He cries, and I silently scream until there is nothing but nothing inside of us.
…
We sit with our backs to the stone. It’s a rosy color, the only one of its kind in the cemetery, and the pink I’d mistakenly thought was the angel. She’s still here, but after so much time, her pink paint is chipping and faded. It wasn’t meant for stone angels.
Her broken wing is missing, too—no longer tied on with a handkerchief. It must have fallen off and been thrown away by a caretaker.
Charlie’s low chuckling breaks the silence between us. “Now we’re going to try to be okay. Okay?”
I snort. It’s like playing the quiet game on car trips when we were little. One of us would say, “Okay, no noises starting NOW,” and we’d both giggle and snort and make plenty of noise between us.
Charlie pulls a pink box tied with string from the brown bag Miss Rose gave him.
“Best doughnuts in all of ever?”
Charlie’s smile flickers. He opens the box and pushes it toward me. Inside is a small cake, decorated with orange roses and a little brown rabbit with faded white spots. “Happy Birthday, Very Real Becca,” is written in orange frosting.
Charlie’s hand finds mine in the long grass. He squeezes my fingers before letting go. “Do you want me to sing?”
“God, no,” I say, a trickle of hysterical laughter threatening to multiply into a deluge in my throat.
“Come on,” Charlie whines. “You know I’ve got mad singing skills.” He sings an even more horrible rendition of this morning’s song. I wouldn’t have thought it humanly possible to sing so terribly if I hadn’t heard it myself.
But his appalling, earnest singing does the trick; it batters down the dam in my throat holding in all the laughter and the sadness and the anger, all the emotions that mean I’m still here. I’m still real. I’m still alive. And this is no act. All this stuff inside me is the real deal.
I join him in the last refrain, delighting in the sound of our voices echoing between the mountains—like we’re multiplied and vast—an unstoppable army of two. Does this count as yodeling? This terrible singing? I think so, Charlotte. I pat the headstone beside me. That’s one more from The List I can check off.
Charlie cuts the cake into three large pieces—one for me, one for him, one for Charlotte. Miss Rose has tucked three plates and three forks into the brown bag. I kind of love Miss Rose right now. And it’s not only because she makes the best birthday cake in all of ever.
We spend the rest of the day with Charlotte. We stretch out in the grass on either side of her just like we always did, Charlie and I making a buffer around Charlotte, trying to protect her from nothing any of us can be protected from.
I tell Charlotte all about the play and Max and even Darby. I guess Charlie is listening, too, because he interrupts.
“You haven’t even texted him?” He props himself up on his elbow to look at me.
“I’m afraid,” I say, sitting up. I face Charlie across the grave. I finger the lines on the headstone of Charlotte’s name. “Remember that dog that lived next door to Gran?”
He nods.
“Remember how they’d tie it up every morning to that stake in the backyard and it’d just walk circles around it all day, wearing a path in the dirt? And that one day, you just couldn’t take it anymore, and you snuck over and set that dog free.”
Charlie’s smile is fragile. “But it refused to leave,” he says. “I set it free, but it just kept circling and circling. Even when we called for it to follow us.”
“I’m that dog, Charlie. My life is just circling and circling, tethered to the time when Charlotte was in it. I’ve tried this year to take new paths, make new friends, have new experiences, go new places, but I keep circling back to this.” I lean against Charlotte’s headstone. “I’m afraid I’ll never get away. I’ll never get over missing her. And I don’t know if I even want to.”
Charlie sits up. “Maybe,” Charlie begins, clearing heaviness from his throat. “Maybe we don’t ever get away from the grief. Maybe we aren’t supposed to. Maybe we’re supposed to carry it with us—always.”
I study the short line on the headstone between Charlotte’s life and death, the dash that sums up her eighteen years here so poorly. It is too small. I want a sharp object so I can etch the line farther, make it bigger, bolder, last longer.
