Page 7

T he weight of the vapor blanketed my body, hardly parting for me as I pedaled through it, veiling the world with a layer of fog that felt as secluded as the thick of the forest. It was honestly a miracle I made it across the trestle without hurtling off it.

Once my tires thumped on solid ground and I turned inland, the wall of gray dissipated.

One unsteady hand gripping the handlebar, I checked my phone notifications, my eyes darting from the screen to the road: generic birthday wishes and gifs from Javi and questions from my dad that I’m sure he sent not even a second past midnight.

Where are you? one message from him read.

And, You’re late.

The latest, If you’re not home in 5 min you’re grounded forever.

He was lucky I wasn’t going to be out until sunrise like most of the others.

Chill dad, grad night, remember?

I managed to type without crashing.

I accelerated up my drive, pedaling against the slope.

A snort of relief escaped me as my familiar two-unit complex came into view.

Its tan exterior walls, seventies brown trim, and lattice shielding the balconies with vines hardly visible in the hazy light of the moon.

The automatic light announced my homecoming and busted the trash-diving racoons.

They hissed, dodging my cruiser as I tossed it to the side yard’s refuge.

I dashed up the stoop and through the front door, the entryway lit in expectation.

My dad would be in his office waiting for me, poring over some research in lieu of pacing, because the window behind his desk gave a full view of our street and the entrance onto our landing.

Holding my breath, I kicked off my shoes, ascended the dozen steps, and glided into our flat.

Those text threats didn’t scare me.

They were very much empty, like the flasks on his desk that he tried to hide when I reached the threshold of his study.

Already well into the night, he was well into the whiskey, and my texts had probably doubled before his eyes.

I exhaled, the tension so thick it coiled around my limbs and absorbed any confidence I’d built up.

He peered at me through his reading glasses, a red tint to his stubbled cheeks from too many hours in the sun.

Restless fingers tapped a mahogany antique desk, the silhouette framed by a stained-glass window that fed my childhood spirit stories with its stars, knights, and angels.

Light from the passing vehicles seemed to mobilize its features, illuminating his face, and polo, in the soft hues of its primary colors.

His frown lines grew deeper as he stared me down.

“River, can you come in here?” A shaky hand folded a stack of crinkled essays, the other swift to close a drawer that rattled with empty glass bottles.

The effort was futile—it made me wince and wish the steaming French press was the only aroma that wafted out into the hall.

I dragged my feet over the threshold’s carpet, the shaggy beige pieces sliding between my toes.

His hands rested in the inner parts of his elbows, not quite crossed: his fighting stance for our verbal brawls.

As I took in the knitted brows, the downward lips, the clenched fingers on his sleeves, I tried to recall the moment when things between us got so…

disconnected. I didn’t think there was a specific one I could blame.

Every year since my mother’s death his drinks got stronger, and our relationship weaker, and now it crumbled right in front of me.

I avoided his eyes—I couldn’t face them yet—and focused on a slug paperweight instead.

The bronze mascot pointed at me from his tabletop perch with a cheesy cartoon smirk, holding a Professor Corbin Harlow, I DIG you!

sign, and bearing the brunt of my nervous stare.

“Do you know what time it is?” My dad filled his coffee mug to the brim, his tone flat and failing to assuage the anxiety I had within.

“Yes.” No reason to argue against something as foolproof as time.

“Do you want to explain what happened?”

Sure, the night was full of terrors and trespassing and a brooding guy to boot.

Ryder. Just his name had my fingers twisting, my feet scuffing the carpet of their own accord.

And when his golden-green stare flared in my mind…

I tightened my arms around my torso, like they could protect me.

I nodded in answer to my dad’s question before my mouth did something stupid: smile.

“It’s Grad Night, you know, the official graduation party thrown by the school? They talked about it at the ceremony. Remember?” I tried my best to keep my voice even as understanding dawned on him.

“I reminded you about it over text. Did you check your messages?”

He eyed the phone that at some point had leapt from his pocket to the floor.

With an audible groan infused with that oaky edge, he stumbled out of his chair to pick it up.

I bit the inside of my cheek.

The tears wouldn’t win—not today.

I’d hold them in even if it drew blood.

