Once upon a time . . .

I see a painting in my head, a big red-dirt desert stretching as far as the eye can see, and everywhere there’s little pieces of Geordie scattered. The twigs and leaves, rattling across stone outcrops and dropping into arroyos. The dirt turning to dust and blowing from one end of the horizon to the other.

The painting’s real. It’s there whether I close my eyes or not.

Once upon a time . . .

I was going to do better than all the king’s soldiers and put him back together again.

I was going to spin straw into gold and buy him back from the underworld.

I was going to weave a nettle coat and wear it until the end of my days in trade for his life.

I would have done anything.

Once upon a time . . .

But that hope’s gone now. I can’t possibly gather up all the debris that went skittering down the side of the mesa. The dirt and leaves and twigs.

I’m not aware of Lizzie and Honey coming back to where I’ve fallen until Lizzie touches my arm.

Oh, Jilly, she says.

I can’t speak. I can’t do anything but stare at that tiny pail far below. Some of the dirt that spilled from it is close at hand, dark and moist where it lies on the red sand and rock. The heat’s so intense that I can watch it dry out and turn into dust while I crouch here, one arm around the rock that saved me from falling as well.

We need to keep moving, Honey says. We need to get out of the sun.

She’s right. We do. Or at least they do.

I don’t care anymore.

I could take being the Broken Girl and losing my art. Just like I took the horrible years of Del hurting me and the foster homes and then my running away and living on the streets. I could even take the nightmare of being stuck somewhere in my own head, reliving it all over again.

But I can’t take losing Geordie.

Not like this.

If he were in love with another woman again, or had just moved away . . .

But he isn’t and he didn’t.

He came to rescue me and got turned into dirt and crap that I’ve now managed to dump all over the side of this mesa.

Once upon a time . . .

Fairy tales saved my life as a kid, but they can’t help me anymore.

Rabedy