by Karen Rivers
You were on the Today show. You were on 60 Minutes. You were on CNN. You did the Ellen DeGeneres Show. Jimmy Kimmel. You know these things happened because you’ve seen the recordings, but you don’t really remember any of them in the way that you thought you would. It’s slippery, the memory of it. You try to grab hold of it and it slithers away like mercury.
You’ve watched footage and tried to recall details—the texture of the couch you sat on or the coldness of the air-conditioning in the studio, but there is nothing there, not really. It’s as if you wrote down a dream that you had, and then, rereading it, could no longer remember what it was about the dream that was so terrifying or so real.
But it isn’t your fault.
It was the plane.
The impact.
Your head smashing against something, or against a lot of things: the seat in front of you, the ground, Josh Harris. Who knows which blow erased this part of you? Does it matter? Your memory is broken, or rather, you have “limited ability to make new memories,” is what the doctor says.
This is who you are now, someone whose thoughts feel like they float away before they can quite stick, before they can take hold. “It may improve,” someone said. You don’t remember which doctor, or when he said it, but you can imagine his face: grave, serious, and so totally caring, like an actor in a medical drama delivering bad news.
But the doctor wasn’t quite right: Some things do stick. The important things. Other details slip away as silently as cats in the night.
On the other hand, maybe that’s how it is for everyone to some degree. Maybe all of us are holding tight to what we think matters, and releasing everything else into the morass of the past, a hazy place you once visited, taking with you only a handful of glittering stones containing all that you want to have matter.
Here is what matters to you: Josh Harris.
The worst part—you don’t know if it’s connected to your head injury or if your heart just hardened to stone the second that Kath disappeared—is that you didn’t grieve. Somewhere inside of you, there is something blocked. It won’t allow the tears to come out. If you grieve, it makes it all true.
It makes it all forever.
“Kath,” you say out loud. Your voice is as dry as crumbs.
“What?” says Josh Harris. “Did you say Kath?”
“No,” you answer too quickly. “Duh. I didn’t. And you shouldn’t either.”
He puts his hand on your arm, but you pull it away. Your jaw clenches tightly. He’s not allowed to say her name.
No one is.
You know that’s unhealthy. You would fix it if you could, throw yourself around the room screaming and crying and pulling at your hair. But part of you can’t seem to keep in focus that Kath is dead. It doesn’t feel like she is dead. You don’t believe it because she still is there. She still talks to you. You know it isn’t real but it’s real enough.
She isn’t totally dead, that’s the thing.
You kept thinking it would happen, it would sneak up on you, that one day you’d be unable to get out of bed, that you’d be pinned down by sadness, grieving so hard you’d be paralyzed by it. But the sadness flickers at the edge of your vision, never quite becoming full-blown.
It makes you feel terrible, like a monster.
Maybe you are a monster now.
But you’ve been so busy doing things—things you’ve mostly forgotten but which must have happened—like seeing doctors, being fitted with a glass eye. That definitely happened, because there it is, in your face. The glass eye is both horrifying and amazing. It’s prettier than your real eye and it’s not subject to uveitis, which makes it superior in at least one major way, but it is also too cold and too smooth: a marble, not flesh, not real. You have to fight the urge you have to tap it with things—a pen, your fingernail—just to feel the solidity of it.
The things you do remember are the first time Josh Harris touched you, a hospital corridor, your stretchers side by side, when he reached out his hand to you. When you were better—or better enough—and going home to California, walking slowly (because everything hurt) between the rows of peach trees, the sun warming your skin, the way he tipped your chin up to his and kissed you.
After Josh Harris started to kiss you, the kissing became everything.
Then, as though it had always been that way, you and Josh Harris were hanging out every day. Every day. Every day.
You are together.
You and Josh Harris are Josh-and-Elyse. Elyse-and-Josh.
When reporters started following you around, they shouted questions like, “Why did you live when everyone else died? Do you think you were chosen?” And no matter how many times you said, “We aren’t special, it was a fluke,” no one stopped asking. Of course they didn’t believe Josh Harris wasn’t special.
Well, duh.
But he also somehow always said exactly the right thing that made them nod and write things down and then disappear into the blue sky in a way that made you think of Kool-Aid dissolving in water.
Even when it’s just the two of you, he still says things like, “While I believe there’s a reason for everything, there’s no reason for what happened to us. We lived because we were sitting in the back row. That’s all.”
You had offers to appear on reality TV shows. A contract arrived to write a tell-all book. It was exciting. It was terrifying.
You said, “No, no, no, no, no,” until you felt like you were made only of that word, screaming through you. “NO.” Josh Harris probably felt crazy, too, but he didn’t show it. He would never show things like that. Outwardly, he was even, smooth, calm. The whole thing feels now like a dream. You question everything except for Josh Harris and how he was. How he must have been.
Josh Harris is your safe place.
Then something happened and his dad had to sell the bookshop. You frown, struggling to get hold of the memory. A rush of people. A crowd. So many people showing up who didn’t want to buy books. Shouting. Wanting. Needing.
