Maya stops dead in her tracks as it comes into view, a bridge that not so much as a bicycle could safely cross. The flashlight from Frank’s dad flickers in her hand. A cool wind slithers thought the leaves, scattering the last of the day’s heat as she stands piecing it together.
A chill claws up her spine.
The bridge before her isn’t just abandoned—it’s crumbling. Lost to history, a bridge of rusted bones, turrets exposed like a giant’s rib cage. Large chunks of concrete have fallen away, leaving only a sliver of passable road in the middle.
She’s about to turn back, rattled to the core, when she notices a light on the other side of the stream. She squints. The light is larger, steadier, and more diffuse than a flashlight. She takes a few steps closer, and now she’s sure of it. There is someone over there, across the broken bridge. She assumes it must be Frank, though she can’t see him.
Every instinct tells her to leave, but she doesn’t. That same curiosity that feels almost like a compulsion has gotten stronger with every step, as if she has been drawn here tonight by some invisible string. Plus, if Frank crossed it, the bridge must be safe enough. She’s extremely careful as she makes her way across, walking as if on a tightrope when she gets to the middle portion, where the edges of the road have fallen away on either side.
The bridge here is only about three feet wide, the water below fast and black. It looks deep. She’s trembling as she arrives on the other side and passes through a last stand of trees into a clearing. She’s figured it out now, the reason Frank’s so weird about his cabin, yet what she sees takes her breath away all the same.
There is no cabin. Only the weathered concrete remains of a foundation, a wide, cracked rectangle in the middle of the clearing. This is where she finds Frank, reclined on top of a plush red sleeping bag several feet in front of where a fireplace seems to have been. He’s set up a battery-powered lamp in the spot, the orange glow she saw from the other side of the bridge a crude replica of the cozy fires that might have burned here once, back in whatever era this house actually stood.
He squints in the glare of her flashlight as she approaches but doesn’t look surprised to see her. He smiles weakly, apologetically even, not moving from his comfortable-looking position as she takes in his surroundings. The portable lamp and sleeping bag, a jug of water, his backpack, and a half-peeled orange.
He wears a flannel shirt and jeans, but no shoes. His shoes sit several yards away at the edge of the foundation, as if he had left them at the front door, like he hadn’t wanted to dirty the floors, and the thought of him playing make-believe out here, acting as if the house is real, is so absurd and sad and strange that a startled laugh rises in her throat, and she covers her mouth as if to hold it inside.
“Hey,” he says. He sounds sheepish, or tired, or both.
“Frank . . .”
“I know . . . I’m so sorry, Maya.”
But she’s too bewildered to be angry. “Why would you lie about something like this?”
He lets out a long sigh. “I guess there’s really no excuse, is there?”
Maybe not, but she still wants an answer. She stares down at him, waiting, the flashlight at her side beaming down at the cracked foundation.
“The truth,” he says, “is that I’m just some guy who lives at home and takes care of his dad. I don’t even have my own car, and my job is embarrassing. And you . . . well, you obviously could do better.”
Another shocked laugh bubbles up. “Are you saying you made up the cabin . . . to impress me?”
He hangs his head.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I’m sorry,” he says again.
But it’s like Dorothy pulling back the curtain to reveal a man pretending to be a wizard. “You really . . . really didn’t need to do that,” she says. “I was totally into you.”
She hadn’t meant to use the past tense, but they both register it. The wind picks up, churning through leaves, and when he speaks again, Frank’s voice is so low that Maya has to step closer to hear him. Now she stands at the edge of his sleeping bag, looking down into his sorrowful eyes.
“It’s just that you’re going away to BU,” he says. “I didn’t want you to think of me as some townie with nothing going on. I’m twenty years old and live at home with my dad.”
“I never thought of you that way,” she says.
But now she doesn’t know what to think. She rushed here tonight on fumes of jealousy and infatuation, needing to know why he was with Aubrey, but seeing him now—barefoot and alone in the woods—the spell has been broken. He might have lied about the cabin to impress her, but that doesn’t explain why he’s here now. It doesn’t explain the sleeping bag, the shoes left by an imaginary door.
“Are you okay? How long have you been out here?”
“Not long,” he mutters, looking away.
“And why . . .”
He takes a deep, shaky breath. “Because I feel safe here.”
“Safe? From what?”
“From my dad.”
Maya thinks back to Frank’s reference to troubles at home when he was young. “Did he do something?”
Frank exhales sharply. It could be a sigh of grief, or a scoff—he’s looking down now, so it’s impossible to know. “He’s done a lot of things. To me . . . to my mom . . . and total strangers. It’s the reason my mom took me away from him when I was twelve. He’s dangerous.”
Maya glances back over her shoulder as if his father might have followed her here. She knows now, as she should have before, that Frank might be lying. But then, his father had made her nervous. “Why are you staying with him, then?” she asks. “If he’s dangerous, you should go to the police.”
