“No, I’m glad you told me.” I touched Tom’s arm reassuringly. He didn’t like being out on an emotional ledge like this.
We started walking again, continuing until we’d stopped outside my classroom.
“You should do another Folly,” he blurted. “Okay, last time was a bust. The thing to remember, Emb, is it was never about the food. We’d have come over and housed canned ravioli if that’s what you served. We’re your friends. We want to show up for you. And you’ve got to lean on your best stuff. Those nights were what made you you.”
I could feel my eyes sting. “Right,” I said helplessly. “Thanks.” Was that true? For me, those nights hadn’t been about me being me. They’d been about getting the dishes perfect. I hadn’t looked through any other lens, or even much considered what Follies had meant to the others.
After Tom took off, I detoured to the bathroom, locked myself in a stall, and pressed my head against the cool metal door. Would last year always be a dark jungle that I was hurtling through, with only a single flashlight to guide me? I should be used to it by now. But I wasn’t.
During lunchtime, I knew by the way Rachel kept trying to draw me into the conversation that I wasn’t fully participating. The others seemed to feel it, too. At one point, Tom left the lunch table and bought me a peanut-butter brownie from the bake sale that was being held outside the gym. Later, when I hit my study carrel to work during afternoon free period, I found that Perrin had taped me a note—It’s me, Perry, just passing by & sending you xoxoxoxo love ya, Emb.
I’d known Perrin since we did Camp Imagine in the summer after fifth grade. Tom’s family went to my church. Rachel and I had been friends since the days of naps and finger paints. My crew was tight-knit and well known to me, familiar as every shelf and corner of the house I’d grown up in. And yet now I was expected to believe that Anthony Travolo had been in my life to the point where he was picking me up from school? That we’d been out together, but I hadn’t considered introducing him to Rachel? Or to my parents? Had I been ashamed of this guy? Frightened of him? Was he really in trouble with the police? What had he meant to me? I’d checked and rechecked every email, every Facebook message. He was nowhere. One thing I knew about our connection for sure: I’d been keeping Anthony a secret.
Why?
There were little drafts of an email I kept saving, that I’d been writing to Anthony’s parents. I’d been working on it for weeks. Starting it, restarting it. I swiped out paragraphs of guilt and sadness and replaced them with new ones. But I’d never gotten it in any shape to send. I was scared of it—scared that whatever sentiment I expressed to the Travolos wouldn’t be correct or appropriate. That in trying to do something right, I’d unintentionally do something hurtful and damaging and wrong.
Dr. P and my parents didn’t want me to push it. They wanted me to preserve my feelings, my sensitivity. When I’d written Dr. P about it, he’d written back to “stop perseverating on this letter. One thing at a time. Let it go for now.” Perseverating was a term he’d used when I was at Addington, and it basically just meant to stop chasing the same worry around and around, with no meaningful way out. At some point, though, I knew I’d have to trade the chase for a decision.
In other words, I’d have to be brave and hit send.
The school day dragged, and I was glad for the end of it. All I had now was physical therapy. As I swept through the city in the underground, the anonymous subway ride felt both romantic and authentic. Alone, surrounded by strangers, and on my way to anywhere, I contained any and all of the Embers I might have been.
“New boots,” Jenn commented when she saw me.
“Old boots. Reclaimed.” I pulled them off and sat them on the bench, like a pair of dusty thug friends. They’d been all the way to the bottom of that river with me. Now they would stand guard over my physical therapy session. It was probably a stupid thought, but I liked to imagine that the boots were somehow encouraging me, subliminally, to push through this session—and to be grateful that I was here, alive, and able to do the work at all.
I’d been diligent with therapy since that first time I missed it, but over the next hour, as I pulled and stretched and bent into as many tilts, tucks, and planks as my body could withstand, I could feel that I was coming at this from a stronger place than usual. It beefed up my confidence, envisioning new muscles thickening my tendons and ligaments, promising me future power.
“Nice, Ember. You haven’t even asked for a break! Do you realize that?” Jenn could give me at least a dozen variations of positive encouragement—and I was grateful for every single one.
“Okay, but I’m taking a break now.” I dropped to the mat and let my cheek claim its sneaker-smelling surface. “It sucks how much it hurts, but I’m really trying to force myself past the pain. It’s different than when I was at Addington—when I felt too close to broken. Now I feel like I can…endure.”
“This time next year, I bet a lot of what you’re calling pain will be more like a twinge. Like pain memory. And I’m not just saying that to psych you up.” Jenn knelt on the mat next to me. Her face was serious sunshine. “You’re so young, Ember, and you’re naturally in such good shape that your body’s snapping back like a rubber band. The prognosis is for a near one hundred percent recovery. In a couple of years, I’ll bet you that—with the exception of your scars—that horrible night, and everything that came after it, will be completely erased from your body.”
My smile was a cover, I hoped. I knew Jenn had meant everything she said in her most upbeat way possible, but as I left the Y, I could hear only that one word: erased.
Reflexively, I touched the scar on my forehead. It was like a secret monster, a hideous zipper beneath my bangs. No amount of scar gel and cocoa butter would erase the ugly rickrack of that mark. That night would take aim at me every time I looked into the mirror.
It was dusk when I walked up from the subway. Another cold snap, but this one meant business. Winter was on its way. The clocks had turned back this week and the sky was wolfish gray.
I stopped at Carroll Park, revisiting the scene of my nightmare. Rachel and I had played here a lot when we were younger, two kids on scooters with Band-Aids on our knees. My nightmare wasn’t waiting for me here, of course. There were no T-shirts on the trees. I lingered. The park was pearl-shadowed, luminescent. I watched different clusters of rowdy kids combine and separate, jousting for time on the swings or yanking for turns playing with grungy public toys strewn in the sandbox. There was a bench under a hunchbacked dogwood. I sat and found a curled piece of bark, rubbing it between my hands, letting it crumble.