All This Time

by Mikki Daughtry

  “A daisy?” I ask.

  “Flowers have different meanings,” she says, sensing my confusion. She nods to the daisy in my hand. “This one made me think of you.”

  “Why? What’s it mean?” I ask, honestly a bit surprised flowers have any meaning at all. I thought they were just nice to look at.

  “Hope,” she says simply.

  Hope. Does she think I’m hopeful? I don’t hope for much of anything anymore.

  “I’m happy to see you again,” she adds suddenly, not looking at me. “I wasn’t sure I would.”

  I decide that I probably shouldn’t say I wasn’t planning on seeing her again. I just smile, and then almost as if we’d already planned it, the two of us find our way down the path and to the pond. We buy some popcorn from a vendor and then walk to her side of the pond, where the ducks are. They gather around her feet to reverently stare up at her, quacking so loudly I swear they must all be holding mini megaphones.

  I watch as she reaches into the red-and-white striped container and throws some kernels to them, her hair falling in front of her face. I mimic her, taking a handful of my popcorn and scattering it in front of me. The ducks converge on it like they’ve never eaten in their entire lives.

  “Do you come here a lot? To feed the ducks?”

  She hesitates, a fistful of popcorn in her hand. “Not as much as I used to.”

  I nod, but I don’t ask why. I know what it’s like to stop doing things you loved.

  A duck snaps at the popcorn in her fingers, and she squeals, breaking the tension with a laugh. She jumps back and releases the kernel before he can take off her pinky. Her shoulder brushes against my arm, lightly enough to leave a trail of goose bumps behind it.

  I clear my throat and take a step back.

  We follow the ducks down to the water, their quacks leading the way. A few feet from the edge, Marley pauses to look up, her hand frozen on top of the kernels.

  “It’s going to rain,” she says thoughtfully, her head tilted back to see the heavy, dark clouds above us.

  I follow her gaze, nodding. Something about it reminds me of the sky on the evening of the graduation party. The same ominous gray, the clouds dense with rain.

  I’m struck again with the feeling that I shouldn’t be here.

  “Kim always liked it when it rained,” I say, shaking my head at the sick irony of that.

  As I pull my eyes away, I catch sight of a blue butterfly fluttering over the dark pond, its wings struggling to move.

  Something’s definitely wrong with it. It’s airborne, but just barely. It painfully inches its way toward us, closer and closer to the water with every pump.

  “Kim,” Marley says. Hearing her name in Marley’s voice makes my scar throb uncomfortably. “The grave you always go to,” Marley continues. “She was more than just a friend, wasn’t she?”

  “Yeah,” I say, an avalanche of memories rushing at me. I can feel my hand in hers as she pulled me down the empty school hallway during junior prom. See her running onto the football field after I’d thrown the game-winning pass. Feel her lips on mine that very first time, when she found my message in her diary. “She was more.”

  I remember the pain I saw in Marley’s eyes earlier. Something tells me I can talk to her about this, that she could understand in a way that my mom and even Sam can’t seem to. But I don’t know how to even begin.

  So I turn back to the butterfly and watch as it drifts closer and closer to shore. Almost… almost…

  “Kimberly didn’t make it,” I say, forcing myself to try to talk about it, but I keep my eyes trained on the butterfly’s blue wings. They give out, and the butterfly drops onto the water’s surface, so close to the bank but not close enough. It twitches, struggling against the current. I hurry to the edge of the water and carefully scoop the insect into my hand.

  I glance down at the water. Something’s not right. I look closer and realize… I don’t see myself. I just see the tree branches above my head, the outline of the leaves. The stormy gray of the clouds in the sky just past them.

  Frowning, I lean closer.

  There’s even the butterfly, but not… me.

  Like I don’t have a reflection.

  I swallow hard and try to collect myself as the familiar pain blooms in my head. I fight to keep myself here and not let my broken brain take over as the words in Dr. Benefield’s note pop into my head.

