A Symphony of Cicadas

by Crissi Langwell

  “Thank you, Rachel! I promise, we’ll watch that movie together next time,” he swore, and then jogged off to the waiting car. Sara gave me a helpless look, but I just looked away from her. “Bye!” Eric called out, and they all waved as they sped away. I waved back until they couldn’t see me anymore, the tears already rolling down my cheeks before they were even out of view. Then I ran in the house, past my bewildered mother, and into my room where I flung myself on my bed.

  He never did call me back, and at school, his blue eyes looked everywhere but in my direction – much to my relief. It made it easier for me to avoid him and never talk to him again.

  However, Sara was a different story. I spent weeks treating her with icy contempt despite her best attempts to sweeten me up and get me to like her again. She didn’t even protest when she found the dress I had borrowed at the edge of my side of the room, a huge tear in the side as if it had been shredded at the seam on purpose. She just placed it in the garbage on her side of the room as if it were nothing.

  “He’s gay,” Sara told me later when I broke the silence and confronted her.

  “That’s not funny,” I told her.

  “No, it’s true!” She described how they had gone to the party and he had met up with someone from his old school. They had disappeared, but her friend, Tyler, caught a glimpse of them kissing in a bathroom. “That’s why his dad made him switch schools, because Eric had come out among the kids and even had a boyfriend. His dad was trying to get him to leave all that behind, hoping he would straighten out at a new school, if you know what I mean.”

  “How do you know all this?” I asked her.

  “He told me when Tyler and I confronted him. He swore us to secrecy, and so far you’re the first person I’ve told.”

  “But he kissed you, too!” I blurted out. The rumors about Eric’s sexual orientation may not have spread around the school, but the story of Sara and Eric making out on a couch while his hand covered her breast had made the rounds. Sara blushed, smiling with both embarrassment and pride.

  “I guess I was just an experiment, to see if he really was gay. Turns out even I can’t get a guy to bat for our team.” That meant the kiss we shared on the top of the hill behind our house, the very first kiss I had ever received, was only a lie – part of his experimentation.

  “I can’t believe you even let him kiss you, knowing that I had a huge crush on him,” I said. It no longer mattered as much, seeing that he wasn’t interested in either one of us. But it still stung that Sara had betrayed me, knowing how much Eric had meant to me.

  “I know,” Sara said. “That was pretty shitty. I’m really, really sorry.” I was never one to hold a grudge, and her sincerity helped me to fold into forgiveness. “Tell you what, let’s make a pact,” she said, holding out her pinky. “I promise to never, ever go after a boy you like, are dating, or even have dated in the past. Anyone you have kissed or you claim as off limits, is off limits. Can you promise the same?” I promised her, linking my pinky in hers even though I was sure I would never be faced with a similar problem.

  But the promise remained true for the rest of our lives, or rather, my life. Sara grew out of her flirtatious teen years. I grew out of my mousy, bookworm state of fourteen and began to care about my appearance and making friends. Soon I was discovering the ups and downs of dating, and Sara became my ally as we both backed each other up when, without fail, a heart would get broken.

  But I was always a little cautious around her, especially when bringing a new guy into the house for the first time to meet my family – to meet Sara. The ultimate test always rested in their initial reaction upon meeting my sister. The ones who couldn’t help but admire her even while standing next to me were almost always gone before the month was over. But the few that took more notice of me than my sister were the ones I allowed myself to fall for until the relationship had run its course. Just two men passed the test, resulting in the only long-term relationships I ever submitted myself to – the one with Joey’s dad, Tony, and the one with John.

  ****

  And yet, here in the present, Sara was moving in on the love of my life, causing him to fall for her through her kindness and the smell of her hair.

  Seventeen

  Picturing the way Sara sat at John’s side in the hospital, I kicked myself for not seeing it sooner. She was falling for him. And how could he not help but fall for her?

  In life I’d had golden brown hair, cut just below my shoulders, and a dozen paths of laugh lines around my eyes, enhanced by years of being in the sun. My nose and cheeks held a hint of freckles that were invisible to me as I looked past them in the mirror, but they were the first thing most people saw when they looked in my direction. Sara was my exact opposite. Her unblemished skin was kept fair by hiding away from the sun starting when she was still young, and she kept her blonde hair cut short, framing her face with just a hint of curl. While I took the darker features of my father, right down to my amber eyes, she had the same blue eyes as our mother’s side of the family, a hint of aquamarine in the cerulean of her irises. She was always the fairer of the two of us, the one who was noticed first.

  But while most were drawn to Sara’s beauty, she had never even fazed John. From the first day, John seemed only to see me. His devoted attention took some getting used to at first, but that only deepened my love for him as time went on. He never even flinched when he first met Sara, unaffected by her beauty as he stood next to me holding my hand.

  Just that glimpse of stirring within him at the hospital felt like a betrayal. He knew the years of torment I’d faced being Sara’s younger, unnoticed sister. He knew that even in my adult years, I struggled against the jealousy of not being Sara. While I hid from him just how much I was haunted by our childhood, the few times I had revealed my insecurity he was right there to assure me that I was beautiful and deserving of love.

