Some Quiet Place

and I’m already confronting too much, so I avoid any more thoughts or memories.
    Once, all I wanted to do was sing, dance, celebrate always and mourn never, but now I am consumed by what I have lost. Is Mom looking for me? Will she ever come back here? I try to imagine her somewhere else, leading an existence without me or Landon. She had no illusion to help her endure. Does she think I’m dead, too?
    Sometimes I wonder if I could find comfort if I were to return to the niche with Charles. Memories are so easily erased, patterns simple to find again. But then I imagine Tim’s red, swollen face, feel the rage of his fists and hear the slur of his words. I remember Sarah’s trapped pain, the guilt that constantly consumed her. I think of Maggie, my only friend. I contemplate Joshua and what could have been. I relive Charles turning his gaze away when he noticed a new bruise on my cheek. And I know I don’t want to go back. Not really.
    I lean against the trunk of a tree, huddling into myself in the twilight. I close my eyes, torturing myself with more memories.
    “Someday we’ll leave,” Landon tells me, eyes so bright, so alive. He holds a book of maps in his hand. “Just you and me, Rebecca. We’ll leave the country, even.” His gaze focuses on something in the distance. “I’ve read about things I can’t even begin to imagine without seeing for myself. I mean, there are pictures, but … ” He sighs. “They’re not enough.”
    “Things like what?” I ask, lying on my back and squinting up at the sun. I pluck a blade of grass loose from the green beneath me.
    Landon finally lies down beside me. We both smell like earth and excitement and daydreams.
    “I want to see Mount Rushmore,” he tells me, his voice soft. “Can you see us there? Looking up at huge mountains that have faces carved into them? And cities! New York! It’s full of towers so tall they touch the sky.”
    Days go by. One morning I sit on a mossy bank by the river, staring down into the currents. The water by my feet is clear and trickles gently over the smooth rocks. There’s a splash nearby, and when I glance over, all there is to show for it is an oily sheen, floating on the surface. The river quickly carries it away. Trout?
    “He’d take you back, you know.”
    Jumping, I turn to see Fear leaning against a tree, arms crossed in that arrogant manner of his. He’s staring at me with an unfathomable expression on his frozen, lovely face.
    I haven’t seen Fear since I healed him, since we both thought I was a human girl called Elizabeth, since I was wearing her mask. At the sight of his achingly familiar face, the breath catches in my throat.
    “Fear.” I stand, brushing off my bottom, swallowing audibly. My dark hair—still foreign to me—tumbles into my eyes, and I’m grateful for the curtain to hide behind. I don’t know what to say. I’m vulnerable. He can see me now; he knows the truth. Does he hate me for what I did? For hiding all this time? I resist the urge to throw myself at him, experience his hands on me for real after so many years of restraint and lies. I know that he wants another now. Someone who was never real to begin with.
    Fear doesn’t seem to sense my inner turmoil. “Are you going to go back?” His tone is so distant it hurts.
    I blink. “Go back where?”
    He sighs impatiently. “To the humans. Back to the boy.”
    Joshua. He means Joshua. I turn my back to Fear, trying to muster the courage to tell him he’s wrong. I can’t. I’ve faced so many things, but this … this I’m not ready to confront. I can’t handle his rejection. I’m good at running from the truth. As I bend toward the skeleton of a dead flower—fresh color streaking through the petals at my touch—I try to change the subject, asking, “Have you done something to Tim? No one’s seen him since Charles ran him off, and I don’t think he’d stay away just because Charles threatened to call the sheriff.”
    But Fear isn’t going to let me run. He strides toward me, bringing a cool breeze and all his horror with him. “I warned him never to touch you again,” is all he says. Then, “Answer me. Are you going to go back?”
    I cringe, and butterflies erupt in my stomach as his essence wraps itself around me. My pulse starts to race.
    Fear breathes down my neck. Helpless, I am assailed by images of us together. His lips pressed to my neck. Legs intertwined. Grass sticking to our backs. I whirl around to glare at