I point into the air because it’s the closest I can get to pointing to the music. I actually say “no thank you” to a beer when she tries to push one into my other hand.
“Why are you playing UL?” I ask her. Something like nervousness is fluttering against my chest while I wait for her to answer.
She keeps the beer for herself, and instead of opening it she grabs a knife from the dish rack next to the sink and jabs it into the side of the can. It sprays across the front of her shirt a little, and she laughs.
She puts the hole to her lips, pops the top, and I watch as dainty Yara, in her fucking pink Uggs and miniskirt, shotguns the whole twelve ounces in less than a minute.
She burps. Loud as hell.
I would never admit it out loud, but Yara’s a little badass.
“You didn’t know?” she says. “Bram was your biggest fan.”
She walks out of the kitchen without saying anything else, and I open the fridge again and pull out a Coke. It’s not cherry, but it’ll do. I hop up onto the granite counter, which is ice cold with the window open, but I don’t mind.
Bram liked my music.
It shouldn’t be a surprise. He loved the stuff I wrote while we were together. But it’s different to hear that he listened to it, even after I broke his fucking nose.
I sip my soda and let the lyrics swell inside me, and I feel like a cracked vase that’s just been filled with expensive roses: broken but beautiful. When I finish my drink, I reach into the fridge, grab another one, and head back to the family room, where everyone else is sitting, feeling like a goddamned rock star.
“Remember that time he jumped off the roof of the rec center and into the pool?” Kole Roberts is saying as I walk in. I guess this is the storytelling part of the evening. A bunch of the other guys, mostly from the football team, laugh. Yara snorts.
“He got banned for that, you know,” she says, and everyone laughs louder. “Not just from that pool, but from, like, every public pool in the city.”
“Oh! But what about when he put on that fake British accent to get out of speeding tickets?” a girl with blond hair, whose name I can’t remember, asks.
“How many times did he use that?” somebody else says, but I can’t see who.
“Pretty much every time he got stopped,” Dexter Lee, another guy from the team, answers.
I smile and look down at my can of Coke. I’d heard Bram’s accent. It was damn good.
I stay quiet while a few other people talk about funny or crazy or awesome things Bram had done or said. They talk about his stupid videos and how they can’t believe how many views he’d started to get. They talk about the time he shaved his head, just because he wanted to see the shape of his skull. The team talks about great plays he’d made in games, and the girls talk about how hot and sweet he was. And even though I remember the Bram they’re talking about, they aren’t remembering all of him. Maybe I’ve been trying to forget the dark parts of him too, or maybe, like them, I just didn’t want to admit that the bad side of Bram existed now that he’s gone.
“Sometimes Bram could be an ass,” I say, thinking about how he’d flip out at me for dumb things—forgetting to return a DVD to him, not texting him back quickly enough. Or the way he’d act like I was his bitch sometimes in front of his friends. He never let them say shit about me, but sometimes, he’d do it for them. The whole room goes silent, the way it did when we were all kids and someone used a curse word for the first time, but it feels worth it—to make sure we remember him as he was, not just as we wanted him to be.
Everyone is staring at me, but then Yara grins lazily.
“Yeah. But he was only like that to the dumbasses like us, who actually loved him.”
And I can’t help it. My eyes find Nico’s.
Yara’s eyes go glassy, even as she keeps the smile on her face, and she’s looking at me as if I’m the only person here who understands her. And it should be a nice moment. I should smile at Yara and agree with just my eyes as the music I wrote plays in the background, like we’re in a shitty, sentimental TV movie or something. But I look away because, even though we’re becoming something like friends, part of me hasn’t let it go.
I loved him first.
Yara gets up and walks over to me, even though I’m clearly trying to avoid making eye contact with her. She sniffs and then touches my hand in a way that makes me feel younger than I am. Hers are fingers used to touching people; soft and warm and steady. I look down at our hands. I’m almost used to the way hers feel on mine.
“I never really said sorry about the way the whole thing with me and Bram went down,” she says. “I didn’t know he was, like, with you—with anyone—until you guys had already broken up.”
I always knew that Yara was a transfer kid—that she met Bram during the summer before our senior year. She wouldn’t have known about me unless someone told her. And apparently, no one, not even Bram, did. But it was so much easier to keep her, and everyone else, at arm’s length.
If she had said this to me a few weeks ago, I know I would have said “bullshit” and walked away from her, no questions asked. But the lighting or the music—or maybe the way she’s been so nice to me every day for no reason at all—have made me feel differently. Her words make something in my belly unknot.
I don’t have a smart-ass comeback. I don’t know what to say. Bram told me that I would like Yara if I got to know her. And he was so right.
“Thanks,” I say, and I’m not exactly about to cry, but all of a sudden it’s a lot harder to swallow.
Yara nods and sniffs a few times as she walks back to the table. Paige pats her on the shoulder as Yara passes in front of her. Then Yara picks up one of the candelabras from a shelf.
“Grab your coats,” she says. “Time for the main event.”
