I was afraid of so much more than that, but I absolutely, without a doubt, loved Tyler – I needed him, I never wanted him to leave. He was my world.
‘I love you too, Tyler.’
We fell asleep that way, me in Tyler’s arms, resolved to memorise every part of him as I held onto him tightly. As I held on for dear life.
— 32 —
I was back at the lake. We loved the stunning maple, but it was a perfect night for something different.
Tyler stood before me at the bottom of the grass, beside the jetty that led to the lake, hands in his pockets and adoration in his eyes. He was so beautiful, I could look at him all night – or day; depending on which reality we were talking about.
Dusk hovered over us, the sky overflowing with purples, blues, and oranges, showing off like a flirting peacock. Pink clouds floated on the horizon and reflected off the crystal, still waters of the lake. I sighed at its beauty, and Tyler strolled up the grass and placed his hand in mine.
‘I’m gonna miss the pink clouds,’ he said.
‘No, you won’t. You’ll never have seen them before.’
‘Ah, yeah.’ He sounded pained at the realisation.
‘Oh my God.’ I spun and faced him. ‘You won’t have had the cupcakes. You’ll go back to not knowing the joy of peanut butter, chocolate cupcakes.’
He laughed, and I joined in, happy for a second of bliss in an otherwise sombre moment.
‘No, this is serious, Tyler, your life is going to be so much worse for the lack of those little pieces of heaven.’
‘It’s true. Life as I know it will be one big, fat lie.’ He had a mischievous glimmer in his eyes. ‘But there’ll be something much more heavenly I’ll miss.’
He tugged on my hand, and I stepped into him as he lowered his lips to mine. I agreed completely and wholeheartedly – this was heavenly.
When we surfaced for air, we decided a swim was in order. We immersed ourselves in the cool, calm water and floated like two starfish, arms and legs outstretched, under our real-life Monet painting.
‘So I’ve been thinking. I know I’ve been acting like this was never gonna happen, as if it wouldn’t if I just believed it wouldn’t, but there’s a part of me afraid of it too. I think of what it might be like for you, but I can’t even imagine it. I know I’ll be clueless on the other side of what’s to come, but I wanted to do something for you. I dunno; give you something to hold onto. I can’t give you a letter, or a gift. Anything from me, that’s a part of me, will be gone. But I’ve found something. Something that was here before I arrived and will stay after I’ve gone. Something you have to promise you’ll only go to find if this really does happen – I’m still hoping it won’t, you know.’
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘With every ounce of willpower, I’m hoping.’
‘So there’s a book in the school library. Right next to our back corner table, in the European history section.’
‘Okay?’ Where was he going with this?
‘It jumped out at me one day; it’s called Queen Victoria.’
‘As in this Queen Victoria?’ I held my arm up, and my bracelet slid down my wrist.
‘Is there more than one?’
‘Probably, don’t they rotate names over there?’
‘Ha, yeah, but yes, that’s the one. If one day, you find you’ve done the unthinkable and dreamed me out of your existence–’
‘Hey, don’t say it like I’m some heartless ogre.’
‘Sorry, just saying it like it is.’
‘You’re mean.’ I shoved a handful of water into his face.
Tyler splashed me back. ‘I know, but you love me,’ he said with a grin, and my smile faded with realisation again.
With a solemn face, I said, ‘Yes, I do love you.’
Tyler pulled me into his arms as we kicked our legs to stay afloat, even though every part of me wanted to hold tight, still my feet, and sink to the bottom of the lake with him. Buried in the murky brown water we’d still be together, I wouldn’t have to worry that he’d leave me. Romeo and Juliet had some truth to it after all, as he’d once said. Their story played out every day by lovers desperate to do anything to keep from being torn apart. My shoulders heaved as I held my tears at bay, I refused to let them out, I didn’t want to ruin this moment.
‘Oh, Lucy, it’s going to be all right. I promise. Somehow, I’ll make my way back to you. We’re meant to be, Batman and Robin belong together.’ He smiled against me, and I laughed. ‘We’ll find a way of getting back here. You just have to wait for me.’