  But now with me out of the way, Sara was able to move in and make a kill. She could claim for her own the man who was supposed to be my husband, even when the body of her own marriage wasn’t yet cold.

  “You’re going to kill yourself if you think this hard,” a man said next to me, startling me out of my head with his sudden presence, and bringing me back to Mauna Kea. His eyes twinkled at his joke, and I chuckled politely, finally getting it.

  “It sure feels like I could die all over again,” I told him in all seriousness. “I’m Rachel,” I added.

  “The name’s Frank,” he said. He wasn’t a very tall man, and lacked any hints of youth. His skin was the color of coffee, weathered by the sun with a few age spots that existed on his bald head. Despite our wintery surroundings, he wore a button-up shirt over a pair of khaki shorts, with sandals on his feet.

  “Did you once live here?” I asked him. “I mean, not here. But on the island?”

  “A long time ago,” he said. “Around twenty years ago. My wife and I lived in a town about thirty minutes from here. We used to visit this spot often when we were younger, bringing the kids with us to see the whole entire island so they knew how lucky we were to live here.” He smiled at the memory, pausing for a moment as he lived in it. His focus returned to me. “Mona still comes here sometimes, and in fact, she’s coming here today. I’m just waiting for her.”

  “That’s nice,” I said, still wallowing too much in my own misery to be able to engage in the life of someone else.

  “So what is it that’s killing you?” he asked, and I sighed.

  “Love,” I told him. He nodded with appreciation.

  “Ah, the greatest weapon of all time, the one power that can leave you feeling so good and so bad, just depending on which way the wind leans you that day,” he mused. “I’ve been killed many times over with love. What a sweet death it was, too.”

  He leaned back and looked out at the horizon, the sky turning a delicious shade of pink as nightfall passed us by and the sun glimmered just below the morning fog. He looked to his right, and I heard his breath catch.


  “There she is, my Mona.”

  I turned in the direction he was facing to see a caravan of cars parking in the lot near the observatory. An elderly woman was helped out of the car by the guide, followed by an older man. The man accompanying Mona linked his arm over hers once they were both safe on the ground. I could tell how much he cared for her in the way he held onto her, ensuring she had no way to slip on the icy ground. With careful steps, they made their way to a place where they could see out over the entire island once the fog burned off.

  “Who is that?” I asked Frank.

  “That’s her second husband, Oscar,” he told me, smiling with kindness in the direction of the man who now held fast to his wife.

  “You’re not jealous,” I stated with surprise. “Doesn’t it hurt to see someone else looking at your wife that way?”

  “It used to,” he admitted. “When they were first getting to know each other, I thought I would die a new death every time I saw them together. But I’ve learned to be okay with it over time. I mean, look how happy she is.”

  He nodded in her direction, and I watched the couple. Sure enough, Mona smiled when Oscar whispered something in her ear, moving closer to him so that they were supporting each other’s weight in the brisk cold of the morning. Their breath came out in puffs of white, but they didn’t seem cold as they stayed near each other. “He loves her so much. It makes me happy to see her taken care of by a good man, since I no longer can,” Frank said with a smile. I expected his face to hold a note of sadness, for his smile to harbor secrets of regret that he wasn’t the one holding on to her and whispering in her ear. But he wasn’t sad. I was amazed at his happiness as he watched his wife in the arms of another man, finding joy in her joy and laughing when she laughed.

  “I don’t know if I could ever be happy if John moves on,” I said, looking away from Mona and Oscar and down at my snow-covered shoes.

  “Is John your husband?” Frank asked.

  “Almost-husband. We were to be married in just a few weeks when I died.”

  “Oh, that’s unfortunate,” he said. “So you didn’t get that much time with him, did you?” I shook my head no, feeling even sorrier for myself in the moment. “But you do know he’ll move on,” Frank said with certainty. I nodded. I knew it to be true. I just didn’t want it to be true.

  We sat there without speaking for quite some time. The sun rose above the fog, burning it off until we could see the beautiful island lying below us, surrounded by the green and blue water that appeared still as glass from this high up. The air was now warm and clean, and more people came by car to see the view and take a few pictures. I could see Mona and Oscar beginning to make their descent back to the car they came from, a guide staying near them to ensure they didn’t lose their footing. Frank got up, too, preparing to leave as well, since his reason for being here was about to be driven away. But he turned to me before disappearing.

  “When you love someone, what you love most about them is how they make you feel,” he told me. “You’re not only in love with them, but you’re in love with the person you are when you are around them. This is a one-sided existence we live in, where we don’t receive the kind of love we used to get when we were in the world of the living. You would do best to adapt the way you love John to fit in with your afterlife, because you’re confining yourself to a world of hurt and disappointment if you keep going on expecting him to give you what you need. He can’t do it. But you can love him selflessly. If you can find happiness in his happiness, even if it’s from someone else’s love, you’ll find peace with him moving on. After all, a selfless love only wants the best for the object of adoration. And in our state, the best just isn’t us.” With these words, he gave me a solemn bow in a ceremonial gesture, and I nodded my head from my seated position. He took my hand in his and kissed it, his kind and smiling eyes the last thing I saw of him before he disappeared altogether.