I can’t figure out how to keep going alone, not when every step I take away from Charlotte pulls me right back. Not when what I really want, in the deepest part of my heart, is to never have to walk away from her, to always be walking toward her.
“I can’t lose anyone else.”
Charlie nods. “Yeah, but that’s not how it works, right? People—” He stops short, catching himself.
My fingertips buzz with adrenaline. “They die. They die, Charlie. People die. One day they’re here, and then they’re not. Could be cancer. Could be a careless accident. Could be getting flattened by a truck.” The cake in my stomach is poisoning my insides, making them burn. “We don’t know. All we know is that they die and they leave us and it hurts.”
“Because we loved them.” Charlie catches my eye before continuing. “It hurts because we love the ones we lose, and they love us.”
“Are you trying to say it’s worth it?” I grasp at my chest like I can hold the torn edges of myself together. “This is worth it?”
“I don’t know, Bec,” Charlie says, pulling at a clump of grass. “But I do know I wouldn’t trade a moment I had with Charlotte. Not a second. I won’t give an ounce of this pain back, because it’s mine, and it means she was here and she was real and she loved me.”
Charlie stands, brushing the grass off his pants. “But I do know this,” he says, looking down at me where I sit. “Choosing to be alone because Charlotte died isn’t grieving for her. That’s just plain old fear, and everyone suffers that, even the brave.”
He stands above me, his fists clenched at his sides, the setting sun turning his yellow hair orange, like a flame.
“How do you know all this, Charlie?”
“Well, I am a genius.” His body relaxes a bit. I reach up and take one of his hands.
I think about Romeo and Juliet, about how they were each too afraid to live without the other. I’ve always hated the end of the play, because if they’re both dead, then what does it matter? Perhaps what matters is that they loved. The point isn’t the end. It’s the story that matters.
I need to write my own story. I need to make it matter.
I touch the rough top of the headstone. Is that okay, Charlotte? Can I keep writing even if you’re not in the story any longer?
When we get back to the car, Charlie stops me before I slide into the passenger seat. He reaches into the glove compartment, giving it an extra hard slam to be sure it closes properly after pulling out a small box.
“What’s this?”
“Birthday present.”
There’s a piece of paper taped to the box with a quote, written in my brother’s cramped scrawl, from my favorite book.
You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. ~ Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit
“Charlie—” I begin, but my voice is broken. He’s already given me so much.
“No, no, no,” Charlie says, holding out his hands like he alone can hold back the tide of tears that are threatening to crush us both. “Cry later. Open now.” He nudges the box in my hands.
I open the box to find a keychain inside with a single key. “What’s it for?”
Charlie opens his arms like a maestro as he draws my attention to his beat-up blue car.
“Your car? Why are you giving me a key to your car, which will be with you in Massachusetts?”
“It’s not my car.”
“There are two pieces of shit like that in the universe? Seems impossible. And cruel.”
Charlie’s ears go re
d, but he chuckles. “It’s the same piece of shit, but now it’s your piece of shit.”
“What?”
“The real Becca doesn’t need to mooch rides anymore. The real Becca can go anywhere she wants, anytime she wants, provided her piece-of-shit car is running that day.”
“Charlie—”
He holds up his hands. “Just take it. I don’t need it. It sits in a garage, an expensive garage, for weeks on end. There’s a train from home to Cambridge, and I can even do schoolwork while I’m on the train.”
“But—”
“You’re welcome,” he says, shutting me up by enveloping me in a lung-crushing hug.
I whisper my thanks into the hair at the nape of his neck. “I don’t deserve you.”
Charlie holds me at arm’s length, a fierce look in his eye. “You deserve to live your life outside the pages of a book, Bec. It’s what Charlotte wanted. Take her with you. Keep her with you.”
I’m smiling and crying at the same time and am acutely aware of the snot threatening to gush out of my nose. I give Charlie my most determined nod possible.
