Sparks Rise

I stick my hand through the opening that Tildon created in the metal bars. Each time my mind brings up the image of a snake, I stubbornly turn it back to Lucas’s face. No one is coming becomes He’ll come, he’ll come, he’ll come to get me. I don’t want to be a realist. I don’t want to pretend like I’m okay living in this gray numbness anymore. I want to get out of here. I want to live. I want to feel every ounce of pain and happiness life can serve up, because it’ll mean I’ve survived. It’ll mean I’m alive.

I fit my arm as far through as it’ll go and wave it up and down. Minutes tick down, second by second, until I can’t ignore the way the metal is cutting into my arm and that nothing has happened. I tug on the lock but my hands are shaking too hard to keep my grip. Shuffling back along the metal bottom of the kennel, I pull off my shirt and expose my skin to the cold. It feels good, actually. There’s something boiling just under my skin; I feel it bubbling in my stomach, too, until it starts to cramp. The shirt is pushed out the hole first, and I reach down to grip it, hoping beyond hope that they’ll be able to see the color moving in the dark better than my arm. I wave it frantically up and down.

Nothing happens, and no one comes, and the longer it takes for me to realize it, the worse I feel. It’s too dark here. Unless the cameras can see in the dark, they have no idea anything is wrong. I could try to scoot the crate back, get close enough to the stacked crates to try to send them crashing to the ground, but it wouldn’t matter. They wouldn’t see it.

I have to get to the lights.

At this point, the punishment I know will come stops mattering and I flip myself around again, scraping my back against the top of the kennel. I can’t make out anything in front of my face, it’s all feeling fingers and desperate hands. Still, I lay on my back and I kick. One leg, the one that feels like it’s actually on fire, I can’t so much as move. I grit my teeth and use my other to kick against what I think are the crate’s hinges—they can break, can’t they? Anything can break if you hit it hard enough. Aren’t we all proof of that?

I hear a snap; the reverberation of the hit races up my leg. One more. Please, just one more—

The door flies off and clatters against the cement. I don’t waste a second in twisting myself around so I can use my arms to drag myself out. The contents of my head are swinging around. I can’t get a bearing on the ground with my feet under me. It’s farther to fall, anyway, than if I go on hands and knees.

I move through the dark, scraping my skin, feeling the loose pieces of concrete dig into my skin. The hand out in front of me bumps the wall and I reach up, feeling along the wall for the switch. My fingers fumble, slick and clumsy. I force myself farther up until I hear a click, and the light that floods the room burns tears into my eyes. I shield my face and look to the door. It would lock from the outside, wouldn’t it? I could try. I need to try.

But that’s just it. Strength seeps out of me, beading on my skin as sweat. I’m shaking and I can’t stop. My head isn’t in control of anything below my mouth.

“Help!” The word tears out of me. I squint up toward the dark blur in the upper corner of the room. “Help me! Please!”

I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die like this.

“Help me! Help—”

It hits me so fast, I barely have time to turn my head before the contents of my stomach come rocketing up and out of me. In between heaves, I can’t release a breath, let alone another word. I’m gasping and it doesn’t stop. Even when there’s nothing left, I’m heaving and cramping and crying because it hurts, it hurts—

The dark swallows me up and spits me back out; there’s no way to measure how long I drown before my body drags me up from the depths again. My hair clings to my face, my neck, my shoulders as the world goes fizzy and foggy around me. The dreams that emerge from the dark are disjointed and bold, colors like vivid sunsets.

My father’s voice trumpets through the night, Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you. I see him standing at the altar, wings with purple and gold feathers expanding behind him, casting shadows over pews. My mother’s perfect, icy face melts off and falls into her lap. Lucas, older Lucas, is above me, climbing up and up and up through the branches of a tree. When he turns to look down, I see a crown of stars around his dark hair. The sparks drift down around me as I reach up for his hand.

I’m on the bus in the pouring rain. The kids around me are silently crying, turning their faces down so the men and women standing in the aisles can’t see. It plays in black and white, an old movie my brain has filed away. But in the row ahead on the opposite side, there’s a little girl with dark hair. I see her in color—green eyes that flash toward me, blue-and-yellow Batman pajamas. I remember this—the gunshot, the Orange. The blood on the bus windows that the rain resignedly washes away. That girl walks next to me the whole way to the big brick building until we’re dripping on the black-and-white checkered tile inside. I hold her hand. I remember holding her hand.

It’s Ruby. I know it is. Ruby, who slipped away, Ruby who disappeared. Is this what she felt like? All those nights I used to wonder, Where did she go? If there’s a Heaven, will they let any of us in? Where do we go? If there’s no place for us outside the fences, where do we go when we die?

The girl crumbles into a pile of ash. I try to scoop her up, mold her back into her shape, but she’s gone, it’s all gone—I hear scratching, a metallic whine, and turn toward the other end of the hallway where a pale blue light glows. The kids around me fade to shadows. A voice like a gunshot cracks through the silence.