Earthbound (2 page)

My favorites are the occasional perfectly preserved eighteenth-century houses nestled amid modern homes in a normal neighborhood. Like a treasure, hidden in the sand, just waiting to be discovered. It’s hard to find them while driving around at the breakneck speed Reese favors, because they’re usually set back from the road and often sheltered by the leafy canopy of an ancient tree. But when I walk alone, I look for them. I’d love to know the stories behind them, but I’m too nervous to go knock on some stranger’s door.

I take pictures instead and make up stories in my mind. I swear I have about a thousand photos on my phone. I wish … I wish I could sketch them, paint them.

But I haven’t been able to draw since the accident.

Still, something about these old homes soothes me; calls to me, almost. I pull out my phone and scroll through to one of the pictures of my favorite house and zoom in, trying to imagine painting the wooden slats in watercolors, the hint of sheer curtains I can see through the windows.

“I got stuck on the phone until just before I had to pick you up.” My brain slowly realizes that Reese is talking to me. “I didn’t think you’d mind.” She looks at me expectantly.

“I’m sorry, I … what?” I shove my phone in my old red backpack. I’m afraid spacing out is my specialty these days.

I didn’t used to be like this.

“Do you mind if I stop by the store for milk? We’re out,” Reese repeats, turning the radio down a little lower.

I dolefully consider the snooty, locally grown, organic food store Reese frequents. Great. “Can I wait in the car? My—my leg is sore,” I lie.

Sort-of lie. It’s been three months since I got out of the cast, but
shattered
is the word my doctors used to describe the breaks both above and below my right knee. Something like that takes time to bounce back from, even without taking into account my decreased gracefulness since brain surgery last year.

At least that’s what the physical therapists keep telling me when I get discouraged.

A wrinkle appears between Reese’s brows for just a second before she accepts my excuse. “Sure thing—I’ll only be a few minutes.”

She leaves the car running. As soon as she’s out of sight, I turn the heater up and lean my head against the window.

The edges of the parking lot still have a few mounds of slate-gray snow that haven’t quite melted, but it won’t be long. Green blades are poking through last year’s crinkly brown grass and tulips are popping up all over town.

At least it’s not hailing, like yesterday.

It’s that almost-spring time of year—jacket weather, not overcoat weather. But the weather has been weird all year. In February
all
the snow melted and the newscasters were predicting drought and heat waves. But two weeks later three feet of snow dumped on us in a single night. Once the snowplows finally dug themselves out and cleared the roads, everything more or less went back to being winter. But still, it’s been a strange few months.

I pull my jacket a little tighter around me, remembering the couple days we had below zero—not to mention the killer ice storm right before—and hold my hands out in front of the vents. Other than the hoodie, I’m not really dressed for winter. I should probably wear something other than my old tank tops and screen tees, at least until summer, but that would require going shopping and I don’t like spending money that isn’t mine. Even if Reese
says
her money is my money. I’m going to have to break down and buy a new pair of jeans soon, though—these ones are pretty threadbare at the knees. Because I’m tall and fairly thin, but with very long legs, I always have trouble finding jeans that aren’t too short. So when I do, I wear them to shreds, which is about where this pair is sitting now.

As my fingertips warm, I scan the slowly darkening street, letting my gaze linger on a house across the road. It’s painted a cheery red and has a whole bed of maroon and gold tulips in front of the veranda. A little girl is sitting on the porch, playing with a doll. I smile when I see she’s dressed in a cute old-fashioned dress and pinafore—not unusual, here. In towns as old as Portsmouth, there’s always some kind of reenactment going on, usually of the American Revolution. This little girl looks great. Authentic.

Well, her clothes are probably a little too brightly colored and those curls are undoubtedly from a curling iron, not overnight curling rags, but hey—that’s what modern conveniences are for. A smile steals across my face as I realize the doll is even that old-fashioned rag type.

Her cute little chin jerks up and I see a man walk out of the house to join her on the porch.

