Eve Silver - Push

I do up the laces, undo them, try again and again and again until finally the bows are perfectly even, the knot dead center, the feel just right. It matters that everything be just right, lined up and perfect and . . . just right.

I straighten and bounce on the balls of my feet. The ground feels spongy, like I’m standing on memory foam. Each bounce pushes me deeper, until I can’t see my feet anymore. I’m sinking, the ground swallowing me, confining me. I shift and sway, certain that if I move just right, I’ll get myself free.

But I only make it worse. I lose my ankles, my shins, my knees, parts of me disappearing. How long until there’s nothing left?

My grandfather reaches down and takes my hand. That’s another clue that this is a dream, because Sofu’s dead. Gone. He can’t be here.

“Do you miss them?” I ask, touching the yellowed picture of my grandfather’s parents in its simple wooden frame. My fingers are small, my hand plump, my voice that of a little girl.

Sofu smiles down at me, his hair more black than gray, his face less lined than I remember. “I miss them, but their spirit is never far from me. They watch over me.” He touches the tip of my nose. “And you.”

His hand grows cold in mine. His features fade and begin to disappear.

“Sofu!”

“I am here, Miki. Right here. Always here.”

Icy fingers touch my skin. Gray. Gray. Gray. Then Sofu’s hand is back in mine, warm and comforting and familiar, like he never left at all.

“Hey,” Jackson says.

I look up to see him standing at the edge of my driveway wearing black-on-black shades and black running gear that hugs the long lines of his muscles. I don’t know why, but I toss my head back and twirl in circles, laughing and laughing until I collapse on the ground.

But I’m not on the ground. I’m running, the air bright and cold, the sky blue and clear, and Jackson’s running beside me. He turns his head. He smiles. Not just with his mouth, his beautiful mouth, but with his eyes. His mercury eyes.

They change, growing darker, brighter, grass and leaves and Mom’s little emerald earrings.

Not Jackson’s eyes.

Lizzie green, like they’ve always been.

“Run,” he says. “Faster. You can get there. You can find it. Faster, Miki. Come on.” But it isn’t Jackson’s voice. And it isn’t Jackson running beside me. It’s a girl, her honey-brown hair streaming out behind her.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“Running.”

Typical Jackson answer. I roll my eyes at him.

No, not him. Her. I recognize her face and her smile, just like in the pictures. “I’m trying to help,” Lizzie says, looking sad.

“I know.” I do. I feel it inside. She wants me to know something. “Are you dead?” I swallow. “Is my mom there with you? She left me.”

“She didn’t. She’ll never leave you.”

I shake my head. “Can you find her? Can you tell her to come home?”

“We aren’t in the same place.”

“What does that mean?”

She doesn’t answer. I’m alone, running and running, my legs pumping, but I’m going nowhere. If I could just run faster, harder, I’d get there. I’d see what I need to see. Find it. Fix it.

I run until I hit the wall, the point of exhaustion, the point of I-can’t-take-another-step.

I push through.

“I’m here for you, Miki,” Jackson says. “To help you figure things out.” Jackson who isn’t Jackson. Jackson who is Lizzie. “It’s important. You need to understand. They’re watching. You have to hurry.”

Marcy tosses her hair and laughs, her mouth growing bigger and bigger, the sound growing louder until it’s all I can hear. Beside her Kathy shrinks to the size of a thimble. It’s funny, but Kathy, tiny Kathy, is the one I watch even though Marcy swells to fill my field of vision.

“You don’t get it!” Lizzie says, looking at me, wanting me to get it. But I don’t. I don’t get it. I run faster, harder. I need to make it to the end.

I’m not running for the run.

I’m running for the finish line. And that’s so unlike me that I stop. Just stop.

“Don’t trust them. They’re poison. Do you understand?”

The world tips and tilts. Time slows. I can hear the rush of my blood in my ears, drawn out so it takes a thousand years for a single beat of my heart.

I respawn in a place that’s blinding and bright, so white it tears at my eyes. This feels different. Real. Not like part of the dream. I blink. Blink again. There’s no floor, no walls, just a gaping black square straight ahead of me. I don’t want to walk through it, even though I know I should. I don’t want to see what’s on the other side. I’m afraid. It’s something terrible. Something I can’t bear to know.

I walk through, heart pounding, and there she is, Lizzie, watching me with Drau eyes.

She lets out a little laugh of relief. “You’re here.”

“Where’s here?”

She’s holding something metallic and smooth. Fluid. Jellylike.

Her mouth tightens. Her eyes flick to a point above my shoulder as she raises her hand and shoots, sending a thousand pinpoints of bright agony speeding toward me, burning my left shoulder as they overshoot the mark.

I jerk awake, disoriented, afraid, heart slamming against my ribs like a caged bird. It’s dark. I’m cold. Shivering, I reach for my comforter.

There’s a tap at my door. “Miki?” I glance at my bedside clock. It’s just after midnight. “You okay?” Dad pushes the door open and light from the hall spills in, leaving him a dark silhouette in a dark frame, surrounding by a soft, yellow glow.

“Nightmare,” I croak.

He frowns and takes a step into my room. “The usual?” The usual is the one where I dream I’m being buried, clumps of earth hitting the lid of the coffin that holds me.

I shake my head.

“The car accident?” he asks, taking another step into the room. The car accident is the one where I shared Jackson’s dream about Lizzie and the night Jackson first got pulled into the game.

I shake my head again. “Neither. Just a regular, run-of-the-mill nightmare.” But that’s a lie. There was nothing regular or run-of-the-mill about it. That last part where I respawned in the white room—it felt real.

Dad starts to back out of the room, pulling my door shut as he goes.

“Wait . . .”

He ducks his head back inside.

“Just . . . um . . . leave the door open, ’kay?”

He nods, and I’m grateful that he doesn’t comment.

Once the door to his room is closed behind him, I ease the neckline of my pj top over to one side, baring my left shoulder and the healing burns that mark my skin.

I BEAT JACKSON ON OUR LORD OF THE FLIES ESSAY FOR MR. Shomper, an A to his A- . He takes it in stride, vowing to beat me next time.

“Seriously? I worked on mine for weeks, outlining my arguments, planning every paragraph,” I say. “You banged yours out the night before it was due.”

“You have a problem with that?” he asks, his arms crossed over his chest, his shoulder propped against the doorframe of our English class, his black-on-black Oakleys hiding his eyes.

“No problem. I’m still the one with the better grade.” I sashay past him, my grand exit ruined when he lets out a low whistle and catches up to me to whisper, “I love watching you walk away.”