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

as I was making my way back up.
    I ran toward the tree line, searching for any sign of her, for another path she might have taken. I refused to believe that she had fallen off the edge.
    Just as I noticed another path through the woods that seemed to head south and I started to go toward it, I heard footfalls in the leaves. I didn’t wait to see if it was her, I ran blindly straight into the woods. A skinny branch slapped me across the forehead on my way, but I didn’t stop.
    Bray and I nearly crashed into each other.
    “Shit, baby! Where the hell did you
go
? Scared the
hell
out of me!” I started to pull her into a hug, but something about her was off and I stopped. She didn’t respond or even raise her head to look at me.
    “Are you all right?”
    I took her hands into mine. Hers were shaking. Her whole body was shaking.
    I cupped her face in my palms and raised her head so that she’d look at me. She was crying, and something in her eyes… I couldn’t place it, but it haunted me. I wondered if she even knew I was standing right in front of her. Her hair was messy, with pieces of leaves stuck within a mass of strands. Dirt was smeared across her left cheek. She looked like she’d been in a fight.
    I touched her split lip, where a thin line of blood glistened near the corner. “Bray, you’re scaring me. What happened to you?” I shook her gently and then more aggressively when she still didn’t respond. “What happened? Talk to me!”
    Her lips trembled and more tears seeped from the corners of her eyes. And then as if a floodgate had been opened, she started screaming through her tears, “It was my fault! Elias! Oh my God!”
    “
What happened?
” I roared, scared for her and for myself, my heart about to burst through my chest.
    “Jana!” her voice trembled and she began to stutter. “Sh-she fell. Jana f-fell. Right off the cliff!”
    “What?” I said, suddenly almost completely calm. I don’t think what she had just said registered in my mind yet.
    Then suddenly, it
did
register and my heart stopped.
    I crouched down in front of her, squeezed her trembling hands within mine, and I looked up into her reddened, tear-soaked eyes as she stood before me.
    “Bray, look at me.
Look
at me.” She did. “Are you
sure
?”
    She nodded in an unsteady, jerking motion. The tears never stopped flowing. Her pretty face distorted with every kind of pain and anguish and guilt that a person could possibly feel at once.
    “Show me,” I said with intent, trying to contain the dread and panic. “Take me to where it happened.”
    She shook her head at first but then nodded. “OK.”
    I followed close beside her as she led me through the woods toward the edge of a ravine not even two minutes from the clearing. I held her hand tight as I stepped to the edge and looked over. The drop was no more than fifty or sixty feet, where I could clearly see Jana’s body splayed out on the rocks.
    “Holy shit….”
    Bray ruptured into heartrending sobs, and she buried her face in her hands. I seized her and pulled her harshly against my chest, squeezing my arms tight around her shaking body, my hands holding fast to her head.
    “Shhh, baby please, stop crying. Listen to me. We have to go down there. We have make sure. Can you do that? Bray, can you help me?” I tried my best to calm her down. I held her gaze until she seemed fully coherent and cooperative. I wiped the tears from her cheeks.
    She nodded slowly.
    “We’ll figure this out, OK? Now let’s go.”
    It took us what felt like a very long time, thirty minutes at least, to find the easiest way partway down the ravine and to Jana’s body. And once we got there, I knew before we even got close enough to see if she was breathing, that she dead.
    Jana was dead. Jana was dead.
    The words kept running through my mind, over and over again like a broken record. I think for two minutes straight I had an out-of-body experience, because nothing around me felt real. I