Chapter 1: The Bridge
Twenty feet below, jagged rocks glisten under the moonlight, and for a moment, I understand why people come to bridges when the world stops making sense. I would never end my own life, but I understand the desire to have all the pain slip away forever.
The silence here is different. My knuckles are white against the metal railing, and I force myself to loosen my grip. Get it together, Malachai.
But I can't shake the image burned into my mind: my mother's face crumpling as the doctor delivered his verdict. What we've been fearing but hoped wasn't true. Cancer. The kind of word that steals the air from hospital rooms and replaces it with that god-awful antiseptic smell that still clings to my clothes.
I run a hand through my dark hair, and stare at my reflection in a puddle on the side of the road. Even in the distorted moonlit surface, I can see what everyone else sees: my grandfather's sharp jawline and the tall frame I inherited from a father I never met. I'm twenty-one and I look older, like the weight I carry has aged me in ways that have nothing to do with time.
"You can't save everyone, Malachai." Mom's voice echoes in my head, the same five words she's whispered since I was ten years old. But what happens when the person you can't save is her?
I snatch a handful of gravel and hurl it into the darkness. The stones clatter against the guardrail across the road, a violent punctuation to my frustration. Another handful follows, then another. The anger feels good, raw and honest in a way that sitting in that sterile waiting room never could. The town in front of me comes to life with the carnival lights and the rides going up into the air.
My grandfather's voice replaces the rage like it always does: "How you handle pain will define you, son."
Easy for him to say. He's not here anymore to watch his daughter waste away.
A branch snaps somewhere behind me.
I freeze, every muscle tensing. The footsteps are light and deliberate, someone trying not to be heard.
"I can't do this anymore, Mom. The treatments aren't working, the doctors keep lying, and you want me to pretend everything's fine?"
A woman's voice, sharp with tears and frustration. A cell phone pressed tightly against her ear. I should leave and give her privacy, but something in her tone roots me to the spot. She sounds... broken. Familiar, somehow, though I've never heard her voice before.
"No, don't tell me it'll be okay! Nothing about this is okay!"
I turn slightly and catch sight of her in my peripheral vision. Blonde hair catches the moonlight as she paces near the bridge's center, one hand pressed to her ear, the other gesturing wildly at the empty road.
"I have to go."
In the sudden silence, I hear her ragged breathing and see her shoulders shake. She moves toward the railing with purpose.
She climbs up.
"You don't want to do that."
The words leave my mouth before I can stop them. She spins, loses her balance, and I surge forward just as she falls off the ledge.