They wanted to meet Josh.
They wanted to touch Josh.
It was the touching that tipped the balance.
You don’t recall how or when it started, or who started it, but rumors and websites cropped up suggesting that you and Josh Harris were saved by God and that God had given both of you the power to heal the sick. You were the Second Coming, the two of you. You were imbued with God’s love. That was a misquote from Josh Harris in the People interview. What he really said was, “I don’t know why we lived, but I do know that everyone on that plane was imbued with God’s love, alive or dead.”
What kind of teenage boy says “imbued”? Only Josh Harris.
To say that the second wave of press was weird was an understatement.
You stopped leaving the house. You remember less the reality of it and more the feeling that nothing was safe, nowhere, except for home. Everywhere you went, the touchers lurked. Every place on your skin that they touched you, you’d develop real, true hives.
You miss how things used to be simple. But you’re also so happy to be here, to be alive, to exist at all. And now you, Elyse Schmidt, are with Josh Harris.
This is why you lived. You’re sure of it.
For love.
8.
“Wait here, Elyse Schmidt,” says Josh Harris. You blink. Foggy. It’s like that for you a lot: like you’re looking at everything through a mist.
“Yes,” you say. You’d almost forgotten where you were, that he was here, all of it. This keeps happening, this drifting away from yourself and getting tangled up in thoughts and memories. Blue, you think. Tangled up in blue.
The fog is not blue. It’s gray and as dense as smoke. You can almost taste it on your tongue.
Almost.
You try not to dwell on that thought, which is threatening to be confusing. You have t
o stay in the present or else this happens, this slipping away. You feel the rough grass with your fingers. You break off a piece and hold it under your nose. It smells green and alive.
Josh Harris puts down his beer, which he’s been slowly drinking, and leans the bottle against your leg. “Hey! That’s cold!” you say. Your voice sounds as though you’ve been asleep.
“Don’t let it spill!” he shouts, getting up in one fluid motion. Then he is jogging across the football field. Considering how much of his body is now made from metal and pins, he still moves like an athlete.
Gorgeous. It’s ridiculous really.
You sigh. You’re so unbelievably lucky. How did you get so lucky? It’s impossible that this is your life now. That Josh Harris is your boyfriend.
“Come back!” you call. “Don’t leave me here all alone!”
He turns, waving, running in place, like he can’t slow down even for a second. “I’ll be right back!” he yells. “Don’t leave!” Like you would. You grin. Then he’s picking something up from the ground and he’s sprinting back toward you, clutching a handful of wildflowers, white blue yellow pink purple red, spilling over his closed fist.
“For you!” he says. He’s panting so hard he has to bend over, hands on his knees. “Just a second, I have to catch my breath.”
You sniff the flowers and sneeze. They are mostly weeds, but they’re pretty. “Thanks,” you say. Then, “Don’t die. Should I call 911? Dude, slow that down.”
He flops down next to you. “I’m in terrible shape,” he says. “I used to be in such good shape. What happened to me?”
“Um, well, you were in a plane crash and then in a hospital bed for, like, a year?”
“Oh, right,” he says. He nudges you, his breathing slowing. “I almost forgot.”
“Liar,” you whisper, right into his ear.
He shivers. “Come here, Schmidt.” He wraps his arms around you and you can feel his heart pounding hard in his chest.
If only Kath could see me now, you think. What would she say?
“You two look like photo negatives of each other. I guess it’s cool. I’m going to say that it’s striking. You two are the human equivalent of a double take.”
That’s what she’d say.
Maybe.
Definitely.
You can practically hear her voice.
“It’s almost too much. Maybe you should dye your hair so you don’t look like a Vogue photo shoot gone rogue on the streets of Wyoming. Does Wyoming even have streets? I guess I should say ‘on the rugged paths of Wyoming.’ This place is terrible. How many people live in this town? A hundred? A thousand? It’s like a pimple on the map of America.” It can’t be Kath, but there is her voice. In your head, everywhere.
“Kath?” you whisper.
“What?” says Josh Harris.
“Nothing,” you say. “Do you like it here? I mean, do you like Wyoming?”
He shrugs. “It’s fine. I like not feeling like I’m being followed all over town by someone who just wants me to please touch her sick daughter’s forehead to cure her brain tumor. You know, I didn’t mind doing it. It was just too much disappointment to be responsible for, I guess. I totally don’t understand how it got so weird so fast, you know?”
“Yeah,” you say. “I don’t know why I brought it up because I don’t really want to talk about it.” You have so much more to say that won’t come out of your mouth, as though when you try to talk about things like this, your voice becomes too thick to move through the air, the words dropping to the ground before he can hear them. You labor on. “But what if—”
“It never worked,” he interrupted. “Not once. We’d have heard about it.”
“I know, I didn’t mean that. But I guess it was nice that they thought we could. I wish we could’ve. But I couldn’t touch any more people, either. I don’t like touching.” A bead of sweat has formed on your upper lip. It’s so hard to talk about this, you want to say, but don’t. You wonder if it’s the same effort for him, but he’s not sweating, not at all.