I didn’t know how he thought it possible. If he had no recollection of me, no idea I even existed, what chance was there he’d make his way back to me? I wanted to say so, but I pressed my lips together, determined to keep the words from escaping, because I too needed to believe in that tiny, fragile chance.
I’d been ripped from dreams before, woken suddenly in the middle of a nightmare, with only half the story played out. There were times I had the strength to keep from leaving a dream, but sometimes the traction was too strong to fight.
I wasn’t being woken, but the pull trying to wrench me out of Tyler’s arms had an energy I’d not come up against before. Tyler held onto me, he kissed my lips fiercely, and gave me the fight I needed to stay a little longer. I closed my eyes as I breathed him in for the last time.
‘I don’t want to go. I can’t do this without you,’ I cried. ‘I won’t do it, I won’t change the crash.’
‘You’re too selfless not to, Lucy. And you’re going to be great, I know it.’ His hand slipped from mine. Tears poured from my eyes. His face filled with fear, and he cried too. ‘It’s on page fifty-five.’
The force yanked me entirely from his hold, but our eyes stayed locked together, and when I could no longer clearly see his face, he called one last time to me. ‘Thank you for bringing my dad back.’
Then I left.
I returned to the artificially bright rooms of air traffic control. My legs shook, trembling from the aftermath of where I’d been, of what lay ahead. I’d arrived before the call for help, but before that happened I needed to make sure Bun Lady wasn’t left alone this time. She’d need to use the annoyance I sensed in her last time, to speak up and deter her colleague from leaving her side.
Buzz-cut slid out his chair and stood, and she pushed her headpiece back and cranked her neck. ‘Don’t you dare, Dave. Get your ass back in that chair, I’m getting swamped.’
Alerted by her voice, the suited man in the doorway, who I suspected was some kind of superior, entered the room. It was the last thing this Dave guy needed to prevent him leaving his desk. Job done.
The call came in from Tyler’s dad, and together, as a fully alert team, air traffic control was able to authenticate the correct altitude. But with failing equipment the pilots still needed to bring the plane down for an emergency landing.
My head swirled, and moments later my hands held onto armrests I’d grown well acquainted with, surrounded by familiar faces, in a seat I’d frequented more than I’d have liked.
The panicking hadn’t yet ceased, a few oxygen masks dangling from the ceiling only increasing the fear. Heads were still bowed in prayer. Little did they know, the God they prayed to had handballed their request, and the girl in seat 41H had already answered their prayers – maybe, we were yet to see. My heart pounded with belief that I may have done it. I still held onto the possibility and hope that I hadn’t and I’d wake up in Tyler’s arms. But as I considered my surroundings, the mother and child in the seat diagonally across from me, the two ladies next to me, even the creepy-looking dude across the aisle, I knew, just as Tyler did, I couldn’t be selfish, not when all these lives were at stake. I wanted to save them all, but why did I have to choose them over him? I shut my eyes from the unfairness of it, clenching my teeth together, holding back the trembling.
I gripped the armrests as the plane began to dive, and then righted itself, before Tyler’s dad’s voice boomed throu
gh the plane, alerting the passengers that the plane was heading down for an emergency landing at Kona International Airport in Hawaii.
My heart pounded heavily with the rocky decent, the cries around me like a drill to my head. The plane jolted sideways, jarring an overhead compartment loose, sending an overly stuffed backpack onto a man’s head, followed by a small suitcase thumping into the aisle. More cries.
Lights flickered in the cabin, the wailing coming and going with the intermittent darkness. I glanced out the window and caught the lights from the buildings below, a whir of orange and yellow. Shit, we were coming in fast. Terror coursed through me. I swallowed the bile in my throat.
My head slammed into the back of my seat as the plane lurched up, loosening more oxygen masks from their panels. The elderly lady continued to mutter to herself, words I could no longer hear above the roar of the engine. Releasing my hold on the arm rest, I gripped her hand. Her wrinkled fingers squeezed tightly, and she lifted her tear-filled gaze to mine.