Frank shakes his head. “They wouldn’t understand. My dad’s never laid a finger on anyone. He hurts people in other ways. He’s manipulative. Controlling. He used to be a psychology professor, but then he got into some trouble and lost his job, his psychology license, everything. He was ruined. He took it out on me and my mom.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Frank . . .” But now she senses him gliding past the situation at hand, the strangeness of it, and she tries to reel him back. She won’t get sucked into another of his stories. “I still don’t get what you’re doing out here,” she says.
Frank pulls his knees to his chest, folding in on himself. He speaks so quietly that she doesn’t hear and must move closer so that she is standing right over him. He looks small from here. Helpless.
“What did you say?” she asks. Her voice is gentle.
“I said it was real to me. Back when I was ten, that night I was lost. I thought I was going to die alone in the woods, and I know it sounds crazy, but the cabin . . . it saved me. I needed it to be here for me. And it was.
“I pictured it so clearly, down to the littlest detail, and when I closed my eyes, it was like I was there. Like I was home. A safer, more loving home than the one I had left. A place without my dad. I came back a lot after that, days and nights when I had to escape. This is where I would come, the truest home I ever knew. I would sit here, just like I am tonight, and picture the door of my cabin. I really had to see it before I could go inside. The color of the pine, the brass knob. I had to feel the doorknob in my hand, but if I could do that, then I could turn it, and everything would be waiting for me on the other side. Home. Something good on the stove, a fire in the fireplace. The big, cozy couch.”
Maya nods. She can easily picture what he’s describing—she has before, and she allows herself to now.
There is sorrow in knowing it’s not real, but what’s even sadder is understanding how he had made it seem that way. The reason the cabin seemed real to her was that Frank has spent hours and hours building it in his head. Here in this clearing. Alone. He knows every floorboard and cabinet as if he had hammered it into place himself; he knows all the whorls in the pine. He knows it so well that when he speaks of the place, as he speaks of it now, it comes to life. The warmth of the fire. The smell of it. She doesn’t know why he’s telling her this now that she knows it’s not real. Yet it relaxes her to hear it. She understands. She doesn’t fault him for anything he’s done. Everyone needs somewhere to return to.
She has lost track of what he was saying, and now he falls silent.
She hears what sounds like a door slam shut at her back. A sound that makes no sense out here and yet is unmistakable—a creak of hinges followed by the low clap of a door landing in its frame—directly behind her. Something tells her not to turn around, but she does anyway. She has to know. She turns slowly back to see Frank standing behind her.
Just inside the front door—the wind must have blown it shut.
Her mouth hangs open as she takes in his handiwork. He was too modest about the cabin. It’s perfect. Fingers interlaced with her own, he gives her the grand tour, and Maya can’t stop smiling. Then comes the tantalizingly fragrant soup that she never tastes because the sudden reminder of her father’s book threatens to shatter the illusion.
And Frank doesn’t want to let her go. Frank thinks she should move in with him.
He tells her to relax, eat her soup, and when she doesn’t, he sets his spoon loudly on the table. Gets down on one knee like he’s about to ask for her hand in marriage, but there’s rage boiling in his eyes, and instead of a ring, he puts something slightly larger in her hand. She feels its metal teeth against her palm and looks down to see the key to the cabin. And for the briefest of moments, she’s confused.
Why would Maya need a key to a cabin she’s already inside?
But as soon as she thinks it, the thought slips away, and what happens over the following few minutes will lie buried beneath the lowest cellar floor of her head for seven years.
She relaxes.
Her breath slows.
And her heart. It feels so good to be here. She sinks deeper, slouching in her seat at the table.
“Good,” Frank says. “Good.” He gets up off his knee and smiles down on her. “You’re feeling better now,” he says. “Calmer.”
She feels better now. Calmer.
“Maybe you’d like to sit by the fire?” The way he says it, it doesn’t sound like a question. “Get comfortable,” he says. “Relax your tired legs.”
Maya would like nothing more than to sit before the fire, get comfortable, and relax her tired legs.
“You feel safe here,” he says.
Her body gives a sluggish jerk as something cold and wet strikes the back of her neck. She frowns.
“You feel safe here,” he says again.
A second cold drop hits her knee. The bracing liquid trails down her bare calf, and Maya focuses on it. The tingling sensation moving toward her ankle. Then another drop and another—her shoulder, forehead, wrist—leading her back to herself. The rain cuts through Frank’s voice just enough for her to understand that she needs to run.
He stands. “Come with me.”
She doesn’t intend to obey, but (oh god) that is what she does. She rises from her place at the table as if her legs and feet belong to someone else. She can’t stop them from following as he leads her closer to the fire, orange light flickering on his face. She smells the sweetly burning wood.
