Rise of Ember Quin

5

By the time Ember makes it past the shuttered gas station and the tiny post office that services the entire zip code, the town is behind her and all that’s left is road. The moon moves and the air gets colder, and the glue binding her together thins with every step. Her legs aren’t built for this, for running away or toward anything, and they threaten to collapse with each stride. She keeps going, driven by the animal urge to outrun her own humiliation, even though it’s fused to her skin.

Her thoughts are a skipping record: What did you expect? He’s Jackson. You’re—what, exactly? You’re just the filler episode between real girls. The first girl he actually dates will have a name like Sadie or Lauren and legs like latticework, and she’ll never, ever spill anything on herself. She’ll laugh at his jokes. She’ll never exist in the same plane of misery as you.

Her right foot snags on a bottle cap buried in the gravel. A jolt of pain spikes up her leg. Ember half-limps, half-dances to a stop, swearing under her breath. She bends and presses her thumb to her heel, feeling the tacky stick of blood and a tiny, foreign object embedded just below the surface. It hurts. Of course it hurts. She stands upright, jaw clenched, and keeps moving.

A night bird trills from somewhere overhead and Ember wants to yell at it, to tell it to shut up, to say doesn’t it know the world is ending? She laughs instead, the sound wild and strangled. “Good job,” she says to herself, voice thin in the open air. “Nailed it, Quin.”

She passes the playground where she and Jackson once pretended to be too old for swings, only to end up breathless and dumb, trying to see who could jump farther. She remembers the way he shoved her lightly, pretending to help, and how she laughed like it was the funniest thing that ever happened. She wonders now if it ever was funny, or if she just wanted to be easy to be around.

She passes the bus stop where she and Rae once ditched school. Rae dared her to text Jackson first. “Just do it, what’s the worst he can do, block you?” It occurs to Ember that the worst is never what you expect—it’s always something smaller and meaner, like the precise way Jackson laughed with his teammates when she fell, or how no one came to help.

Her phone starts buzzing again, but she doesn’t need to look to know who it is. Rae will keep trying, Ember knows this. She considers answering, but the thought of explaining herself—of narrating her own failure for Rae’s benefit—makes her want to peel off her own skin. She lets it go to voicemail.

The edge of town becomes flat fields and then a patchwork of small, dark houses spaced so far apart they each seem exiled, too. Ember’s teeth start to chatter. The night is much colder than she realized; the adrenaline is gone and her sweat dries into gooseflesh. Her arms wrap around her stomach, less for warmth than to stop it from coming undone.

You didn’t even like him that much, she tells herself. Liar.

How could you be so stupid? You saw every sign. You saw how he talked to you only when his friends weren’t watching. You saw how he ignored your texts but always liked your posts. You saw how he looked at you and saw—what, exactly?

She tries to remember the last nice thing he said to her. She can’t.

Her feet sting, then go numb. She’s stopped wiping her face and now the tears have dried in salty streaks. Her nose is running; her eyes are swollen. If she could see herself, she’d be horrified. But she can’t. There are no mirrors here, only the reflected blue-white of the moon off passing cars, which are fewer now, and seem to move faster.

She passes a strip mall, lights off except for the cheap security lamps. The Subway is closed, but the illuminated sign flickers like it’s fighting for relevance. Once, she and Jackson made out in the parking lot here, cold subs sweating in their wrappers, his hand under her shirt and hers clumsy on the zipper of his jeans. He never mentioned it afterward.

She keeps walking. Her thighs burn; her lungs are raw. The inside of her head is a blender and she can’t turn it off.

How could I be so stupid? How could I be so stupid? It’s not a question, just a broken chorus.

She’s aware, distantly, of the wet stick of blood on her foot, and the way her right knee is starting to throb. She stumbles, once, nearly goes down, but saves herself at the last second. She glances over her shoulder, irrationally afraid that someone is following. But there’s no one. Not even Rae.

The phone lights up again. She’s too tired to be angry at it anymore. She lets it buzz, lets the sound become part of the world’s general hum.

She reaches the bend in the road where the town gives up entirely, where the only sign of life is the glow from a distant water tower and the sleepy chirr of insects. The next mile is just her and her shadow, stretching and shrinking with the rise and fall of the land.

Ember slows down, finally, because her legs refuse to go any faster. The shaking is worse now—her hands are useless, fingers curled and pale. She’s so cold she thinks she might be getting sick.

She looks up, expecting to see the moon, but it’s clouded over. The world is dim and empty. She’s so tired she can barely remember why she left, or where she’s supposed to be going. All she knows is that she can’t go back.

Her phone vibrates one more time. She fumbles with it, and this time she checks the screen.

EM CALL ME.

EM PLEASE.

I’M SORRY.

She looks at the text for a long time. Her thumb hovers, and for a second she almost calls Rae back. But the words won’t come. She puts the phone down on the grass, slumps to the curb, and pulls her knees to her chest.

She rocks back and forth, eyes shut tight, letting the shivers shake her brain loose from its misery. She whispers, “He never deserved me. Never deserved me. Never deserved me.” It doesn’t sound true, but she says it again and again, until her voice is just a low drone.

She stays there until the dark is complete and her body goes slack, the pain settling into something familiar and less urgent. The cold doesn’t bother her anymore.

She’s not sure how long she sits there. But when she finally stands, she’s empty. There’s nothing left.

She steps back onto the road, blood slicking the heel of her left foot. She thinks, maybe this is what freedom feels like—numb, messy, alone.

She keeps walking.