Before I Let Go

ALSO BY MARIEKE NIJKAMP

This Is Where It Ends

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Copyright © 2018 by Marieke Nijkamp

Cover and internal design © 2018 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

Cover design by Nicole Hower/Sourcebooks, Inc.

Cover images © Ilona Wellmann/Trevillion Images; Dominic Burke/Getty Images; SJKoenig/Getty Images; OlyaSolodenko/Getty Images

Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

Published by Sourcebooks Fire, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

(630) 961-3900

Fax: (630) 961-2168

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Names: Nijkamp, Marieke, author.

Title: Before I let go / Marieke Nijkamp.

Description: Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks Fire, [2018] | Summary: Returning to her small Alaska home town after her bipolar best friend's death, Corey uncovers chilling secrets about the townspeople and their treatment of Kyra prior to her drowning.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017015421 | (alk. paper)

Subjects: | CYAC: Death--Fiction. | Best friends--Fiction. | Friendship--Fiction. | Community life--Alaska--Fiction. | Artists--Fiction. | Manic-depressive illness--Fiction. | Mental illness--Fiction. | Alaska--Fiction.

Classification: LCC PZ7.1.N55 Bef 2018 | DDC [Fic]--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017015421

Contents

Front Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Day One

Midnight Flight

A Land of Gold and Loneliness

Stars and Stories

Unpredictable

Strangers, Traitors, Ghosts

Framed Moments

Loss

Saints and Sourdough

Doorways

The Lonely Lake

Memories of Infinity

In the Company of Others

Foreseen and Foretold

Whispers in the Night

Day Two

Astronomical Twilight

We Can Be Heroes

Conversations

The Choices We Make

A New Lost

Happily Sometimes

Now Here’s to You

Planting Seeds

To Those We Have Loved and Lost

Pathways

Abandon Hope

Gifts

Day Three

Wholesome Lives and Hot Springs

Birds with Broken Wings

A Shrine of Blossoms

Keeper of the Spa

Writing on the Wall

Nightmares

The Way the World Changes

Do You Understand Now?

Fear Her

Of the Dead, Nothing but Good

No Need to Say Goodbye

Scorn and Celebration

Service, Interrupted

Darkness Falls

A Backpack Full of Home

The Smell of Smoke

The Taste of Ashes

Day Four

Where Do We Go From Here?

Polar Twilight

Night Swimming

Testimony

A Cure for All Ills

Fear about Town

Empty Rooms, Lost Words

Dear Diary

History

Allies

Unexpected Friendship

Northern Lights

Day Five

The Smell of Changing Weather

Understanding Dawns

Top of the Morning

The Art of Living

Stealing in

The Art of Dying

The Mist, the Woods, the Darkness

Kyra vs. the Rest of the World

Belonging

Brushstrokes

Let Me Tell You a Story

Stolen Time

The Way the World Ends

Endless Night

Endless Day

Come to Steal Your Soul Away

Saving the World

Day Six

Hero Days

Homeward Bound

All the Lives We Shared

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

A Conversation with the Author

About the Author

Back Cover

To the ones we lost along the way

As the story goes, the town of Lost Creek, Alaska, isn’t named after the eponymous stream. It’s named after its first group of colonial settlers, a handful of adventurers for whom the world didn’t have a place anymore. Lost men, who didn’t belong anywhere else. They set down their roots, stealing land that was never theirs, and carved their home between the mountains and the mines, the hot springs, the river, and the lake, during those long summer days when anything seemed possible.

Then the cold came. And these settlers discovered that they had built their home in the heart of winter. They’d come for new opportunity, but they found that winter is not malleable, and frost settles too. And no matter how hard they tried, they could not escape being lost.

Day One

Midnight Flight

The airplane’s engines rumble. The shades are drawn, and the lights are on low. The few passengers around me listen to music or try to sleep in their uncomfortable seats as we fly toward a harsher winter.

I can’t sleep. I haven’t been able to since the call came. I stare blankly at the seat in front of me, but all I can see is her. Dark curls. Hazel eyes. Big heart. A girl who smiled even when the sun did not rise in the morning, who laughed in the face of darkness, who embraced her nights and cherished her days.

She took my heart and held it safe. She promised to wait for me, with words that echo in my mind and tender touches I can still feel on my skin.

She.

Kyra.

Mine.

Let me tell you a story.

She was my best friend. She was my everything. And I lost her.

Phone Call

Corey?

Mom? I just got back from the gym with Noa, and Eileen gave me your message. What’s wrong? Are you okay? Is it Luke? What happened?

