Song of the Fireflies by J. A. Redmerski Page A

last one to be seen with her! There was a girl here with her just before it happened! And I, more than anyone out here, had motive. They won’t believe it was an accident! They’ll
crucify
me!” She buried her face in my chest, her fingers digging into the back of my neck.
    I decided to do the right thing, just like my mother always said. In that moment, it was the right thing to do…
    “Let’s go,” I said, pulling her to her feet. “We have to get out of here.”
    Bray looked at me with confusion in her eyes, but it took all of two seconds for her to understand and follow me. We found our way back to the ridge in the clearing. We didn’t speak, overwhelmed by what had happened and exhausted by the uphill climb. I held her hand tight the whole way, afraid to let her go for even a second.
    I was afraid to let her go…
    I grabbed our blankets from the ground and tossed them over my shoulder.
    Finally, I spoke. “Now listen to me, OK?”
    She nodded.
    “When we go back to the main camp we have to act normal. Hopefully no one will notice us, but if they do we
have
to act normal.”
    “Are we leaving… now?” she asked nervously.
    “Yes,” I said. “If they find her while we’re still here…” I stopped. I sighed. But I had to be truthful with her. “Bray, I’m not confident enough to believe that you won’t break down in front of everyone. We can’t stay here for that. Do you understand?”
    She nodded again. “But it won’t be normal for us to leave in the middle of the night,” she pointed out.
    I hadn’t thought of that. A heavy breath rattled through my chest. I looked out toward the ridge for a moment.
    In the end, I could think of nothing. Nothing was going to make this better. I knew deep in my gut that unless she turned herself in, that if I didn’t talk her into doing the right thing, that from this point on everything would just get worse.
    I pushed myself away from her and threw the blankets on the ground in a rage. “AHHH!” I shouted, balling my fists beside me, my arms bent upward. I went to the edge of the ridge. “God damn it!” My hands gripped the back of my head and I just stood there like that, staring into the dark sky.
    Bray came up behind me. I felt her hands slip around my waist from behind, the softness of her cheek pressed against my bare back.
    “I won’t turn myself in,” she said softly, as if she knew what I was thinking. “Elias, I know in my heart that this will be the end of us. I’m scared. I’m scared of losing you, of being taken away from you and put away. Haven’t we been apart long enough?”
    Those last words wrenched my heart. My fingers dug in between hers against my stomach. I choked back the tears.
    “If you don’t want to leave with me,” she continued, “I’ll understand. It’s probably better that you don’t. Because this wasn’t your fault. You don’t need to ruin your life because of me. But I want you to know—”
    “I’m not going to leave you,” I stopped her, turning around to face her. “I’m not going to lose you. It’s you and me, it always has been. It always
will
be.”
    I smashed my lips against her forehead.
    We made it out of the camp that night without a scene. Only one person stopped us to ask why we were leaving, and Bray pretended to be sick. It wasn’t hard for her to pull off especially since she looked like she had been to hell and back. And she smelled faintly of vomit.
    It was daylight when we arrived back at my apartment. Everything was different. The way the early morning sun hung over the trees and how it always made the wind chimes hanging outside my neighbor’s front door glisten and sparkle. The sunrise seemed darker; the reflected light on the shiny metal trinkets, lifeless. I didn’t hear any birds. I had always heard birds chirping in the early morning, but not this morning. Maybe they were there, carrying on like they always did, but I didn’t hear them. Even the paint on the apartment walls