  Chill out. It’s not really happening.

  I focus on my heart beating in my chest, my rib cage rising and falling all around it, the butterfly flitting around in my palm.

  Another reflection appears in the water. Marley, her face concerned. I look quickly over at her, and the butterfly takes off, still struggling, but moving.

  “Poor thing,” Marley says as she watches it go.

  I look back at the water, holding my breath, and this time my eyes stare back at me, dark and panicked. Instantly I feel like an idiot. I probably looked like I was freaking out over a butterfly.

  These brain spasms keep getting weirder, not better. I reach up to touch my scar but disguise it by running my fingers casually through my hair. Dr. Benefield said this is happening because I’m protecting myself. Maybe it’s because I was talking about the accident.

  Marley leans over my shoulder to look at my reflection in the water. And of course, it’s right there, looking back at us, just like it’s supposed to be.

  Her hair falls across my arm as she leans even closer, making my skin prickle. “With that scar, you look like Harry Potter. Without it, you’d practically be Prince Charming or something.”

  All thoughts of my head injury disappear, because… Prince Charming?

  “Oh no,” I laugh. “Is that the kind of fairy tale you write? Are you filling kids’ heads full of that nonsense?”

  If I learned one thing from what happened with Kim, it’s that I’m definitely no prince. And love is not a fairy tale, no matter how perfect the story sounds. I don’t believe that anymore.

  Our images blur as it begins to rain, heavy drops rippling across the pond’s surface.

  “I hope it’s not nonsense,” she says, her voice quiet. “I hope there’s something better ahead to believe in.”

  She raises her face to the sky. I take in the pink of her lips, the openness of her face to the rain. In that moment I want to tell her everything. Because even though it seems so impossible after all that’s happened, I want to believe there’s something better ahead too.

  But the rain starts falling too hard, and before I can make up my mind, we have to leave.

  * * *

  That night I sit at the kitchen table, twirling and untwirling spaghetti around on my fork, my hair still wet from walking home in the rain.

  “Well,” my mom says, scanning me with that X-ray vision all mothers have, “she sounds like a nice girl.” She takes a loud, crunchy bite of garlic bread.

  I stupidly told Mom about Marley when I walked through the front door, soaking wet and holding a daisy. She asked me where I got it from, and my broken brain couldn’t think of any other possible reason I’d be holding a daisy.

  I’m realizing now that any excuse would have been better than telling her the truth.

  I tighten my hand around my fork as she presses for details.

  “I barely know her,” I say, stabbing another bite of spaghetti. “Don’t make this a thing, okay? She’s just… easy to be with. She… gets what I’m going through.” I shake my head. It’s not like I met her in the park or the mall. It was a cemetery. And not just any cemetery. It was in the middle of the cemetery where Kim was buried. “But, I mean… shit.”

  We stare at each other, and she reads my mind with yet another mystical mom power.

  “Kim would want you to be happy.”

  “Mom, I told her I’d love her forever. Even just being friends with someone new feels wrong.”

  “That’s not very fair to you, is it?” she asks.

  I let my fork clatter against
my plate. “How could you even say that?”

  Not very fair? What isn’t fair is that Kim’s life was taken away from her because of a fight and a freak storm. The least I can do is keep this promise to her.

  “Kyle,” she says calmly, ignoring my outburst, just like she always does lately. “I just meant that you have a lot of life left to live. You never know—”

  “No,” I say as I push back from the table and stand up, the chair legs squeaking noisily against the ground. “I do know. Kim was the only one for me. And I’m the one not being fair to her.”

  With that, I storm downstairs to my room, and a new kind of clarity forms.

  If I can’t go to the cemetery just for Kim, I have to stop going.

  I have to stop seeing Marley.

  11

  I head to the cemetery a week later to tell Marley I can’t see her, the warm fall day taking me through the winding paths of the park as I search for her around every bend, between every cluster of trees.

