Beautiful Darkness

  How powerless we are.

  This far up the Tracks, away from the cities, nothing ever changes. This land has always been wild.

  A person can feel safe here.

  Safer.

  I raise my voice. “It’ll be getting dark soon.”

  He’s up the trail, once again. Then I hear a ripple through the brush, and the sound of rolling rock, and he lands behind me, nimble as a mountain goat.

  Ro smiles. “I know, Dol.”

  I take his calloused hand and relax my fingers into his. Instantly, I am flooded with the feeling of Ro—physical contact always makes our connection that much stronger.

  He is as warm as the sun behind me. As hot as I am cold. As rough as I am smooth. That’s our balance, just one of the invisible threads that tie us together.

  It’s who we are.

  My best-and-only friend and me.

  He rummages in his pocket, then pushes something into my hands, suddenly shy. “All right, I’ll hurry it up. Your first present.”

  I look down. A lone blue glass bead rolls between my fingers. A slender leather cord loops in a circle around it.

  A necklace.

  It’s the blue of the sky, of my eyes, of the ocean.

  “Ro,” I breathe. “It’s perfect.”

  “It reminded me of you. It’s the water, see? So you can always keep it with you.” His face reddens as he tries to explain, the words sticking in his mouth. “I know—how it makes you feel.”

  Peaceful. Permanent. Unbroken.

  “Bigger helped me with the cord. It used to be part of a saddle.” Ro has an eye for things like that, things other people overlook. Bigger, the Mission cook, is the same way, and the two of them are inseparable. Biggest, Bigger’s wife, tries her best to keep both of them out of trouble.

  “I love it.” I thread my arm around his neck in a rough hug. Not so much an embrace as a cuff of arms, the clench of friends and family.

  Ro looks embarrassed, all the same. “It’s not your whole present. For that you have to climb a little farther.”

  “But it’s not even my birthday yet.”

  “It’s your birthday eve. I thought it was only fair to start tonight. Besides, this kind of present is best after sundown.” Ro holds out his hand, a wicked look in his eyes.

  “Come on. Just one little hint.” I squint up at him and he grins.

  “But it’s a surprise.”

  “You’re making me hike all this way through the brush.”

  He laughs. “Okay. It’s the last thing you’d ever expect. The very last thing.” He bounces up and down a bit where he stands, and I can tell he’s practically ready to bolt up the mountain.

  “What are you talking about?”

  He shakes his head, holding out his hand again. “You’ll see.”

  I take it. There’s no getting Ro to talk when he doesn’t want to. Besides, his hand in mine is a good thing.

  I feel the beating of his heart, the pulse of his adrenaline. Even now, when he’s relaxed and hiking, and it’s just the two of us. He is a coiled spring. He has no resting state, not really.

  Not Ro.

  A shadow crosses the hillside, and instinctively we dive for cover under the brush. The ship in the sky is sleek and silver, glinting ominously with the last reflective rays of the setting sun. I shiver, even though I’m not at all cold, and my face is half buried in Ro’s warm shoulder.

  I can’t help it.

  Ro murmurs into my ear as if he is talking to one of the Padre’s puppies. It’s more his tone than the words—that’s how you speak to scared animals. “Don’t be afraid, Dol. It’s headed up the coast, probably to Goldengate. They never come this far inland, not here. They’re not coming for us.”

  “You don’t know that.” The words sound grim in my mouth, but they’re true.

  “I do.”

  He slips his arm around me and we wait like that until the sky is clear.

  Because he doesn’t know. Not really.

  People have hidden in these bushes for centuries, long before us. Long before there were ships in the skies.

  First the Chumash lived here, then the Rancheros, then the Spanish missionaries, then the Californians, then the Americans, then the Grass. Which is me, at least since the Padre brought me back as a baby to La Purísima, our old Grass Mission, in the hills beyond the ocean.

  These hills.

