“Jenn? I’m really sorry, but I missed my stop on Lorimer and now I’m far out and I think it’ll take me—”
“Ember, it’s fine, calm down,” Jenn interrupted. “No damage done. If you feel like this is too much activity in your weekday, let’s think about changing to Saturdays and Sundays, okay?”
“Totally,” I wheezed. “That’s a good idea.”
“Because the thing is, I’m only as committed as you.”
“Right. I know. I’m sorry.” My chest was burning. I stopped and leaned against a building. My lungs were creaking for oxygen.
“You were a dancer, right? So you know about scheduled practice.”
Were. That past tense made me feel strange—even if it was true. Of course I wasn’t a dancer anymore. Not in this body. “Yes. See you tomorrow, thanks, and I promise it won’t happen again.”
“Cool. Okay, see you then.”
I shut off my phone against Mom’s pinging texts (are you there safe? / how do you feel?) and slipped it into my backpack. Then let myself take stock of where I was. Did I really know this place? Had I been here? It wasn’t completely unfamiliar.
Walking along Myrtle Avenue, I turned left and left again. Grimy industrial space. The sun was losing to dusk. My nerves flicked alert as I approached the building, a prewar in an ugly checkerboard brick the color of liver, peaches, and salmon. There was hardly any sign of life. A newsstand on the corner with a blinking Lotto banner, but the rest of the block was warehouses and garages, a gas station, a closed Laundromat, a line of narrow row houses. I felt under-armored and overexposed, as if I were being watched. The woman wheeling her baby stroller around the corner didn’t look scared—but she looked tough.
I squeezed my eyes shut to visualize the card in my room.
Between Myrtle and Evergreen. As in, right around the corner.
The building was nothing to see, but as I drew nearer, I could feel a twinge of something. Yes, I’d seen this before, I’d been here before. Only it had been different. Night, maybe…My sense of it was like a mist, like a dream.…
I stepped across the street, my body zinging with urgency to possess the memory. Though there was no sign, nothing on the building’s cheap door intercom system that gave me an indication that this was the “right” place. It looked vacant, too, with a roll-down grill over the front door and a padlock on the side door. The fire escape was the only means up.
I rubbed my hands together, grabbed the ladder’s rungs, dug a breath, and almost instantly let go.
What was I doing? I stood stone-still, staring at my open hands, the ladder rust streaked across my palms like dried blood. Was this like me? Not like me?
Just do it. A slip-slide of memory, of being outside, night, kids, joking and whispers. We’d been up to something mischievous. Maybe illegal. But what? With who? Not the Lafayette crowd…
It was killing me. Now I had to do it. Had to prove that the adventure still lived in me. Quickly, I began to haul myself up.
Why five floors? If my brain didn’t know, my legs did.
When I arrived, I was sick with exhaustion. My lungs felt as thin as plastic wrap. I leaned against the rails and let myself catch my breath.
The window was a dry film of orange dust. I rubbed a patch clean so I could look in.
Huge, empty. A vaulted crossbeam ceiling and sloppy mortared walls. Was this right? Was this the place? I turned, stepping to the farthest corner of the fire escape, scoping it out.
The sun was setting in harvest colors, outlining the water towers and flat-top warehouses. I was far from home, I was alone, and suddenly I was wiped out. As if I’d depleted my entire reserve of strength. I sat down and wrapped myself into a ball. I felt slow, and yet I was tingling, it reminded me of those first conscious weeks after my accident, and all of those sleep-inducing drugs.
My eyes grew heavy.
At Addington, I’d taken a nap nearly every day, right about this time. Lying quiet as a mouse in my narrow bed, watching the sunset draw away over the smooth fields. Sometimes my sleep would be so deep that I’d wake into blackness, and find out that I’d missed dinner.…
Scrrrritccccch! I jumped up at the sound, nearly losing my balance as I knocked backward slightly and caught myself against the rails.
“Sorry, sorry!”
“You scared me!”
“You scared me, too.” He laughed as he pushed the window up and then swung a leg out, then another, so that he was sitting on the ledge. I could tell he wasn’t nearly as startled as I was as we stared each other down.
“But you really scared me. I’m serious.” My hands flew to my flushed cheeks.
“Sorry,” he repeated. “Once I saw you, I didn’t want to lose you. That’s all, Red. I’m harmless.” He smiled. “I’m Kai.”
I paused. “Ember.” I knew that I’d surrendered my name only because he’d said his. And because he was cute. A different cute than Holden—which I’d always considered to be my type. This guy was nothing like Holden, nothing at all. Kai was caramel skin and prickly dark haircut, with eyes the brown of a stone you’d want to pick up on a beach. He was also thinner—less varsity-athletic than Holden, who’d never met a racquet, stick, or ball that he couldn’t master.
“Ember?” he repeated. “Perfect.”
“Perfect how?”
“Because. You glow.”
“You were watching me?”
“Yeah, for a while. I was sure you’d seen me.”
“Right, okay, look…” I crossed my arms over my chest. This guy had such a slow-motion ease in his speech and movements, it was hard to be on full alert. But easygoing didn’t mean harmless. “There’s a stalker element to you following me onto a fire escape. And believe me, I can scream a lot louder than I just did.”
“Have some faith.” Kai’s smile opened his face as he joined me out on the fire escape. He looked cold—he was shivering. I fought the urge to button his jacket, an olive-drab whipcord, thick but shabby. His clothes were beat-up jeans and lug-heeled boots that were big with the Bowery kids. His T-shirt, visible beneath his jacket, was printed with a graphic of a tree that had been photographed in black light.
“Anyway, I wasn’t looking at the view,” I told him. “I was kind of more trying to figure out where I am.”
“For me, the best view is out here.” He meant his view of me? His tone was casual, but my face burned up again.