  She’ll probably think I’m some kind of weirdo, coming to find her just to tell her I’m going to be ignoring her from now on. I mean, what am I even going to say?

  Hey, if you happen to run into me by my dead girlfriend’s grave, don’t expect a hello.

  I roll my eyes, even though that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Because it feels like that’s what I have to do to do right by Kim.

  My thoughts wander to my fight with my mom last week, frustration and guilt sitting heavy in my stomach.

  She’s been such a broken record lately. You have to keep moving forward. Stop lingering in the past.

  I tried to talk to Sam about it during the morning run/walks we’ve started going on every Friday, but it’s no use. He says it’s not lingering in the past; it’s just keeping her memory alive. They’re always trying to tell me what I should do and how I should heal, without bothering to give me any useful specifics.

  I take a long, deep breath, trying to shake the feeling that I’m trapped. Stuck somewhere between Kim and Sam and my mom, unable to cross the start line.

  A yellow-and-white striped shirt catches my eye, the lines thin enough for the two colors to blur together.

  Marley.

  She’s standing by a huge cherry blossom tree, her long hair catching the breeze and dancing around her shoulders, down to the small of her back.

  I watch as she reaches up to carefully break a stem off the tree, something about the movement familiar even though I hardly know her. She smells the jumble of tiny pink flowers at the edge of the branch, face deep in concentration.

  I find myself wondering what she’s doing before I remind myself why I’m here. Maybe I should just leave it to chance. She hasn’t seen me yet. I start to turn around and leave.

  “You’ve decided not to see me anymore,” a voice says, stealing the words right out of my head. I look back to see Marley studying me, her serene expression gone.

  I pause. How did she…? It doesn’t matter.

  I look down at the cherry tree twig in her hand as I avoid the question. “What’s this one mean?”

  “What do you want it to mean?” she asks, turning it right back around on me. It catches me off guard. She’s the first person to ask me something like that in a long time.

  A new start. I catch the words just before they come out, the answer suddenly right in front of me. A way forward that doesn’t feel wrong.

  “I don’t… I don’t know,” I say instead. I should be shutting the conversation down, saying goodbye.

  Only I can’t. Her eyes don’t buy it. They hold me in place, the green strands vibrant in the morning sun, the same color as the grass at the pond. Marley’s side of the pond.

  “I want…,” I start to say, watching as the cherry blossoms begin to tremble slightly. A few of the petals fall to the ground in a small shower.

  Say it.

  I can’t, though. Because there’s something there in her face. The exact thing I’ve been looking for. The unnamed thing we both understand.

  “I want… a friend,” I say, my own words taking me by surprise. “Someone who didn’t know me before all of this happened. Someone who I can be myself with, the me that I’m becoming. Not who I was. The me I want to be.”

  “We all want that, don’t we?” she says, nodding the way you do when someone says exactly what you’re thinking.

  But I have to draw a line. For myself. For Kim.

  “But that’s all I can be. Just friends.”

  She bites her lip and nods. Something like relief settles in her shoulders. Like it’s a safe compromise for her, too. “Definitely. Just friends. Nothing more.”

  She brightens then and holds out the cherry blossom twig to me. I take it, letting out a small laugh. “So… what does it mean, really?” I ask her.

  “Cherry blossoms? They mean renewal, a new start,” she says.

  Her words send goose bumps up my arms. Another wind gust pulls the cherry blossoms off the tree behind us, then tugs at the branch in my hand. Her eyes are bright as she smiles at me through the whirl of pink and white petals, the sunlight glittering through the trees all around her.

  * * *

  Later, when I get back home, I take off my jacket and find a cherry blossom petal clinging to the sleeve. I pluck it off and hold it in my palm. The color always makes me think of Kim at our senior prom, in a dress the same soft pink. I told Marley that earlier as we sat under the cherry blossom tree, and she nodded, her face thoughtful.

  Her sister had liked the color pink too. That’s why she’d stopped by the cherry trees in the first place.

