Rise of Ember Quin

10

Evening, and Rae’s room is a fish tank: blue from the monitor, rectangles of streetlight pulsing across the ceiling. Rae is out at gymnastics, so Ember is alone. She sits at Rae’s desk, a legal pad open before her, cheap rollerball pen in hand. The paper is as blank as a confession. The room is quiet but for the hum of the power strip and the distant, muted sounds of a neighbor’s TV.

She stares at the top line. For a while, nothing comes. Then she writes:

Jackson,

and stops. She hates how his name looks, how it takes up so much space.

She tries again.

Dear Jackson,

No. She crosses out “Dear.” Not “dear.” Never again.

Jackson,

You probably don’t care why I left. You probably told everyone I did it for attention. That’s what you’re good at, right? Making everything about you.

She writes it, then almost tears the page out. She doesn’t want to sound bitter, but maybe bitter is okay for now.

She takes a breath. Her hand shakes a little. The pen skips on the page, making angry little scars.

The thing I need to tell you is that I was never enough for you. Or maybe I was too much. You made it sound like the problem was me, every time. Like if I could just be less, you’d stay. If I wore the right thing, if I didn’t talk about art, if I didn’t have feelings. Like being myself was a flaw.

She pauses. The words look ugly on the page, but they’re true.

You told people I was obsessed with you. Maybe I was. Maybe I thought if I loved you enough, you’d love me back. But it was always about you. Never about me.

She’s crying now, not big tears, just a slow leak down her chin, dotting the paper and smudging the ink.

You made me feel like I was lucky to have you, but the truth is, I deserved better than what you gave me.

She stops. Rereads the line. Something in her unclenches.

You don’t get to break me. I’m done making myself small for you. I’m done pretending you’re a good person when you’re not.

She crosses out the last sentence, then rewrites it in capital letters:

I’M DONE PRETENDING.

She sits back, pen still in hand. Her heart is a wild animal, slamming against her ribs. She feels raw, exposed, but not empty. More like every nerve is on fire.

She reads the letter, start to finish. The first lines shake, but her voice hardens as she goes. By the time she hits “I’M DONE PRETENDING,” it’s almost a shout.

She wipes her face. Folds the page into fourths, then again, then tucks it into her journal—the one with half-finished sketches and sticky notes from Rae, the one she stopped using months ago. She slides it into the back pocket, like a bandage or a fuse.

She sits for a long time, listening to the silence. Her chest hurts, but it’s not the same pain as before. It’s cleaner, more like the ache after a pulled tooth.

She whispers, “Goodbye, Jackson.” The name doesn’t taste like poison anymore. It’s just a sound.

She turns off the desk lamp. The room is dark, but not scary.

She stands, finds her reflection in the blacked-out window, and doesn’t look away.

She goes to bed early. She doesn’t brush her teeth, doesn’t put on moisturizer, just lies down in the guest bed and listens to the unfamiliar hum of Rae’s house. There’s a different water pressure here. The heater kicks on with a rattling shudder, not the quiet click she’s used to at home. The sheets are starched, rougher than her own, and her body within them feels both too big and too frail. She curls into a comma and tries to think of nothing.

Sleep won’t come, but that’s alright. She prefers the liminal time, the in-between, where nothing has to be decided, and nobody is looking at her. She holds her phone under her pillow, screen-down, the battery almost dead. She doesn’t plug it in. She likes the idea of it running out, of not having to answer anything anymore.

Sometime in the night, she gets up and goes to the bathroom down the hall. The light is too bright. She pees, washes her hands, stares into the mirror. Her reflection has not forgiven her, but it’s less accusing than last time. She runs water over her wrists—it’s ice cold—and thinks about what it would be like to start over, to step out of her own body and slip into a new one. Someone who never went to the party, never cared if Jackson liked her, never learned to hate the sound of her own name.

She walks back to bed by memory, guided by the blue nightlights Rae’s stepmom plugged into every outlet. Maybe it’s for emergencies, or for stepkids who are afraid of dark. Ember isn’t afraid of the dark; she’s afraid of what might be waiting when the lights come back on.

The next morning, she wakes to Rae at the foot of the bed. Rae is holding a garbage bag and a pair of hedge clippers. Ember blinks, not understanding.

“We’re doing it,” Rae says.

