by Sarah Beard
I want her to always look this way. I know that’s not possible, but this is how I want to remember her.
For now, I banish all thoughts of what tomorrow will bring, and allow myself to imagine a future with her. A lifetime of days just like today, at the end of which I’ll have a million mental snapshots of her hair stirring in the ocean breeze, of her freckled cheeks turning pink, of her blue eyes rising to meet mine, of her soft lips parting to say my name. I see her hair pinned up and adorned with white flowers and a veil. I see her greeting me with a smile in the doorway of our little home. I see her in the ocean, laughing while teaching our kids to surf.
A flood of pain and joy and longing rises up inside me, and if I don’t open the floodgates now, I just might drown all over again. So I pick up my guitar, and set the deluge free.
Avery watches in quiet appreciation as I strum a progression of chords in a swaying rhythm, like a boat rocking gently in undulating waves. It comes easy, like the song was already written and I’m merely reading the tablature. The words come effortlessly too, as though they’ve been floating around in my mind for months, and now I’m plucking them out of the air and dropping them into their rightful place in the melody.
“In this borrowed heaven, in this sliver of time … A lifetime unfolds where I’m hers and she’s mine.”
The way her blue eyes light up at my lyrics makes my lungs swell, making it kind of hard to get the next lines out.
“The sky is raining stars, four seasons intertwine…. She makes the tides reverse and the drums beat out of time.”
She closes her eyes as though she doesn’t want her vision getting in the way of the music. It seems to draw her in, and her body slowly leans toward me until she’s so close I can see the individual eyelashes shadowing her cheeks.
“I’m lost in her embrace, tangled in gold hair…. Breathing in white petals, blissfully ensnared.”
In all my attempts to escape the misery of my childhood by imagining a brighter future, I never imagined this. Never imagined her. How it feels to love her. How it makes me wish I were a better person. How it makes me want to find all the dark things inside of me and wrench them out and burn them. I almost feel unworthy of her love and vitality and beauty. I never could have imagined it, because it’s a beauty that can’t be seen with the eye.
“She’s a black swan in the sea, an unexpected good charm…. My heart was buried alive, but it rises in her arms.”
As the last chord resonates in the salty air, Avery gazes at me quietly with a look I can’t quite discern. Every time I think I can define it, it changes to something else. Awe, reverence, and admiration all cross her face before her lips curve into a warm smile. She tilts her head and squints at me, then asks softly, “Where did you come from?”
I don’t know how to answer, so I just give a breathy laugh.
She scoots closer until her knees are touching mine, and then she shakes her head. “I’m serious.” She sighs, and I feel her sweet breath on my face. It makes me want to kiss her, but she’s studying me so intensely that I figure it’s probably not the right moment. “Where did you come from?” she repeats.
I set my guitar on the blanket so there’s nothing between us. “Michigan, remember?”
“I’ve never met anyone like you.” Her hand comes to my shirt collar, and she clutches it between her fingers. Now I really want to kiss her. But she keeps talking. “Four days ago, my life was something different. And then you come along, and now …” Her blue eyes slowly well up and she gets this worried look on her face as though someone just gave her bad news.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, brushing her cheek with the back of my finger.
“Nothing. I’m just … dangerously happy.” Her hand comes to rest on my knee, sending a shot of heat up my leg and into my abdomen. Her other hand is still on my collar, and she tugs me closer until her lips find mine. Her kiss is so soft and exquisite that for a moment the cliff and the ocean and the sky fall away, because there’s only her.
She leans back and looks at me, the fear gone from her face. “So what do I need to do to get more answers from you today?”
I clear my throat, still reeling a bit from her kiss. “Nothing. You have a VIP pass now.”
She raises one corner of her mouth and a skeptical eyebrow.
I’ll probably never have an obituary, or a eulogy, or even a gravestone. Nothing to leave behind to tell people about my short and pathetic life. But I want to leave some of myself behind. I want someone to know and remember me, not only for who I was as a kid, but for who I’ve become. “I’m an open book, Avery Ambrose. I want you to know everything about me.”
She hesitates, like she’s unsure whether I mean it. “Really?”
I almost say yes, but there’s one chapter in my book that will have to remain stapled shut—the one where I die. However, I’m sure I can avoid the subject easily enough while still remaining honest. I’ve had four days of practice, after all. “Ask me anything.”
“Okay, then.” She leans back on her hands and lifts her face to the sky, biting her lower lip while deciding what to ask me. She’s wearing little aquamarine studs in her ears, and they catch a bit of sunlight and sparkle. I see her come to some sort of conclusion, and then she looks at me. “Why aren’t you off pursuing a music career when you play and sing like that? And don’t give me some lame, vague answer like ‘life.’ ” She says the last word with a deep voice, attempting to impersonate my answer from a couple days ago. It makes me laugh for a second, until I realize that giving an honest answer as promised is going to be harder than I thought.
I roll onto my stomach and play with the grass at the edge of the blanket while formulating a reply. I’m tempted to make up some BS answer about how I realized there were more important things in life than music and fame and fortune and blah blah blah, but something tells me she’ll see right through it. And then I find myself thinking that if music were the one thing I could have taken with me when I died, maybe my death would have been bearable. Charles urged me yesterday to accept and live my new life, but how can I when everything I love, everything that brings me joy, has to be left behind?