  Until that moment I’d kept all the reminders of Kim to myself, but talking about it with Marley somehow made the memories less painful. I haven’t felt that comfortable with anyone in months.

  This isn’t at all how I thought things with Marley would go.

  I kick off my shoes and crawl into bed with a groan, pulling the covers up over my head. Part of me feels weak, like I betrayed Kim so I could feel better, but the guilt doesn’t rush over me like it once did.

  Frustrated, I roll over. I don’t know what the right thing is.

  I don’t know anything anymore.

  I stare into the darkness beneath the blanket, letting it envelop me. I don’t know how much time goes by, but I eventually jolt awake to the sound of a phone ringing, the dusky twilight outside my bedroom window now replaced with midnight black.

  Groggily, I fumble around on my nightstand until my fingers finally find my cell. It must be Sam.

  I look at it, surprised to see the screen is black. There’s no incoming call, but the ringing doesn’t stop. If it’s not my phone, then where is it coming from?

  I sit up, trying to figure it out.

  I don’t have a landline in my room. The upstairs phone is upstairs, and my mom’s cell would be with her. Still, there’s a phone ringing somewhere nearby.

  A wave of dread rolls through me as my gaze falls on Kimberly’s purse, sitting on my desk. No way. I walk over, my heart hammering loudly in my chest. The ringing is definitely coming from inside. I yank the purse open. Kimberly’s cell phone, with its blue glitter cover, sits at the bottom, the screen blinking the words UNKNOWN CALLER as it rings. This is impossible. Kim’s phone was almost never charged. How has it stayed on for months?

  It keeps ringing.

  Tentatively, I press the green button and hold it up to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  The phone crackles noisily, the sound of buzzing and distant voices pulling through the static.

  “Can… ear me? Don’t… have to…”

  “Who is this?” I ask, pressing the phone to my ear, straining to hear. But the line abruptly goes dead. I pull the phone away to see the screen is dark. I hold down the power button as hard as I can, but it refuses to turn back on. The battery is completely drained.

  I limp quickly back to my bed, rip the cord out of my phone, and plug it into Kimberly’s.

  I pull my desk chair ove
r and plop down, staring at the phone as it charges, the battery symbol appearing, red line blinking. I lean against my nightstand, watching. Who the hell would be on the other end of that call?

  I wait and wait, but the phone refuses to boot back up. My eyes start to droop. I remember pestering Kim to get a new phone, one that might actually charge, but she never got the chance. So I sit and I wait.

  I wake with a start, realizing I’m back in bed, the covers wrapped firmly around me.

  I don’t even remember lying down.

  Frustrated with myself, I roll over and reach out for Kimberly’s cell, feeling my way up and down the nightstand. I can’t find it anywhere.

  Did I knock it off in my zombie state?

  I lean over the edge to peer around on the floor, but the blood rushes to my head and sends a throbbing pain across the length of my scar. Note to self: brain is still not ready for a head rush.

  There’s nothing on the floor.

  I mean, a few lingering Pop-Tart wrappers, but no phone.

  I clamber out of bed, looking at my desk for her purse. But… it isn’t there. The spot where it was resting just last night is vacant.

  That doesn’t make any sense.

  Slowly, I turn toward my closet. Now that I think of it, what actually makes no sense is that the purse was even on the desk in the first place. It was never on my desk. It’s still…

  I open the closet door and zero in on the box immediately, tucked away in the corner, just like it’s always been.

  I pull back the lid to see the shoe, the disco ball, and…

  The purse, cell phone inside, screen dark and quiet.

  12

  “It didn’t happen. It’s just your head,” Sam calls to me on our run the next morning, struggling to keep up with my scared-shitless pace, which is coming pretty close to an Olympic marathon runner’s even with my less than fully functioning leg.

  On our first mile on the track, I told him about the phone, the unknown caller, the garbled voice, struggling to put into words whatever the hell happened last night.