Luke’s all right, honey. But I got a call this morning. I—I wanted you to hear it from me…

A call?

Lynda—Mrs. Henderson. Something happened in Lost Creek.

Kyra? Did she have an episode? Did she run away again?

No, it’s not that. It’s… She…

Mom, tell me. Please.

Corey, I’m sorry.

Mom, are you crying?

No one knows quite what happened, but they think she wandered across the lake and found a weak spot. They found her under the ice.

Wait—what?

She drowned. Kyra’s d—

No.

Corey…

No. No.

Corey, sweetheart, listen to me.

No. I don’t want to hear this. I don’t believe you.

Corey—Corey. Slow breaths. Listen to me. I spoke to your headmistress. Come home.

No.

You’re hurting—

Kyra can’t be dead. She promised to wait for me. She knows I’m coming to visit. She can’t be dead.

Lynda thinks—

It’s the first week of January! The lake should be frozen solid! It’s not possible.

Sheriff Flynn is investigating, but nothing suggests that her death was suspicious. Honey, Lynda thinks Kyra went looking for a crack in the ice.

No, no, no.

Kyra was ill. They tried to help her, but sometimes there’s nothing anyone can do.

I shouldn’t have left her. I never even replied to her last letters.

Oh, Corey.

I need to go to Lost, Mom. I promised I’d go back to her. I promised.

Come here first. Come home. I know I worked a lot of overtime at the hospital over the holidays, but come home. We’ll postpone your trip and spend time together, just the three of us.

I’d like that. I would, Mom. But I can’t not go. Can I still stay with the Hendersons?

Yes, but—

I need to go home-home, Mom. I’m sorry.

I never knew, between the two of you girls, who was more headstrong. Lynda said the school will host a memorial service next week. And Joe found a handwritten letter to you in her room. He thought having it might help. I’ll forward you his email with the photo.

Thanks.

Honey, everyone will understand if you want to cancel your trip.

I’ll be there. I want to go. I need to go.

Kyra needs me.

Letter from Kyra to Corey

unsent

A bonfire lights the town square to mark the longest night. Remember how we thought that the world would be a happier place with more celebrations? I’m not sure that’s true. I’m not sure I’m happier.

Someone left me salmonberries and flowers this morning. People do that a lot these days. Where the fruit and the flowers come from, I don’t know. Jan’s grocery store doesn’t sell them. Yet here they are.

How is life outside the boundaries of endless time? Are you enjoying your classes at St. James? Are you as happy as I thought you would be?

I hope you are. I know you never wanted to escape, but I’m glad you did. I can’t wait to escape too. I’m trying so hard to wait for you. But it’s hard, Cor. Lost is emptier now that you’re gone. And I’m lonelier. I’m less without you, and Lost wants more. I don’t remember the last time I slept. I don’t remember the last time I smiled. The night is not dark enough. The stars you love still whisper their secrets, but sometimes I think I know too much. Around here, everyone wants answers, but I am the only one with questions.

I miss you.

I miss the dark nights.

I miss the dawn.

I miss you.

And I’m sorry.

—Kyra

A Land of Gold and Loneliness

The airport is quiet, sterile. This early in the morning, the few people in the terminal are lost in predawn slumber, and I am lost too. I’ve been traveling for thirteen hours. Three thousand miles. I settle on the floor in front of the tall glass windows as Alaska wakes up to another day with scarce sunlight. I watch planes taxi to and from the runways.

In the reflection of the window, a young girl stares at me. She sits a few seats down, her dress bright against the darkness outside and the gray of the terminal. Although she can’t be more than eight or nine, even younger than my brother, I don’t see anyone with her. The traveler to her left rests his head against his backpack, but he keeps shifting, as if in a restless sleep. An elderly couple reads a day-old newspaper. And the girl’s eyes meet mine.

She holds a handful of flowers in front of her green dress. The petals are a familiar magenta, and she picks them off one at a time.

Salmonberries don’t grow here, not at an airport on the outskirts of a city. They’re not the kind of flower you’d find at a florist’s shop, and they certainly don’t bloom in January. The girl holds flowers that shouldn’t be. From this distance, I shouldn’t be able to hear what she’s saying either, but I do, as clearly as if she were standing next to me.

Endless day, endless night, come to set your heart alight.

With each cadence, she plucks off another petal.

At the end of her tune, she smiles.

My heart stutters. I clamber to my feet and turn to get a better look at her. But the waiting area is nearly empty. I spot the backpacker. The elderly couple. A family with twin boys. There’s no sign of the girl, as if she’d only existed in the window’s reflection.