The lights flew past the window, larger, brighter, and I held my breath. The nose pitched up again, slamming me back in the seat, before the deafening crunch of the tail smacking the tarmac. We lifted off the runway and smashed down again, tail, then wheels, then nose. My head whacked the seat in front of me as I was thrown forward, a sharp pain stabbing into my stomach from the seatbelt. Grinding metal thundered as we careened for an eternity, eventually coming to a stop.
My head slumped back, and I started to breathe again.
Huge cheers erupted, and the cabin filled with joy. I glanced around the plane, at the ecstatic faces surrounding me. I tried to scrounge up some happiness for these people, but it was an elusive ask. I wiped my moist hands on my legs and caught the eye of the man opposite me. He smiled, a disturbingly crooked arch that I wanted to look away from, but then he spoke.
‘Thank God,’ he said and leaned sideways into the aisle. ‘I had big plans for today.’
The tops of my cheeks rose slightly, and I murmured a half-hearted agreement before turning away from him and staring straight in front, the fear of what lay ahead steadily filling me with unease. My pulse raced; I didn’t want to wake up. I couldn’t. What would be waiting for me? But more than that, who? Sorrow clenched around my heart, and the sting of a single tear crept down my cheek.
I woke alone, my body numb with dread, but somehow I managed to sit up and place my feet on the ground.
My jet bracelet sat on the table beside my bed. I had no need to wear it today; no deaths were witnessed last night. The white gemstone band Tyler had given me wasn’t beside it, and it took a few seconds for the implication to hit me like a sledge hammer, and I caught a sob in my throat. I picked up the jet and placed it on my wrist.
I rubbed the goose bumps on my arms, and dressed slowly in my school gear, I only had one place to get to this morning. On unsteady legs, I made my way downstairs, each agonising step ramming the jagged knife further into my heart.
I wasn’t sure I could bear to face anyone so early in the morning and scribbled a quick note to leave on the table.
Walking to school today.
In a haze, behind blurry eyes, with no life in me to run, I waded through fog and inched toward his house. Music – always my companion – walked with me. Billie Eilish and Khalid’s ‘Lovely’.
I rounded the corner to his street, and the large blue ‘For Sale’ sign that’d been erected for months, perhaps even years, before Tyler showed up, stood once again on the front lawn of the red-bricked house. I remained there for what felt like hours in silent denial. The day before it had been a house full of life; not happy life, but still…life.
Except it wasn’t yesterday at all.
It had never happened.
His days with me were merely a drop in an existence vaster than the oceans, and yet the heaviness of the loss weighed as much as eternity itself. A weight that pressed in on my sides, constricting any breath left in me.
I pressed my hand upon my chest, desperate for an easy breath that didn’t want to come. I turned up the music, and my body trembled with the graceful swirl of the violin, echoing like the sorrow growing within me. I willed my feet away from the house and through the path toward our hill. I sat on the grass and, finally able to let out what had been building all morning, I raised my face to the sky and screamed out in agony to relieve an ache I couldn’t describe. The cows watched as I yelled and cried, and tears and pain fell.
When at last I had nothing left in me, I lifted myself up and dragged my legs, bit by aching bit, back down the path. I reached the top of the road and stopped, as I often did, to reflect on a simpler time, a happier time before life chewed us up and spat us out as only a semblance of what we’d been.
It’d been six years ago, our whitest winter in a long time, and it had snowed heavily overnight during one of Granny Tess and Pop’s visits. We woke to the most magical display right outside our doorstep. The silence was heavenly, and it smelled of happiness.
Pop darted out the door before us, and together we made our way to the end of our street, rounded the bend and climbed the steep road, moments before the rest of our crew joined us.
Pop laid down his homemade sled – the cardboard packaging from our new fridge.
‘Hop on, Lucy Lou,’ he said with a grin, holding it still above the pearly white snow for me.
