Chapter 1
Ember held on to the ribbon long after it had lost its childish charm, using it as a bookmark. In her school dormitory room, there were paperback novels hidden in every drawer and tucked away behind her textbooks on the shelves. Amidst her uniforms and shoes and jackets in the closet, there were even more.
She kept her desk neat and clean, with a stack of college-ruled paper and a cup of pens and pencils for homework. There was a window opposite the door, closest to Ember’s little bed, and in the morning the light cut a straight wedge in the middle of the desk. She liked to think that someday, she would get a plant to sit in the wedge of sun, and it would do well. Of course, Ember was eleven then, and she would be moving to the junior-high dorms in a few years—long before ‘someday’ was ever likely to come, and her imaginary plant would never bask in that wedge on the desk.
At such times, Ember wondered if she had a gift for growing plants. Her mother was a fantastic gardener. She had drawn a picture in crayons and watercolor in art class two years ago of her mother’s garden. The assignment had been to draw a memory of home. The fruit trees and the vegetables in the garden had been the only image she could muster; that, and the bookstore. Her teacher had said that the bookstore didn’t count, and that she had drawn Alaska wrong, because gardens like that didn’t grow so far in the north.
When she closed her eyes and thought hard, she could still see the strawberries and the mint patch. It might have been a figment of her imagination, like the notion that her mother gardened, and in that case getting a plant might have been riskier than she wanted to believe.
“What are you looking at?” Tiffany asked, turning over in her bed and rubbing her eyes.
Tiffany was the same age as Ember, and had short, blond hair. When they had met at the start of the year, Ember had told her that she was an orphan in the care of a nun who had sent her to the school. Her last roommate had asked incessant questions about Ember’s home, and her parents, and her sister, and Ember hadn’t been able to answer any of them. Luckily, Tiffany believed just about everything she was told.
“Nothing.” Ember shrugged. “Do you think they’ll have pancakes today?”
Tiffany shrugged in turn, rolling over to hug her pillow. “Maybe. I like pancakes.”
“Me too,” Ember agreed.
Tiffany was simple, and easy to please, and Ember liked her. When there were pancakes, they would take great ceremony in properly buttering and drenching each in the stack with more than enough syrup. Eggs were made to be eaten on toast, and bacon was eaten last so that the taste lingered on the tongue. They agreed that the apple juice in the cafeteria was too sweet, their English teacher was so old he was likely to die at his desk one day, Jason in Social Studies was the cutest boy in their grade, and having any more than one piercing on each ear was too many.
They stayed roommates until just after the sixth grade, when Tiffany had gone searching for her history book in Ember’s closet, thinking that she must have put it away by mistake, and found the generic birthday card that her mother had sent her. There, beneath a stack of old papers and on top of the box that held Ember’s patent leather shoes that were only for recitals and special occasions, their friendship had ended.
As Ember stood in the doorway, with her hair braided down her back just as Tiffany had left it that morning, she stared at the card in Tiffany’s hand. It was signed, not just by her mother, but by her sister and grandmother as well. Sincerely, Mom, Thalia, & Nan. Tiffany had stared in betrayal as Ember turned bright red; there was nothing to say.
No one believed that a mother could do what Gina Gillespie had done, and Ember hadn’t seen her since she was a little girl. She had chosen one daughter to keep and love, and given the other away to be raised by the ever-shifting tide of teachers and mentors that came and went over the years. Ember wasn’t even allowed home for the holidays, breaks, or the summer. No one believed that a mother could hate her child that much, unless there was something wrong.
That was the look that Tiffany had in her eyes then, asking Ember why she would hide such things. They accused her of being a freak, or a pathological liar, and at the very least, not a true friend.
Ember snatched the card from Tiffany’s hand, running from the room to lock herself in the janitor’s closet on the second floor, where she ripped it up into pieces no bigger than quarters, and stared at the bright bits of paper on the floor around her. Sinking to her knees, she pushed them back into a little pile and collected them, wishing she hadn’t done it. Those signatures might have been the last she would ever see of her family.
She cried for herself, for the card, and then for Tiffany. They never spoke to each other again.
After that day, Ember decided that she didn’t need friends who were close enough to go through her closet. For good measure, she properly disposed of everything her mother sent her, using the trashcans in the common areas and never the ones belonging to her personal room. It was easy, because she only sent a total of two cards each year. One came on Ember’s birthday, and the other around halfway through December. They only ever said “Happy Holidays”, causing Ember to worry during her early teenage years that she was supposed to be either a non-practicing Catholic or a Protestant.
She joined every club and organization she could, less out of interest than to prove to the other students that she wasn’t a freak. She cooked and served for the homeless, visited with the elderly, and did science projects for the city fairs. She kept her hair and her clothes clean, and once wrote to her caretaker to ask about getting braces to straighten her teeth.
