Breaking Point

some truth my life relied upon.

I hated secrets.

I removed the St. Michael medallion from my neck. It couldn’t touch my skin anymore. It was for the sniper. It had been given to me right in front of the sniper. I’d been her cover all this time. Even in death.

It slid from my trembling hand and bounced on the floor with a fragile metal click.

I don’t know why, but amid the pounding revelations my mind found Chase. Clearly I saw him, sitting beside me on the tailgate of Tubman’s truck, telling me about St. Michael, and the spirit world, and his hope that my mother had found peace.

Before another thought entered my head I was on my hands and knees, retrieving the coin from where it had fallen, beneath one of the long tables covered with hodgepodge supplies. I needed it. It had kept me alive. I couldn’t let it go.

That’s when it happened: a deafening, thundering crash. The walls shook. Dust spilled down from the ceiling. It was a short burst of an earthquake, over in seconds that felt like a lifetime.

I was still on the floor, halfway beneath the table with the necklace locked in my fist. Terror had seized my muscles. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even breathe.

A high screech of twisting, tearing metal filled my ears. The flashlight’s beam vibrated against the wall. The sounds were coming from deeper in the tunnels. Somewhere closer to the remains of downtown. Somewhere near the Loop, where the meeting was to be held.

Where Chase and Sean and Tucker were all headed.

One more explosion, and I watched the ceiling crack open like it was paper torn down the center. I heard it grumble angrily and whine, and then vomit rock and dust. The walls, so solid in appearance, bowed, the racks broke and spit supplies into the center of the room.

The world went bright white, and then black.

* * *

THE pain receded. Not immediately, but in stages, like I had slipped into a hot, healing bath. My muscles relaxed. The fear dissipated. Soon the darkness seemed as natural as nighttime.

And then she was there. I don’t know how, or even when she came exactly. All I knew was that she was there, as real as I was. She crouched on her knees and then laid down close beside me, so that we were both staring up into the black.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, baby.” Her delicate fingers wove between mine and our joined hands came to rest on the soft T-shirt covering her stomach.

“So I’m dead then,” I said. It didn’t seem so bad; I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t tired or angry or hungry. But even though she was here, I still had the strange sensation that something was missing. Some crucial part of me.

“I don’t think you’re dead,” she said.

I snorted at her uncertainty. Of all people, she should know.

She hummed quietly, running her fingers over the back of my hand. I sighed. For the first time in a long time, my mind was quiet, peaceful. I turned my face and smiled, and she smiled back, and I thought of how we had the same mouth. I liked that.

“I’ve missed you,” I said.

She was warm, but when I tried to snuggle up to her side a rock embedded into my ribcage. What was that doing here? Just a moment ago the ground had been soft. I released her hand to pull the rock out, but though I felt the rough edges, I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t even see my hand. All I could see was her.

My head began to throb, building to a hammering in the base of my skull that sent waves crashing behind my eyes. There was something in my other hand. A flat and round piece of metal. It was wet, and my fingers hurt from squeezing it so hard.

It reminded me of something. A silver ring, with a pretty black stone. But it wasn’t a ring, it was a coin.

“I knew he’d find you. He’s always been a good boy. Came from good people,” she said.

A sharp pain exploded at the front of my brain. Streaks of light appeared before my eyes, blocking her out for seconds at a time.

I remembered. I remembered everything. His black hair and calloused hands. His dark eyes, always watching me.

Please don’t be dead. Please.

“Mom, is he…” I couldn’t say it out loud.

“I don’t know,” she said with a small frown.

That little expression did it. I was torn. Ripped clean in half. I had to find out if he was dead so that he could be with us, but I couldn’t leave her. Not for a second. I’d never let her out of my sight again.

“Ember, sweetheart,” she soothed, pulling me close. But she wasn’t soft and warm. She was cold, and the light inside of her was growing dim. When I grasped for her she wasn’t there. My fingers connected with something hard and flat above me. Splinters dug into the beds of my nails.

“No, wait…” I sobbed. “Mom. Please. Stay.”

“You can’t have us both,” she said, her face pale. “But it’s okay. You know why?”

I gasped for breath. Pain jolted from my left wrist to my elbow.

“It’s okay because I got almost eighteen years with you. The best eighteen years of my life.”

“Mom…”

“Hush. Listen now. I need to say a couple mom things.”

Chase and I were sitting on the truck bed at East End Auto. He was telling me about his mother. About the spirit world. He was right. He was always right.

“Listen, because this is important. Eat more—you’re getting too skinny. And smile. Oh, and don’t believe anyone who says they’ll pay you back later; they never do.”

The pain in my arm was like fire in the bone. It whipped through my body to my spine, to my ankles, to the back of my head.

“And one more thing,” she said. “I have never loved one single thing in my life more than you. You were worth living for, and Ember, you were worth dying for.”

And then she was gone. And it didn’t matter how much I cried that I loved her back, or not to go, she was simply gone. There was only the black, and the rubble, and the walls of my silent tomb.

* * *

WHEN I woke again, it was with the acute understanding that I was alone. The rest returned slowly—the tunnels, the supply room, crawling under the table to retrieve the St. Michael pendant. My mother.

I screamed for help, but the sound slapped against the walls of the enclosure and made my ears ring. I reached up, feeling the underside of a flat board, less than a foot above my face. It angled down over the length of my body, trapping my shins and ankles. My left wrist seared with pain, and sent my fingers into spasms of prickling numbness. With my right hand and left elbow, I pushed upward on the barrier as hard as I could. It didn’t move.

I was trapped.

Okay, I thought. I forced myself to breathe, to try again. But the board didn’t budge.

A sudden panic seized me, and I twisted, throwing my shoulder against the board. My knees cracked against it. My cries were met with silence.

Nobody was going to come.

Nobody was left alive.

Everyone had died in the earthquake, or whatever it was. I didn’t even know how long I’d been down here.

After a while I became still, too scared to move. The seconds passed, one by one. I tried to count them, anything to quiet the scalding horror. When I passed one hundred, I stopped, realizing that I’d begun the countdown to the end.

I was going to die here.