by Susan Oloier
“No fucking way. Tell me you did not just grab my ass. Tell me you did not tell her we’re a couple. Tell me that. Now.”
“We’re a couple,” I say nonchalantly.
Nate shoves me. “You are so going to fix this.”
I push back against his shoulder. “I so am not. In case you forgot,” I get in his face, “you have a girlfriend.”
“Fuck you!” He smacks his beer down on the edge of the pool table, and a bunch of it sloshes over the side. “Do you know how stifling that is? She won’t let me be. Doesn’t give me my space.”
I throw my hands up. “What do you want me to say? Oh, poor Nate. He has a girlfriend. Someone who actually wants to spend time with him. Someone who cares. You say fuck me. I say fuck you!” Then I slam my beer down, but instead of following the same course as Nate’s, mine simply tips over onto the felt of the pool table. I don’t care. I grab my jacket and storm out the door.
An icy, winter wind blasts me as I push my way outside. I have no idea where I’m going or what I plan to do. Nate drove, so I’m stuck. Unless I walk, which I guess is the only choice I have. I tip my head down to ward off the wind as I make my way along the sidewalks only lit by the stores, restaurants, and car headlights.
I finally decide to snag a bus back home. But before I know what I’m doing, the doors hiss open, and I’m stepping out to the stop near the cemetery. I listen for the shushing sound of the door closing and hear the vehicle take off down the road, closer to my house.
I stand outside the gates. Staring through them makes me think of horror movies and zombies digging their way out of the graves. But, in reality, it’s pretty quiet. Snow banks against some of the headstones from the last winter storm we had, and the branches of some of the trees seem like arms reaching out to grab me. I know he’s in here. But I’m not so sure I want to go looking for his grave in the dark. Or ever. I could stand out on the sidewalk forever and freeze to death or dig up the courage to head inside. Or just trudge the rest of the way home. I go inside, heading toward the area where I once spotted Hailey. I have no idea what her boyfriend’s name was, but I continue on anyway, deathly afraid of some ghoulish thing popping out from behind a tree or a headstone.
I scan the markers and spy years dating back to the 60s, 40s, even the early 1900s. I should be able to find his resting place by the birth and death dates. I’m just not sure why I want to. Seriously, what am I doing here? It’s none of my business. And this guy—her boyfriend—wouldn’t want me around here anyway. The person who wants to take the place he left vacant when he went and died.
Gravestones are tipped at different angles. Those are the ones that have been around for a while, bullied by time and weather. Then I spot a new headstone beneath a mighty oak, and my stomach lurches while my pulse speeds up. I know it’s his. I creep up to it as though the stone itself is alive and will attack me at first sight. Jeremy Freeman with birth and death dates. Only 18 years old. I stare at his grave, and the reality hits me. This is for real. Not just a second-hand story from Hailey. A guy is actually dead. Her boyfriend. The one who was in the car she drove. And he’s in the ground practically underneath me.
I lean over afraid I’ll get sick. I spit into the grass, trying to keep the beer I drank down, but there’s acid in my throat. I hear a crack of a branch or something, and instead of throwing up, I take off toward the exit. I need to get the hell out of this place. Everything in it gives me the creeps. I run for the gates and notice something weird, so I briefly slow down. It seems as though no life exists in the cemetery at all. It’s totally still and quiet except for this freaking pinwheel turning at a grave near the road. And there’s no wind. Icy cold air, but no breeze whatsoever. I don’t take the time to look at the marker or anything else. I simply get the hell out of there as fast as I can. I don’t stop until the cemetery is far enough away to not feel threatening anymore.
Jeremy
Rae and I sit beneath the great oak rising over my gravesite. We watch the little boy who stands at the entrance gate, hands poking through the bars, as he looks out onto the street.
The summer tanager, which should have migrated long ago, remains a constant companion—its red plumage in sharp juxtaposition to the white and bloodless world of the cemetery. It flits from tree to tree.
