“Why do I feel more alone than ever all of a sudden?” The sense that I was no longer protected by modern civilization was deafening. A chill bubbled through me as I realized I was my only hope. I was my own last resort. I couldn’t wait for Tav or a helicopter or another mountain man to deliver rations, if I wanted to make it off this mountain, I’d have to conquer it myself.
Even if it killed me.
Nineteen
Sweat pricked and beaded at my skin.
I blinked into the darkness, delirious from exhaustion and poor nutrition and the uneven balance of chemicals in my brain. I blinked again, hands clutching at the leather couch cushions as I realized where I was. Asleep on the couch, stacks of my childhood photos piled on my chest and the coffee table at my side.
The chalet. The room. Hell.
I pressed a hand to my head, realizing the full moon had pulled me from my sleep with its kaleidoscope of light patterning my eyelids.
I sighed, wiping the beads of dampness from my forehead and then crammed my eyes closed and wished for a time before the chalet. Before Tav.
Bradley’s warm eyes caught mine across the dance floor. His familiar arms circling my waist as we swayed, our bodies pressed in a sea of hundreds of others as old nineties music charged through the sound system. Steph was supposed to meet us at the bar, but she’d never shown up, Bradley and I alone and somehow it felt so right.
I wasn’t sure why that memory had entered my mind at that time, but I missed Bradley and Steph too. They’d both been such a mainstay in my life for so long, when Bradley had left for his tour of duty his absence left me feeling like a ship without a port on rough seas, riding the waves of strangers as I silently sank inside of myself. Bradley was the only one that’d known how to draw me out through all of high school, his teasing charm and ability to read me left me weak in the knees. His dark eyes, my only soft place to fall.
Bradley had been on my mind more than ever these last months because he’d only shown up again in the few months before mom passed. Just as I’d found an old friend, I’d lost something else. Being with Bradley felt as natural as breathing air, but had the reality been anything but? Was Bradley’s return to my life orchestrated more concisely than he’d let on? My favorite distraction was sent just when life was about to pull me under its waves like we were fated.
My chest ached as I thought of Bradley now, he must be worried sick...or was he? I hated that I couldn’t trust anyone or anything. The fact remained that someone was watching, I had the note to prove it.But who?And how would I ever find out without leaving?
I imagined a scenario where I at least had access to the internet, surely I could then deduce who was holding me captive here by process of elimination. I chuckled to myself, imaging the kind of message I would send to Bradley if I could:
Help: I’m trapped! Send the police!
Bradley’s wide, friendly grin beamed out from one of the polaroids taken at church one Sunday when I was a kid. He stood at the pond behind the church skipping stones, and I sat on a rock watching, both of our laughs visible even through the grainy image.
Bradley was the sibling I’d never had but always craved. He’d tried to kiss me twice back then, once after school when I was thirteen for a dare, and the last time on the night of my eighteenth birthday when he told me he was joining the military. I cried as he kissed my lips and told me he’d stay if I promised to marry him.
I wouldn’t say it.
Not because I didn’t want to, but because it scared me so much at the thought of his leaving, that I’d shut down.
Just like I always did.
I couldn’t see the forest for the trees when it came to life decisions. Mom had been there for that, and then Tav. And now all I had was me.
Should I stay or should I go?
I’d taken to moving around the house quietly and keeping my thoughts to myself just in case the house was listening.
Correction: itwaslistening, I just didn’t knowwhowas behind it.
I fingered the polaroid of Bradley and I, wondering what it meant that this house contained so much of my childhood.
Some of the photos were some I’d never seen before.
I wondered how long this house had been here, and if its solitary presence meant to do just that: stoke the fear that went so well with isolation.
I’d never felt so connected and so disconnected at the same time.
Like a split from reality, only I was the portion cleaved off and discarded.
There were no others.
I was alone up here.
