Foreverland Is Dead

twisting in both directions and pulling with both hands like perhaps the hinges are rusty.
    Cyn suddenly backs up.
    The old man turns around. She explains something. Miranda turns up the sound. She rubs the back of her neck. The old man isn’t distracted. He walks around the East corner of the building, looking up and down, as if a secret crevice might reveal itself.
    Miranda punches a key. The old woman is on the monitor.
    The old man and Cyn’s voices are muffled, but they’re out there, right outside the small building.
    The old woman is still motionless, but in a slightly different position than the last time. The pillows have been rearranged beneath her head and a different blanket covers her. She’s sure of it. Last time it was a brown fleece blanket, but now there’s one with woven Native American patterns. But she’s still asleep, her chest gently rising and falling.
    Her gray hair is pulled off her face, kinky strays poking in different directions. It’s too dark to tell how old she is. Old enough.
    The voices are gone.
    Miranda switches the view outside the cabin. No one is there. She cycles through the outside cameras, finally sees the old man crossing the dead garden.

    “Ms. Miranda?” He raps on the shutter over the front door.
    Miranda wraps the blanket more tightly around herself, sinks into the chair.
    “My name is Mr. Williams. I’d like to talk with you.”
    She jumps out of the chair before fear holds her down, paces back and forth, mumbling. Looks down the hallway. It feels so much longer, so much darker.
    “Mr. Miranda?”
    Rap, rap, rap.
    Miranda takes a long breath. She tiptoes through the house, listening to his gruff and muffled voice call her name. She leans against the door, careful not to bump it or scratch it.
    She feels his knuckles through the protective shield.
    “I know this is all very confusing,” he says, “but we have a lot to talk about. Perhaps you could open one of the shutters?”
    It’s been so long since she’s seen daylight with her own eyes, not the camera’s eye.
    She slinks to the back room, dropping the blanket near the kitchen. She taps the spacebar, activates the main monitor. The cursor speeds across the screen, centers over the same question it asks every time.
    Deactivate security?
    The cursor hovers over ‘ YES’ .
    She looks to the other monitors. The brick house camera is focused on Cyn, standing beyond the fence, leaning on sticks. She’ll know I’ve been hiding. She’ll be pissed.
    She releases the mouse like a hot coal.
    “Ms. Miranda?”
    Miranda switches the view on one of the smaller monitors to the front porch, swings it around to focus on the old man. He has a slight hunch near his shoulders. His hair is wispy around the crown.
    He knocks again. Turns his head.
    Looks right at the camera.
    He knows!
    He drops his hand to his side, still looking. A nod of resignation. Perhaps a brief smile.
    “Perhaps she’s trapped.” He turns to Cyn. “We need to find a way to communicate. Maybe there’s a crack in one of the shutters; I can slide a note inside for her to see.”
    He looks at the camera again.
    “She needs to know she can trust me. That I can help.”
    They walk back to the dinner house. One slowed by injury, the other by age. Miranda watches them go through the front door, sees them sit down at the dinner table. But she doesn’t switch the view to look and listen.
    Instead, she runs to the kitchen.
    She begins hiding food around the house.

33

    The ledge is sharp.
    The fog shifts. Beckons.
    The fall, bottomless.

    Sleet pecks the windows.
    Cyn’s breath curls in column after white column, each fading into nothing. The stove lifeless.
    Pain greets her. Good morning.
    Her heels throb. Each pulse pushing pins into her legs. She pulls the covers up to her chin, closing her eyes, wishing it away. But it doesn’t. Nothing goes away, no matter how many times she asks.
    The girls are waking. The bed in the far corner is missing. Cyn lies still, hoping her heels will forget she’s awake. She scratches another day on the wall, ignores the endless lines behind it. They are her challenge, each line a brick in a wall that she’s building up to the sky, one she can crawl over, where the sun shines and birds sing and pain does not exist.
    Each day a brick. Heavy and solid. Each day she carries a brick to the wall and puts it in place.
    “Good morning,” Jen says.
    Kat and Mad mutter back, dressing quickly.
    Cyn throws the covers