Rae turns a snow globe in her hands, sending a powder dusting of snow through a miniaturized version of Paris.
“What’s he doing?” I ask Rae.
“Waiting.”
“His dad’s not coming,” I say. “Trust me. I know.”
I feel Rae studying my profile, waiting for more. I don’t indulge her. My dad hasn’t shown up either, but that’s none of her business. Besides, it no longer matters.
“His dad was here.”
“Okay, I’m confused,” I tell her. “Isn’t that what he was waiting for?”
Rae shrugs. “Apparently, it wasn’t enough. He didn’t stop to say goodbye. He was here for some other reason. But you’d know that if you were here.” She sounds what? Bitter? Slightly jealous?
“Nothing’s keeping you here,” I say matter-of-factly.
I feel her stare on me. She wants to say something, but she’s holding back.
“What?” I finally snap.
She shakes out of it. “It’s just…” she swallows hard, “It was eerie without you here.”
Her confession grounds me, and I finally look her in the eyes. They’re big, brown, and outlined by thick lashes. She’s young. Died too soon.
I nod at the snow globe. “What’s that?”
“My mom left it for me. I collected them when I was…you know.”
I nod.
“What did you do when you were…still alive?”
I consider her question, remembering all the wonderful things I once did that made me a living, breathing human being, like making omelets for my mom and Zoe or dancing with Hailey or spending quiet time at the bird sanctuary. All of those memories are bittersweet.
I catch sight of the tanager in a nearby balsam poplar. “You know the estuary on 501?” I ask.
Rae nods.
I used to go there with my girlfriend. She was completely clueless about birds, but she liked it anyway because it was just the two of us. No school, no hassles. Just the birds and us. She loved the red ones, couldn’t believe nature produced such vivid colors in an animal.” I let my thought trail off silently at the memory.
“That’s nice,” Rae says. She gestures toward the poplar. “Tanager, right?”
“Yeah,” I say. “She’s the one I’m always waiting for. But I can’t say goodbye.”
“When you finally do,” Rae says, “he’ll be gone.”
She means the bird. But I also know she could be speaking of me.
Hailey
I curl up on the couch with my chenille blanket. Mom and dad are tucked in their own room. For the most part, they’re so good at giving me the privacy I need these days. Occasionally, my mom pushes, but I know she’s trying to help in the only ways she knows how.
I click the play button on the remote control, and the screen animates the life I used to know. We’re in the Weminuche Wilderness in spring. I can hear the rush of the creek running alongside the trail we took. There’s an occasional birdcall, which automatically makes me think of Jeremy. I had forgotten all about the hike. Seeing it now takes me instantly back to that moment, as if I’m reliving it.
“Come on, Jeremy,” on-screen-me says. “Give me the camera.”
“No way,” I hear his disembodied voice. “Say something funny.”
I watch the old me tuck a strip of hair behind the ear. “Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?” It’s Jeremy’s voice again.
“Daisy.”
“Daisy who?”
“Day say you’re in, but I don’t believe them.” On-camera-me tips her head in embarrassment for such a lame joke.
“Cute,” Jeremy says, and real-life me feels a rush of sadness and sentiment. He ev
en knew how to make me feel special with a stupid joke. I hold the tears at bay because I want to at least see him before I break down, and I know we’re going to switch places soon. I remember the moment vividly now.
“Your turn,” on-screen-me says while we trade places.
Then there he is in front of the camera. His brown hair is tucked under a backwards cap, and a t-shirt hides all the muscles I came to know so well through dance and a loving touch. “All right,” he says, folding his hands and rubbing them together in preparation. “I suppose you want a joke, too.”
Tears pool in my eyes. A few drip down my face, and I wipe them swiftly away.
“No joke,” I hear myself say. “Tell me why you picked me.”
“For this hike?” he asks in mock naïveté.
“No. I mean why me and not, say, Julie Waters?”