“I’m sorry.” He pressed on his knees to stand.

“How could I forget.”

I grimaced at the answer to that.

“It was a beautiful ceremony. You made me very proud.” A sliver of that pride slipped from his already glassy eyes, and it started to soften the blow.

Even if that diploma was still up for grabs, he didn’t mention my shortcomings, and in that endless sea of parents I’d found him clapping and cheering like I deserved every stride across that stage.

“And I was listening, I just…forgot how late those things run.”

His ambient smile dampened the frustration in the air, his arms widening for a hug.

I looped around his desk and dumped myself into his embrace.

The grief dissipated the longer I stayed, as if every extra squeeze wrung it out a little more.

“I shouldn’t have been so hard on you,” he said into the top of my head.

“After all, it is your birthday.” His arms left my shoulders as he glanced at his watch.

“I know we’re only thirty minutes in, but I want to give you your present now.”

With a wistful smile that had my heart breaking all over again, he unlocked a hidden desk compartment and pulled out a small velvet pouch.

It had no label or visible branding, just plain black with a silver cord.

His fingers jerked, seeming to hesitate for a second, as he passed it to me.

I stared at the peculiar bag as if it might bite me, then emptied its secrets into my palm.

A surge of prickling energy flooded my veins the second the lapis stone touched my skin.

Folding my lips to conceal a gasp, the power traveled through me like a river and rushed my ears with a gurgle that sounded so similar to the syllables of my name.

All the air whooshed out of me as the sensation slowly receded, and the pins and needles faded, leaving my muscles tender and sore.

I glanced at my dad to see if he’d noticed, but he was fiddling with his secret drawer again.

With my insides feeling a bit like churned butter, I ran my thumb over the back of the necklace’s circular pendant—smooth and silky as water, while the raised edges on its other side indented my palm.

I flipped it over. A rippled water droplet with two four-pointed stars lining the upper lefthand corner brocaded the stone’s surface.

It glistened with a blue so mixed and multihued, it could have been crafted out of the element itself.

“It was your mom’s.” My dad addressed me with an inscrutable sable stare, running his fingers through his wavy chestnut hair.

“She never took it off. Until…”

Like a plague of locusts, guilt swarmed the frail buds of joy, leaving me—and the entire room—feeling raw and consumed.

I’d already taken the most important gift, her life.

I couldn’t take anything more from her.

It didn’t seem right.

“It’s beautiful but…” I shoved my hand forward.

“I don’t deserve it.”

My dad didn’t falter, staring deep into the necklace’s sparkling center.

“It was her eyes. One look and I was drowning. They reminded me of the sea on a winter day. Mira saw the world through a different lens, and she let me in.” He pointed to himself as if in disbelief.

“Nothing got old for her, even the simple every day. Her love for us, her love for life…it renewed something in me.”

Sometimes, like now, I saw a flicker of that zest animate his entire being.

It lasted half of a second, so quickly I wasn’t sure if I imagined it, because the real truth was it’d been lost long ago.

Or maybe it’d just been numbed by his drinking.

“I know I need to let you grow and be your own person and let you experience life…be free. It’s what Mira would have wanted, it’s why she…” He shook his head, unwilling to finish the thought.

At this point I was happy to hear anything.

“I see so much of her in you.” He cleared his throat thickly.

“And I can’t lose her again.”

I swallowed a sob.

“She told me over and over she wanted you to have this when you turned eighteen, as if…deep in her gut she knew something might happen to her.” He squinched his eyes shut.

“I know I’m a forgetful old guy, but I’d never forget this.”

Silence, such deep, cataclysmic silence, hung on the air with his words.

And still, I thought about rejecting it.

Not because of her, but because I didn’t deserve it—her sympathy, her love, whatever the necklace represented.

Yet…I pulled back my hand, clasping my fingers around the pendant, and held it close to my heart.

I stared at my bedroom’s ceiling, the glossy surf posters lit by the atomic yellow glow of celestial stickers, as I replayed my dad’s words.

My mom’s—now my—necklace settled against my chest. I spun its silver chain and cuddled further into the warmth of my geometric-patterned quilt.

