Jeff Hirsch - The Darkest Path

I felt Kate’s hand take my shoulders and turn me around. I flinched away but she was firm, lowering my head down into her lap. Diane stopped singing and her guitar rang out alone. The sound of it was so familiar and so sweet.

I breathed easy for the first time in what felt like weeks. I closed my eyes, feeling like we were locked away in a bubble lit by fairy lights and so still. And even as the world revolved, we remained.

I glided up to the house with the moon’s broad face above me. Diane and Kate were just behind me, talking quietly. The rest were strung along behind them down the hill, singing as they walked.

The glass door slid open and I stepped into the den. A second later, Reese and Alec came around behind me, heading into a hall at the dark end of the house. Alec brushed my shoulder as he passed.

“Night, buddy.”

He drifted away, humming quietly to himself. Diane and Christos followed them off.

“Night, Cal.”

“Sleep good, Cal.”

Kate led me back to my room, where the light from my open door made her pale skin and her violet eyes glow. An anxious buzz started in my head and moved through my body.

“I’m the third door down,” she said. “On the other side of the house. If you need anything.”

“Thanks,” I said, surprised to find my voice hoarse.

I expected Kate to go, but she looked at me intently for a moment and then down at the floor, her eyebrows drawn tight together. “I shouldn’t…”

“What?”

“It’s not my place,” she said, seemingly to herself. “But… you noticed that Alec changed the subject when I brought up New York earlier?”

“Did something happen? Is New York—”

Kate placed her hand on my chest. “No, it’s fine. It’s just… a few days ago Alec and Christos decided they were getting bored, so they talked their parents into sending a plane to pick us all up. It’ll be at a small airport not far from here in a couple days.”

There was a wooden creak as someone moved through the house. A door opened and closed.

“I don’t under—”

“Cal, we’re going to take the plane and go to New York.”

My heart pounded once, sending a tremor through my chest, and then everything seemed to go perfectly still, like the world was balanced on the edge of a cliff.

“I can’t promise that Alec will agree, but Diane and I talked about it. We’re going to tell him that if he doesn’t take the three of you with us, then we’re not going to go either.”

“I don’t know what to—”

“It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to say anything. And we should probably be prepared for the possibility that Alec prizes Diane’s guitar playing and my sparkling wit a little less than we’d hope. In which case the five of us might be stuck here for a while. Anyway…”

Kate dipped in and kissed my cheek. Her face lingered alongside mine afterward. The scent of lavender clung to her as it did to me. I closed my eyes, breathing in the flowery scent. When I opened them she was gone. The house was shadowy and still, quiet except for the phantom strains of Diane’s guitar that replayed in my mind.

Something brushed against my calf and then Bear jumped up and planted his paws on my knee. He looked at me, his stump of a tail twitching frantically.

“You need to go out?”

Bear exploded out the porch door as soon as I opened it, disappearing into the trees. Even he seemed to be feeling better, his limping run a thing of the past. I went to the kitchen and filled one bowl with water and another with crumbled hamburger and leftover chunks of steak I found in the fridge. I carried the bowls outside and sat down at the end of the table. The sky was clear, so I found the North Star and used it to turn my chair due east.

I could feel Ithaca, sitting out there like a fire in the dark, tendrils of its warmth brushing my skin. I saw myself climbing onto a plane and rocketing toward it, a thrill in my chest so great it was almost an ache. I imagined finding Mom and Dad and even Grandma Betty out in the garden. Mom would have a glass of wine in her hand, listening as Dad played. Once dawn cracked the sky, we’d all drift toward the house and settle down to sleep. No one would ask about the last six years, no one would ask about James; we’d all slip into the future without a word.

Bear trotted out of the woods and threw himself into his food, snuffling and slurping as he ate. I looked across the table and saw that Diane had left her guitar behind. I popped the clasps of the case and pulled the guitar out and into my lap, leaning over its body.

“Want some dinner music?”

The Path didn’t allow music outside of Lighthouse, so it had been a long time since I had played. My fingers moved across the steel strings, stretching against the restraint of my cast to press into the frets. I played slow and mechanically at first, chord to chord, but then it started to come back to me. I meandered for a while until a song settled in.

My fingers tripped, sending the tune flat. I backed up and started again.

“Hey.”

Nat was standing in the open doorway behind me, barefoot in her filthy clothes. Bear left his empty bowl and ran to her, butting her shins with his forehead.

“She doesn’t have any hamburger, buddy.”

Nat lifted him up, setting his forepaws over her shoulder and cradling his bottom with one hand. Bear nuzzled into her neck as she dropped into the chair beside me. Bear adjusted, dropping off her shoulder and curling into her lap. He rooted around in her hand, opening it up and then licking it thoroughly.

Nat stared out at the shifting trees. She looked exhausted. Her face was drained of color and her eyes were deep and shadowed.

“Who are these people?” she asked.

“They’re from California, I think. Their parents sent them here when the war was heating up. Sounds like they even sent a squad of Feds to look after them.”

“Seriously? Fed soldiers?”

“That’s who found us on the mountain. I guess they’ve got their own barracks out there somewhere.”

Nat’s brow furrowed as she turned to look deep into the trees around us.

“You okay? Sorry, that’s a stupid thing to—”

“No,” she said. “It’s all right.” A tired smile rose on her lips. “When they brought us here, that Reese guy patted my back and said, ‘Just remember — everything happens for a reason.’”

“He’s lucky you weren’t armed.”

A puff of a laugh escaped Nat’s lips. It was welcome, but fleeting. She picked up a plastic lighter from the table and turned it in her fingers.

“I keep thinking about that parade,” she said. “You know? The one they used to have at Thanksgiving?”

“Macy’s,” I said. “My parents took us down to see it one year when we were little.”

“You remember how they had those helium-filled balloons? The big ones?” I nodded. “I feel like one of them. Big and empty and just… floating.”

Nat sparked the lighter once, illuminating her face in flames, then tossed it onto the table.

“Me and James had never been away from our parents before,” I said. “So those first few weeks after we were taken, it didn’t even feel real. We kept thinking we’d just wake up one day and everything would be back to normal. Someone would come for us or…” I looked over at her, ashamed. I was saying everything wrong. “I know it’s not the same—”

“No,” she said. “I know what you mean. Does it get better?”

I wanted so badly to tell her that it did, that all it took was time and patience and then everything was okay again, but I couldn’t lie to her.