I’d never taken my peacoat off, so I grab a small tea light candle sitting in an old-fashioned copper holder. I stand by the door waiting, looking for Yara in the dark.
Nico walks by. He grabs my hand, and I slap his back, and we nod at each other but don’t say anything. I want to ask him about Undying Light—if they found a singer yet, if they’ve written a song—but this isn’t the time or place. Even though I kind of gave him and Aden my blessing to move forward without me, if and when they do, it’ll still sting.
I squint and spot Yara at the end of the long line of kids. She’s blowing out all the candles that got left behind. Dozens of tiny spirals of smoke spin up into the air behind her, and by the time she reaches the door, the tears that have been pooling in her eyes are falling.
This time, I’m the one who reaches for her hand.
She looks past me at the kids gathering in her small backyard. If we lived anywhere else in the world besides Queens, there would probably be a fire pit or kindling or at least something akin to a bonfire. But Yara just has a charcoal grill set up in the center of the ten by ten square of grass, and with the way everyone is standing around it, they almost look like hobos crowded under a bridge.
Yara kind of dissolves at this point. Two of her friends materialize out of the night and come to where we’re standing in the doorway. Each one takes one of Yara’s arms, and they walk her over to the grill, but she doesn’t let go of me, so I’m kinda dragged along with them.
Standing there, in the center of it all, I feel weirdly closer to everyone, the way you can only feel when a crazy or impossible thing unites you with a group of half strangers. Nico comes over to me.
“I’ll tell her, I swear,” he says, like he knows the position his secrets put me in. “When she invited me, I knew there was no way she knew about Bram and me. So I’ll tell her. Not tonight, though.”
I’m surprised nobody else has told her yet, to be honest. But I just nod and put my arm around his shoulder, thinking about how everyone is so much more complicated than we think they are.
Take Bram. His mom was broke. He was dealing drugs. He was using drugs. He failed a drug test and lost his scholarships. He dumped Nico the same day he died—but only after Yara dumped him first. I loved him. Maybe I still love him, but I didn’t really know who he was anymore. Maybe I always imagined him a little too simply. I made him into who I wanted him to be and ignored the person who was right in front of me.
Someone grabs the lighter fluid and matches that are on the ground beside the grill and lights the wood chips stacked inside. A few minutes later, everyone starts walking up to the fire and dropping pieces of paper into the flames.
Nico hands me a stack of Post-its and a Sharpie, and then he steps closer to the flames, his own Post-its already scribbled on and crumpled in his hand.
“They’re memories,” a guy from the football team says, explaining what’s happening because I’m frowning. “Everyone’s writing down their best and worst memories of Bram, and that’s what they’re throwing in.”
“Oh,” I say. “Right.”
A lot of people are crying, and some are even kissing the papers or looking at the sky before tossing them into the flames. It’s a little melodramatic for my taste, but I can get behind the sentiment.
Writing down my memories is the easiest part of the whole night. Watching them burn is the hardest.
BEST: the first time you kissed me.
WORST: the day we broke up. The day you died. And just about every day in between.
BAMF // SHAY’S ALBUM REVIEW…FOUND OBJECTS
When I say that this album was transformative, I mean that I am literally a different person after listening to it. The haunting lyrics and synth sounds come together for something that makes me feel like I’m floating through space and tripping on acid at the same time.
I think Sasha would say, Sounds like: kinetic energy.
—Shay (Sasha’s sister)
At away meets, I’m used to running with no familiar faces in the audience. Track meets are boring enough as it is, and when they’re far away, my friends don’t come. Most of the onlookers here are holding signs in black and gray—the colors of the team whose gym we’re in. I glance over at the girls warming up on the other side of the track, wondering who my biggest competition will be once we’re out and running.
As I approach the starting line, my eyes sweep across the crowd, and there’s no one holding a sign with my name, though I do see a few people wearing my school colors: bright blue and green.
A queued post from Sasha arrived just before I started warming up. It was a photo of the two of us doing yoga, because Sasha never really had the lung capacity for running. The caption read Keep Calm and Carry On—nothing more. It felt like a message from her, just to me. So as I warm up, I try to breathe a little more deeply—to clear my head of everything: BAMF, Mom, even Jerome, and I just “keep calm.”
As six girls line up beside me, I shake my hands and jump up and down. This is my favorite part—the anticipation. The not knowing exactly what’s going to happen. The indoor track should be a piece of cake since I’ve been running and riding my bike out in the cold all winter. So I’m not worried. I’m actually feeling a little cocky. I’ll make good time, and I might even place.
We all take our marks, and I look at my shoes. Then I stare straight ahead at the track. When the buzzer sounds, I propel myself forward, and the track unspools in front of me. I become the rhythm of my feet as they hit the floor, the rhythm of my heart as it crashes around in my chest, the rhythm of my own breathing. I have tunnel vision, and nothing can break my focus.
There’s only one other girl in front of me as I round the corner to start my last lap. I know I can pass her. But that’s when I see a flash of green and blue unfurl in a way that makes me turn my head. I see a pair of brown hands holding up a sign that says YOU CAN DO IT, SHAY!