Light from a passing car slipped through the cracks in my blinds, illuminating my room, and I flipped onto my side.

Old photos, like the one that stared back at me from the frame on my nightstand, and distant memories, like the rare one tonight given by my dad, pieced together an image of the woman I’d never see again.

The woman I’d never live up to, a little voice started to tell me before I banished it from my mind.

My own self-doubt was loud and clear, but I expected much more commentary—a feisty outburst from the first, maybe a spark of interest from the second, or some wry humor from the third.

There was none of that.

There was nothing.

Closing my eyes, I took a controlled breath in and focused on every sound: the slatted blinds clinking on the breeze, the water pipes humming in the walls, the pastel sheets creasing around me…

Nothing else materialized, except the whine of a mosquito flying around my head.

I swatted at it and huffed.

“Some still feeling sensitive over what happened earlier?” I didn’t try to hide the bite in my tone.

“Oh, you didn’t actually leave—because that would be a miracle.” Silence answered me, pressing in on my senses, louder, harsher than any auditory episode.

I sat up abruptly. “Did you?”

I took my annoyance out on the duvet, flattening the fluffy barricade around me with dramatic strikes and puffs.

The blue pendant settled at the base of my neck.

Every fiber in my body lightened with its touch as if I’d drift up into the clouds.

Not from nerves. Not from grief.

From the opposite of it.

Happiness?

No, happiness was a pipe dream.

But this was pretty close.

I held on to the feeling, whatever it was, letting it lift me high above the seeds of worry, as I drifted off to sleep.

The darkness swallowed everything.

My quick breaths, my cries for help, the echo of my footsteps.

Nothing, no one, escaped this black hole of a place that sucked all color, all life from existence.

A flash cut the void—a star born out of the nothingness.

It pierced my vision with pulsing white blotches.

When those settled, I blinked, and faced a large white door.

Tentacles of light crept through its cracks, dancing over my face and downturned lips.

Fighting my hesitation, with trembling fingers I grazed the lines of thin text carved into its frame, written in a language I didn’t understand or recognize.

I pressed a hand to the center of the door.

It swung open.

I peeked through the opening at a forest.

Colossal redwoods guarded the woodland, so tall and broad they could be the children of Goliath.

A stream divided the grove, the dense branches an awning over the lazy current like a vaulted church over its pews.

With a glance back to the darkness affirming I had nowhere else to go, I crossed the threshold.

The sun kissed my cheeks, and an earthy scent tickled my nose.

Before I had a chance to really take in the beauty of the forest, a film of fog wisped in, graying out the sky, turning the air harsh and rotten.

My cheeks suddenly burned with an icy cold that singed the tiny hairs in my nostrils.

The trees shuddered, a generous portion of their leaves drying to a crisp in piles at the bases of their trunks, as if all of winter had happened in a single moment.

The stream went still, stagnant, its inhabitants flopping along the banks.

Death was here. And I brought it.

Spread it with every breath.

I turned to go back, but the door had disappeared.

Something fluttered in my peripheral vision and a buzzing rang in my ears.

A pesky gnat or a fly or a—sprite?

The fairy creature flapped its iridescent wings before me, baring miniature fangs.

Its empty, black eyes held no flicker of life, like they’d been molded from the void I’d just escaped.

With a cobalt flash, it flew into the trees, leaving me stunned—and determined to catch it.

Fear and wits forgotten, I sprinted into the thick of the woods, but soon lost its glinting blue trail.

Every breath stung my lungs and my ego.

I almost dropped to the ground until I noticed the lagoon, and the guy standing on the opposite shore.

My heart already thudded wildly but now it felt like it might burst.

Ryder.

He was dressed in his all-black ensemble, with his hood flipped off, and the floating fish circled his reflection like a garland of death.

As I stared, his head snapped to me and he pointed at me with a bloody arrow, his irises so vibrant, like they had stripped the green from the foliage.

It took forever to find my voice.

“What are you doing?!”

In answer, he stretched out his arm, readied his bow, and slowly drew back the string.

Crimson stained his wrist. The smirk that had once made my knees buckle now twisted into a sinister grin.

“The end is nigh, River—the transfer of power has been completed.” He released the words with an arrow, headed directly for my heart.