by Jessi Kirby
“It’s for a vision board I’m making,” she says, maybe just as relieved as I am to change the subject.
“What’s a vision board?” I ask, wiping the wetness away from my eyes. “Does it have something to do with the manic pixie thing?”
Ryan laughs. “No, not really.” She thinks about it. “Well, sort of. It’s an inspirational tool. A way to visualize what you want so it’s easier to focus on.” She sifts through the stack she’s cut out already. “You choose pictures or words of things you want to do, or be, or have, or things that inspire you, and you put them all up where you can see them every day, to remind you and keep you moving toward them.”
She’s quiet a moment, and I’m sure it’s because she’s thinking of the photos I have up in my room, the pictures of Trent and me together that I look at every day. Pictures of things I can’t have anymore because they exist only in the past.
“Did you learn that in your Women’s Studies class too?” I say, not wanting to veer back into our previous conversation.
She grins. “No. From my New Agey roommate. She’s all into that stuff. Here,” she says, handing me a magazine with a sun-soaked cover. “You should make one. Start with this. Travel is easiest. Find a beautiful place you’d wanna go and cut it out.”
When she says it, the first thing I think of is the inside of the cave today, with the reflection of the water dancing all around. And Colton sitting across from me. I want to go back there. I doubt I can find a picture that comes close to being that beautiful, but I take the magazine anyway, and Ryan sits back with hers, and we skim our magazines without saying anything else.
She grabs a pint of cookie dough ice cream from her nightstand, takes a bite, and passes it to me. “Eat. You’re too skinny these days, and Mom’s gluten-free, sugar-free tart thing couldn’t pass for dessert anywhere.”
I laugh. “Oh my god, you have no idea the things we’ve eaten since you’ve been gone,” I say, digging into the middle, where all the cookie dough is.
“Well, eat up.” Ryan smiles. She reaches for another magazine. “Then pass it back.”
I can’t remember the last time the two of us sat together like this, but it feels just right being in her room, sharing a spoon and a carton of ice cream and flipping through magazines. It feels normal.
I sneak a glance at Ryan, who is busy cutting out pictures and words with abandon, sure of herself like always. Focused on seeing her future instead of her past. Right then I wish I could snap a picture of her and put it up as inspiration to do the same thing.
I page through the first magazine aimlessly, unsure of where to start. Truthfully, I haven’t thought about the future a whole lot in the last 402 days. And the things I used to want seem so trivial and faraway now anyway. Had I been sitting here in Ryan’s room before, I probably would’ve torn out pictures of what I wanted my senior prom dress to look like, of the college Trent and I would go to together, a ring I’d imagine him giving me somewhere down the road, or the house that we would have. I would’ve made a collage of the life we’d have together. That’s what you do when you think you’ve found your one true love.
I still don’t know what you do when you’ve lost him. I stopped running, didn’t go to senior prom. I pushed all our friends away until they stopped calling. Mom and Dad made me go to graduation, but I walked out when they started the slide-show tribute to him. I missed college application deadlines and didn’t care. I’ve spent the better part of the last thirteen months alone and stalled out, an eighteen-year-old widow who has yet to make plans or look forward no matter how much anyone tries to get me to.
I page through more magazines, one after another, past words that don’t speak to me and pictures that don’t stand out as anything I want, or even think is a possibility. Until I get to one that stops me. I run my eyes over the picture, take in all the details: clear water and sunset-gold light, velvety-looking sand, and a lonely bottle washed up on the shore. It’s what the bottle contains that gets me. Inside its clear glass sits a deep-red, blown-glass heart. The sun shines through it at just the right angle so that it throws a small red shadow on the sand in front of it. I’ve never seen anything like it. The heart is beautiful, and fragile, and safe inside its bottle, like the old notes that supposedly traveled over distance and time, through storms and lulls, to finally find a shore. And then to be found.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“The average heart beats eighty times per minute, which means that, in any given day, your heart will beat approximately one hundred thousand times. In a year, it will have beaten forty-two million times, and in a lifetime it will beat nearly three billion times. All the while, it is taking in blood and expelling it to the lungs and throughout the body. . . . It does not rest. It does not tire. It is persistent in its drive and purpose.”
—Dr. Kathy Magliato, Heart Matters: A Memoir of a Female Heart Surgeon
“GET UP.”
I don’t need to open my eyes to know Ryan’s standing next to the bed. She pulls my covers off, and I scramble to get them back. “Are you crazy? What time is it?”
“Six,” she says. “It’s gonna get hot early, so get up. We’re going for a run.”
I squint at her, already in her running gear, in the pale morning light. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“I don’t have any running shoes,” I say, reaching for my covers.
“Really?” Ryan crosses my room, opens the closet door, and climbs into the back, where every Saucony I’ve ever owned is piled. Shoes start flying, one after another, each landing on the carpet with a thump.
“I’m sure two of these will work,” she says. Then she heads to my dresser and pulls out shorts, a tank top, and a sports bra. Tosses them on the bed. Next, my sister crosses the room, pulls up my blinds, and lifts the window wide open, letting the cool morning air in. She pauses a moment to breathe it in, then grins at me. “C’mon. Get yourself up—it’ll feel good. Dad’s waiting.” Then she leaves the room—her favorite way to end a discussion.