  I knew he was right. If I loved John like I thought I did, I needed to start thinking about his happiness and leave my own happiness to the side. Well, no, that’s not what Frank was saying. I needed to find my happiness in John’s happiness, receiving love and joy back with each blessing that came John’s way. If this joy happened to come from Sara, so be it. I needed to let go of the childish jealousy I felt towards her, letting go of the past because that’s all it was – the past.

  I didn’t realize I was crying until the tears from my cheeks dropped down and splattered on my bare knee below the hem of my dress. My heart was breaking all over again, but this time it was cleansing. I let go and immersed myself in my sorrow, grieving for the romance John and I shared. I knew the next step was to let it go and make room for a different kind of love. Such a human emotion, this crying is, I thought to myself, even as the tears and sobs continued at a steady pace. I wondered why, when we had to give up all other attributes of human life, we were allowed to keep our emotions – and even stronger emotions than we had in life. It seemed both a blessing and a curse, allowing human life to be held onto by a thread while keeping the fullness of it just out of arm’s reach. I wanted the freedom to feel nothing for my human life. But in a contradicting desire, I wanted to seize life so it would stop slipping from my grasp.

  The sun rose and set, at times in a rapid spiral of motion as an immeasurable length of time passed me by. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been there when the tears ceased their steady stream down my cheeks. But when the last tear dropped, I felt a sense of relief as I realized I was ready to begin a new chapter.

  I took a deep breath, blew it out, and stood up and brushed the snow off my dress, taking one last look out at the ocean that surrounded the big island of Hawaii and my perch atop Mauna Kea. The fog had just begun to form at the base of the mountain, and I watched as it grew, gathering strength in its manifestation. Soon, the whole expanse in front of me was covered in the white blanket of clouds.

  “What would happen if I walked out upon the fog, Daddy?” I had asked my father that day driving above the covered valley.

  “You’d pass right through and fall to the ground,” my father had told me, stripping away all the magic my five year old self still held when it came to science and life.

  The fog touched the edge of Mauna Kea, inviting me to test my father’s theory and prove him wrong. I placed a cautious step forward onto the filmy cloud, touching the solidity within the mist that existed only for me. I moved forward so that both my feet were firm on the fog. A gap in the cloudy substance showed I was standing thousands of feet above the shadowed island below, with nothing to break my fall should I plummet from my space in the sky. I found pleasure in this dangerous thought, smiling in the freedom that existed in this one simple realization. And then I ran across the fog at full speed, skipping over the covering of the earth until I reached the end and jumped off into the ocean below.

  Eighteen

  John came home after a grueling day of work in the summer heat. He kicked off his shoes at the door to keep from tracking dirt any farther than the entry way of the apartment, shedding clothes piece by piece as he walked up the stairs to his room. At the top of the stairs, he tried to ignore the view of Sam’s room from the corner of his eye, though it was getting harder and harder to do in the emptiness of the house. His son’s room was added to his list of ghosts that haunted him, sitting as it did beside the ghosts that lay within the door of Joey’s room.

  It had been just over a year and a half since my death, and a year since Sam had moved out. At times, John felt like time was passing at a rapid pace. Other times it stood too still. He was glad he would soon be free from the clutches of the apartment, fleeing the memories and starting fresh when he moved to the finished house in San Anselmo. The whole apartment was packed up, save for the few belongings he still needed in his day-to-day life – as well as the contents behind the door of Joey’s room.

  This forbidden area of the apartment had become something like a shrine since my departure, unseen by human eyes sinc
e Sam had moved out. While John refused to view the contents of the room, Sam had often gone in there when he lived in the room next door, rifling through Joey’s video games and belongings in secret, just in case there was anything of interest to him.

  I also visited the room. Often I would find a hollow sense of solace among the clothes on the floor, the unmade bed, Joey’s things strewn below boxes of my things. His smell still existed in the walls and the bedding, and I would sit for hours, days, weeks, just pretending I still held a connection with my son. I had given up on finding him in this divide, knowing that when it was time, if it would ever be time, he would find me instead.

  As John showered, his mind drifted to Joey’s room. He knew he needed to do something with the room, but wasn’t sure if he could bring himself to open the door and face all the things he’d packed in there to keep my memory at bay. While it hadn’t worked – I haunted him even when I stopped trying to do so – he found comfort in knowing the solid proof of my existence was hidden behind a closed door.

  But he couldn’t move from the house until he had packed up everything. And that included Joey’s room. He needed to decide what to give up forever, and if anything within that room would make it to the new house. He knew this was a task he couldn’t do on his own.

  John finished his shower and dried off with hurried movements. I knew who he was going to call before he even picked his cell phone up off his bed.

  “Can you come over? I need your help with her things,” he said without even saying hello.

  “Of course,” Sara replied.