Look into the light, she thinks she hears him say, or maybe it’s the stream, the watery hush of it lulling her closer and deeper until the fire is all she can see. And taste. And feel. And it feels like coming in from the cold, like suddenly catching everything she’s ever chased. Confidence. Approval. Love. The light feels like contentment, like the sun on her face, and smells like melting snow. It sings like bells. You’re safe now, says the stream. You’re home. And that’s just how it feels, like coming home. But she knows. Even as she craves the fire’s warmth, the flames shimmering red, orange, blue, and gold, a part of her knows that home isn’t the right word for this place.
Like in the story. Like Pixán, taken in by imposters, gazing up into the mist, Maya knows her true home is elsewhere.
“You . . .” she whispers, although her intent is to shout it.
A raindrop on her cheek!
Every part of her wants to dissolve into the light. But she tears her gaze away to glare at Frank. “You tricked me.”
“Relax,” he says. But he doesn’t sound so confident now.
She shakes her head, anger rising, threatening to break through whatever spell he’s cast. “What did you do to me?”
“Listen to me, Maya, you need to calm down—”
“I know,” she says.
And just like that, the roughly hewn logs that make up the wall at his back begin to look even more rustic. They start to look like trees. Weeds sprout up between the floorboards, and it isn’t the roof she sees above her now but the endless abyss of the night sky, and it’s like looking down to find yourself suddenly at the edge of the Grand Canyon. A great, swirling terror. Overwhelming vastness.
“Maya,” he pleads.
She looks at his face. He’d been talking to her, has been all along, while she was busy looking at the sky, or the wall, or the fire, or the soup.
But Maya doesn’t have to listen. She knows this now. Frank begs her with his eyes not to say it, but this only sweetens the words on her tongue. “There is no cabin,” she says, and as if on cue, what’s left of it dissolves and the ceiling returns to sky and the floor to earth.
A loss of orientation as she tries to run. Her legs won’t work, or she has forgotten how to use them. With what’s left of her strength, she tries to lurch ahead, but the lower half of her body feels bound in an awkward position.
The problem reveals itself as soon as she looks down. The problem is Maya isn’t actually standing in front of the fireplace but sitting in the dark, in the rain. No wonder she can’t take off running—her legs are crossed.
She and Frank are sitting on his sleeping bag in the feeble glow of his battery-powered lamp, getting soaked. All her limbs are asleep, and she’s clumsy as she pushes herself to her feet, the sleeping bag slick beneath her hands.
“Maya, wait—”
A head rush darkens her vision, but she pushes through it, nearly tripping on the uneaten orange Frank had been peeling when she arrived. She steps off the foundation onto wet earth, breaking into a run. Clouds cover the moon now. She’s forgotten the flashlight and can only see a few feet ahead of her as she plunges through the trees outside the clearing.
She doesn’t see the edges of the bridge as she runs out onto it.
“Stop!”
She ignores him. The road is gravelly and wet. Alarm bells clang in her chest, and something tells her to slow down as she nears the middle of the bridge, but she ignores her intuition in her desire to get away from him. She hears his footsteps close behind over the sound of rushing water.
“Look out!” he shouts.
The flashlight flares on at her back, revealing the crumbled section of bridge just ahead—the sheer drop she was about to race over.
Maya shrieks, pinwheels her arms. She staggers back from the edge directly into Frank’s embrace. “Shh . . .” he whispers, holding her close. “You’re okay now, just relax. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
But Maya won’t believe him twice. She squirms her way out of his arms and is about to dash across the narrow length of collapsed bridge when he turns off his father’s light.
The darkness is complete.
The wind picks up, and the rain. What started as fitful showers earlier has swelled to a deluge, the kind of rain you’d have to shout to be heard over. Without the flashlight, the edges of the road disappear into darkness, and if she were to walk across that narrow stretch right now, every step would either bring her closer to safety, to the car, her mom, her home, or down into an angry river, no longer the placid stream it had seemed to her before.
So she lowers herself to the ground and feels her way across. She runs her palms along the edges, broken concrete rough beneath her hands and knees. She knows how easily she could fall and she’s never been a good swimmer, not that it would matter if she landed headfirst on a boulder.
She moves carefully but quickly as he’s still behind her—she can tell he’s speaking but does her best not to hear, listening only to the rain pelting the bridge and the river, turning the dirt beneath her to mud. Eventually the strip of road she’s on widens again. She’s on her feet in an instant, unable to see much, but all she has to do is stay on this road and it will lead her back to her car.
She breaks into a run and he follows—she hears his heavy steps—not slowing even as the road plunges back into the forest.
But then she hears the jingling keys at her back.
Her heart drops. Her feet slow and Frank moves closer until she can feel the heat of his body pressing in. “You forgot these,” he says into her ear.
She doesn’t turn. She thinks she could outrun him—but that won’t matter, will it, if Frank has her car keys.
“Give them to me.” She speaks forcefully, but the rain makes her sound small.
“Of course,” he says, mildly indignant.
She holds out her hand for the bulky key chain, weighted down with her mom’s many keys—house, car, work locker, garden shed—and mini-flashlight, but this isn’t what Frank drops into her waiting palm.
The only key he gives her is his own.