Dad’s waiting? It’s been even longer since he’s gone running than me. Longer than 403 days. The number comes to mind automatically, but not with its usual weight. Today feels different because yesterday was different.
I stretch my arms above my head, wincing a little at the unexpected soreness in my shoulders. And then it all comes back to me: paddling with Colton, the sunshine, the water, his hand waving out the window as he drove away. The empty feeling that good-bye left me with. And then later, the dinner discussion with my family about going back today.
My phone buzzes on my nightstand, and I jump at the sound. I reach for it, hoping it’s him and telling myself at the same time not to hope, that I’m being ridiculous. But when I look down at the screen, it’s a text from a number I recognize now. I freeze. Stare at until it buzzes again in my hand, and then I swipe it open.
So I was thinking. Yesterday was a really good day, but I bet today could be even better. What do you think?
I smile, and my first thought is that it already is.
Another text buzzes through:
Working at the shop this morning, but maybe later we could see?
I read the words over again, trying to think of how to answer.
“Quinn.” Ryan pokes her head through my doorway, and I jump again, not sure what to do with the phone in my hand. “What are you doing? Let’s go.”
I put my phone back on the nightstand. “Nothing. I was just turning off my alarm.”
“Well, come on; get up. We’re waiting on you.” I know she’s not going to leave again until I actually get out of bed, so I do. Answering Colton’s texts will have to wait, because my sister does not.
Mom’s in the kitchen, dressed for work, when I get downstairs. “Good morning,” she says brightly, setting down her green juice and reaching out her arms for me.
“Morning,” I answer.
I shuffle over and give her a quick hug. She kisses the top of my head. “It’s s
o nice to see you up. And dressed. Your dad’s going to be so happy. This’ll be his first run in years.” I can see how hard she’s trying to contain how pleased this makes her. Never the runner, but always the cheerleader, she’s beaming, back in her old role.
“They’re waiting outside,” she says. “I’m heading in to work early and won’t be back until around five. Have a good day, and have fun running and kayaking!” She gives me another kiss on the head and squeezes my arm, and I can feel the hope in it.
“Quinn!” Ryan yells from outside. “You coming?”
I don’t answer, just head out to the front porch, where she and Dad are waiting. She’s got one leg slung up on the railing, and she stretches over it, grabbing her toes easily.
Dad laughs when he sees me. “Well, good morning, Sunshine. Looks like your sister’s powers of persuasion worked on you too, huh?” He gives my ponytail a tug.
“Something like that.” I shake out my legs and stretch a little.
My dad looks from me to Ryan, and then wraps an arm around each of us, pulling us out of our stretches and into him for a hug like he used to when we were younger, so close our cheeks almost smoosh together. “This is a treat for your old man, you know that? Like the old days. Except now you two are gonna have to wait up for me. I’ve been walking with your mom, but I don’t even wanna think about how long it’s been since I’ve run.”
I know exactly how long it’s been since I’ve run, but I don’t want to think about that. Instead I go back further, to before I ever knew Trent, to when Ryan and I started running with our dad. She was fifteen and I was thirteen, and those runs with him were special. They were for summer and weekend days, when he still had the time. He’d get us up and out the door early, never telling us where or how far we were running, but he always made sure there was a cool destination involved. Something to show us, like the top of a ridge where you could see all the way to the ocean, a tunnel made of oaks and hanging Spanish moss, vineyards that stretched and rolled for miles with bitter little grapes we’d pick as we went, a trail off the beaten path where we’d see deer, and wild turkeys, and rabbits. Ryan and I always made a big deal of groaning about getting up, but we both loved those runs with him and the things he showed us.
“I don’t know, Quinn’s a little out of practice.” Ryan looks at me, a hint of challenge behind her smile. “I think we both might finally be able to kick her butt.”
I feel an old fire start to flicker. A competitive one. Ryan and I both ran cross-country and track, but I made the varsity team as a freshman, and I was always a little faster. It drove her crazy, and it was one of the things I loved best about running. That it was mine. My place to shine when she did everywhere else.
Dad shakes his head. “We don’t need to race or anything. We’ll just go slow and get the feel of it again.” He catches my eye. “With something like this, you’ve gotta ease back in.” The way he looks at me, I know he doesn’t just mean physically.
More than once after Trent died, he asked me if I wanted to go for a run together even though he wasn’t really running anymore either. It had always been our special time before, and I think he was looking for a way to find that again—to check in with me, because we hadn’t ever talked about that morning after the fact. He’d been the one the paramedics handed me over to and the one who’d driven me to the hospital, chasing the ambulance with its swirling lights. But after that day I was so far lost I couldn’t talk to him any more than I could run past that stretch of road.
“Okay, we go easy,” Ryan says, “but I choose the route.”
“Deal,” Dad answers.
“Good. I have an idea of somewhere I wanna go.” She looks at me with a grin. “It’s a little tough but nothing you can’t handle.”
I take a deep breath. Hope I can still rise to her challenge.
