“What have I done?” He followed me, the stage thundering as he sat down beside me like a heavy sack.
“You said you love me.”
“You’re still sore about that?” he said, sounding hurt. “Because if you don’t love me back, Ara, just say it and—”
“That’s just it, Mike. It’s not about whether I love you or not. This is so much bigger than what’s in my heart.”
“What do you mean?”
The build-up of sadness and worry and fear shook my ribs. I rolled my face into my hands and let myself cry for a moment.
“Baby, talk to me.” He rubbed my back firmly. “Please don’t be so closed off. I just want you to be happy.”
“If you wanted me to be happy then you should never have told me you love me, Mike.” I looked up at him. “Now I’m just confused and empty.”
Mike jerked back, dropping his hand to his lap as the blade of my words hit his heart. “You don’t mean that,” he whispered.
“I do.” I nodded, sobbing harder because I also knew how much that killed him. “I’m sorry. I do. I’ve never been happier or clearer about anything as I was when I was with David—”
“So that’s what this is all about?” He motioned around the room. “All your depression and angst—the running off this morning—it’s all because of that freak show you think you’re in love with?”
“He’s not a freak show, Mike!” I yelled, jumping down off the stage, the ground sending a jolt through my heels. “You don’t know anything about him!”
“I know he hurt you. I know he changed you; made you sad and quiet and secretive, Ara.” He followed me up the aisle. “Don’t you know how that looks from my perspective—from your dad’s? We’re worried about you!”
“Well you can stop worrying,” I called back. “David’s gone, and I just have to get over it.”
“But you’re not getting over it.” He grabbed my arm and spun me around to face him. “You’re dangerously depressed, Ara.”
“I’m not depressed. I’m just sad. And lonely.”
“Well you’re not alone. You have me,” he said softly.
“I don’t think it’s enough,” I said in a weak voice, holding his gaze.
When he dropped his head, even the shadowed darkness did nothing to hide his pain. “So that’s it then? You don’t want me now because of some boy you just met; some boy who doesn’t even want you?”
“He does want me!”
“Does he?” he asked conceitedly. “Because I don’t see him around here, Ara. I—”
“He’s not. But I can go with him—”
“Go with him?”
“Yes. Like I told you on the phone that night, remember? I can be with him, but I have to…” I hesitated, not sure how he’d react. “I have to leave everything, everyone behind.”
“Is that what you want? Do you want to move away?”
“No.”
“But he won’t stay here to be with you?”
“He can’t,” I said to the ground.
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t!”
“But I can,” he stated. “I love you, Ara—”
“And I will always love him!” I looked at him for a moment, watching the damage bleed deeper into his soul before I sunk to the ground, hugging my knees. “I can’t do it. I can’t do it anymore, Mike.”
He dropped to his knees and gingerly touched my shoulder. “What, baby?”
“I’m so tired. I’m so goddamn tired. I just can’t do it anymore.”
“Ara. Please. Why are you shaking? What did this guy do to you?”
“He didn’t! Do! Anything!” I screamed, shoving him onto his ass as I got to my feet. “He loved me, Mike. That’s all he ever did!”
“Okay,” he said in a cautious tone. “I’ve heard you. I understand. But now I’m worried. Really worried.”
“About what?”
He slowly got up, taking small, hesitant steps toward me. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’m gonna say it anyway, okay?”
“No. Just leave me alone,” I said, turning away.
“I can’t. You”—he caught my wrist and made me stop—“you’re not okay. You need someone to guide you right now, and I know you better than anyone. This isn’t normal—the way you feel about David. This is grossly magnified by grief…”
“You’re wrong, Mike.”
“I wish I was.” His eyes rounded with deep sympathy, like I was a stupid young girl that just didn’t understand the world. “I’m not devaluing what you feel for him, but I’m saying that you need to take a step back; that maybe you need time to process it all and see if it’s real, or if it’s just a coping mechanism—”
“David is not a coping mechanism!”
“Can you just…” He edged closer, moving to grab me with both hands. “Can you just stop for a moment, and realize that there might be a grain of truth to what I’m saying, Ar? Please?”
His last word sounded desperate, as if he’d tacked on in his mind that if I couldn’t be reasoned with, he’d be forced to take action. And by action, I knew he’d tell my dad it was time to lock me away—for my own good. So I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath as I thought about everything he said. I wanted him to be right. I wanted David to be a ‘situation’ I could medicate and talk away on a leather couch. But he wasn’t. No matter how badly I wanted that.
“I love him, Mike.”
“I know.” He moved in then and put his hand firmly on my lower back, kind of holding me there without actually restraining me. “I know you do, baby. But he’s gone, right?”
I nodded, my face crumpling with sadness.
“Okay, then you need to let me help you accept that, okay?” He braved another inch closer, wrapping both arms around me. “You need me to hold you and love you until you feel okay that he’s gone.”
“Or I could go with him.”
He shook his head. “No, baby. You can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because we love you. Your dad, me, Sam, even Vicki. You can’t go away.”
