Over the Ridge

OVER THE RIDGE

WRITTEN BY LUKE KRUGER-AIMONE

A gleeful laugh echoed across Breakneck Bluff. June made effortless leaps down the rocky mountain path, her brother’s pleas a mere afterthought. If he were to fall and kill himself, that would be on him. No, there was no one who would keep her from reaching that river at the bottom, shimmering like fiery diamonds in the twilight.

“June, come on, Dad’s gonna kick my ass if I don’t get you home soon” James whined, nearly slipping on a rock at the riverbed.

“Yes. But he won’t do anything to me.”

Too scared to.

“Besides, you really don’t want to see for yourself? Come on, twenty thousand? You could buy Stefania a million of those disgusting orange chocolates she likes. Bet she’d kiss you. ”

She could hear the crunch of begrudging footsteps behind her. Getting people to do as she pleased was easy, especially other kids, but she could do it with anyone, really. No matter what they said they wanted, all it took was to prey on something they craved even more.

Their feet sank into a sifting marsh, as the brook came to an end. “Start looking around, would you?” June commanded, already several yards ahead of her brother. She began kicking aside patches of squishy grass.

“June, I don’t know about this” James called out. His voice sounded empty, caught inside the whistle of a breeze. “I don’t think we’re gonna find anything.”

Everything went quiet. June could no longer hear him, the wind, or the bubbling water behind her. Her eyes had frozen tight onto the corner of a small black notebook, sticking out from a damp rock. She reached down in a trance and pulled it from it’s hiding place. Its yellowed pages were sopping wet, and a piece of string had been wrapped snugly around a leather-bound cover.

She turned it over in hand. On the back was an inscription.

Do not open, unless you are prepared to lose what matters most.

“June!”

June swung her head. James was at her side, arms held out at his side.

“I’ve been calling you for like thirty seconds, what the hell are you— what is that?”

His eyes dropped to the notebook.

“This has to be it” she said. Her eyes had filled with greedy longing.

“What does it say?” James muttered, taking the book from June and reading the back. A ghostly wind rolled along their skin, and his eyes grew as he stared between his sister and the book.

“June, I don’t know about this” James said.

“And why not” June bemused.

“I mean— if the money is in here, its not ours to take. This belongs to Mr. Galawitz, and— and I don’t know, this is starting to creep me out.”

“What, this?” June jabbed a finger at the ominous inscription. “This is obviously to freak out kids like us.”

She had to stop herself from saying, kids like you.

“It’s just a notebook.”

James swallowed, turning towards the darkening sky.

“Well what does that even mean?”

June shrugged. “Who cares?” She snatched the notebook back, then wrapped two fingers around the string.

“No!” James shouted, clasping his hands around hers.

“What is wrong with you?” June snapped.

He gave her a firm stare. “You know what? You were probably right, June, about the money, about the whole thing. You always are, aren’t you? But something is weird about this.”

June’s eyes took a voyage into the back of her head. Yes, James, that’s true, I am always right, now give me the damn notebook.

Days before, a townie named Jonas Galavitz had won Twenty-thousand dollars in the lottery. It was quite the news story, in their non-town where a hawk sighting would have everyone pissing their pants.

As if he deserved it—June knew damn well, that money would go to the silly old man’s grave, only to be seized by his simpleton son. And what would it be used for then? Beer and half-off crab legs from the superstore?

No, it could not be allowed.

The following day, Mr. Galavitz had put flyers all over town, about a black notebook he’d lost somewhere in Breakneck Bluff; no one could be bothered to help him look. “But think about it” June had told her brother. “Why else would he put out those flyers, for some stupid notebook? Bet you anything he hid the cash in there, and now he’s desperate to get it back.”

“But why would he bring it to the Bluff?” James had asked.

“Galavitz is a paranoid schizophrenic, everyone knows that” June scoffed, like it was perfectly obvious. “Why wouldn’t he? Probably figured someone would take the money if he left if for two seconds.”

The wind died down, leaving June and James in a stagnant silence, hands still grasped tight to the book.

“You’re being stupid” June glared. “And let’s say the money is in here. Don’t you want to use it to help Granny?”

James did not break his hold, but his eyes began to dart.

“We both know Mom and Dad don’t have the money for her surgery. She hasn’t got very long.”

June knew she had him. His curving lashes had already begun to glisten. She could feel his will to stop her breaking, his fingers twitching on top of hers—the poor sap would do anything for that foolish old lady, all it would take was a final blow.

“We could save her.”

“You never cared about her.”

“But I care about you. And I know you would be upset if anything happened to her.”

No, June thought, the money would not go towards helping that woman. But not all of what she said was a lie.

James looked stricken. He sucked in a stuttering sob, then finally his hands fell away. Tears tumbled from his eyes into the marsh, as he looked down at the book without another word. Slowly, June tangled her finger underneath the string. Still watching her brother, she yanked it away, then let the cover fall open.

A shadow bloomed over the ridge, bathing June in obscurity, and her heart started to gallop as the wind picked up again; hundreds of crisp bills had begun to fly from the notebook, flapping swirled around her head.

An elated shout escaped June’s lips. She snapped the book shut and began snatching them from the air.

“What did I tell you James, can you believe it, we’re rich, we’re—”

June froze, and the notebook slipped from her hand. The bluster had again died down. With it the money fell, scattering in a circle at her feet.

“James?”

It was barely more than a whisper. There was no trace of her brother, nothing to suggest he had stood there only seconds before. She forced her head to turn through a cold paralysis, seizing her by the spine, but there was nothing, only an ambient rustle...

June gathered the notebook and the fallen cash, then turned from the river, back along the ridge trail and into town. All was quiet, the streetlights of Centre Street lit, the sky a wash of indigo. She reached her families cul-de-sac, where all cars sat in their places, empty. The houses were lit, but nobody sat inside them.

She stepped through her front door, Oakfield Road, number 77. Her house too was empty. She turned from the parlor, and made her way to the middle of the cul-de-sac, then glanced down at the notebook.

Do not open, unless you are prepared to lose what matters most.

June frowned.

Wasn’t that her? Yet she had not disappeared.

No. It wasn’t her, was it, who mattered most, or at all. It was the power she had, the power over others, that she valued.

And that could not exist if it was just her.

June smiled to herself, poked by the small pleasure that she’d figured it out. Then she began to walk. She returned to the bluff, to the edge of the highest overlook, and stared into the dark forrest trench. It was only hours ago that she had been there, listening to James ramble about his silly grade school crush. It was not silly to him, of course— in fact, that seemed to be what mattered most to him.

But James had known who she was. He never understood, but he knew, and he'd accepted it. And he was the only person to never cowered from it. A shame, really, that he was gone.

She glanced over the ridge. Better to join him than stay with herself.