In front of me, Maddy has managed to hold onto the belt around Liva, and she’s dragged back and forward by Liva’s frantic movement. Maddy has no way to brace herself. She barely has anywhere to stand and hold her footing. She’s pulled into a violent storm, closer and closer to the cliff.
The boulders have slowed to a halt again, but I don’t know if that matters now.
Finn tries to push Liva down with his crutches, but she dances out of reach.
That was the flaw in our plan. We never thought we’d have to keep fighting.
Everything slows down and speeds up, slows down and speeds up, as if to form a heartbeat.
Liva flings Maddy to the side, and Maddy swings perilously close to the cliff’s edge. She almost loses the ground beneath her and she screams.
“Maddy, let her go!” My voice carries.
Liva falls back again and tries to shake the belt off. She says something to Maddy that I can’t make out, but Finn flinches. Liva’s a whirlwind, a tornado, and she’s willing to destruct everything around her to get free. And with the cloak still partially covering her face, it’s hard to know how much of her direct surroundings she can see.
Meanwhile, Maddy clings to the belt like a lifeline. “I can’t! I wrapped it around my hand!”
“Untie yourself!” Finn shouts in despair.
“I can’t.”
Liva flings all her weight to the side, and something snaps.
At first, I think it’s the belt. Then Maddy screams.
And that’s it.
When Liva rears up and tries to pull Maddy off balance again, Finn leaps toward her, the bread knife out. His knees twist and his ankles sprain, and he lets himself fall on top of Maddy.
With more determination than force, he pushes the bread knife against the leather belt and thanks to the constant strain of the two girls tied to each other, it cuts clean through.
The belt goes slack.
Liva’s angry roar turns to a scream when she breaks free, but momentum keeps her stumbling backward, until the ground ceases to be.
Finn yells her name and reaches for her, but he’s too far away.
She topples over, tears out of the cloak, not in slow motion but with determination. With the full force of gravity and inevitability.
I don’t see her face when she falls. I don’t want to see it. But I also can’t look away, because once upon a time, only a few hours ago, she was one of my closest friends. And I don’t know what changed. I don’t know how she changed. Perhaps down the line, people will say there was something wrong with her, that there was a shadow inside of her.
Call it fear. Anger. Hatred.
But if that’s true, there’s a shadow inside of us all. The only difference is, she decided to feed hers, and we lit matches to feed the light.
Was there a way to win this? Maybe losing is the same as loss.
Thirty-One
Maddy
Silence.
Pain.
Betrayal.
There’s an actual piece of bone sticking out of my arm, and I’m starting to crack at the edges. We all are.
Ever reaches out with their good hand to support me to walk, but I’m all too aware of how uncomfortably close we are, well beyond my own personal boundaries. I shrug them off—and whimper.
The world floods in with the waning moon, the shadows a bright reminder of the past… I wish I could say days, or weeks, but it’s only been hours. Strange how, when we climbed up this mountain, we thought the world looked so different.
Now, there’s three of us left, and it feels like we’ve all gone to war in real life.
“It doesn’t feel real, does it?” Ever says.
Finn shakes his head. He almost hangs in his crutches, pushing himself upright through layers of exhaustion. We pull ourselves together and push across the boulders, and I don’t know how.
“I wish it wasn’t,” I say.
“Yeah.”
I bite my lip until I taste the metal twang of blood. Then I’m crying. Big, heaving sobs, like my body doesn’t care that my brain is still struggling to keep up; it needs a way to get rid of the excess anxiety. The pain from my arm finally floods me, and it threatens to knock me off my feet. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so resolute in dumping all the painkillers, because right now, I wouldn’t mind them. Still, it’s probably a good thing. I need a clear head to get down the mountain. As clear as it gets through a haze of pain.
With every step, I lose my balance. With every step, pain courses through me. With every step, I lose another piece of me.
On somewhat stable ground, Ever kneels before me. They’ve taken a piece of their tunic and ripped it to shreds, and they’ve wrapped it tight around their hand. The cloth is bloody, and Ever’s jaw is set. With Finn’s assistance, they’re using another part of the tunic to tie a makeshift sling. “Hey, shh, it’s okay,” they say. They pull the sling over my head and they motion toward my arm. “Can I help you put this on? C’mon, it’ll be fine. Don’t cry.”
They say it with a hint of panic, and halfway through a sob, I start to laugh. “I thought I was the one who couldn’t deal with emotions in this group.”
Ever shakes their head. “You’re not. I think we’ve all lost our footing a bit.”
When I reach out my arm to them, Finn takes a careful hold of my elbow and wrist, almost as if he’s pulling at the bone, and he guides my arm through the sling. “This may help.”
The sling doesn’t help. Which is to say, it keeps my arm in one place, but it doesn’t stop the pain that cascades through me. “Did either of you see this coming? Because I didn’t. Could we have
