by S. L. Naeole
I was standing in the middle of my bedroom, nothing having changed at all, yet everything was different somehow. I looked over at the bed; it was unmade and well slept in as usual, the covers pushed down to the foot of the bed, and a pillow had fallen to the floor.
I turned to look at my dresser, everything still piled carelessly on top, my alarm clock pushed to the far corner, a stack of books on the opposite end. I looked at the mirror and saw that my reflection showed nothing different about me. Same plain face, same brown hair and brown eyes. I began the short trip to my closet when something caught my attention.
Or rather, something that wasn’t there caught my attention.
I turned to look once again to my dresser, and my gaze traveled to the bottom of the mirror. There was a sticky residue there, evidence that tape had been there, but whatever it was that it had been holding was gone. I looked at the top of the mirror and saw the same sticky residue, but no tape.
I tried to remember what it was that had been there, but my mind was foggy with thoughts that didn’t feel like my own. The sound of a car starting up outside caused me to turn around and head to my window.
I stuck my head through the opening and smiled as I saw Graham’s car pull away from the curb. He was probably heading off to work. A few seconds later, Richard came storming out of their house wearing a stained bathrobe, a frosted bottle filled with clear liquid in one hand, a glass filled with ice and an amber liquid in the other. He was shouting at the car as it sped away, the words too garbled for me to make out, but the tone saying more than the words could.
I called out to him, my anger at his behavior towards his son taking control, and chastised him for letting the alcohol once again take priority over sobering up for his son. He never turned to look at me, and instead took a swig from his glass and shuffled back into the house, the ratted bathroom slippers on his feet kicking up muddy slush from a spring snowfall that I did not remember onto the bottom edge of his robe.
A knock on the door caused me to jump. I hit my head on the window as a result and was rubbing the growing lump when Dad walked in. He was holding a basket of freshly laundered and folded clothes. “Hey, Grace. Did I scare you?”
I shook my head. “No. I was just looking outside. Richard was shouting at Graham and I yelled at him to stop, but it’s like he didn’t hear me.”
Dad nodded his head and smiled. “Of course he didn’t hear you, Grace. He’s half-dead from all of the booze, and half-deaf from all of that yelling. I don’t know how Graham puts up with it, but I suppose you can’t help but worry about him, no matter what happened between you two.”
“He’s my best friend, Dad. It’s kind of my job to worry about him,” I joked as I began placing my shirts into my drawer. I stopped at the last one, the markings on it very familiar. I opened it up and puzzled as to why it was in my possession. “How did this shirt get in here?”
Dad patted my shoulder. “Grace, I understand that you feel a need to hold onto Graham despite what he’s done to you, but his behavior and his treatment of you should be enough to tell you that he’s not your friend. I cannot even say if he ever truly was.”
Rolling my eyes at Dad’s over-protectiveness, I shook the shirt in front of Dad’s face to bring his attention back to my question. “Why was this shirt in the wash, Dad?”
He grabbed the shirt from me and looked it over before placing it on the dresser. “You always had a thing for smiley faces, Grace. I would guess it was in the wash because you wore it again, though I don’t know why. It’s a fairly ugly shirt. You’d think that there’d be more of a selection at that thrift store you like so much.”
I stared at the shirt and opened my mouth to tell Dad that I hadn’t worn this shirt in over six months, that it had been in Robert’s possession the last time I saw it, but held my tongue. That would have been very difficult to explain, and Dad would have automatically assumed the worst, which would have been even more difficult to reverse. I set it aside closed my drawers.
“How’s Janice doing?” I asked as I began to put away some of the other items in the basket.
“Why are you asking about her?”
I turned around, a pair of socks in my hand, and took a good look at his face. He looked thinner for some reason, older. There were dark circles beneath his eyes, and the lines on his forehead seemed to have grown deeper and longer, engraving his face with an age that didn’t belong to him.
“I wanted to know how she was doing,” I said slowly.