Ember groans. “Doing what?”

“Reclamation project. Your fate is in my hands now. Shower, meet me in the backyard. You have five minutes.”

Ember showers, lets the hot water scald all the way up her shins. She doesn’t bother with makeup, puts on Rae’s old gym shorts and a t-shirt from Rae’s last summer camp. Her feet throb in flip-flops, but she bites down and walks anyway. In the backyard, the grass is too green, the air too sharp. Rae has spread a tarp under the patio awning, weighed down the corners with cinder blocks.

Rae is waiting with a pair of safety goggles and her phone ready to record. “We’re burning it,” Rae says matter-of-fact, “the Dress That Shall Not Be Named, all traces of Jackson, and every memory that makes you wince.”

Ember laughs because it’s either that or scream. Rae hands her a lighter, the kind shaped like a cartoon frog. Ember holds it and hesitates. Rae gives her a look—do or die. Ember takes the red dress from the trash bag, holds it up. There are still faint scars of punch on the skirt, like wounds that never healed. She balls it up, sets it on the tarp, and presses the frog’s belly. The lighter coughs, then spits out a mean little flame. The dress smolders, then catches fast, blue fire licking up the polyester and turning it into black lace. Ember doesn’t look away, even when the acrid smoke gets in her nose and eyes.

Rae cheers the little pyre, clapping in deliberate, off-rhythm staccato. She looks at Ember, checking—always checking—that this isn’t making things worse. Ember lets the smoke fill her nose, lets the brief heat prickle her skin, and thinks about the party, Jackson, the moment everything split. The smell is acrid, but not intolerable. She likes how the color dims, how the memory leaves residue but not shape.

Next, Rae hands her a box. Ember doesn’t want to look inside, but she does: screenshots, old texts, shitty gifts from Jackson, even a scrapbook she’s pretty sure she didn’t make. She dumps it on the tarp. The fire is smaller now, dress burned down to a gooey, shapeless mass. Ember stoops, prods the pile with a stick, watches a note curl into illegibility. The ashes float up, gray flakes dissolving into sunlight.

“If this doesn’t work,” Rae says, “I have a plan B. It’s extremely illegal, but that hasn’t stopped me before.”

Ember says, “I think this is enough.” Her throat is scratchy, and she wonders if the words will stick this time.

They stand together, watching the fire die down. Rae’s hand finds her shoulder—warm, the only steady thing in the world right now. Ember leans into it, just a little. She can feel the smallest version of herself—scared, new, bird-boned—somewhere beneath her skin, waiting. She imagines that version breathing in the smoke, letting it flavor her bones. Maybe this is what starting over feels like.

The cleanup is anticlimactic. They make a game of who can pick up the most scraps with barbecue tongs. Rae makes a show of using the clippers as a ceremonial sword, declaring Ember “officially emancipated from all douchebag boyfriends, effective immediately.” Ember rolls her eyes, but she means it when she says, “Thank you.”

“You’re not even at final form yet,” Rae says. “This is just the beginning.”

That night, Ember is supposed to go home. She sits on the stoop with Rae, each of them draped in a blanket, knees pressed together. The hush between them is companionable, no need to fill it with apologies or explanations. Rae’s stepmom, who has never quite learned to read a room, brings out popcorn and two cans of diet soda, and then disappears again.

“You know you can stay,” Rae says, quietly. “As long as you want. Or as long as my stepmom keeps pretending your feet aren’t destroying those slippers.”

Ember thinks about it, about staying forever, about the possibility of shedding her old self like snakeskin and just being here, untouched by the outside world. She’s tempted.

But she shakes her head, hair falling forward. “I should go. I owe my mom basic proof of life. And I have to face it sometime.”

Rae nudges her, shoulder to shoulder. “Not alone, you don’t.”

“I know.” She does.

They sit until the frogs start up from the drainage ditch behind the houses, a choral mass of noise that would have kept her up all night, before. Now it makes the darkness feel less empty.

When Ember finally stands, she expects her legs to give out, but they obey. She hobbles to Rae’s car, a dented Corolla with a dashboard covered in candy wrappers and festival wristbands. Rae drives slow, windows down, the air sticky with August and the last burn of summer.

They park at the curb, and Ember makes herself walk up the driveway alone.