I pull on the lock and realize that I’ve been trying to open my locker with Lizzie’s combination. This is, I guess, my new normal and I’d better get used to it. Maybe I’ll just change my numbers to hers. It would make things easier.
I enter the right combination just as I hear “oof” behind me and something slides into my foot. I glance down and then turn and gloat at Justin Dillard hobbling down the hall on a broken ankle and now missing a crutch, which is lying on the floor in front of me. I’d almost feel bad for him had he broken the bone in a game or something, but rumor has it that he broke it falling over a curb in the parking lot while he was hitting on a freshman, so I’m not going to get worked up about it.
I lift my foot and put it down lightly on the crutch.
“Come on, Ryan. Don’t be a dick.” Justin’s eyes are pleading for me to stop.
“Seriously? You going to insult me? You must not want this back in one piece.”
He hops on his good foot and winces. “Sorry. Can you just give that back?”
We’ve got a couple of minutes before class and part of me wants to drag this out as long as possible. It’s nice to see him look contrite. For once.
“Did you know you have a huge splinter on your foot?” Spencer moves up next to me and I’m even more amused by the fact that he’s playing along than I am at giving Dillard a hard time.
Justin narrows his eyes and looks back and forth between us and I wait for him to say whatever horrible thing is on his mind, but then he literally bites his lip and I have to laugh.
I bend down to pick up the crutch and slide it across the floor. “Get out of here,” I say and start to stand, but something catches my eye. There in the bottom corner of my locker is a tiny painting of a cow wearing a Detroit Tigers’ cap jumping over a moon surrounded by a couple of surprisingly accurate constellations. The whole thing is about the size of a silver dollar. I could have easily gone the whole year without seeing it.
I sit down and examine each perfect brush stroke and the tiny initials underneath: LM.
Spencer kneels next to me to see what I’m staring at. “She started it,” he says in a voice filled with awe.
I promised.
I grab my phone and do what I should have done with her locker: I take a photo. I’m not losing this message from her.
“Thanks, Lizzie.” I whisper it even though the hallway is loud with students and only Spencer is close enough to hear. “Thank you.”
I’m determined not to cry and wish I could find some way to thank her that’s more public than talking to her in my head.
Spencer watches me, waiting to see how I’m going to react. He’s ready to pick up the pieces as usual. But this time I’m not going to fall apart. This time I just want to do the right thing to honor the friend that I love and miss so much.
“I’ll do it,” I say to him in a broken voice. “I’ll go with you.”
And that’s how I find myself after school in a new blue suit on a beautiful spring day, in the back of Spencer’s car. I’m shivering like it’s suddenly winter, and Ally keeps reaching through the space between the seats to hold my hand. I think she’s as freaked out as I am, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s only their voices and the flow of the periodic table through my head keeping me together.
I keep my eyes closed through the whole drive and it’s only when I realize they’ve stopped talking and the car has stopped moving that I open them.
I never thought I could ever go to a cemetery, yet here I am. Rows and rows of gray headstones stand at attention like concrete soldiers. Some have flags. Some have flowers. Some have nothing and these last ones make my chest constrict.
I sit in the car, paralyzed like I’ve forgotten how to open a car door. Spencer and Ally exchange looks like protective parents before getting out of the car and coming around to my door.
I take each of their hands in one of mine, and they pull me out, and we begin walking.
My suit is itchy and hot. I had a black one that used to get dragged out for athletic department dinners, but it didn’t fit anymore. This new blue one already feels tainted. I don’t want something that I only wear to cemeteries.
As we walk, Ally and Spencer keep hold of my hands, which is good because I’m watching the sky rather than my feet. Puffy cumulous clouds are dotted around like cotton balls and I focus on them until we stop and I’m forced to look at what’s in front of us.
The headstone is gray marble like the others. For a minute I’m relieved because I think that we’re in the wrong place since the grave is labeled, “Elizabeth Marie McDonald” and I don’t remember Lizzie ever going by anything other than Lizzie or Liz. But then I feel my heart miss a beat and I know that this really is her grave.
Ally tightens her grip on my hand while Spencer bends down and places a bouquet of wild flowers onto the soil.
Some flowers are already scattered over the grave. Some are planted—I guess my mom and Spencer’s have been busy—but there are a few scattered on the grass as well: fading, dried red roses next to some that look like they were just delivered by a florist. I know Lizzie didn’t really have any friends beside us; Spencer must come here more than I know.
We stand there for a few minutes. I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do so I start counting a bunch of rocks that are placed haphazardly on top of the marble.
“What’s with the stones?” I quietly ask no one in particular.
Spencer picks a small round rock off the ground and adds it to the pile. “It’s for respect,” he answers. “So that the person knows they’ve had visitors.”
That seems odd. I mean, everyone here is dead; they aren’t out running errands. Spencer’s explanation makes the stones sound like some type of cosmic voicemail.
Spencer opens up a bag I didn’t realize he had and pulls out one of those LED candles he had in The Cave.
