by Matthew Fish
Morning came to a sunny sky and the sounds of birds chirping. Andrew and Emily dressed, watching each other with nervous excited laughter. In the kitchen they ate a few muffins that Emily had skillfully baked and joked around, shoving bits of muffin into each other’s face like children.
Emily’s wristwatch alarm went off when it hit eleven A.M.
“Are you ready to head home?”
“No,” Andrew said as he placed his arms around Emily. “But I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
“Would you like to come out with me tomorrow night and see the fireflies before we have another exciting week of school?” Emily asked as she squeezed Andrew tightly against her.
“I would,” Andrew answered. “Must I wait so long to see you again?”
“My parents have plans for us for dinner tonight, and then in the afternoon tomorrow they’re forcing me to go shopping with them. I wish I were with you instead. Believe me, the places they shop at….”
“So I would be the lesser of two evils,” Andrew replied with a laugh.
“Only in this one instance,” Emily jokingly said as she playfully pushed Andrew away.
“Now let’s get you home before you get the both of us grounded.”
Andrew went through his day back at his house as though he was half-asleep. For most of what remained of day he lay in bed, remembering every moment that had transpired the night before in such detail that he memorized every word that passed and every action.
During dinner when asked how the sleep over went, a question posed by his mother, Andrew had to stifle an urge to say Really well.
That night Andrew felt a sense of contentment that he had not experienced yet in life. He had spent most of the day doing basically nothing other than thinking of her. As it grew late into the night Andrew was half-asleep as the phone rang beside his pillow.
“Hello?”
“It’s just me,” Emily whispered. “I’m sorry for calling so late.”
“I don’t mind at all,” Andrew said as he rubbed his eyes and looked at the clock that read it was a bit past eleven.
“I just wanted to hear your voice,” Emily said as she giggled nervously. “Silly, I know…I just wanted you to know that I thought about you all day.”
“I did the same; I didn’t do much else at all.”
“My parents think I’m on drugs, the way I was half there all day,” Emily whispered as she stifled a bit of laughter.
“My parents just thought I was either sick or bored,” Andrew added. “They actually left me alone.”
“Well, I ought to get off. If they find out I’m on the phone past eleven my dad will pitch a grade-A shit-fit,” Emily quietly said as a serious tone came into her voice. “Do you still feel the same way you did last night?”
“Of course I do,” Andrew replied. “Aren’t I the one supposed to be all…questioning things and worried?”
“I just wanted to hear you say it,” Emily said simply. “Thank you.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Of course, my favorite spot, I’ll be there at dusk to pick you up—goodnight, Andrew,” Emily finished.
“Goodnight, Emily,” Andrew said as the line went silent.
The following evening Andrew and Emily sat upon the hood of Emily’s small compact Ford. As night fell like it had so many days before, the fireflies returned in force.
“It’s the rainfall from last night,” Emily said as she marveled at the sight. “The humidity attracts them.”
“It’s beautiful,” Andrew said as he looked more to Emily than the fireflies.
Oh, come on.” Emily blushed as she playfully pushed Andrew, nearly causing him to fall from the car. She then placed her arm around him and kissed him sloppily on the cheek. “Share this moment with me.”
“Happily,” Andrew replied as they sat in silence as the sun disappeared beyond the tree line. Soon darkness was all around them.
The fireflies continued their display long into the night, coming so close that one landed on Emily’s hand. She held it out in front of her and Andrew as it glowed in its quiet brilliance. It flashed a few more times before flying away to join the others.
“Do you think that happened by chance?” Emily asked, seeming more introspective tonight than normal. “Or do you think it was fate?”
“I don’t know; perhaps it just found you attractive,” Andrew said with a smile.
“Do you think that we have a future?”
“I couldn’t imagine one without you,” Andrew answered seriously as he placed an arm around Emily and drew her closer to him as a cool misty breeze rolled in. “Do you think you’ll ever grow annoyed of me like others have in the past?”
“Never…. I mean, I know it sounds foolish to say. I don’t know why people grow apart, or fall out of love. I don’t understand it. However, I don’t feel like I have to worry about that with you for some reason,” Emily whispered as she kissed Andrew beneath his ear. “Am I foolish?”
“Not at all,” Andrew said as he kissed Emily.
“Good.”
“I feel like I’ve known you for years, you make me happy…you make me laugh,” Andrew said.
“I do love you. My parents will probably hate you. I don’t care, but you’ll have to meet them soon, though, are you all right with that?”
“I am, and I do love you, too. My parents will probably love you.”
“Is it because they think you’re gay?” Emily asked with a sharp laugh.
“Probably,” Andrew replied with a hearty chuckle.
“It’s getting late,” Emily said sadly as she checked the watch on her slender wrist.
“Do we have to leave?”
“School tomorrow, I’m afraid so,” Emily added as she jumped off the car’s hood.
“Let’s skip it. Go to the zoo or something,” Andrew said as he followed suit.
Emily laughed, “I’d love to, but my parents are nowhere near as forgiving as yours. If you want to see me at all in the next few weeks that’s probably a bad idea, unless you want to wait until I’m eighteen.