I didn’t need much encouragement and jumped on with a wide grin to match Pop’s. Max climbed on followed by Sean and Cal and we were all set. My cold fingers gripped the thin piece of rope attached to the front of our sled.
We all turned as Jake and Richie wedged themselves on the ugly, green plastic toboggan Richie had ‘borrowed’ from the ski resort the year before. Jake had dared him to break the law, and it was the least dishonest thing he could come up with, because he always planned to return it. He never did.
‘You guys are mince,’ Jake called. He sat behind Richie, who had his tell-tale beanie pulled tightly on his head, his white face sporting the same entire-face-grin his brother often wore.
‘No we’re not, we’re the awesome foursome, right guys?’ I said over my shoulder.
‘Impossible!’ Jake yelled.
‘Raise the starting flag, Pops,’ Richie called from his driver’s seat – he always called him Pops.
‘Nothing’s impossible,’ Pop whispered in my ear and stood to raise his arm. Max’s hands dug into my sides, and I fixed my eyes on the bottom of the hill.
‘Ready. Set…’ Pop lowered his arm. ‘Fly!’
*****
I stepped into the school building and walked toward an eerily quiet, early morning library. The lump in my throat quivered as I remembered the first dream I shared with Tyler, here in these corridors.
Once in the library I headed straight to the section I’d seen many times before. I ran my fingers along the spines until I bumped into a large book: Queen Victoria. I plucked it out and sat at the table. I placed my trembling hands on either side of the book and stared at the gold hardcover, at the face of the Queen staring back at me.
I thumbed the pages until I reached fifty-five. I could still hear his voice as he called the words to me. His smooth, always calm voice, giving me one last thing to hold on to. My pulse sped at the awareness that the words in front of me might be the last thing I ever received from Tyler. I inwardly thanked him for his forward thinking. Always my Robin.
I closed my eyes and drew in a large breath.
On the page were words Prince Albert had written to Queen Victoria before they married, dated November fifteenth, eighteen-thirty-nine – one hundred and seventy nine years past.
‘Dearest deeply loved Victoria,’
According to your wish, and by the urging of my heart to talk to you and open my heart to you, I send these lines. We arrived safely at Calais, and Lord Alfred Paget is to re-cross in a quarter of an hour, and will arrive at Windsor early tomorrow. The state of the tide and strong wind forced us to start at half past two in the morning and
we reached here at about 6 o’clock. Even then the firebrand could not approach the quay, so that we decided to go ashore in a smaller boat. We both, Schenk, and all the servants were fearfully ill; I have hardly recovered yet.’
I couldn’t imagine why Tyler had directed me to this page, what kind of code breaking skills did I need to decipher the hidden message in all these words? And then I read on…
‘I need not tell you that since we left, all my thoughts have been with you at Windsor and that your image fills my whole soul.
Even in my dreams I never imagined that I should find so much love on earth. How that moment shines for me still when I was close to you, with your hand in mine! Those days flew by so quickly, but our separation will fly equally so.
Ernest wishes me to say a thousand nice things to you. With promises of unchanging love and devotion, your ever true Albert.
Tears streamed down my cheeks and dampened the page, and the words from the borrowed love letter sank in. He’d gone. He no longer knew me. A dizzying pulse raged in my temple. The memory of me might’ve faded from his mind, but it didn’t lessen the pounding clarity of all the memories I had of him.
Like the years since Albert had written to Victoria, my months with Tyler had vanished, now etched into the subconsciousness of time, but as real to me as the stars threaded in the night sky. Just as real, yet equally unreachable.
And with his promise of unchanging love through our cosmic separation, he gave me a small measure of comfort, while at the same time calmly reached around into my breast pocket and stole every breath he’d ever given me.
After a moment, or maybe a thousand years, I brushed the drying tears from my cheeks and scraped my chair out. I gathered up the book and carried it to the photocopier at the far end of the library and placed it face down on the glass.
I read the words again. And again. Pulled out a pen from my bag and traced a line under the words, ‘our separation will fly equally so’. Was it possible? I wanted to believe it was. I chose to believe it was.
Lucid Page 26