He smiles and tucks a hair behind my ear. “But could you drop me off at home before you go to Max’s?”
“How’d you—?”
He points at his head. “Genius. Remember?”
I laugh, wiping my nose with the back of my hand. “How could I ever forget?” And while I never thought I’d have a birthday better than the one I had with Charlotte, this one is pretty damn okay.
Scene Fourteen
[Max’s bedroom]
It starts drizzling as I turn onto the long gravel drive threading through the pines to Max’s house. The rain does little to dampen the smell of dust and evergreens as I park by the barn. I run my fingers along the smooth, worn wood as I walk around it toward the kitchen door. I imagine I can feel every drop of rain as it falls on my face, each one a reminder that I’m still here.
I knock on the kitchen door before peeking my head in. This is protocol for the Herrera household. Once they’ve invited you into their life, you don’t need to wait out in the cold, but let yourself in. Dezi explained it to me what feels like ages ago. It was really just months ago, though.
Inside, Javi and Victor are sitting at the kitchen table. They both look up at me as I enter. Javi gives me a big smile. Victor looks wary, like a predator has just cornered him.
“You’re here,” Javi says, pushing away from the table to grab my hand. “Victor made me hot chocolate. Want some?”
I glance at Victor and decide, no, I do not want anything he might hand me. It’d probably be poisonous. “Where is everyone?” I ask instead.
Javi tells me how the house has been so full lately, aunts and uncles, cousins, friends all coming and going. “Mom said she needed some peace, so Dad took her somewhere, even though there’s no one here but us.” Javi points to himself and Victor.
I clear my throat. “I see. And where’s—”
“Sleeping.” Victor’s reply is a barricade.
“Right,” I whisper.
Javi chuckles. “He won’t wake up. His medicine makes him funny. Then he sleeps and sleeps. Want to see him?”
I don’t look at Victor, but nod at Javi. He drags me down the hall to Max’s room. Victor follows like a shadow. Once we’re inside, Victor tells Javi to go find the marshmallows for the hot chocolate. When we’re alone, he crosses his arms and looks me in the eye.
“I should have been here sooner.”
He nods.
“I shouldn’t have run.”
He nods again.
“I won’t run again.”
Victor sighs. “He may not want you here. You should have seen his face, Becca, every time he woke and you weren’t here.”
I swallow. “I’m here now. I’ll be here.”
Javi’s victorious cry snakes its way down the hallway toward us. Marshmallows have been found. Victor glances at Max once before he brushes past me.
The rain continues to fall outside, tapping on the window with feather-soft fingers. The lamp on his desk is on, but otherwise the room is dark. I glance around, studying the drawings on his walls. They are sets, beautiful, modern sets for Romeo and Juliet. He’s been working on them even though Owens would never look at them. I touch the firm ink lines, so solid and sure, and ache to touch Max.
His breathing is slow and rhythmic. His left arm is in a cast from just above the elbow down to his hand. The bandages on his head have been removed, and his sharp cheekbones seem even more pronounced in the semidarkness of his room. His hair is shaggier, too, with a long black lock that has fallen across his eyes. I push it back, savoring the warmth of his skin.
Watching him sleep with the rain beating a steady rhythm outside, I’m suddenly exhausted. Slowly, careful not to disturb him, I crawl into the space next to Max on the bed. I curl into his right side, the side not covered with bruises, and breathe in the sweet smell of him. The storm of fears that has been swirling around me since Victor called to tell me there’d been an accident suddenly stills. Actually, I’ve been lost in this storm longer than this one week. It feels like I’ve been fighting it my whole life. I think of Romeo’s line, just before he drinks his poison.
Then, I defy the stars.
I can’t change my past. I know that now. I wouldn’t want to. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let something as fickle as fate decide my future.
I rest my head on the pillow, in the crook of Max’s neck. I’ll be here, unmovable, I think, just before I fall asleep.