  The Padre tells it like a story; he was on a crew searching for survivors in the silent city after The Day, only there were none. Whole city blocks were quiet as rain. Finally, he heard a tiny sound—so small, he thought he was imagining it—and there I was, crying purple-faced in my crib. He wrapped me in his coat and brought me home, just as he now brings us stray dogs.

  It was also the Padre who taught me the history of these hills as we sat by the fire at night, along with the constellations of the stars and the phases of the moon. The names of the people who knew our land before we did.

  Maybe it was supposed to be like this. Maybe this, the Occupation, the Embassies, all of it, maybe this is just another part of nature. Like the seasons of a year, or how a caterpillar turns into a cocoon. The water cycle. The tides.

  Chumash Rancheros Spaniards Californians Americans Grass.

  Sometimes I repeat the names of my people, all the people who have ever lived in my Mission. I say the names and I think, I am them and they are me.

  I am the Misíon La Purísima de Concepción de la Santísima Virgen María, founded in Las Californias on the Day of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, on the Eighth Day of the Twelfth Month of the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred Eighty-Seven. Three hundred years ago.

  Chumash Rancheros Spaniards Californians Americans Grass.

  When I say the names they’re not gone, not to me. Nobody died. Nothing ended. We’re still here.

  I’m still here.

  That’s all I want. To stay. And for Ro to stay, and the Padre. For us to stay safe, everyone here on the Mission.

  But as I look back down the mountain I know that nothing stays, and the gold flush and fade of everything tells me that the sun is setting now.

  No one can stop it from going. Not even me.

  Exclusive Excerpt for Unbreakable

  1. SLEEPWALKER

  As my bare feet sank into the wet earth, I tried not to think about the dead bodies buried beneath me. I had passed this tiny graveyard a handful of times but never at night, and always outside the boundaries of its peeling iron gates.

  I would’ve given anything to be standing outside them now.

  In the moonlight, rows of weathered headstones exposed the neat stretch of lawn for what it truly was—the grassy lid of an enormous coffin.

  A branch snapped, and I spun around.

  “Elvis?” I searched for a trace of my cat’s gray and white ringed tail.

  Elvis never ran away, usually content to thread his way between my ankles whenever I opened the door—until tonight. He had taken off so fast that I didn’t even have time to grab my shoes, and I had chased him eight blocks until I ended up here.

  Muffled voices drifted through the trees, and I froze.

  On the other side of the gates, a girl wearing blue and gray Georgetown University sweats passed underneath the pale glow of the lamppost. Her friends caught up with her, laughing and stumbling down the sidewalk. They reached one of the academic buildings and disappeared inside.

  It was easy to forget that the cemetery was in the middle of a college campus. As I walked deeper into the uneven rows, the lampposts vanished behind the trees, and the clouds plunged the graveyard in and out of shadow. I ignored the whispers in the back of my mind urging me to go home.

  Something moved in my peripheral vision—a flash of white.

  I scanned the stones, now completely bathed in black.

  Come on, Elvis. Where are you?

  Nothing scared me more than the dark. I liked to see what was coming, and darkness was a plac
e where things could hide.

  Think about something else.

  The memory closed in before I could stop it.…

  My mother’s face hovering above mine as I blinked myself awake. The panic in her eyes as she pressed a finger over her lips, signaling me to be quiet. The cold floor against my feet as we made our way to her closet, where she pushed aside the dresses.

  “Someone’s in the house,” she whispered, pulling a board away from the wall to reveal a small opening. “Stay here until I come back. Don’t make a sound.”

  I squeezed inside as she worked the board back into place. I had never experienced absolute darkness before. I stared at a spot inches in front of me, where my palm rested on the board. But I couldn’t see it.

  I closed my eyes against the blackness. There were sounds—the stairs creaking, furniture scraping against the floor, muffled voices—and one thought replaying over and over in my mind.

  What if she didn’t come back?

  Too terrified to see if I could get out from the inside, I kept my hand on the wood. I listened to my ragged breathing, convinced that whoever was in the house could hear it, too.

