Damaged (17 page)

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Why is it so dark?

Where am I?

Where's Hunter?

I am trapped here.

She has finally caught me.

I am finally hers.

My throat pulses where her fingertips branded me. I try to scream but nothing comes out, like someone reached in and stole my voice. I am not dreaming. It didn't even take a nightmare to get me here. It is dark and this is real and I am taken.

No, I am in a different kind of hell. This shack, in the middle of nowhere, next to a toxic boy. It is still the same day. The rain has let up, but random drops still bang on the tin roof, sending bullets through my brain. I feel antsy. I need to move.

I stand up, stretch my legs, and walk to the car. The ground is a giant mud puddle. The air is still thick with moisture. Water falls in fat drops from trees. I find Hunter's phone in the glove compartment, on top of a stack of brochures and maps we've picked up at rest stops along the way. I know there's no reception here, but maybe I can listen to some music or play a mindless game on his phone. I press the power button, but nothing happens. The phone is dead. Of course.

So I take the pile of brochures instead. At least they'll kill time. At least they're something to look at with pictures, with empty words that don't require much more than a short attention span. I sit on a bucket on the porch of the shack and start going through them slowly, one by one, trying to imagine all these places I will probably never see. Parks and lakes, outlet malls, a town where it is always Christmas, a petting zoo where all the animals are pygmies, a reptile farm, the world's largest coffeepot, and countless other tourist traps. But I am not a tourist. Not anymore. I am simply in transit. This is just a stop in the middle of nowhere, on my way to somewhere.

After a brochure about a combination cherry farm/go-cart track/paintball course, I flip to one with a picture that looks eerily familiar. I stare at it for a long time, trying to figure out where I've seen this particular scene before—the fence, the small building with the tin-roofed porch, the mottled sunlight painting the canopy of old oak trees. It could be any old building in any old ghost town, but I shudder when I recognize it as the one I'm sitting in right now. The weather in the picture is more cheerful, making it look more like a setting for a historical building and artifacts rather than the broken-down shed and garbage I assumed it was. Without thinking, I turn around, as if to check to make sure there's no photographer standing there right now. It's as if someone took a photo of this place, Photoshopped out the rain and mud and darkness, then erased me. It is a picture of the world without me.

The heading on the brochure reads “Old Quarry ­Historical Site.” My heart races as I skim through the information about the surrounding flora, fauna, and geology; trail maps; safety information; and history of the abandoned quarry. My heart rate starts to slow back to normal as I come to a picture of its towering chiseled walls, the nine-hundred-foot sheer limestone cliff. What am I getting so worked up about? It's just a brochure. They included a photo of this building because it's part of the history.

But just as I am about to throw the brochure on the ground with the other ones, I see something strange in the photo of the quarry. On the rim of the cliff, at the very top, is a tiny figure. The cliff is lined with a fence, but the figure is standing in front of it. How could the brochure makers have missed that? Surely they'd want to avoid picturing someone so obviously breaking the rules.

I look closer and my heart stops.

New details suddenly seem more visible than before—long, straight dark hair, skinny jeans, a tank top with a logo just barely out of focus that looks shockingly similar to my high school's. And the face—it's so tiny I can't be sure, but the proportions are exact. The figure in the photo is Camille.

“What the fuck?” I say out loud.

I look at the picture again. The figure is still there. I don't know if I am imagining the smirk on the gray, smudged face, but it seems to be taunting me, laughing at my fear. Camille never smirked in real life, but there she is, in two dimensions and less than a centimeter tall, daring me to come find her.

I turn to the page with the map of the park. Just a short hike from here to the top of the quarry. I am aware of a small voice inside shouting for attention, wanting to talk some sense into me, but that voice is distant and out of focus. The only voice I hear clearly is the one that says I have no choice—I must see what's at the top of that ridge. I must find Camille.

I shove the brochure in my pocket and get up. As I trudge through the mud to find the trailhead, the leaves shiver above and around me, filling my ears with a glassy hum. I just keep walking, barely seeing anything except what's right in front of me, as if everything else is out of focus, as if the only thing that's real is the path that will take me to the top of the quarry.