“Come see what awaits you in Elysium,” he said. “It’s more than you can imagine.” Maybe things are different there. Maybe that’s where the music is, and it’s been my unwillingness to move on that’s kept me from happiness in the next life.
Avery’s hand falls lightly on my wrist, and I realize she’s still waiting for an answer. “It’s still the plan,” I say. “I’ve just been delayed with … everything.”
She must think I’m referring to running away and all the resulting complications, because she seems satisfied with my answer. “That’s good to hear.” She’s lying on her stomach now too, and she scoots closer until the side of her body is pressed against mine. It’s like hooking up to a generator the way it makes every cell in this body hum to life. She loops her arm under mine, and the ends of her hair tickle the skin on my forearm.
I turn and kiss her temple, leaving my lips there. “Anything else you want to know?”
She tears off a blade of grass and splits it down the center. “Yesterday,” she says hesitantly, “you said you had a rap sheet.” She makes an apologetic face. “What’s on it?”
“Hm,” I grunt. “Did I say ‘open book’? I forgot to mention that some of the pages have been torn out.”
She nudges me with her shoulder. “I won’t judge. I just … I don’t know. I want to know all of you. I trust you with my secrets, and I want you to trust me.”
I let out a long sigh, and then look away so I don’t have to see her reaction to my confession. “Vandalism. Theft. Assault. Jaywalking.” I throw on the jaywalking at the end, hoping she won’t dwell on the assault. But I hope in vain.
“Assault against who?” I feel her arm tense under mine, as if she’s suddenly nervous to be here with me.
“I had a lot of emotions I didn’t know how to deal with when I was growing up.
Grief from losing my mom, stress from trying to protect and take care of my sisters, and dealing with my dad …” I don’t want to go there, so I shake my head, casting the memories out. “And then being separated from my sisters and placed in strange homes with strange people … my feelings were all over the place. I looked for conflict, because it was an avenue to release all the frustration and anger and everything else inside me. That’s no excuse, of course. But every time I hurt someone, my foster parents would get scared and I’d get sent to a new home. Over, and over, and over.”
Avery rubs my arm consolingly, but I still can’t look at her. I don’t want to see the disappointment or judgment or pity in her eyes. So I roll on my back and gaze up at the lacy white clouds, and keep talking. “I went through more therapists than I can count, but fought against everyone who tried to help me because … I don’t know. I guess I couldn’t bring myself to believe that they actually cared. Maybe they did. But when they’d take out their little books and worksheets and assign me mental exercises and tools to work through my emotions, I couldn’t help wondering how many other kids they’d given the same canned advice to. It made me feel like one more file in their cabinet that they’d pull out every now and then to work on.” I close my eyes. I’ve never talked to anyone like this, so openly, so vulnerable. It feels scary and liberating at the same time. I open my eyes. High in the sky above me, a dark bird drifts on the headwind.
“You seem like a different person than the one you’re describing,” Avery says quietly.
“I guess that’s because I am. Mostly thanks to Charles. I was placed with him when I was sixteen, and he was different than everyone else. Instead of trying to baby me or pretend to care about me, he put me to work in his vineyard. At first I hated it, but he was persistent and patient. There was this one day when all my pent-up anger came bursting out, and I took it out on one of his vines. I kicked and tore the thing apart. When Charles came over to see what was happening, I thought he was going to kick my can and throw me out.”
I pause and smile at the memory. “But he just looked at me, and at the shredded vine, and at me again, and then said, ‘Well, sonny, I guess now would be a good time to show you how to repair a vine.’ And that’s when I knew. Knew that he really cared about me. He was always patient with me, and eventually taught me better ways to vent my emotions, like through music and hard work. But then, like I told you, he passed away last winter.”
And so did I. But I’m trying really hard not to think about that right now.
Avery is so quiet that I finally brave a glance at her. She’s lying on her side watching me, head propped on her hand, and her expression is the last thing I expected to see. It’s a medley of admiration and reverence, of tenderness and love. She slides closer and lays her hand on my cheek, stroking my skin with her thumb.
In the months since my death, it’s been my job to heal dozens of people. But in Avery’s touch, I feel more healing power than I’ve ever felt leave my own hands. It gathers up the dark things, capturing them and dissolving them like bleach on a stain. It’s a cleansing feeling I’ve ached for my entire life, and her soft fingertips are the last place I would have expected to find it.
“You’re a beautiful person,” she says softly, and then her face gets all blurry because tears are suddenly flooding my vision.
I shut my eyes and try to swallow them back, but they squeeze through the cracks and trickle down my temple. I don’t want to cry right now. I don’t want to waste this day by turning into a mess. But healing, in all its warmth and light and grace, is also painful. There’s a sudden void where all my sorrow once dwelled, and when the peace and warmth come rushing in to fill that space, it’s a shock because I’ve never felt anything like it.
I feel her fingers brushing away my tears, feel her lips on my forehead, on my cheeks, on my lips. Her arm slides around the back of my neck as she pulls me close to her.