She bounds down the stairs, and Dad and I follow. I’m not sure she’s right about me being able to handle it, but I hope so. I take another deep breath as my running shoes crunch over our dusty driveway. Ryan starts jogging right away, and so does my dad, and then I have no choice. We head down our driveway at a slow warm-up pace that feels clunky, like my body doesn’t remember how to do this anymore.
Ryan pauses, and for a second I freeze up at the thought of running by that place on the road, but she knows better than that and turns in the opposite direction. We fall into a single-file line on the narrow shoulder, with Ryan leading, Dad in the middle, and me bringing up the rear. I focus on putting one foot in front of the other, not just because I need to if I want to keep up, but because Trent is the first thing I think of once we get going. I was the one who got him running. He was a swimmer and water polo player, definitely not a runner, and in the beginning he’d ride his bike alongside me sometimes, keeping me company and pushing my pace. It wasn’t until sophomore year that he started running with me on the weekends because his coach said he needed the conditioning—and because it was another way to spend time together with how busy our schedules had gotten. We’d meet up in the early mornings between our houses like this for a run into town, have a huge breakfast at Lucille’s, then walk back home the long way, talking and laughing like we had all the time in the world.
I stop, chest all of a sudden aching, out of breath. “I don’t think I can—”
My dad turns around. “You okay?”
“No—I—I think I need to go back.”
Ryan stops and turns. Her cheeks are flushed, and she’s breathing hard as she walks back to me. I expect her to give me an order to keep running, but her eyes soften when she looks at me. “You’re okay,” she says. “It’s just your first time back out here. You don’t need to go back.”
Dad seems to understand too. “Come on. Let’s do this together. We’ll go easy.”
“Just focus on breathing,” Ryan says. “Let your legs do the rest.”
She turns and starts up again, and this time my dad motions for me to go in front of him. I take a step, and then another and another, until I’ve fallen into a semblance of a rhythm, albeit one that feels heavy and out of practice. And after a few minutes we settle into a slow but steady pace. Ryan pulls me forward, and the rhythm of one foot in front of the other gets a little easier. I breathe hard, in-out, in-out, in-out, and my heart pounds away, unused to working like this. My legs burn at first, then start to itch as blood fills and expands the capillaries in a way that it hasn’t for so long. My body starts to remember, starts to come back. Starts to wake up again, like yesterday.
Ryan turns off onto a single-track dirt trail, and I know right away where we’re going. I look back at Dad, and his smile says he does too.
“The ridge?” I yell up to Ryan. “On the first run back?”
“Yep,” she calls over her shoulder. “No sense half stepping!”
“You’re trying to kill me,” I yell.
“I’m trying to do the opposite,” she says. “You got this.”
The three of us weave our way through the oaks at the base of the hill, where the shade makes it a touch cooler than is comfortable, and I do my best to keep up. In spite of the hard work, I start to relax a little, stop thinking so much. The morning smell of the plants and the night-cooled dirt rises up all around, and I breathe it in.
After a mile or so of rolling hills, the trail takes a hard turn and makes a steep climb up a series of switchbacks, and the only thing in my mind then is making it to the top without walking, because as we all used to say on the team, there’s no walking in running. Ryan stays one turn ahead of me, so I only catch little glimpses of her as she takes on the hill. Behind me my dad’s breathing becomes more labored, just as mine does, and I keep glancing over my shoulder, checking to see if he’s okay.
“You doing all right?” I ask over my shoulder.
“Hanging in there,” he puffs. “You?”
“Same.”
We don’t say anything else as our focus shifts to making it up the hill. Just when I think I may have to break the cardi
nal rule of running, the trail begins to level out, and the trees open up to a view of the cloudless sky first, then the tops of other hills, and finally, the ocean.
Ryan’s already sitting on the giant boulder that is our destination, looking flushed and triumphant. She stands when she sees us, puts her hands to her mouth, and lets out a whoop. Dad catches up to me and puts his arms up in the air like he’s crossing a finish line. I do too, because it really does feels like an accomplishment.
“Nicely done,” Ryan says, reaching down a hand to help me onto the rock. “I knew you guys would make it all the way to the top.”
“I didn’t,” I say, hoisting myself up.
Dad grabs hold of the rock and pulls himself up too, and we all stand there at the top of the ridge, looking over miles that separate our golden hills from the variegated blues of the ocean and the sky.
“Look at it,” Ryan says as we catch our breaths. “It feels so faraway, but really it’s right there.” She looks at me then. “You just have to see it—what’s in front of you. The forest for the trees, or the ocean over the hills.”
“Tell us more, O wise Ryan,” Dad says, still out of breath but clearly amused. When did you get so philosophical?”
Ryan rolls her eyes and nudges him with her elbow. “Last quarter, in philosophy.” Then she turns to us both. “Or . . .” She pauses and looks down at her feet for a moment, then back at our dad. “Either that, or a few days ago, when Ethan broke up with me at the airport,” she says flatly.
“What?” I can’t contain my shock.
“Ouch,” Dad says, wincing for her. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. That must’ve stung.”
“Yeah. But only for a day or two.” She kicks a pebble off the rock, and we all watch as it tumbles down the ridge. “I’m done with that now.”