“School is good, too,” Andrew said as he held on to Emily one last time and their lips met in the night as the fireflies surrounded them.
As Emily dropped off Andrew at his house she reached over and gave him one last kiss that day.
“I love you.”
“I love you too, Emily,” Andrew said as he smiled. For a moment he lost himself in that beautiful, delicate face he had grown to be so fond of, the same face that came to his mind every waking moment and haunted his dreams.
“See you in the morning—goodnight.”
“Goodnight. Tomorrow, then,” Andrew said as he exited the car and began to walk toward his door. He looked back once more and waved. However, it was too dark to see if Emily waved back as her car disappeared into the night.
Andrew went up to his bedroom and lay on his back with his arms folded beneath his head. He thought of Emily for many more moments before sleep came to him.
The next day Andrew arrived at school right on his usual time. He was happy. He made his way into the building and began to walk through the halls to his locker. All around him seemed to be a buzz of hushed activity. The school felt somehow different, changed. He shook this idea off as paranoia as he arrived at his locker. To his surprise, Emily was absent. He opened up the combination lock and shoved his backpack into the locker, grabbing his biology-prep book and a notebook and pencil. As he shut the door he saw two girls pointing at him and talking quietly. It was then that he noticed that everyone else was talking very quietly, too. It began to make him feel all the more anxious and unsettled. He looked around nervously at people whom he barely knew, all their attention fixed upon him as though he was some kind of sideshow attraction. He began to walk past them, just as his friend John came to him.
“I’m really sorry to hear about what happened to Emily,” he said as he placed a hand on Andrew’s shoulder.
Andrew quickly
shrugged off the gesture, pushing his hand away and looking terribly confused. “What’s happened?”
“You don’t know?” John asked as a horrified look washed over his face.
“Something happened to Emily?”
“I can’t, man…,” John said as he backed away and quickly sped off.
“What’s happened!” Andrew shouted.
His demands were only met with silence as people began to sulk away like ghosts until he found himself in the hallway alone. He punched his locker—denting the metal slightly and causing his knuckles to bleed.
“Someone tell me what the fuck is going on!”
The Principal, Mr. Thompson, rounded the corner and placed an arm around Andrew.
“Please come to the office and sit with me for a moment.”
“What did I do?” Andrew asked, his first thought going to the fact that he had done something wrong. Perhaps Emily’s parents had found out about what they had done while they were away.
“Just please—a moment,” Mr. Thompson said as he escorted Andrew into the office.
“Please sit….”
Andrew obliged. Although he could feel his hands trembling as he wondered what kind of trouble he had caused.
“You were close with Emily Jones, right?”
“Were close?”
“She passed away last night,” Mr. Thompson calmly said as he folded his hands against the desk, “I know this is hard for you and I want you to know that we have excellent counselors available at our disposal.”
“What…no. I just. I was with her last night. You’re joking. Right? I’m not the best person, I know; I do a lot of dumb shit, but this is just…cruel,” Andrew said as he shook his head and began to get up from the seat.
“Please…Andrew. Sit.”
“Are you fucking serious?”
“Sit.”
Andrew sat. He fidgeted with his hands nervously and avoided all eye contact with Mr. Thompson.
“You are not a bad person, Andrew, you are not being punished. However, it is the unfortunate, sad truth.”
“How did she die?”
“There’s no need to go into details right now,” Mr. Thompson calmly said as he attempted to maintain an air of countenance to counteract the dire sadness of the situation.
“Tell me.”
Mr. Thompson let out a heavy sigh as he shook his head in disappointment as well as disagreement. He would not comply.
“Tell me or I leave right now.”
“They’re not completely sure what happened. She was headed home and somehow ended up off the road and hit a telephone pole head-on going very fast. She was killed instantly. There was no pain, so I’ve been told,” Mr. Thompson began.
“Where?”
“Right off of the corner of Bur Oak Drive and Route 4,” Mr. Thompson replied.
Andrew bolted up from his seat and dashed from the office.
“Andrew!” Mr. Thompson fruitlessly shouted as he attempted to catch up to the vastly faster teen.
Despite the two-mile run to the accident site, Andrew never stopped. His lungs burned, his legs threatened to give way, however, he pushed on despite the agony. Sweat poured down his face from the summer heat, soaking his black T-shirt.
Finally, he collapsed upon the rough surface, scratching his bare knees against the rough road upon the corner of Bur Oak Drive and Route 4. Off in the distance he could make out the tree line where Emily’s house resided. He thought to check there, but the proof he required was right in front of him. A large wooden beam was splintered and fractured in many places, all smeared with the familiar yellow paint of Emily’s car. There were odd pieces strewn about, bits of metal.
Andrew walked to the beam and placed his hand upon it. He then began to punch the pole in frustration and collapsed to the ground and began to cry. After many moments Andrew got to his feet. He began to walk, walking from memory as his mind was in a complete state of shock.