In this moment, I have no regrets. I don’t regret dying for her. I don’t regret stealing Charles’s ring. And I don’t regret letting her in to love and heal me. Because even if it’s only for a little while, I now know what it is to love and be loved. And really, Avery is the one who has saved me. She’s salvaged my life, taken something stained and damaged and transformed it into something valuable.
The waves crash into the rocks below, drowning out all other sound, and it feels as though Avery and I are the only two people on this Earth. If I could, I would stay here forever with her. But I can’t, so the best I can do is leave a piece of me behind.
“I have something for you,” I say, pulling away. I sit up and open my guitar case, retrieving the notebook of my lyrics. The edges are gray with dirt, worn from being laid out on sidewalks and street corners and truck stop tables. But the pages inside hold my heart and soul, the only parts of me I can leave with her. I hand it to her.
“What’s this?” she asks, sitting up.
“Songs I’ve written.”
She lets the pages fall open, then flips through, reading as she goes. Her face turns sad, and she shakes her head. “You can’t give this to me.”
“Yes, I can.”
“But—”
“Please.” My voice is strained. “It would mean the world to me if you’d take it. It’s the only thing I have to give you.”
She looks at me uncertainly for a long time, and then her face relaxes and she nods. “Okay. But if you ever need it …”
“I’ll know where to find it.”
She smiles, and then her gaze sweeps over my face, her expression turning perplexed as though she’s looking at a sliding puzzle and trying to figure out how to move the tiles into their proper place. “Kai, I have to tell you something.”
Maybe it’s the serious tone in her voice, but my stomach tenses up. “What?”
“Something really weird is happening to me.” She pauses, reaching up and playing with a button on my shirt. “I keep having these memories. Of the day that boy drowned. And … I’ve been getting glimpses of him.”
It’s a good thing she’s not looking at my face, because my eyes go wide.
“And,” she continues, “I know this sounds nuts, but the face that I see … is yours.”
I pray that she doesn’t lift her eyes, because if she does, she’ll know the truth. It takes one, two, three seconds to wrestle my face into composure. I can play this off. She can’t know it was me. I tilt my head, like what she said is the strangest thing I’ve ever heard. “Huh. That’s weird.”
She finally looks at me. “I know. And I know this is crazy to ask, but … is there any possible way that it could’ve been you that day?”
“Avery,” I say without missing a beat. “If it was me, would I be sitting here now?” Her cheeks turn crimson, and then her ears too. I feel bad, but what else am I supposed to say? Why, yes, it was me. I’ve been keeping my true identity from you for four days. And by the way, I’m dead. No—there’s nothing else to say.
“I know—you’re right,” she says sheepishly. “I think my mind is just playing tricks on me.” She bites her lip and stands, walking toward the fringe of the cliff. She stops a few feet from the rim and looks out to sea. The wind is whipping the tops of the waves white and blowing her hair off her back and shoulders. She wraps her arms around her waist, obviously troubled.
I go and stand behind her, circling my arms around her shoulders and drawing her close to my chest. Dipping my head to her ear, I softly say, “You don’t have to remember his face to remember him. Remembering what he did for you is enough.”
She’s quiet for a long time as she gazes out at the blue horizon, watching a sailboat slowly disappear into the seam between earth and sky. Then in a small voice she says, “Do you really have to leave?”
I should tell her that I’m leaving in the morning. But I can’t bring myself to say it because it will crack apart this perfect day that I’ve so carefully constructed. There’s more time. Not much, but enough to save bad news for later.
The mast of the sailboat is almost gone now, and I say, “When I do leave, I won’t really be gone. I’ll be just over the horizon.” I bury my lips in her hair. “And it won’t be good-bye forever.” At least I hope with everything in me that it won’t. I have to believe that. And I hope that long after I’m gone, she still believes it too.
She turns in my embrace and slides her arms around my waist, burrowing into my chest. I soak in the warmth of her body, the softness of her hair between my fingers, the tickle of her breath on my arm, and push away all thoughts of tomorrow.
Today, she’s mine, and I’m hers, and nothing—not even death—can separate us.
When I walk Avery to her mom’s porch at dusk, I don’t want to leave. She must not want me to leave either, because before I can begin my half-baked this-is-goodbye-for-this-life speech, she grabs my hand and says, “You want to come in for a movie or something?”
I don’t think, just nod, because I’m far from ready to say good-bye. She opens the door and I gladly follow her inside. It’s pitch dark in her mom’s condo, and ice cold. Avery fumbles for the light switch for a minute before she finds it and flips it on.
“Sorry for the mess,” she says, looking a bit confused as she glances around at the magazines scattered across the living room floor. “Mom?” she calls out. There’s no answer, and Avery gestures to the couch. “Have a seat. I’m going to check on her.”
She disappears down the dark hallway, but I’m suddenly too anxious to sit. Something doesn’t feel right.
Seconds later, Avery screams.
I rush down the hall, following the sound of her cry. I find her in a bedroom, curled over something on the floor. I flip on the light, and there’s her mom, crumpled on the floor beside a broken wineglass.