgusting clothes, I briefly considered washing them in the shower with me, but I quickly dismissed the idea. I didn’t want to have to walk around in sopping wet clothes again, even if they would be a slight bit cleaner. I set my things on the bench, then started unwrapping the gauze from around my chest. The deep gashes underneath had healed almost completely, and I suddenly remembered waking up to flooding warmth and Farida’s soft voice. She had healed me before she left then. The realization left me feeling strangely hollow but heavy. I discarded the soiled gauze and stepped into the shower.

  It was way nicer than even the motel had been. The stall was spacious and I could tell the tiles covering the floor and walls were cleaned regularly. There was an adjustable shower head high up on the wall as well as a detachable shower nozzle, so you could stand under the spray or pull the nozzle off the wall to spray over your body as you pleased. The water started off ice cold, but warmed fairly quickly. I was able to stand under the spray and appreciate the refreshing, muscle-easing heat for a few seconds before my paranoia kicked in.

  Some of the men in that lounge had been staring at me. I needed to wash up and get out of there before one of them called the cops.

  There was just a soap dispenser on the wall — I wasn’t sure if it contained soap or shampoo, but it was better than nothing and, at this point, I would take whatever kind of clean I could get. I scrubbed it over my scalp and through my hair, then washed my body with it. In a perfect world, I would have been more meticulous about the process, getting all the dirt out from under my fingernails and painstakingly making sure all the grime from this hell week was gone. Instead, I gave myself a quick but thorough overall wash and then turned the water off. I’d been in there less than ten minutes. It still felt far too long to be safe.

  Putting my filthy clothes back on seemed all kinds of wrong, but I didn’t have any other choice. I spared a glance in the mirror and found myself more recognizable without the layers of filth on my skin and hair, but a quick wash couldn’t do anything for those tired, scared eyes.

  I made sure the room was about the same condition as I had found it in before exiting, returning the key to the counter, and then heading outside to the car. I was barely climbing into the passenger seat when Emily was shoving a bundle of clothes at me, saying, “Here, I got you a new shirt. The pants are an old pair I had in the backseat. They should be fairly clean, but you’ll have to pull the drawstring pretty tight ‘cause I’ve definitely got bigger hips than you. Don’t worry — I’ll drive somewhere with less traffic so you can get changed without flashing the whole parking lot.”

  It was one of those big red, green, and yellow striped sweaters with the big front pouch that I’d come to think of as a stereotypical stoner’s hoodie, along with a pair of black sweatpants. She must have bought the shirt in the truck stop convenience store. I could have cried. “Oh my god, thank you!”

  “The thing wrapped in foil in the cupholder is a hotdog. It’s for you. We’ll get more food somewhere else after you get changed.”

  Now I really was crying. Sniffling, I beamed at her as I choked, “You really are the best friend in the whole world, you know that?”

  Emily grinned. “Yes, ma’am. And don’t you ever forget it.”

  ~

  With clean clothes on my back and some food in my stomach, I was feeling… not better, exactly. Sure: Physically, I was better, with fewer hunger pangs and no dirty, itchy skin. But mostly I just felt more present and less numb. It was a bit like I’d just come crashing back into my consciousness after having an out-of-body experience.

  Masika was dead. Farida was using multiple stones and had run off to god knows where for reasons I couldn’t understand. Emily was in the driver’s seat beside me, pulling up to a drive-thru to order me a chicken burger.

  It was too surreal to be right.

  After we got my food, Emily pulled the car around to the parking lot. I had intended to eat my burger and fries slowly — to savour having real food at last — but I was almost done the burger by the time Emily got us parked and switched off the engine.

  For a while there the only sound was the rustling of the paper bag my food had come in and the engine cooling down. Outside, seagulls soared overhead, shrieking to each other as they scoured the parking lot for spare fries. I watched them as I ate, enjoying the companionable silence Emily and I shared. It was like old times. We’d done this almost every day at lunch in high school, and as often as our conflicting schedules would allow during undergrad.

  But I knew in my heart this was different. I would have to talk eventually — have to explain eventually.

  “Sorry I’ve been so out of it.”

  Emily shrugged. “It’s okay. I get the impression you’ve been through some shit.”

  “Understatement of the year.”

  She raised her eyebrows expectantly at me.

  So I told her. About the museum meeting that ended in me summoning a dragon, about Farida and Masika finding me in a field, about the stones and magic creatures and rifts to other worlds, about how Masika and Farida were always at odds about what to do with me, about all the people chasing us. She didn’t quite believe me at first. I couldn’t exactly blame her, and I hadn’t expected her to, anyway. But she relented that she hadn’t been there and couldn’t explain away all the shit I had seen and done.

  “And I know you haven’t been brainwashed into some cult or terrorist group,” she said. “You’re too smart for that.”

  I snorted as I scraped up the very last crumbs from my fries with a wetted fingertip. “You sure? Some people would argue differently.”

  “Mitch is an idiot. That was well established when he broke up with you.”

  I licked up the crumbs, savouring the explosion of salt on my taste buds. “He’s got a lot of other people convinced.”

  “They don’t know you. Anyway, we still haven’t gotten to the part where I find yo
u camping in an abandoned construction site. What else happened?”

  It was harder to talk about my parents being kidnapped, about Masika’s fate, about everything going wrong. Even still, there was a sense of catharsis in saying it all out loud. Speaking the words hurt because I was reopening the wound, but it also allowed me to bleed out some of the grief and fear I had kept pent up inside me.

  “So the woman you were trying to protect died anyway?” Emily asked softly.

  “Yeah. There was nothing we could do to save her once she started using magic.”

  She swore under her breath. “Every part of this is so messed up. No wonder that other girl lost it.”

  But I wasn’t done yet — I hadn’t even gotten to the ambush at the abandoned house or Farida’s last words to me. I had built up momentum, the grief pouring steadily out of me, and I didn’t know how to dam it back up again.

  “I just — I feel like—” I choked back an unexpected sob, pausing to compose myself. My voice was too quiet and shaky when I said, “Is it bad that I feel… That I’m a little relieved Masika is gone?”

  Emily stared solemnly out the windshield. I worried that I had said exactly the wrong thing — that I had finally managed to find the thing that would drive even her away from me — but eventually she said, “Grief is complicated. And, well, emotions are ugly in general. You’re not responsible for what you feel, just what you do about it.”

  I wasn’t sure I could wholly agree with that (how could I not be responsible for my own feelings? Surely there were some things that you just shouldn’t feel in certain situations), but I appreciated her being kind to me. I didn’t know what I would do if she had turned away from me, too.

  I didn’t want to dwell on the subject, though. Honestly, I was a little embarrassed that I had even blurted those dark feelings out in the first place. In any case, I switched back into explaining what all had happened, filling her in on the incidents at the abandoned house.