I see his eyes wrinkle under his smile. “Because I love you, silly. That’s why. All right, lets tick some birds off our…”
Real me can’t take anymore, and I hit the pause button in the middle of Jeremy’s sentence, freezing him forever in this never-again-to-be, artificial TV life.
I hear myself sob and know it will be a sleepless night.
Jeremy
I’ve been spending way too much time here. I need to get away. It can’t be healthy to loiter in a cemetery, even when you are dead. But there’s something peaceful about hanging around with Rae. She seems to intuit things that completely escape me. Perhaps we’ll stay here together forever, enjoying the short bursts of time we have with our loved ones.
“She left another one,” Rae says, holding a snow globe with the Eiffel tower inside. “I don’t know where she finds these things. Maybe eBay.” She jiggles it back and forth in her hands so the flakes spiral around inside the glass. “It’s not like we can ever go.” There’s sadness in her voice.
“So what happened?” she finally asks. “I mean, I don’t remember you from Bloomfield.”
“I went to Wheaton,” I answer as a flood of images of the school, my friends, my life before rushes my head. “Car crash.” I turn to her. “You?”
She stops fingering the snow globe. “Leukemia. Well, actually pneumonia…from lowered immunity…from leukemia.” She stares at the fake Eifel Tower pinned under glass. “My mom promised to take me when I got better. I knew we’d never go, but she needed to hold on to the lie more than I did.”
“You could go now,” I say. “To Paris.”
“It wouldn’t be the same.”
“No.”
“Nothing’s the same,” she says.
“It is and it isn’t. They keep on living as though we never existed. And the bird sanctuary…” I glance down at the brown earth buried beneath the snow. “It’s just lonely.”
Rae reaches over and rests her hand on top of mine. I let her. “I know.”
There’s reassurance in her touch. A sense of safety.
“How did he die?” I finally ask, gesturing toward the boy who’s by the gate.
“I’m not sure,” Rae confesses. “But his marker is in the children’s memorial section. His death date’s the same as his birth date. So, you know, he didn’t live long.”
“But shouldn’t he be a baby then?”
Rae lifts her shoulders. “Age isn’t the same over here. If we stick around, we’ll change, too.”
Change. I don’t like the sound of that. I want things to stay the same. Better yet, I want them to go back to the way they once were.
Rae and I continue to watch him as chunky flakes of snow twirl down around us. We may not care to change, but the world around refuses to stay the same.
Eli
It’s Saturday. I sit at the living room piano and tinker with the keys. Visions of the cemetery and the spinning pinwheel reach into my mind, but I need to push them out. Too effing scary. Even more, I have to find a way to cope with my feelings for Hailey since I have nowhere to put them except into my music.
“Whatcha playing?” my brother asks as he hovers over the upright.
“Well,” I say, patting the bench for him to sit beside me, “I’m actually writing a song.”
“What kind of song?”
“A love song,” I say, assessing his reaction.
“For mom?” He hits a few keys not really paying attention to me anymore.
“No, not for mom.”
I let him play around for a while, then my mom calls him into the kitchen for a snack. She knows I need some time to myself, and Conner’s all over the peanut butter brownies she’s made.
Definitely not for mom.
“Let’s go watch something in the back. How ‘bout it, Conner?” I hear my mom say. They head down the hallway and leave me with notes coursing through my head and a rush of emotions. I lose myself completely to the music and the piano. My fingers brush the ivories as if stroking skin, fingering muscle. And if I try hard enough, I can pretend the piano is her.
Hailey
I muster everything I have to stay focused on Physics. My mind keeps trailing off to other things—things I don’t want to think about. At all. To make matters worse, the guy two seats diagonally back from me—I think his name is Terry—stares at me most of the time. I catch his eyes on me and can even feel them while I’m looking forward.
So it’s a major relief when Mr. Buckheimer asks someone to take paperwork to the office. A slew of hands shoot up, including mine. And oh-so-fortunate for me, Mr. Buckheimer picks me out of the crowd. I dart out of my desk, itching to burn off some of my nervous energy.