The only true part of the story she had told Tiffany years ago concerned the nun who looked after her. Sister Helen managed the trust fund that had been arranged to cover Ember’s expenses, and would continue to do so until Ember turned eighteen.
Keeping her appearance and behavior strictly groomed, Ember gained the respect of the other students and her teachers. People remarked at what a wonderfully mature young woman she was becoming, and how bright her future was.
When she was fourteen, Ember decided that someday, she would go back to her mother’s home to prove herself worthy. Whatever Thalia had been up to, it would pale in comparison to Ember’s achievements, and then her mother would be forced to allow her to come back. They would work in the garden together, and Ember would finally have a family, and a home that she could tell people about.
When she was fifteen, Ember finally got up the courage to ask Sister Helen about the address of her mother’s house. She wanted to send a letter.
The nun kindly told Ember that she would send the letters on for her, and realizing that she had no other recourse, Ember agreed.
The letters went, one after another, one every week. Week after week, Ember waited for a reply that never came. She stood at her door, looking hopefully at the floor advisor as she walked down the hall handing out letters or tucking them under doors. The woman smiled at Ember every day as she walked by with nothing to put in her small, anxious hands. Ember turned and went back into her room, frowning, and looked at herself in the mirror.
Her new roommate, an awkward, quiet girl who went by Heather, had started an insect club that she attended every afternoon. It spared Ember the embarrassment of having to wait in nervous excitement and then trudge in embarrassment in front of anyone but her own reflection.
She stared at herself, wondering if her mother would write back if she sent a picture. Somewhere, years ago in a psychology book, she had read that people were more likely to respond to faces than to flat text, regardless of the emotional pleas within. Ember had a build that was still more athletic and girlish than womanly, but she had a pretty face—perhaps, she thought, it should only be a face shot.
She wondered if she still looked like Thalia. She wondered if that fact would make her mother take her back.
Carefully pulling her hair back into a ponytail, she wondered how Thalia wore hers these days, or if Thalia had pierced ears. She made
a note that she would have to ask her nun if she could pierce hers, because most girls her age did have them, and then she could wear some modest gem studs to accentuate the blue in her eyes.
Grabbing a paperback and sitting on her bed, she tried to figure out who she could ask to take her picture. Heather was the closest thing she had to a friend at school, and perhaps she could do it. Heather, at least, would take the picture without asking what it was for.
Heather had started the bug club that she attended. Heather, as of yet, was the only attendee, but she was happy enough to go sneaking through the underbrush, sticking her hands into dark holes, alone. The girl wasn’t afraid of mysterious things, which made Ember unendingly grateful for her company. When they first met, she had asked Ember where she came from.
“Alaska,” Ember had replied, knowing what would come next. Is that where your family lives?
But Heather had only stared at her with a disinterested expression, and said, “Oh. I’m from Vermont.”
And that was the end of it. Heather wasn’t a girl who needed, or even liked, to talk about things; things were just as they were, and that was good enough for her. They respected each other’s space, didn’t borrow clothes or books or school supplies from each other, and generally got by on small talk and niceties.
However, outside of their dorm room, Heather and Ember couldn’t have been more different. Heather didn’t care what people thought of her quiet eccentricities, but Ember always put on a smile and tried to be nice to people. She volunteered for a wide range of clubs, mostly because she didn’t like saying ‘no’ to the people who asked her. She hadn’t joined Heather’s bug club because she knew Heather liked to be alone, even if she didn’t know why. She had only named it a club to give teachers an excuse as to why she needed an hour every day to chase her creepy-crawlies in the fields and barn.
Sometime later, Heather came back, happily toting a jar filled with grass, sticks, and a large hairy spider. She set it on the nightstand that divided their beds and grinned at Ember from under long, brown hair that constantly hung in her face.
“You need bangs and a headband,” Ember said to her, not for the first time. “Good haul today?”
“Wolf spider,” Heather replied, with a flourish toward the glass. “Second biggest spider I’ve ever caught. One time in Florida I caught a huntsman spider, though, and that one was the biggest.”
“Do huntsmen spiders kill wolf spiders?” Ember mused.
“What?” Heather’s brow furrowed.
“Never mind.” Ember shook her head, grabbing the bit of red ribbon from the nightstand and shoving it into her book. She sat up properly on the edge of the bed. “Do you think you could use your camera to take a picture of me?”
Heather looked down at the digital camera she kept clipped to her belt. Normally, it was exclusively reserved for taking pictures of bugs too delicate, dangerous, or difficult to collect and document. “Sure, I guess. What am I going to do with a picture of you?”
“It’s not for you.” Ember tried to give her a winning smile. “I just need one to send…home…to my family.”
Heather shrugged. “Sure. Whatever.”