  Eventually, the wood gave beneath my palm and a thin stream of light flooded the space. My mom reached for me, promising the intruders had fled. As she carried me out of her closet, I couldn’t hear anything beyond the pounding of my heart, and I couldn’t think about anything except the crushing weight of the dark.

  I was only five when it happened, but I still remembered every minute in the crawl space. It made the air around me now feel suffocating. Part of me wanted to go home, with or without my cat.

  “Elvis, get out here!”

  Something shifted between the chipped headstones in front of me.

  “Elvis?”

  A silhouette emerged from behind a stone cross.

  I jumped, a tiny gasp escaping my lips. “Sorry.” My voice wavered. “I’m looking for my cat.”

  The stranger didn’t say a word.

  Sounds intensified at a dizzying rate—branches breaking, leaves rustling, my pulse throbbing. I thought about the hundreds of unsolved crime shows I’d watched with my mom that began exactly like this—a girl standing alone somewhere she shouldn’t be, staring at the guy who was about to attack her.

  I stepped back, thick mud pushing up around my ankles like a hand rooting me to the spot.

  Please don’t hurt me.

  The wind cut through the graveyard, lifting tangles of long hair off the stranger’s shoulders and the thin fabric of a white dress from her legs.

  Her legs.

  Relief washed over me. “Have you seen a gray and white Siamese cat? I’m going to kill him when I find him.”

  Silence.

  Her dress caught the moonlight, and I realized it wasn’t a dress at all. She was wearing a nightgown. Who wandered around a cemetery in their nightgown?

  Someone crazy.

  Or someone sleepwalking.

  You aren’t supposed to wake a sleepwalker, but I couldn’t leave her out here alone at night either.

  “Hey? Can you hear me?”

  The girl didn’t move, gazing at me as if she could see my features in the darkness. An empty feeling unfolded in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to look at something else—anything but her unnerving stare.

  My eyes drifted down to the base of the cross.

  The girl’s feet were as bare as mine, and it looked like they weren’t touching the ground.

  I blinked hard, unwilling to consider the other possibility. It had to be an effect of the moonlight and the shadows. I glanced at my own feet, caked in mud, and back to hers.

  They were pale and spotless.

  A flash of white fur darted in front of her and rushed toward me.

  Elvis.

  I grabbed him before he could get away. He hissed at me, clawing and twisting violently until I dropped him. My heart hammered in my chest as he darted across the grass and squeezed under the gate.

  I looked back at the stone cross.

  The girl was gone, the ground nothing but a smooth, untouched layer of mud.

  Blood from the scratches trailed down my arm as I crossed the graveyard, trying to reason away the girl in the white nightgown.

  Silently reminding myself that I didn’t believe in ghosts.

  2. SCRATCHING THE SURFACE

  When I stumbled back onto the well-lit sidewalk, there was no sign of Elvis. A guy with a backpack slung over his shoulder walked by and gave me a strange look when he noticed I was barefoot, and covered in mud up to my ankles. He probably thought I was a pledge.

  My hands didn’t stop shaking until I hit O Street, where the shadows of the campus ended and the lights of the DC traffic began. Tonight, even the tourists posing for pictures at the top of The Exorcist stairs were somehow reassuring.

  The cemetery suddenly felt miles away, and I started second-guessing myself.

  The girl in the graveyard hadn’t been hazy or transparent like the ghosts in movies. She had looked like a regular girl.

  Except she was floating.

  Wasn’t she?

  Maybe the moonlight had only made it appear that way. And maybe the girl’s feet weren’t muddy because the ground where she’d been standing was dry. By the time I reached my block, lined with row houses crushed together like sardines, I convinced myself there were dozens of explanations.

  Elvis lounged on our front steps, looking docile and bored. I considered leaving him outside to teach him a lesson, but I loved that stupid cat.

  I still remembered the day my mom bought him for me. I came home from school crying because we’d made Father’s Day gifts in class, and I was the only kid without a father. Mine had walked away when I was five and never looked back. My mom had wiped my tears and said, “I bet you’re also the only kid in your class getting a kitten today.”