“It’s my life—”
“Yes, it is. But we’d miss you.”
“And I’d miss you, but—”
“It’s not right, baby. It isn’t right for a man to ask you to do that. No one should have to leave their family for love.”
“You just don’t understand.”
“Then let’s leave it there for now, okay? You’re shaking and I can tell you haven’t eaten. You don’t think clearly when you’re hungry, you know that.”
I nodded.
“Come home with me. Eat, and process things, okay? Get a clear head, and then we can talk about David.”
“I don’t want to talk about him, Mike.”
“Okay.” He nodded against the top of my head. “Then we won’t. But you know I’m here if you do want to, right?”
“And you won’t tell my dad that David asked me to go with him?”
“No, baby. I won’t.” He kissed my brow, leaving his lips there. I could feel the concern in his breath, though, and I knew I must have sounded incredibly insane to him, which is why I knew damn well that if I had any desire in my heart still to go with David, I needed to make a decision either way and I had to do it quickly.
“Can you ask dad not to be mad with me—about running off?” I looked up at him. “I honestly just didn’t realize the time.”
Mike smiled softly, wiping a drying tear off my cheekbone. “Of course.”
* * *
The last chimes of the principal’s speech resonated in my thoughts. Even with my eyes closed, I could feel the pale glow of the spotlight over me as my fingers scaled across the keys, breaking the hearts of those in the crowd tonight.
Of all the worlds my mind created, this one, where I lived each day, was the most painful one: the world that hovered on the wrong side of truth; the one I could not escape from, even if I closed my eyes or woke myself up. In this world, everyone I loved w
as gone, and the boy the crowd mourned, Nathan, was gone too. No matter how much we played for him, he would never hear our songs, but I would play for them anyway—for all those who lived only in my memories. Including David.
I sang the words of the song from memory, not from my heart. All the joy, all the passion I once felt when singing was non-existent. But my music teachers taught me well how to perform when everything around me was falling away. No one in the crowd would have known how much I was suffering.
We finished the song to a standing ovation, and Mike wiped a mock tear from his cheek as I smiled at him. I took a bow then and sat back down at the piano for my solo.
No one made a sound. Not a murmur was heard from within the crowd as they waited.
After a deep breath, I closed my eyes, and in the moment it took to open them again, the room went dark and ultimately quiet. A wispy cool encircled me, the absence of life filtering emptiness into my world. I sat taller and looked around the vacant auditorium.
I was alone; everyone was gone.
How long had I been sitting here?
The whisper of a memory salted my thoughts, making me look down at my bone-white fingers. I remembered playing. I remembered the faces of the audience; how they greeted me and shook my hand afterward. I’d smiled and accepted their praise while, inside, I was dying. I could see it all as it happened, but couldn’t remember living it.
I just wanted to rain my heart into a song until it no longer felt like it was bleeding. So I did, each note pouring through my hands like rainbow-colored grief—strings of light that, with every pull on my heart, tore away another part of my soul; brought to the surface another emotion, another painful memory I thought I’d locked away for good.
Through all of this that I’d suffered, I knew I was destroyed. I would never be the same again. I tried once to move on, to be normal, but with the loss of David, I knew that moving on was never in the cards for me. Whatever my existence here was fated to be, happiness was not it. David was not it.
Like a strong link to a powerful memory, the faint hint of a familiar scent touched my lungs. I drew a deep breath of orange-chocolate, and my body rejoiced at the sensation of oxygen, as if I’d not taken a breath since I last held David.
My head whipped up then toward a feeling. I looked back to the chairs that only hours ago had been filled with friends and family, and all of a sudden, in the middle seat, softly lit by the light from the corridor outside, I saw a face.
David.
He stood up slowly, like a ghost weighed down by the anguish in the world.
How long had he been there? What had he heard in my thoughts while he was watching me?
“I know this is hard.” He appeared behind me, his gloriously real form pressing against my back, so cold I knew it wasn’t just an apparition. “But breaking up was never going to be easy.”
“So that’s what this is?” I asked in a quiet voice, looking down. “We’re broken up, now?”
“I wish it wasn’t so.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“It does.”
“But, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to be…” I stopped then as I spun around on the seat, hit hard by the reality that he was here after I was sure I’d never lay eyes on him again.
“What wouldn’t be so bad?”
“Being like you.”
He shook his head. “You can’t be like me. I’ve spent so much time thinking about it—desperate to find some way this could work. But, Ara? There’s no saying you even carry the gene. What if we tried, and you…” He shook his head again. “No. You have to take a chance at life. You have to live it to its fullest before I could even dream of changing you.”
“But—”
“No.” He cupped my jaw firmly, coming so close I thought he might kiss me. “If you die, Ara, without ever knowing life, I could not live with myself. It is better to have lived your life in heartache than never to have lived at all.”
“But the heartache is worse than I thought.”
David’s eyes moved to my hand over my heart, and he nodded. “I know.”
We looked into each other for a long moment then, leaving our future resting on the pause of a few simple words. After a while, I sighed, turning my face away when the words refused to come.