She plopped onto her bed and pulled the spider jar over to sit on the pillow next to her head. Ember grinned inwardly as she grabbed her nightclothes and her toiletries and walked down the hall to the bathroom area. She changed, and brushed her teeth, and then wandered down to the kitchen. The students each had a water bottle with their name written on it in the refrigerator, and Ember liked to collect hers for the night in case she got thirsty.
She went back up to her bedroom, and found Heather already dressed and ready for the lights out check. She sat on the edge of her bed, slowly turning the spider jar in front of her face. Ember folded back her comforter and slipped off her shoes. When she sat down and picked up her brush, she saw that Heather had put the spider down, and was watching her.
“What?” she asked, trying not to be too forceful.
Heather raised her eyebrows and shook her head. “Nothing! Just…you said you wanted to send a picture to your family?”
Ember stared warily at the spider on the desk, tasting the bile creeping up her throat. “Yes.”
“Why are you sending them a picture?”
Ember smiled; Heather was just being her usual odd self. She didn’t understand that families liked having pictures. Or at least, normal families did. “I think my mother would like one, is all. She could look at it and think of me.”
“Oh.” She picked up the spider jar again, shaking it lightly. “Does it bother you having a spider in the room? It would bother most people, I think.”
Ember shrugged. “No.”
“Not at all?” Heather pressed.
Ember looked up sharply, staring first at Heather, and then at the spider. She looked Heather in the eye. “It’s a spider. It’s in a jar.”
“What if it wasn’t in the jar?”
Ember swung her legs into the bed and between the sheets, wondering where Heather’s sudden curiosity had come from. It wasn’t a bad thing, but it certainly wasn’t her typical behavior. “I guess it would find a corner and do what it does, and eventually one of us would catch it and shoo it out a window.”
When Heather didn’t respond, Ember stared at her significantly. Their gazes locked for an uncommonly long time, but Ember never blinked.
“Oh,” Heather said finally, and then, “Goodnight, Ember.”
“Goodnight.”
Ember switched off her bedside lamp as her roommate did the same. She twisted around under the covers to face the window, and heard Heather shuffle around for a moment before settling.
“Ember?”
“Hm?”
“If you told your mother you weren’t happy here, she would let you go back.”
Ember furrowed her brow, stuck somewhere between amazement at Heather’s sudden epiphany and annoyance with the intrusion into her personal life. She shook her head, twisting around again to face her. Heather’s face was a pale island in the dark bedclothes she had cocooned herself in, illuminated by the moonlight through the window.
“You don’t think I’m happy here?” Ember said with a frown.
Heather slowly shook her head. “Anyone who’s paying attention knows that you’re miserable. But if you told her that, if you told her that you want to leave and go back to Alaska, I think she would let you.”
“You don’t know my mother,” Ember said, deflated.
Heather stared at her for a moment, and then shrugged, Ember was forced to concede—she didn’t know her mother, either. She laid on her back, staring at the ceiling, and the jagged pattern that the popcorn texture made in the slanted light. Eventually, she drifted off to a dream that felt like falling, causing her to start in surprise and jerk awake in the night. It was hours later, and Heather had fallen asleep with her spider jar clutched to her chest like a teddy bear.
They never spoke of Ember’s family again. The next day, Heather took the photo, and their biology teacher arranged to have it printed on the glossy photo stock paper along with Heather’s homage to webs in the barn. Ember wrote her letter, explaining in a genial tone that she wanted to come back to Alaska. As a last thought, she added the line about being unhappy, and tucked it into an envelope to give to Sister Helen.
No one ever replied.
But when Sister Helen came for an unscheduled visit in the middle of the week, Ember knew something was different. The nun had come to see her—not the school guidance counselor about her classes, or the teachers about her grades—her.
Her mother wanted to see her for a visit. She was invited back to the island for the summer vacation.
On the walk back to her dorm room, Ember was stunned and speechless. Even as clueless as Heather usually was, she noticed.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“I’m going home,” Ember replied, still hardly able to fathom the idea. She looked at Heather. “It’s because of y
ou. Because of what you said, about telling her that I was unhappy.”
Heather cocked her head. Her eyes didn’t even bidge from the nature magazine she was reading. “You’re unhappy?”
Ember scoffed, and then smiled and laughed. “Come on—really? You told me that everyone knows…”
Heather flipped a page, and then looked up at her with her, as detached and unaware as always. “I didn’t know. And I didn’t say that to you. You must be confused.”
Frowning, Ember waited for Heather to laugh, or smile, or give her a look. She had to be joking. But she was just sitting there, leafing through the magazine before pausing to study a picture of an enormous beatle.
“You really don’t remember?” Ember asked, suddenly unsettled.
Heather looked up again, and seemed to search her mind, just to be doubly sure. She licked her finger before returning to the glossy pictures before her.
“Nope. Whoever it was, it wasn’t me.”