  Elvis had turned one of my worst days into one of my best.

  I opened the door, and he darted inside. “You’re lucky I let you in.”

  The house smelled like tomatoes and garlic, and my mom’s voice drifted into the hallway. “I’ve got plans this weekend. Next weekend, too. I’m sorry, but I have to run. I think my daughter just came home. Kennedy?”

  “Yeah, Mom.”

  “Were you at Elle’s? I was about to call you.”

  I stepped into the doorway as she hung up the phone. “Not exactly.”

  She threw me a quick glance, and the wooden spoon slipped out of her hand and hit the floor, sending a spray of red sauce across the white tile. “What happened?”

  “I’m fine. Elvis ran off, and it took forever to catch him.”

  Mom rushed over and examined the angry claw marks. “Elvis did this? He’s never scratched anyone before.”

  “I guess he freaked out when I grabbed him.”

  Her gaze dropped to my mud-caked feet. “Where were you?”

  I prepared for the standard lecture Mom issued whenever I went out at night: always carry your cell phone, don’t walk alone, stay in well-lit areas, and her personal favorite—scream first and ask questions later. Tonight, I had violated them all.

  “The old Jesuit cemetery?” My answer sounded more like a question—as in, exactly how upset was she going to be?

  Mom stiffened and she drew in a sharp breath. “I’d never go into a graveyard at night,” she responded automatically, as though it was something she’d said a thousand times before. Except it wasn’t.

  “Suddenly you’re superstitious?”

  She shook her head and looked away. “Of course not. You don’t have to be superstitious to know that secluded places are dangerous at night.”

  I waited for the lecture.

  Instead, she handed me a wet towel. “Wipe off your feet and throw that away. I don’t want dirt from a cemetery in my washing machine.”

  Mom rummaged through the junk drawer until she found a giant Band-Aid that looked like a leftover from my Big Wheel days.

  “Who were you tal
king to on the phone?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.

  “Just someone from work.”

  “Did that someone ask you out?”

  She frowned, concentrating on my arm. “I’m not interested in dating. One broken heart is enough for me.” She bit her lip. “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know what you meant.” My mom had cried herself to sleep for what felt like months after my dad left. I still heard her sometimes.

  After she bandaged my arm, I sat on the counter while she finished the marinara sauce. Watching her cook was comforting. It made the cemetery feel even farther away.

  She dipped her finger in the pot and tasted the sauce before taking the pan off the stove.

  “Mom, you forgot the red pepper flakes.”

  “Right.” She shook her head and forced a laugh.

  My mom could’ve held her own with Julia Child, and marinara was her signature dish. She was more likely to forget her own name than the secret ingredient. I almost called her on it, but I felt guilty. Maybe she was imagining me in one of those unsolved crime shows.

  I hopped down from the counter. “I’m going upstairs to draw.”

  She stared out the kitchen window, preoccupied. “Mmm… that’s a good idea. It will probably make you feel better.”

  Actually, it wouldn’t make me feel anything.

  That was the point.

  As long as my hand kept moving over the page, my problems disappeared, and I was somewhere or someone else for a little while. My drawings were fueled by a world only I could see—a boy carrying his nightmares in a sack as bits and pieces spilled out behind him, or a mouthless man banging away at the keys of a broken typewriter in the dark.

  Like the piece I was working on now.

  I stood in front of my easel and studied the girl perched on a rooftop, with one foot hanging tentatively over the edge. She stared at the ground below, her face twisted in fear. Delicate blue-black swallow wings stretched out from her dress. The fabric was torn where the wings had ripped through it, growing from her back like the branches of a tree.

  I read somewhere that if a swallow builds a nest on your roof, it will bring you good luck. But if it abandons the nest, you’ll have nothing but misfortune. Like so many things, the bird could be a blessing or a curse, a fact the girl bearing its wings knew too well.