She moved the paddle to the other side, waited a moment, then inched the hurt leg forward, hanging as much of her weight as possible between the paddle and her good leg. Her foot touched down, her weight shifted, and pain exploded like a galaxy being born, unfurling its arms infinitely outward. The light dazzled her, and then she was falling, so slowly but actually quite fast, into a deep, velvety, smothering cushion of oblivion.
21
Ivy shut the door softly and stepped out into the snow. She’d spent too much time indoors all geared up in Mary Ellen’s thick sweaters, socks, coat, boots, hat, and gloves. Now the cold air struck her sweaty skin like a clapper hitting a bell. She stood for a moment waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, but the world remained hidden. No moon, no stars. No streetlights, storefronts, porch lights, or passing cars either. Ivy realized she’d never experienced a complete vacuum of light before. She was totally blind.
She hugged herself, bracing for the wave of terror she knew was rolling toward her. Somehow, knowing it was coming never seemed to help. “Put yourself on the outside of it,” Colin used to say, whenever she would crawl into bed next to him, sweaty and shaking. “Stand outside yourself and say, ‘Look what a scaredy-cat I’m being.’ That’s what I always do when I’m scared. You see yourself, and you see your fear, and it kind of gets smaller. Because you’re not inside it anymore; you’re off to the side kind of, like, checking it out.”
That never really seemed to work, probably because Ivy didn’t try very hard. It was enough to have the big, muscled mass of Colin next to her. This time was different, though. This time she really needed to be able to put her mind over fucking matter.
There were sounds all around her—little sounds made big by the light vacuum. The forest was swishing and ticking and creaking. For once, there weren’t any crows flying around, but she knew there were other kinds of animals that only came out at night: hunting animals, the kinds with glowing eyes. She could hear their feet pricking the snow; she was pretty sure she could hear them breathing.
She closed her eyes and tried going outside herself, off to the side and up in the air a little way, but in this kind of darkness, how exactly was she supposed to look back and examine the situation? You couldn’t see a damn thing. Maybe, she told herself, that was good. She nodded, twisting her torso back and forth to keep the blood moving. She was invisible. Whatever was out there couldn’t find her, couldn’t touch her, because she was like smoke.
She opened her eyes, stretched out her hands, and aimed herself in the direction of the car, moving slowly, her legs tensed up, ready for the strike of a log or a rock or a car bumper. The distance to the car stretched like a rubber band, then snapped shut when she came up against the cold metal body. She felt her way to the front door lock, stabbing it with the key until she finally got it open and the dome light flooded the whole world with its brilliance. She swiftly grabbed the backpack she’d left in the back seat, then tossed the keys onto the dashboard and shut the door, the orange glow staining the backs of her eyeballs for another full minute.
With trembling hands, Ivy opened the backpack and pulled out the kitchen knife. She would slice her way through the dark. She thrust the blade out ahead of her, and somehow this persuaded her legs to move as well.
She thought she’d memorized the shape and size of the driveway, the way it curled into the first switchback, then scribbled its way up the slope. But the picture in her mind was useless now, the reality of the physical world as formless as a just-forgotten dream. She’d have to use the incline as her guide, keeping her feet moving uphill. As long as she did that, she was bound to reach the road eventually.
She was in the woods now; branches scraped her face and thorns tore at her jeans. She stumbled a few times, nearly stabbing herself in the face with the knife as she pitched forward. She was pretty sure she was headed uphill, but it wasn’t always easy to tell in the confusion of the snowy undergrowth. Her foot hooked itself under something, and this time she flew forward, letting go of the knife just in time to break her fall with her hands. She patted around herself in all directions, but the knife was gone. She struggled to her feet and turned back toward the house.
Something yellow was glowing down there, at the bottom of the hill and off to the left. Mary Ellen must have woken up and turned on a lamp. Ivy exhaled slowly, grateful for the shred of light, glad to know the lady was still alive. Earlier, Mary Ellen had started talking nonsense, her skin hot with fever. When Ivy changed the bandage, she’d seen that the wound was weeping yellow stuff and was starting to give off a whiff of death. She’d known then that waiting until morning would probably mean the end for Mary Ellen. Ivy’s fear of the dark was going to have to take a back seat.
Keeping the light behind her—checking its position from time to time—she could kind of go in a straight line, even though she was as blind as ever, and trees kept jumping out in front of her. It was a little easier on her brain just knowing the glow was there, like the little bare-bulb night-light in her room back home. It helped her stay on the outside of the fear, looking back at herself.
And what she saw when she did that was a girl