The trail gets steep and I feel my legs burn from disuse. A couple of weeks ago, I could have probably run up this hill without breaking a sweat, but now my body feels suddenly old and weighed down. My legs are heavy and slow. The sky rips open and the rain starts again, even heavier than before. I am wading through a lake, an ocean. Lightning flashes and the whole sky is on fire for a split second. My ears pop with the electricity.

I am drenched and panting when I reach the top. I didn't bother to look anywhere but in front of me on the way up, so I only now notice the dramatic view. I lean against the wooden fence and look down. My knees wobble with vertigo as I scan the sharp shelves cut into the cliff, the lonely stranded trees that took root in the eroded piles of rubble, the pool of collected rainwater at the bottom, all made eerily more sinister by the gray blanket of rain dancing in twisted formations, pushed this way and that by the wind. I step back and close my eyes, put my hand on the fence to steady myself, take a few deep breaths to regain my bearings. The voice I ignored earlier is suddenly crystal clear:

What are you doing here? What do you hope to find?

I hear movement.

I hear spongy footsteps in wet leaves.

I feel the breath of air as something passes by me.

I open my eyes and there is nothing.

“Camille?” I call out. The wind blows as if in response, and every bone in my body shudders with the certainty that she is here. The rain dances in the open sky in front of me; a gust of wind sends it swirling into a circle, a semblance of a face, and then it is gone. The sky rumbles and darkens and gets closer to night.

I hear the leaves again and feel the air shift around me. I look down at the ground and am paralyzed by what I see.

Indentations. Foot shaped. Coming toward me.

I can't move. I can't scream. I close my eyes again, squeeze them tight. If I shut the world out hard enough, maybe it will go away. Maybe it won't scare me.

A breeze inside my ear whispers, “Kinsey, Kinsey.” A gust of wind blows the leaves against my bare legs and arms, and they feel like wet fingers scratching their way across my skin.

When I open my eyes, the footsteps are gone.

The leaves flutter in slow motion down into the quarry like sad confetti, like the afterthought of a party no one came to but me.

A few last leaves follow the others, but these ones take their time, swirling in dizzy circles around my ankles before taking the leap, like they're pulling on my leg, begging me to come play with them. I look out across the quarry, this giant man-made scar, and am impressed by how completely it's been reclaimed by the trees and grasses and pooled water, how it looks almost natural now, as if it is meant to be here. There must be some meaning in this, and I feel so close to figuring it out, something about how something wrong can turn into a right, something bad can be really good.

I am so close to the truth now, just on the edge. I have been brought here to find it.

There is a reason the leaves were blowing around me. There is a reason this fence is so easy to climb over. There is a reason I am standing here now, on this thin lip of solid ground, looking hundreds of feet down, no barrier between me and nothingness.

Maybe this is what I've been looking for all along. Maybe home is at the bottom. Maybe that is where I'll find Camille, the real Camille of my memories, not this cruel one who's been following me. Maybe home is where I can be with her again, forever.

“Yes,” Camille says. “You are supposed to be with me.”

“You're the lucky one,” I say. “You were always the lucky one.”

“Come with me,” she says. “Let go. You've been working so hard your whole life. Aren't you tired?”

“I'm so tired.” I feel my eyelids droop. My legs are weak. The wind blows raindrops against my calves, pushing me gently forward.

“Take a break. You deserve a break.”

“I deserve a break.” The rocks under my toes crumble and fall slowly away.

“You can stop now. You can rest.”

I could fall asleep right here, standing up. I can barely keep my eyes open. The wind is so strong now. I sway with it.

“Come with me,” Camille says, her voice so clear up here, away from the noise of the world. “There's nothing left for you here. We can be together forever, like we always planned.”

I close my eyes, feel the wind nudge me toward the edge.

“I miss you,” I say.

“Come with me.”

The wind gusts.