“I don’t know how she is, Grace. We stopped talking to each other after she moved, remember?”
My face wrinkled with confusion. “What do you mean, ‘after she moved’? Moved where?”
Dad’s mood grew sullen and he started to walk away. “Dad!” I called to him, and he turned around, his eyes sad, his mouth twisted in anger.
“You got your way, Grace, isn’t that enough? She never had a chance with you, we never had a chance, and now that I’m finally starting to move on, move past this, you bring her up again. Is this some kind of twisted game you’re playing, Grace? I get that you’re still upset about Graham. I understand that you blame yourself for Stacy being the one hit by that car and not you, but do you have to act like everyone else’s feelings are here for you to toy with because life dealt you a lousy hand?”
The words that came out of his mouths sounded foreign, they didn’t make any sense because none of that happened. But then the memories, those strange memories in my head that felt like they didn’t belong there…suddenly did.
I closed my eyes and I could see images that weren’t mine, and yet were. The first day of school, the day of the accident, the aftermath…they were all familiar and yet different.
Dad had said that it was Stacy that had been hit by the car, but how? In my eyes, I saw the same road, and I was on it, but I wasn’t alone. Stacy—she was beside me; we were walking, her car having broken down half a mile away, and we were headed towards the library to use their phone.
In every other way, the scene played itself out exactly the same, but this time it wasn’t me that was hit. I heard myself scream as Stacy was jolted away from me, the impact of the car sending her shooting forward and landing on the asphalt several feet ahead of the vehicle, which then proceeded to run over her before coming to a halt a few feet away.
The driver stepped out of the vehicle; disoriented and on shaky feet, he walked over to the crumpled and bloody heap that was Stacy. I ran towards them, my voice nothing but screams. The man looked up as I came nearer and then in a panic, began to run to his car. I screamed at him to stop, to come back and help, but he left. He got back into his car and drove off.
I looked down at Stacy and I shut my eyes to the image, opening them up once more in my room. “Stacy…” I whispered, and looked up at Dad’s face, it was twisted with the same pain that I was feeling.
“She didn’t suffer, Grace. The doctor told you that she died very quickly, that there was nothing that you could do.”
I shook my head at the idea of Stacy dying. Healthy, ass-kicking Stacy? Stacy was the one hit by Mr. Frey’s car instead of me? “This isn’t real,” I began to mumble to myself. “This isn’t real. Stacy’s not dead. I was the one hit by that car. It was me, not Stacy. Robert knows that it was me, he was there, remember?”
Dad shook his head and approached me. He placed two, strong hands on my shoulders and began to shake me, the motion too gentle to do anything but muss my hair. “Grace, what are you talking about? Yes, baby, Stacy is dead. Remember? The car swerved to avoid you and hit her instead. She died just a couple of weeks after school started. And who’s Robert?”
“Who’s Robert? What do you mean, who’s Robert? He’s my…” My head whipped around to the mirror, my eyes focusing in on the spots on the mirror that were conspicuously empty. “He’s, he’s…”
“Grace? He’s what? Who is he?”
I turned to look at my dad’s face and I couldn’t answer him. I reached to grab th
e t-shirt that he’d placed on the dresser and noticed my hand—my right hand—was bare. I dropped to the floor and began searching the carpet, my hands running over and into the soft plush material, raking it with my fingers.
“Grace, what are you doing?” Dad asked, alarm tingeing his voice.
I didn’t answer him. I simply knew a desperation to find the ring that wasn’t on my finger, that should have been there because I never took it off.
“Grace,” he shouted when I didn’t answer him. “Grace?”
He began to shake me, and everything began to fall into place. Janice had moved away, just like he had said she would. Dad’s attitude towards Graham was just as cold as it had been after Graham had ended our friendship, which meant that Graham and I had never made up. But we hadn’t made up until after the accident…which killed Stacy.
“Oh God,” I moaned. If the accident had killed Stacy, that meant that there was no Robert.