“Don’t get lost,” he teases since I am one of the newbies.
I smile. “I won’t.”
I give one last glance to a resentful crowd of faces, and then find freedom in the hallway. I already plan to take the scenic route, kill as much time as possible before the bell. It’s a pretty direct path to the office, but I decide to tour parts of the school I haven’t seen yet. I head to the art pod. Maybe there’s a masterpiece in the making or something. I wend my way through the maze of hallways and reach Art. Self portraits paper the brick walls. A multitude of colors and angles glare at me. So many of them are a study in psychology. I can tell by the art renderings which students feel self-assured and which ones are filled with self-loathing.
As I pass through the halls, all is pretty boring and quiet. I make a series of turns, poorly navigating my way through the twists and turns of Bloomfield High School. Then I’m in Music. There’s no cacophony of tuning instruments. Instead, I hear the muted sound of piano keys from one of the practice rooms. And for a moment, I feel as though I’ve been touched by heaven. The notes are smooth and nearly perfect. But as I get closer, I realize there’s a quality to the song I instantly recognize. Our song, Jeremy’s and mine. It’s not exactly our song, but it’s there in the nuances of what I hear. But it sounds more like a mash up.
I freeze, but my insides come alive with anticipation. Can it be? Is he here? I mean, why else would someone play portions of that piece? It has to be him. My head spins, and I think I might faint at the possibilities. Maybe this whole thing was just a nightmare or a trick, and he’s not dead after all. I have to find out if it’s true.
I rush to the room, anxious to see him again. Both thrilled and scared at the prospect of staring into his eyes once more, touching his skin, wrapping my arms around him. I take a deep breath and burst through the door. The music instantly stops, and my heart bottoms out when I see it’s not Jeremy after all. It’s Eli. Of all people. I feel my brows knit into a scowl.
“What are you doing here?” My tone is accusatory and mean.
Eli looks around as if I’m speaking to someone other than him—maybe to a ghost in the room.
“Answer me!” I demand.
“I’m, I’m just playing,” he stumbles. There’s a puzzled look stenciled on his face. I know I’m the last person he expected to see, too.
I storm over to the piano and pull the music sheets from the rack. I study the pages even though I know nothin
g about reading notes.
“Where did you hear this?” I ask. “This song?” I cinch the papers in my fist, shake them at him, knowing I destroy whatever he’s been working on.
“I, I…” He’s rendered speechless by my anger.
“Tell me!”
“I don’t know,” he says, shaken. “I made it up.”
“You’re lying,” I say. I can feel the tears leeching from my eyes.
“Hailey,” he says, turning around on the bench to fully face me, “I’m not.”
“This was our song. You didn’t make it up!” I hear myself yelling but don’t stop. “You didn’t!” I’m hysterical now, certain if there’s someone in the hall he or she will hear me and call for help. But I don’t care.
I hear Eli take a deep breath, trying to make sense of my ranting. He reaches out a hand as if to touch me, but it simply hovers in the air, maybe afraid I might snap it off with hidden jaws.
“Why?” I ask, sucking in jagged gasps of breath. The sheet music is nothing but a crumple of pages in my hand now. I loosen my grip. “Are you playing it out of spite? To hurt me?”
“What? God, no. I didn’t know this was your song with…”
“He has a name.” My tone is berating and mean again. “It’s Jeremy. You can say it.”
“You never told me his name. You never told me about the song,” he says. “It just popped into my head,” he explains, setting his hand in his lap.
My eyes light on the infinity tattoo on Eli’s wrist, and I work hard to ignore it.
“Hailey, I swear,” Eli continues to explain. “It’s some 1990s tune and, and I blended it with some of my own work. I didn’t know. Honestly.” His eyes are pleading and full of regret.
“I don’t believe you,” I say, throwing the papers toward him.
They scatter on the floor, and Eli watches them for a moment. Then he glances up at me. That’s when I realize he’s probably naïve to all of my accusations. Innocent of the crime I’ve accused him of.