I wake to the feeling of fingers playing in my hair. The rain is falling harder outside, and the desk lamp has been turned off, so the only light from the room filters in from a distant source down the hallway. I pick up my head and am inches from Max’s face. His fingers freeze, and he eyes me warily.
“Are you really here?” His voice is a rasp.
“Yes.”
“Are you going to leave again?”
“Not if I have any choice in the matter.”
He smiles and closes his eyes. His fingers run gently through my hair again. I press myself forward, pressing my lips to his. His good arm tightens around me, and I think to myself, I will not lose another chance to kiss this boy. I will not lose another smile from his lips. Not because of fear.
This is my birthday present to me.
Scene Fifteen
[The theater]
I pull into Darby’s drive Monday morning, blocking her car just as she’s about to pull out. She doesn’t recognize the car, so of course she hops out in full drama queen mode.
“Some of us have places to go, asshole.”
I roll down my window and stick out my head, enjoying the moment Darby realizes it’s me. “Stop your whining and get in, then.”
Darby’s smile is annoyance, humor, and admiration all at once. She reaches into her car for her bag and takes her sweet time strolling around to the passenger side of my car. Once she’s in, she examines everything, from the clock on the dash missing most of the bits from each digital number, to the crack in the dashboard that makes the glove box door misalign. She settles back into her seat with a satisfied smile, propping her feet on the dash.
“Well, it’s a piece of shit, but I do like having a chauffeur for once.”
There’s a smug grin on my face. “This car goes where I want to go and nowhere else.” It feels good to be in control.
“Is that right?” Darby laughs. “So how was your birthday?”
I know what she’s hinting at. “I got everything I wanted.” I catch a glimpse of a smile on her face.
“What finally made you go?”
“Charlie.” I pull into the drive-thru line at Dunkin’ Donuts. “And Charlotte.”
…
Darby and I ask to go to the library in Mrs. Jonah’s class. She doesn’t even question us, just writes a pass. We head straight for the tech booth.
I sit in Max’s chair, and I think I can smell his soap. He should be back next week. I
can’t wait to pick him up for school in my new piece-of-shit car.
Darby reads quietly beside me—Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. I smile inwardly, knowing she’s going to have a lot to say about the play when she’s finished reading it.
“Hey,” I ask, breaking the comfortable silence. “What ever happened with that essay?”
Darby smiles. “I rewrote it.”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from grinning. “Oh, well, I’m sure that was a good idea.”
She chuckles. “We’ll see. Of course, impressing that scout will go a long way, too.”
“There’s no way she won’t be impressed by you, Darby.”
She looks me in the eye. “Thanks.”
My face feels like I’m sitting too close to a campfire, and I’m relieved (and amazed) when I realize Darby’s blushing, too.
I make a big fuss pulling out my English notes, unable to say anything else. Darby retreats into A Doll’s House. I consider reviewing for tomorrow’s test. Instead, I turn to a clean page and pull out a pencil.
Without thinking about it, I start to write, just nonsense at first, but then it takes shape, turns into a dialogue, something I’ve never read before, but feel certain Romeo and Juliet might say to each other in a quiet moment alone. Not that they got too many of those. No, that’s not true. The only thing they ever had was moments. What happens when the conversation goes on for more than three minutes? What do they say then?
Wryly, I know they’d probably just stop talking and start making out, but I force my hand back down to the page and try to imagine them in a more realistic setting.
I see them sitting opposite each other in a cafeteria, surrounded by their peers. Before I know it, the words are flowing onto the page. I’m lost in their conversation, until Darby scoots closer, leaning over my shoulder.
“What’re you working on so diligently over here?” Darby asks, pulling the notebook from my grip.
I swipe it back and hug it to my chest. “Nothing.”
She gives me one of her devilish grins. “Looks like something.” She opens and closes her hands, making gimme, gimme motions. “Come on. Let me read your dirty fan fiction.”
Life After Juliet Page 22