“Grace, what’s wrong?”
“Robert…” I sobbed softly, closing my eyes and curling up into a ball on the floor, the pain of him not existing more excruciating than the idea of him simply not being in my life. I felt empty, hollow, my insides caving in around my wounded heart.
“Grace!” Dad shouted.
“Grace?”
I felt him shaking me, but I didn’t want to open my eyes.
“Grace, open your eyes, it’s okay.”
I shook my head, unwilling to see a world that didn’t possess the one thing in it that made everything else work.
Open your eyes, love.
I did so, but more out of shock than anything else. My head was no longer against soft carpet. Instead, it was pressed against cold steel. Mercury eyes, liquid and brimming with concern were staring at me from the edge of the table that I had fallen asleep on.
“Robert?”
He nodded his head, his hand gently squeezing mine. My eyes shifted to it and I spied the glint of silver around my finger. “Oh, it’s back,” I whispered.
“It never left,” Robert said softly.
With a cry, I wrapped my arms around Robert’s neck, the sobbing that had begun on the floor in my dream crossing over into my reality, only now with relief and joy that Robert was here, that he was real, that he was still mine.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, concerned. He gently pulled me away just far enough so that he could look into my eyes. “Grace, what’s wrong?”
“I dr-dreamt that y-you weren’t r-real,” I hiccupped, my fingers digging into Robert’s shirt in an attempt to keep him from pulling me away any further. “Don’t leave me. Don’t ever go away again.”
He allowed me to bring myself closer, his hand pressing against the back of my head, his embrace strong and comforting. “I promise, I promise you, Grace. It’s okay. It was just a dream, I’m here,” he cooed into my ear. I nodded my head, but didn’t let him go.
A soft cough alerted me to the fact that we weren’t alone. “Who’s that?” I whispered into Robert’s ear, unwilling to turn around, to leave the stronghold of Robert’s arms.
“Mr. Frey,” Robert replied. “He’s here to ask you for your forgiveness, Grace.”
I lifted my head from Robert’s shoulder and looked at him in disbelief. “Are you serious?”
Robert nodded. “Yes. I am.”
“But he nearly killed me,” I hissed. “He left me to die on the side of the road, Robert.”
“Yes, he did. But I told you that he needs your help, and it begins with this,” Robert insisted, pulling me away once more to turn and face the man who had nearly destroyed my life. “He needs absolution, Grace. You can help him by doing this.”
“How?”
“Listen to him, let him tell you about what happened.”
I looked at him with disbelief in my eyes. But I already know what happened.
Robert reached for my hand and held it, giving it a gentle squeeze. “He needs to do this, Grace. He needs your forgiveness. And you need to listen.”
“Fine,” I conceded and turned to face the man who ran me down. “Tell me about what happened.”
Mr. Frey looked at me and then at Robert. Seated in the chair opposite me, he seemed as confused as I did, but proceeded to tell me the same series of events that he had given to Robert, the details bringing forth different memories, each one from a different point of view to form a complete picture of what had happened to me. As the story reached its culmination, the scene in my mind changed. It was no longer my body on the ground. As I had in my dream, it was Stacy’s body that lay broken and battered on the road as Mr. Frey drove off to escape the reality of what he had done.
I felt Robert release my hand and he turned me around to face him, his eyes searching, his mind probing as he, too, saw the image in my thoughts, leaving him perplexed and bewildered.
“Grace,” I heard behind me. I turned to look at Mr. Frey, whose eyes had turned puffy and bloodshot, his nose large and red with the emotions that he had been unable to express to Robert when faced with his death.
I looked at him, took in the drastic change that had occurred since the last I had seen him, both in my own mind as well as Robert’s, and I started to see something in him that I hadn’t before. In his face, I could see my father’s, aged and miserably lonely. His hand bore a white line on his left ring finger, but no wedding band. My hand clenched instinctively, feeling the press of the sapphire stone against my palm and relishing in its presence. There were no laugh lines around his eyes, though he appeared far older than Dad, and I knew that he had no friends who could offer him the solace of friendship.