“You like touching me,” he says, grinning. He leans into you, bumping you gently over onto the blanket. Your arms are covered with goose bumps, even though it’s hot. The air moves over you slowly like a warm current of water, caressing your hair and your skin. Sensual, you think. It’s a word you’ve literally never used before, but there it is.
“I love this,” you say, pointing up. The sky is an easier topic. The sky is uncomplicated. “Look. The stars are seriously amazing here. There are way more than at home. Is that even possible? It’s like there is a whole other layer of them.”
“Yep,” he says. “It’s very romantique.” He looks at you and raises his eyebrow, just one, all the way to his hairline. It looks cute but ridiculous, and you laugh, and then he laughs.
“Is that French?” you say. “Are you bilingual now?”
“Mais oui,” he says. “Aren’t you?”
“Non.”
“Can I say something that might sound dumb?”
“Non!”
“I can’t?”
“I’m joking! Of course you can. You can say anything. Duh.”
Josh Harris takes a deep breath and lets it out, slowly. “This sky makes me believe in God.”
You stop laughing.
“Not me,” you say. “I don’t. I know you do. That’s fine. It’s cool. Whatever. But where was God when—”
He holds up his hand. “Everything happens for a reason,” he says. “We just don’t know what the reason was. For us, I mean, to survive. Not yet. But I feel like we’ll figure it out.”
“Bullshit,” you mutter. “It was random. It didn’t have, like, this big meaning.”
“I don’t believe that,” he says.
“You think there was a reason?”
“No. I don’t know. Maybe. I guess I think the reason is coming, that we’ll figure it out. Eventually. Maybe God doesn’t even know yet.”
“Well, that’s weird. If he’s going to pull the strings, he should know why he’s pulling them.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“That’s because it doesn’t make sense, but none of it makes sense. There’s no reason or meaning and there’s never going to be.”
“That’s what you believe.”
“I can’t explain it, but I sort of think you sound like an asshole when you say there’s a reason. It makes it seem like you think we’re special.”
“Maybe we are.”
“And everyone else wasn’t? Yeah, I don’t think so.”
“Well, I do.”
“Jerk.”
“I’m not a jerk.”
You sigh. “I know. But you say stuff. You told those reporters. I read it in a magazine!”
“I wanted them to stop asking. I didn’t want them to ask more questions. It seemed like the answer they wanted.”
“But do you actually believe we were just better than everyone else? No one was better than—” Your voice catches on the word Kath, so you say instead, “—the rest of them.”
“We don’t have to do this. So let’s not, Schmidt,” he says, and you know he means, “Let’s not talk about the crash,” which is fine by you because the effort of it is killing you, even though sometimes it’s literally all you can think about, all the time, a scene that inserts itself in front of your every waking moment: Mr. Appleby shouting “HEY!” and the way Kath disappeared and the movie on the tiny screen flickering to black and the yellow oxygen masks dropping abruptly from the ceiling, swinging out of reach, all the blue pushing the smoke and flames away. You can’t remember what you had for breakfast or when you bought these shorts, but you remember every detail of that.
“Deal,” you manage to say, your voice crackling with tears.
Don’t cry, you tell yours
elf. Don’t you dare cry.
A cricket plays a tune with its legs somewhere in the distance, scratching like a tiny out-of-tune violin. Crickets are good luck, your dad has always insisted, because they can only move forward, never backward.
Beyond the cricket, there is the sound of thrumming music from a nearby house, the loud bass rupturing the night into a series of tiny earthquakes. There’s a party. It’s a party that you were supposed to go to. A wave of young voices rises and falls in a way that makes you think of a volume knob being turned up and down.
You should have gone. Probably. You and Josh Harris, both. How else will you know everyone? How else will you be a part of it? But the truth is, you don’t want to be a part of it. You want to be alone with Josh Harris at the back of the plane, alone with Josh Harris on this field in Wyoming, always and forever alone with Josh Harris.
Other people are just too complicated.
Plus, you’re going to have to do so much explaining. Of all the things that you imagined for yourself in the future, being someone who has to constantly explain who you are in terms of a crashing plane was not one of the possibilities that you’d considered. Josh Harris is the only person you have to explain nothing to, because he was there, which—if you think about it—lines up with your former fantasy of being thrown together by fate.
“This is great,” you say. “Way better than that party. Who listens to Guns N’ Roses in this century? Is my dad the DJ? I kind of don’t think those are our people.” You pick up the wilting bouquet. The stems of the flowers are stuck together, gluey with sap. You pull them apart, one by one, and spread the wildflowers around the blanket so that the wind can blow their tangy scent all around you. They smell dry and dusty and remind you of something, a scent memory, but you can’t put your finger on it. Your hands feel wet.
The stickiness makes you think of blood.
You sneeze three times in a row.
“Bless you,” says Josh Harris.
“I might be slightly allergic to these flowers, but they’re awesome. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” he says. “You’re the kind of girl that boys want to pick flowers for, Schmidt.”