“He’s right for you, you know.” David broke the silence, though the tension stayed as thick as blood.
My quiet breath sunk.
“I want you to go back to Perth with him.”
I looked up quickly.
“I see in his thoughts, Ara. I watch him with you. He loves you—deeply.” He lost his voice on the last word, closing his eyes as he said it.
“I know.” I had to whisper, afraid my words would wound him forever. “But I can’t go with him. I can’t. I just can’t leave you here al—”
“Ara. Be smart.” David dropped to his knees in front of me. “I can’t have you here, lingering in a place I may one day return. That’s not living. You have to go. You have to be far away so I can never find you.”
“But—”
“No. I won’t do it. I won’t return and ruin your life and, knowing how close you are—that I could just drive to you—would be more agony than I could bear.”
The tears in my eyes turned to thick droplets as they spilled onto my cheeks and over my lips. He was right. It would be selfish of me to wait around here for him; to hope he might change his mind and become a fake human. If he left his Set, he’d have nothing, and one day, I’d be gone anyway. At least, for now, we suffered the absence in union—desolate union.
“Please, just don’t make me say goodbye, David. Go, leave me, but let me believe that we’ll see each other again one day. For one last goodbye.”
He smiled and sat beside me on the piano stool. I tried to steady my pulse, pushing away the memory of the first time I saw that dimple; how I wanted nothing in the world except him—just him. Life or death or murder meant nothing. I just wanted him.
“This is not goodbye, Ara. Not yet. I still have a few more days.”
“I know.” I cleared my throat. “Until the last red leaf falls, right?”
“Until the last red leaf falls,” he said with a grin.
“Where will you go—what will you do when I’m gone?” I asked.
He looked down and then smiled as our eyes met again. “See the pyramids.” He shrugged. “Maybe head to a tropic isle and watch a sunset.”
I managed a soft smile, thinking about the song he was referring to.
“Don’t you ever forget, Ara, how much I love you.” He placed both hands on my face, then turned my head slowly. “You still, and always will, belong to me.”
I nodded, rolling my cheek into his thumb as he wiped a tear away. Then, he slowly lowered his lips to mine, and like so many times before, they fit to perfection, as if we were made for each other, but so cruelly unsuited to each other. We’d kissed for love, kissed for lust, for happiness and thankfulness. But this was a kiss of sorrow, of loss and despair, yet so full of love—so soft and so gentle, like a beast handling priceless porcelain.
But even with the warmth his touch brought my soul, the small silver locket around my neck felt heavy under the pain of imminent separation. It had felt that way for so long now, but only in his arms, with his lips once again belonging to mine, could I finally see that it always would. And I wasn’t sure I could bear it.
I yanked the chain loose as I pulled away from the kiss. “I’m sorry. I just can’t do this.”
“Ara?” His voice overflowed with confusion as I laid the locket in his open palm.
“It’s too painful for me. I can’t keep this as a memory of you. I need to forget. I need to try to move on, and every time I do, this is a constant reminder that you’re no longer a part of my life.” My voice broke, shattered, as I tore out his heart.
His rounded eyes burned deep into my soul; he wanted me to feel what he felt right then, but I already knew. I could feel it myself, in my bon
es, breaking my resolve.
I looked away. It hurt too much to see that on his face. It would only destroy me over and over again.
The locket sat in David’s outstretched palm, shimmering like moonlight on sand in the cold, dull light of our eternal darkness. I closed his fingertips around the locket and held my grip there for a second.
“This is not goodbye, remember?”
“Not yet, anyway.” He nodded solemnly as he placed my heart into his pocket, and then, like so many times before, without a word, without a sound, the darkness was the only thing I saw in his place.
27
With my back against the wall outside Mr. Benson’s class, I hugged my books—the books David usually carried—and watched everyone pass. They didn’t talk to me. They hardly even gawked at me anymore, and the horrid yellow linoleum just seemed to be a part of the scenery, ironically, like me. Didn’t mean it fit, though.
“Hey, did you hear?” Emily came bounding over.
“Depends. What was I supposed to hear?”
“The benefit? We raised enough to cover Nathan’s funeral.” Her lips practically touched her ears. “And due to an anonymous donation, Mrs. Rossi won’t have to pay the hospital bill, either.”
“Wow, that’s really great.” We moved aside for Mr. B to get into class. “So, who’s the donor?”
Emily glared at me. “Ara, the point of being anonymous is that no one knows who you are.”
“Oh, right.” I closed my eyes for a second. “Sorry. I’m just—I’m not really with it today.”
“Are you ever?” she asked. I shrugged. “So, what happened to you anyway, after the show? You just… disappeared.” She fluttered her fingers as if throwing a handful of butterflies into the air.
“I uh—”
“Oh, by the way.” She gave me a little slap on the arm with the back of her hand. “Mike. Gorgeous! You were definitely right about his cuteness.”
“I know.” I tried to smile. “And he feels really bad for practically shaking you the other day.”
“It’s okay. Really. I get it. He was worried.” Her smile subsided to a frown. “Really worried, actually.”
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