“You live a very sad life, Mr. Frey,” I told him. “You ran away from your problems to keep your family safe from it, and yet they left you anyway, didn’t they?”
Robert and Mr. Frey gasped at my words, both shocked at what I had been able to discern, Robert amazed that I had learned something he hadn’t. I stared at Mr. Frey and started to feel sorry for him as I thought about the girl who had died, and about Stacy, whose death in my dream felt just as real. “You’ve lost everything; your wife; your children; soon your career and your freedom will be gone, too. You killed that girl, and somewhere, her family is wondering the same thing that my father wondered about me.
“There is no reason on earth that would justify me forgiving you for what you did. You left me to die on that road. You knew who I was, knew that I had no one, and instead of taking even one moment to be the person you want me to be, you walked away. You left me there, all alone, scared, broken, dying. And then you let me accuse Mr. Branke, let him be arrested and watched as I ruined his life. There is no reason why I should forgive you, Mr. Frey. I shouldn’t forgive you.
“But I will.”
Mr. Frey began choking in disbelief and out of habit, I stood up to pat him on his back. He looked at me with wide eyes, his hands shaking, sweat pouring down the side of his face like he had just been doused with it. “Why?” he whispered, his voice cracking from the surprise.
“Because it was me,” I said softly, sitting back down in the chair across from him. “It could have been someone else, someone who would have died, someone I care about very much, but it wasn’t. For whatever reason, it was me that you hit that day, and that accident changed my life.”
Robert knelt down beside me and I felt the burn in my throat as I saw so clearly what life had been like without him in it, even if only for a blink of time. His gray eyes grew dark and stormy as he saw what I did, knew what I had seen.
I blinked away some of the fresh tears that formed and took a deep breath, needing to finish what I had been brought here to do. “Mr. Frey, you have my forgiveness, but what I hope for you, what I pray for you is that you can forgive yourself. You have lost a lot because of what you did, and you will probably lose a lot more, but I know that you haven’t lost what’s most important—not yet.”
Mr. Frey began sobbing and though I knew that I shouldn’t, I felt a need to comfort him. I placed my hand onto the tabl
e, extending it out to him, palm up. He looked at it with skepticism, looked at me with confusion, but his hand slowly inched forward, and I felt it fit awkwardly into mine, the small contact opening up a floodgate of tears from both of us.
We sat there like that, hands extended, tears freely flowing until there was nothing left to give. No more tears, no more confessions. I felt emotionally drained when I stood up, with Robert nudging me and announcing that it was time to go.
“Thank you,” Mr. Frey whispered to me as we walked out of the room, his hand pressed against his heart in sincerity. “You truly are an angel of mercy.”
I laughed nervously at his words and looked at Robert, who shook his head and pushed me forward. We walked quickly past several police officers and loiterers who didn’t seem to notice two high school students, one barefoot, haunting their halls well past midnight.
Only when we were outside did I ask him what it was that I had done, and why it had been so urgently necessary.
“You’re the angel,” he teased, but quickly grew serious as we reached the end of the sidewalk fronting the police station. Without stopping or even warning me about what he was about to do, Robert pulled me into his arms and pushed up off the ground, the movement sending us into the air.
I kept my face pressed against the warm column of Robert’s neck, seeking to see nothing but him, smelling nothing but him; Mr. Frey wasn’t the only person who needed absolution.
It wasn’t long before the odor of damp, freshly mowed grass intruded in on me, breaking through the heady scent that was uniquely Robert. I raised my head just enough to peek over Robert’s shoulder and see where it was that we were. The white wall was unmistakable, the large, white house instantly recognizable to me. “Why are we here?” my muffled voice asked into his jacket collar.
“We need to talk, and you need a place where you can yell.”
I chuckled at that. “That might be true.”
“Of course it is,” he insisted.