by A. R. Asher
“Don’t be stupid.” Her voice is stern and cold.
“Huh?”
“Don’t be stupid! Of course, everything that happens is your own doing. You think it was destiny for me to go through everything I’ve gone through, just to have my best friend, the one person I’ve found who really gets me, just give up on her own life? Purpose is so easy to find. You’re here, aren’t you? You’re alive? That’s for a reason. You can always make the decision to cut some thread and just let yourself go but you have made a conscious decision to keep yourself alive up to this point, right? Doesn’t that mean anything to you? You’re just going to throw everything away?”
I look away. “I don’t need this right now, Grace.”
She slaps a hand on her thigh, “This is EXACTLY what you need right now, and you’re going to let me finish talking.”
I blink for a few moments before nodding my consent.
“Much better. Now think of all of the people you love. Do you think a single one of them would be okay if they knew you weren’t okay? If they knew you didn’t want to stay here with them?”
I don’t know why, but I think of Regan. “No.”
I think of her smacking me on the face at the track, and when I found a sister for the first time in her. In that moment, I had family. Just a moment. A smack across the face was all it took.
I think about my mom, who always believed in destiny… but she also told me to never forget who I was.
“Grace. Who am I?”
“You tell me. What do you know about yourself that you’re positive is true?”
“I’m weird.”
Grace rolls her eyes. “That’s not what I meant at all and you know it.”
I shake my head, “I don’t know who I am, Grace.” I feel tears slip down my cheeks and tickle my nostrils. “If I was just born to die, then do I really need to be anybody?”
“I know what we have to do. Follow me.”
She starts out the door and I’m still frozen to my seat. I’m terrified of what she might do or say, but Bear plods after her, and he looks back at me, as if asking whether or not I’m coming.
“I am,” I tell Bear, following after him.
We follow Grace until she reaches Cal’s door and knocks on it. I don’t want to see the boy behind the door as much as I do, with all of my heart.
He’s leaning in the doorway, shirtless and half-awake, half-asleep. His pajama pants are black, which seems to be the only color he wears.
He sees me and grins lazily, pushing his long black hair behind his ear. “Jay.” He turns to Grace, “What’s up? Is… Oh no, is something wrong?”
“This girl is having an identity crisis,” Grace says, somehow only mildly fazed by his bare torso. Meanwhile, I want desperately to look away, but I can’t. I don’t want to feel the feelings that I do, but the scorching heat and gentle butterflies and the floods of a thousand oceans torch me to nothing and everything all at once.
“Do you both want to come in, or…?” Cal asks, wiping the sleep out of his eyes.
Grace shakes her head, “Thank you for the invitation, but she’s all yours.”
She leaves us alone, and I want more than anything to fall into his arms, but I have to be strong. He gestures into his room, and Bear and I step in. The room is larger than I imagined it would be from the outside, full of artwork, books, and a desk covered in a sea of papers with his slanted black scribbles marking them as his.
“Jay… are you okay?”
I shake my head, “No. I’m very much the opposite of okay.”
He lays on his bed and pats the space beside him. It’s an invitation I can’t refuse. He pulls me close, and I curl into his bare chest, listening to the heartbeat that has become my music and my air. A heartbeat that should never stop beating.
“What’s on your mind, Jaybird?”
I smile, “Never had a nickname before.”
“Really? Well, it’s about time then. Tell me what’s on your mind.”
I tell him everything. Everything about how I’ve just met the person I was born to love and I only have three days to love him. I tell him about how I see no point in a life without him. I don’t understand what I am supposed to do with my life, and I’m tired of being a pawn of fate. I tell him, and he listens.
But there is a massive crash, and I feel fire all around me. The room is lit in flames. My world is exploding to pieces and there is nothing I can do to stop it.
I scream, and Cal covers my mouth with his hand, scooping me into his arms as we dash out of the fiery room. I hear a mad cackling surrounding us, filling our ears and every pore, guttural and dark.
“What’s going on?” I yell as Cal rushes through the hallways towards Grace’s room.
“He’s here. Elliot is here. Stay put,” he says, as he opens Grace’s door. He drops me and takes her into his arms instead just as fire consumes the bed. “RUN!” He yells to me, and we dash through flaming corridors that crumble in wake of our footsteps.
The smoke fills my lungs and I can’t breathe. The stairs are a flood of flame, and everything behind us is alight with white fire.
“The window,” I say.
“You’re crazy.”
“How else?” I scream. “I’m going first. Drop Grace down to me,” I say as I thrust a fist through the window, reeling back as it shatters around me.
“You’re not thinking straight, Jay! You’ll die if you jump from here!”
I turn back to him, face earnest. “No. I won’t. Even if I do… We have to try.”
I leap out the window. At first the world is swirling tumultuously around me, and I am in a snow globe of trees and rivers and fire. But I land on my feet.
I land on my feet.
He drops Grace to me, and I catch her and set her on the ground. He jumps and I catch him.
We run. We run for the forests and the hills, we run for the memories of what we shared together, we run for our love and everything we believe in. We run. We run.
I see the cannonball blasting towards us and I know. I know what it is I’m meant to do.
I spread my arms wide and leap in front of the bomb, bracing for everything and nothing at all.
“Jay! NOOOOO!”
I feel it hit me, five million pounds of hatred to my gut. I hear the same cackling. Elliot thinks he’s won.
But the cannonball bursts. It shatters to pieces as I collapse to the ground. The roaring black swirl of sky overhead stops, and I look at my bloody chest as it fractures apart. White light is leaking from cracks in my skin, blinding me.
The crows in the sky evaporate.
The darkness is shrinking, slowly, reverting back to light.
My flame consumes the world.
I know that I am gone, but my spirit lingers. I can see the rest. I can see.
Elliot’s body burns away, and he is nothing. Leo is released from the grip he’s been possessed by. Somewhere, the darkness in Julian’s eyes is replaced by blue. Nick wakes from his coma. Everything good is here.
Cal will take care of Grace, and her baby. They will be a family. I never deserved him. They were always the ones who were meant to be.
Prophecy or not, I knew I won.
I watch my own body as it slowly fractures away into a fluorescent ball of light, and it bursts into the sky, and lets light kiss the earth again.
In the wake of my absence, a small, golden bird chirps and soars into the sky, wearing a necklace of feathers.
It leaves a single red rose behind it.
In that moment, I burn brighter than every star in the sky.
-THE END-
-ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share