Thunder shakes the sky and earth.

Rocks crumble and I am airborne.

I am whisked away by strong arms. The ground is gone.

I have been rescued from this pain by somebody who loves me.

But I am not falling.

“Dammit, Kinsey! What the fuck are you doing?”

The world comes screeching back into focus, all sharp lines and hard edges, a sharp pain on my shin from knocking into the fence, arms tight around me, the smell of poison sweat.

“Kinsey, say something.” Hunter's sour breath, frantic.

“Oh” is all I can manage.

“I was screaming at you. You acted like you didn't even hear me.”

His arms are still around me, rescuing me again. We are still so close to the edge.

I blink my eyes as I look around. None of this looks familiar. I am groggy, disoriented, like I was just woken up in the middle of a dream. What is this place? How did I get here?

“What were you doing? Why were you on the other side of the fence?”

I say nothing. I am shaking now, uncontrollably, but I am not cold. It comes from somewhere deep down.

“Kinsey,” he says, this time more gently. Our eyes lock and I am steady. “Were you trying to get yourself killed?”

I look away. I can't look him in the eye. I don't know the answer to his question. I don't want to know the answer.

“Oh fuck.” He grabs my arm. He squeezes too tight. He pulls me to start walking. “No. No way.”

“Ouch,” I say. My voice tastes strange in my mouth. “You're hurting me.”

He stops and looks me in the eye. “Fuck you, Kinsey. You cannot kill yourself on my watch.” He turns and keeps walking down the hill.

“I wasn't,” I cry after him. “It wasn't me.”

“I can't believe this shit.”

“I have nightmares,” I blurt out. I don't know what I am trying to say. I don't know how much I want to tell him.

“Nightmares? Like, what, you were sleepwalking?”

“No. Nightmares. About Camille.”

“What do nightmares about Camille have to do with throwing yourself off a cliff?”

“I wasn't. That's not why I came up here. I was . . . looking for something.”

“What could you possibly have been looking for at the edge of a cliff?”

“I don't know.” I know that's not the answer he wants to hear, but it's the only honest one I can think of.

“Why did you go over the fence?”

“I don't know.”

We're both quiet for a few moments, the only sound our footsteps muted on decaying leaves, the low roar of the rain. Somewhere beyond the rain, the sun is setting. The sky is almost black. Hunter turns on his flashlight.

“What a fucking pair we are,” he says with a hiss of disgust.

“I'm sorry” is the only thing I can think to say.

Hunter turns around so quickly I bump into him. “At least I don't try to blame my shit on Camille,” he shouts. “At least I'm honest about how fucked-up I am. I don't pretend I'm perfect. I don't try to act like I always know everything.”

“But I can't stop thinking about her,” I say. It's an explanation for nothing. He looks at me like he doesn't even know me, like I'm some crazy stranger he found in the woods. But I keep talking. I need him to understand. “No matter how hard I try, how hard I try to block her out, she keeps coming back.”

“Maybe that's your problem,” he says. “Maybe you're not supposed to block her out. Maybe you're not supposed to stop thinking about her. You can't control your feelings like that.”

We stand in the drenched, black forest, two crazy people with a death wish staring each other down. I know there is some truth here, something important that's been revealed, but we are both too blind to see it.

“Let's get out of here,” Hunter says as he turns away. “Let's get out of this fucking state.”

“But you're sick,” I say.

“Look who's talking.”

The rain lets up to a drizzle as we pack up the car in silence, everything wet and musty, staying as far away from each other as possible. I try not to think about how just a few days ago we were in Chicago with Eli, Hunter was sober, I was happy, even relaxed, and everything seemed so full of promise. Now we're both miserable and crazy and on our way to a city I don't even know I want to go to anymore.

I get in the driver's side, where just last night Hunter sat with poison racing through his veins and slowly killing him. He gets in next to me, slams the door, pulls his phone out of the glove compartment, plugs it into the charger, and puts his earbuds in. He has made it clear that he doesn't want to talk to me.