Not a man, I guess. Too young to be her dad. I only see a wisp of his face, but he looks about eighteen, same as me. Maybe a tad older. Reenactments must be a family affair in the red house because he’s dressed in a navy-blue jacket and has a tall hat atop golden blond hair that’s pulled back at the nape of his neck.

He’s nice to look at; I won’t complain about that.

Sadly, his luxurious hair is probably a wig. Most people aren’t hard core enough to actually grow it out. And the ones who are; well, they’re a little scary in their own right.

As the guy crouches by the little girl, I wonder why breeches went out of style. Let’s just say they look amazing from the back. I arch an eyebrow in appreciation and squint to get a better look, glad the Beemer has dark-tinted windows and I can enjoy my little eye-candy feast in private. It seems like my moments of casual contentment are so few and far between these days.

The guy stands with the little girl’s hand in his. Showtime, I suspect.

As if sensing my laser-focused gaze, he pauses, then turns. My mouth goes dry when he stares pointedly in my direction.

He can’t see me, can he? The tinting on Reese’s car windows is almost a mirror from the outside. But his eyes stay focused and widen in an expression of surprise I can make out even from here.

He takes a few steps in my direction and I clench my fists as his eyes burn into mine. I’m certain he can’t know I’m here. How … ?

On the second step he stops and looks back at the little girl, who’s gripping his hand and pulling him back. He pauses, hesitates. He looks at the girl for a moment, then back at the car, his expression conflicted.

I can’t look away, even though I feel warmth rushing to my cheeks. From this distance I can’t tell what color his eyes are, but they pin me in place and it takes a few seconds to realize I’m holding my breath.

A sudden chime from my phone shatters the silence and breaks the spell. I look down to see a text pop up labeled
Benson Ryder
.

All done?

“Perfect timing,” I mutter. But I can’t suppress a smile as I jet off a quick response.

I had friends back in Michigan—in my former life, as I tend to think of it—but they were casual. My art was my life, and friends tended to pull me away from that. At-school friends, I guess. When Reese and Jay told me I’d have to cut contact with everyone in Michigan to keep my location a secret from the media, I admit I wasn’t sad to give them up. They felt … frivolous.

Benson, is … well, it’s just different. I see him almost every day. We text a lot. Have long phone calls sometimes.

And he knows.
Everything.

No one else does.

Being the sole survivor of a major disaster leads to attention. Questions. And that means having to remember—the pain, the surgeries, the shaky memories.

My parents.

It’s easier to lie, to just tell everyone I broke my leg in a car wreck. No one questions it. Sometimes they tell me I’m
lucky to be alive
.

The people who say that have never lost anyone close to them.

My doctors know what happened, my physical therapist, Elizabeth, and of course Reese and Jay, but no one else. Fewer people to leak my location to the media, who would love to swoop in and grab an exclusive story, even months after the fact.

Well, I told Benson too. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say Benson worked it out of me. Not exactly unwillingly. The closer I got to Benson, the more I
wanted
to tell him. To stop lying. When it finally came out, it was a huge relief. It was nice to tell the truth. Especially to someone
I
chose.

I haven’t mentioned to Reese that I spilled it all to him. I don’t know if she’d be mad or not—it’s my life, after all—but the fact that I’m not sure is reason enough for me not to tell her.

Besides, Benson will keep my secret.

Sometimes I think I need him—need our easy camaraderie—and that scares me.

Everyone I’ve ever needed in my life is dead.

As soon as I hit send, my eyes dart back to the tall boy on the porch with the little girl, but they’ve gone in. I try to shake off the bizarre melancholy that has enveloped me. I stare at the house—wishing, I guess, for the strangers to reappear—and just as I blink, something flashes over the door. I open my eyes wide, but the flash is gone.

No, not
completely
gone—

Almost like a shadow in my peripheral vision, so faint I have to blink a few times to make sure I see it, a shape glitters just above the door. A triangle.

And for reasons I can’t comprehend or explain, my heart begins to race.