Except that flower petals lie scattered across the floor, and her voice still swirls around me, singing the song that Kyra sang to me first.

Endless night, endless day, come to steal your soul away.

• • •

The fifth and final leg of the trip gets me going. I cling to my coffee, the deception of daylight, and a combination of restlessness and homesickness. I transfer to a small floatplane that will fly me northwest, to Lost Creek, where I’ll stay for the next five days, until another plane can bring me back here. Cramming my backpack into the seat next to me, I buckle up behind the pilot. I nod to him, but from the moment we take off, my forehead is glued to the window.

The lights of Fairbanks International Airport glimmer below us. To the east, the city glows electric and yellow under a blanket of clouds. At the start of the year, Fairbanks sees fewer than four hours of sunlight a day, and Lost Creek fewer still.

Kyra loved coming to Fairbanks. She thought Lost was claustrophobic. She wanted to travel. She wanted to study and explore. But the city never called to me. It always felt too large, too anonymous. Life may be softer here, the winters less threatening, but back home in Lost, people looked out for one another. In our tight-knit community, surrounded by nothing for miles, we had each other and the deep blue of twilight. To me, Lost felt safe.

Even now, I’m more at ease at St. James’s small boarding school in Dauphin than I am in the large house Mom bought in Winnipeg. She calls the neighborhood affluent and prosperous, though people never leave the confines of their own yards. Mom is rarely there to notice because she works long days at the children’s hospital. At least at school I have a community, friends, teammates. Still, we may have made our home in Canada, but I left my heart in Lost.

The plane leans north, and Fairbanks disappears behind us. We fly to an otherworldly place, one that does not play by the same rules. The evergreens wear an armor of snow. The air shimmers with cold. Lost Creek is godforsaken, with winters that feel cruel and permanent, and we are proud of our resilience. The journey to Lost is a rush of turbulence through snow and memories, and the refrain of those same awful words: Endless night, endless day. Come to steal your soul away.

By the time Lost comes into view, I’m spread thin by exhaustion and fear. Time flies like we do, and I’m not ready. I’m not ready to face that Kyra won’t be waiting for me, and I’m not sure I ever will be. I’m torn between homesickness so deep it aches and the debilitating uncertainty of what lies ahead, of not understanding what happened to my best friend.

I push my nails deep into the palms of my hands and keep my eyes on the landscape as we prepare to land. To the left are the camping grounds where a handful of tourists spend their summers fishing on the lake and hunting bears in the woods. The cabins are abandoned in winter, groaning under their blanket of snow.

To the right are the old mining works. Gold is still rumored to lie beneath the hills—or heavy metals, perhaps—but the easily accessible ores were all exhausted decades ago. Mining deeper would be expensive, and our mine is too small to be profitable. What lies under the land may hold promises of riches, but for Lost Creek, those promises are empty, and people know better than to rush now. Our community has grown to depend on itself and the carefully cultivated land, not on the unpredictable nature.

Our community. Lost Creek, established in 1898, population 247.

I breathe. Two hundred forty-six.

Bordered by its eponymous river, Lost Creek stands against the elements. Our small, narrow, gold-rush town has a police station, a combined elementary and high school, an office for the doctor with whom Mom often worked, a moderately well-stocked grocery store, a bakery, a sole café/pub, a post office/tourist center, and an abandoned spa with hot springs, which sits outside the borders of town. The spa is a dash of color on the bleak horizon. The first time Kyra and I went there, we thought it was a superhero headquarters.

The landing gear hits the ground with a jolt and my seat belt strains against my lap from the force. We bump to a stop. This runway and the single road through the interior are the only paths that connect Lost Creek to civilization. These two connections to the outside world used to be all we needed to survive. Nothing could harm us within these borders. Within this community, we stood together. All of Lost against the rest of the world.

All of us.

All of us except one. All of us except Kyra, who never felt like she belonged. She never cared for hunting or camping. Like her grandfather, Kyra wanted to study storytelling. She collected the town’s myths and legends, and she was always curious about what lay beyond. But Lost is a town that thrives on secrets, and in Kyra, all of Lost’s secrets lay exposed.

Stars and Stories

Two Years Before

In Lost, the easiest way to fit in is to fall into the town’s rhythm. And on the days when Kyra wasn’t with me, I did. I did my homework and my chores. I didn’t talk back to the adults in town. I kept an eye on Luke when Mom was away. I had my stars in the sky, and I didn’t need to go anywhere to observe them.

It should be enough, I told Kyra, when I snuck into her room at midnight.

She sat at her desk, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, half a dozen books open in front of her. Her knees were pulled up to her chin, glasses perched