Hours passed and he finally arrived to the spot in the field where he and Emily had sat against the hood of her car twice before. He collapsed to the ground in exhaustion and allowed his mind to be filled with disbelief. Perhaps she was not really gone. Perhaps Mr. Thompson had not gotten all of the information. He imagined a million scenarios where she lived, or was in the hospital somewhere getting fixed up. There was no room in his mind for thoughts that he would never see her again. That she was gone—lost to him, forever.
As darkness finally came Andrew got to his feet, shuffling along like some sort of zombie. He looked to the fireflies as he stood at the same spot he stood the night before. Only that time, Emily had been with him. This time she was nowhere to be found and Andrew could not grasp his mind around that simple, yet terrifyingly profound concept.
“Emily!” Andrew shouted in the darkness as he stumbled about the ground.
“Emily! Where are you?”
Andrew wipes away a tear from his eye as he slowly gets out of bed. He did not mean for his memory to progress as far as it did.
“I guess no matter how much time passes, it’s never enough,” Andrew says to himself as he makes his way to the bathroom. Today is beginning to feel like a two-Xanax day.
After swallowing the pills, Andrew returns to his bed and checks the phone. To his surprise he as missed a message from Anna. It simply says I am sorry, I could not do it. I couldn’t come.
Andrew quickly texts back Please give me a chance, I just need to talk to you. Please don’t disappear from my life.
He looks at the old antique clock on the red wall and notices that it is already after five. Has he spent the entire day lost in the memory? Andrew walks over to his bookshelf and begins to rummage through a stack of old books until he finally comes upon his high school junior year class book. He flips the book open to the first page and sees Emily’s face once more. Beneath the words “In Remembrance of” lies a photo of Emily resting her arm against the edge of a desk, her hand in her hair. She is smiling happily, a smile that Andrew remembers well. She is wearing the grey-hooded sweatshirt she wore the first day they met. Andrew begins to cry once more as he throws the book down to the ground. He cannot quite grasp why he even thought that this was a good idea in the first place.
Andrew begins to pace around the room as the low rumble from the heating vents kick on. The day is growing dark. Andrew dislikes the darkness as it reminds him of his loneliness. Phone in hand, he rummages through the fridge, searching for something to eat despite the fact that does not feel like eating at all. His stomach is sick with worry that Anna will not answer back, that she will not give him that second chance for which he so desperately yearns. He contemplates sending more messages or even leaving the apartment to go to her, however the thought of doing either fills him with such dread that he cannot summon the courage to do so.
The clock ticks the hours away as Andrew can no longer bear the sound of it. He goes over to the wall and stops time—not literally; the notion of being able to do so would only bring him more pain, freezing him forever in this moment of total anxious sadness. The clock that has been in motion since he first moved in is now silent, its pendulum fixed and locked away and its hands stuck at exactly 10:50 P.M.
The only sound left in the apartment is the dull hum of electricity from the refrigerator and the low growl of heat from the iron floor-vents. Unsettled by this newfound silence, Andrew loads up his computer and clicks on his playlist and sets it to randomly play. He laughs at the irony as Todd Carey’s “Where Are You tonight?” plays over the speakers. As the opening line—Where are you tonight? /Are you in someone else’s arms?—begins, he worriedly thinks to Anna once more. What if she has truly moved on and has found someone else? Perhaps it was not her insecurities and issues that led to their eventual separation but Andrew’s vast shortcomings and anxiety.
Andrew shakes the thought free of his mind. After all, she said that she could not be with anyone, not after her boyfriend of so many years had left her. Still, the idea that perhap
s she has found someone new solidifies in his head and torments him further, though he has no proof that the idea has even the slightest validity.
As the song nears its climax and the line— have you really moved on? Is my ghost really gone? “—plays, Andrew begins to feel as though he has been nothing more than a ghost over the past few weeks haunting his apartment. Living an existence in isolation save for the occasional message from Anna which he eagerly awaits as the only sign of hope as he becomes hopelessly lost in a world comprised of living only in memories and spending very little time in the present.
Andrew decides that the night is turning into a three-Xanax experience as he makes his way to the bathroom’s medicine cabinet. He knows that this increased amount in one day is not beneficial, especially with the growing possibility that in the swiftly approaching future he will be completely removed from its protection once that last pill has left his system. He knows that the anxiety and withdrawals will return with such fierce intensity that he will be unable to cope with life. A self-destructive part of him counts on it—like he almost welcomes the pain, as though he is deserving of it. After some time passes he feels extremely tired; however, it is a good, dull, emotionless state. He lies in his bed listening to The National’s “Exile Vilify” as the lyrics ask “You've got suckers' luck/Have you given up? Does it feel like a trial? Does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine? Does it feel like a trial? Did you fall for the same empty answers again?”
Andrew finds the lyrics, as usual, immediately relatable. For perhaps he has given up—then again, perhaps that is another reason why Anna is no longer in his life. He contemplates this as his mind grows fuzzy, languid. Dreams overcome him.
Andrew and Anna returned to their sea-foam-colored room at the Holiday Music Hotel in Door County after Todd Carey’s performance just after 3 A.M. Their friendship has grown over the past nine months—still, at this point it is just that and nothing more: a mere friendship.
“Did you enjoy the show?” Anna asked as she crawled into her single bed.