U
sually my nightmares are about the crash, about those moments I don’t remember. Sometimes I’m forced to watch as my parents’ bodies rip apart in slow motion, blood splattering across my eyes and painting my vision that unmistakable red. Sometimes it’s me—my hands—being crushed in the debris. They curl into unnatural angles, the bones snapping until they’re nothing but a mangled mass.

Which is what should have happened.

Maybe I’m morbid, but while I was in the hospital I spent a lot of time on the Internet looking at photos of the crash site. And even though the media didn’t get my name, they knew which seat I was in.

“According to analysts, the frame should have crumpled here, and here,” one reporter said as she pointed to two places on the frame of the cabin. “But instead you can see that the interior of the plane looks completely untouched. The passenger in 24F, who the airline will only confirm was a female minor, sustained life-threatening injuries but survived in this unlikely cocoon, which experts are at a loss to explain. It’s as though this section of the plane wasn’t in the crash at all.”

I stay away from the reports where they show the casualties. Rows and rows of bodies, sometimes with broken arms and legs flopping out from beneath the drapes. Those I simply can’t look at.

Part of me fears I’ll recognize my parents among the bodies: my mother’s left hand with her wedding ring, my father’s ankle with an army tattoo twisting up his calf.

Another part is just overwhelmed by guilt that out of 256 passengers, I was the only one who somehow survived.

But tonight there are no bodies, no blood.

There’s no plane at all.

I’m floating.

Floating in water. The ocean? A river? A lake? I can’t be sure.

But it’s cold. The kind of cold that feels more like a blade against your skin, flaying away your flesh and exposing your bones. Even though I somehow know it’s a dream, I shiver.

My hair is long and loose, billowing around me, and when I realize I’m being dragged under, I reach for items that are just suddenly
there
—a life jacket, a floating log, a small boat. But as soon as my fingers make contact, they pop out of existence, less real even than the dream. Exhausted, I simply flail in the water, but my hair gets wound around my arms, trapping me like ropes.

Something is pulling me down. I can’t tell if it’s a current or my heavy clothes. Why am I wearing heavy clothes?

I can’t stay afloat.

I fling my arms out, looking for something else to hold on to, but the water is rising. Or I’m sinking.

I raise my chin, desperate for one more breath, and see a big, bright moon shining down on me. Tears sting my eyes as I realize it’s the last thing I’m going to see before I die—but I don’t feel fear. I feel something else.

An aching loss.

This water is taking something from me.

I open my mouth to scream, but icy liquid rushes in, filling my throat and making my teeth ache all the way into my jaw. The surface closes over my face, but my eyes remain open, looking at the bright, silvery moon.

Desperate, I manage to rip my consciousness away from the dream and force my real eyes open, where a similar moon greets them. Thankfully, this one is shining through my window, not the wavering surface of icy water. My lungs burn and I suck in air as though I had actually been on the verge of drowning. As my heartbeat slows, I touch my forehead and find beads of sweat. It’s been weeks since I had a nightmare this bad.

Weeks.
I remember when nightmares like this happened every few
years
.

And when they did, I had a mother’s bed to jump into.

I toss back the duvet, and even though a chill ripples up my legs when the night air hits them, the shock assures me that I’m awake—the nightmare is over. My feet are resting on solid wood, not flailing in the impenetrable blackness of a bottomless lake.

Lake—it was a lake.

But I push the thought away. I don’t want to dwell on the dream. Its effect on me is lingering too long anyway.

Everything’s been a little off since therapy. Talking about my parents does that.

No, I have to be honest with myself. It’s more than that. It’s that guy. That house. The triangle.

It’s been nagging at me all evening—like I’ve seen it before. But where? I rise on shaky limbs and cross through the shadowed room to the door.

Warm milk—the age-old remedy for nightmares.

In the kitchen I try to keep quiet, but when I hear a squeak on the stairs, I’m unsurprised to see Jay’s face poke around the doorway. “You okay?” my uncle asks softly.

“Nightmare,” I reply, waving my spoon at the microwave. It’s all I need to say. They’re used to it.

Jay steps fully into the kitchen, leaning one shoulder against the wall. There are light but definite shadows under his eyes.