I grin because Rohan didn’t tell me he was coming, and I put my head down and try to run faster. The smile on my face widens as I lean forward, and even though I still finish in a close second, Ro is here, and it makes me feel like I finished first.
I rush toward the sign, panting and laughing. And just before I’m about to say, “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming,” the person holding the sign lowers it, and it’s Mom’s round face staring back at me instead of Rohan’s.
My smile falls away faster than the drips of sweat sliding down my back, mostly out of surprise.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, and immediately wish I’d said something else.
Mom smiles a small smile and shrugs. “I got out of a meeting earlier than I expected, and this school is actually on the way home, so…”
Mom licks her lips and looks back behind her. She picks something up from her seat, and then she’s handing me a bouquet of yellow roses. The flowers seem to be exploding from the white paper they’re wrapped in, and I don’t know what to say or do.
“Great job out there,” Mom says awkwardly. “You’ve gotten faster since I last saw you run.”
I nod. I take the flowers and press my nose into them, and the smell reminds me of Sasha. I look back up at Mom, and I want to cry.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” I say, because I can’t remember the last time she came to a meet. I reach out to hug her, and the spray of bright petals gets a little crushed between us. A few fall to the floor as I step back, and I think about picking up each one and slipping them into my pockets; drying the whole bouquet the way Sasha used to so I can keep them forever.
“Me neither,” Mom says, laughing.
She takes me out for ice cream. We go to my favorite diner, and I order a banana split piled high with every possible topping. Mom gets an apple turnover and a vanilla milk shake.
And it’s weird, but we talk. Mom asks me about school and Rohan’s band and boys. When I tell her about Jerome, she asks how much I like him, then giggles at how much I grin. When I explain the Unraveling Lovely reunion show I’m trying to organize, she claps. She asks about running and what training in winter has been like, and if I like off-season track and field as much as I love cross-country. She wants to know about the beanie I’m wearing today: a sky-blue one that Sasha knitted herself.
But we don’t talk much about Sasha. Just the occasional “She would have ordered this” or “She would have said that.” When Mom gets quiet after we finish our desserts, though, she asks if I’m planning to go back to the Twinless Twins Support Group.
“I think so,” I say. “Even though most of the people were way older than me, I just felt like they got it, you know? In a way that even my friends, even you, don’t.”
She nods. She looks nervous then, which is strange because she’s normally so confident. She takes out her phone and starts typing something, then pushes it across the table a minute later. The heading reads There’s No Word for Us. It’s a website that lists support groups for parents who have lost a child.
Mom says, “It’s weird to think about, but the name of the site is really true. You’re a widow or a widower if your spouse died. You’re an orphan if you lose your parents. Even you…You’re—”
“Twinless,” I say.
“Right. But I’m not childless, thank God. I have you. So what am I? There’s no word for it, and I don’t know why, but something about not being able to say ‘I’m a whatever’ makes this harder to talk about. To even think about.”
I realize how many times I’ve had the thought I’m twinless, and I totally get what she means. Then I think about my mom for a second. I think about Sasha. I push my spoon into the soupy remains of my banana split.
“You’re Sasha-less,” I say, and my heart starts thumping in a way that feels dangerous. Mom smiles, but she doesn’t look happy.
“Yeah, I am,” she says. “We both are.” She reaches across the table for my hand. “Will you come with me to the first meeting? There
’s one next Thursday. And since you’ve been to one of these already, I figure you could, you know. Show me how it’s done.”
I swallow hard and push away the ache in my legs that always makes me run away from too-hard conversations; the urge inside me to push people aside. Maybe it’s time to be brave. Mom needs me.
“Yeah, of course. We can go to one of mine first, if you want.”
She nods again. Mom looks scared but kind of relieved by my suggestion. “Yeah, that sounds perfect. Let’s do that.”
She raises her hand to get the waitress’s attention. And I hear Sasha whispering in my head. But it’s not really words this time. It’s like I can hear her smiling at us.
FEB. 5, 7:22 A.M.
Lately I’ve been thinking you’d want me to go on this trip with Willow—to see this stuff because you never got the chance to.
Is that a crazy way to feel?
FEB. 6, 8:37 A.M.
Your birthday is tomorrow, and just knowing that makes me want to rip a hole in the universe. That day shouldn’t exist if you don’t.
Tavia may not be on Hangouts right now. She’ll see your messages later.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Sent: Feb. 7, 10:57 p.m.
Subject:
July fourth was your favorite holiday, which makes sense, as extravagant as you were. You liked the explosions. You liked the crazy clothes. You liked that it was a celebration of freedom, even though you weren’t very patriotic at all.
So we bought sparklers for your birthday.
On Tavia Eve, as you called it, I’m at your house. Dante and I go out with the sparklers as soon as it’s dark enough to use them, and we write your name in the air a hundred times with light. I laugh as we spell out other words that are yours alone, like “Sunchild,” something you always called yourself, even though you were born in winter, and “mother of Pearl,” something you’ve been saying all the time since you swore off cursing last year.
The Beauty That Remains Page 22