“The cemetery won’t let you bring in real candles because of all the grass.” He turns it on and puts that on top of the headstone as well. I think back to what he said about ghost lights and about how they’re meant to keep the good, creative spirits around. Lizzie would like that.
Actually, as I look around, I think that Spencer was right when he said that she’d like this whole place. There’s a pond and all sorts of bushes that are in bloom. I think if she were here, she’d already have climbed to the top of the tall tree that’s casting shadows all around us. She’d be lobbing acorns at my head. That idea makes me smile, which isn’t what I was expecting to do here.
Spencer grabs my arm and gives a little tug, then points to a grave a few rows away. “Do you see that?”
I squint. That grave has a candle on it too.
“Alice Tylor,” he says. “The girl who killed herself in The Cave. A bunch of us decided to take turns making sure it stays lit, at least until graduation anyhow.”
Ally’s arm wraps around my waist and it feels like it belongs there. It’s getting hard to imagine there was ever a time when all I could do was watch her across hallways.
“Can you guys do something for me?” Spencer asks.
He takes a deep breath and looks from one to the other of us and I know whatever he’s asking means something to him; something important.
“My dad is speaking at a conference in Seattle. He … my parents bought me a ticket to go too,” he says with a half-smile directed right at me. “They think I need to spend some time with Rob in person.” If he weren’t smiling, I’d think they’d had a fight or something, but Spencer doesn’t look upset. In fact, he’s pretty much glowing. “I guess I’ve learned that you can’t take time for granted.” He shrugs, looking slightly embarrassed and a little young. “It’s time to take my own advice.”
“Wow. Cool parents,” Ally says. I have to remind myself that she doesn’t know Spencer well, so she wouldn’t know that all his parents said whe
n he came out to them was, “We know.” Just like with us, it just didn’t really matter. I suspect that they’ve been giving him as hard a time about seeing Rob as Spencer gave me about talking to Ally.
Here in the quiet of the cemetery, with Spencer on one side, Ally on the other, and Lizzie seemingly everywhere, I find myself in the middle of a memory of first grade.
I honestly don’t remember a time before I knew Spencer. We met in preschool or maybe even before. But in first grade, we met Lizzie. She was tiny, with long dark hair and a haunted sad look to her eyes. She walked into the first day of class late and Spencer and I looked at her and then at each other. Somehow we both knew she’d be important to us.
At recess, instead of joining the other girls, she stood against a wall and watched everyone. She looked so deep in thought that I never would have said anything. But Spencer recognized something in her, I guess. When he told her to eat lunch with us, her whole face lit up and she gave him a smile that seemed to seal our futures.
I look at Spencer now, watching him smile at Ally—it’s a different smile from what he offered to Lizzie, but it gives me a similar feeling of completion.
“Yeah,” he says with a glint in his eye. “My parents are great. I was just wondering if you could take care of the ghost lights. Just while I’m gone.”
Ally doesn’t let go of my hand, but she leans over me and pulls Spencer into a hug. “Of course we will,” she says, looking at me for confirmation.
I nod.
The wind picks up a little and I hear the tree leaves rustle in it. And that’s when I realize that the wind is all I’m hearing. I search my brain for Lizzie’s voice, for some sound, but for the first time since the hospital I don’t hear anything at all. Not even the sound of her blood coursing through me.
This silence is odd and makes me feel lonely. I’d gotten used to Lizzie being in my head even though it freaked me out.
But then I think that maybe this is how it’s meant to be. Maybe we each need to be alone at some point so that we can consciously choose who we want in our lives, who we want to be a part of us.
I stand there watching Spencer. I know, without even having to think about it, that I can count on him for anything. And then I look at Ally and I have to smile because she didn’t know Lizzie and yet she’s here. Just for me. Just to help. So even though Lizzie’s voice is gone from my head, I’m not alone. I realize that now. And really, I don’t think that Lizzie will ever totally be gone so long as I have her heart inside me.
But I guess what remains after someone you love dies aren’t things you can reach out and touch. When you love someone, that love changes you for better or worse. So in a way, maybe they’re never truly gone.
I kneel down and touch the dirt on Lizzie’s grave. I expect it to feel different, but instead it feels surprisingly like the dirt on a baseball infield.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper for the last time. “I’ll never forget you. Ever. You’ll always be a part of me.”
As I stand up and brush the dirt off my pant legs, the breeze kicks up again. I get a whiff of some sort of flowers and then it starts raining with them. Ally, Spencer, and I hold hands as white and pink flower petals float over us like snow. Somewhere, I think, Lizzie is smiling.
People throw around phrases without thinking all the time. They say they’re having a change of heart when they’re really just changing their minds. I mean, there are only around 2,200 transplants done in the US each year, so there aren’t a lot of people who know what it really feels like to change your heart.
Then there are people who say that they’ve learned something “by heart.” But really they’ve just used their brain to memorize it.
And I know for a fact that you can’t really steal someone’s heart. You can’t just break them in two and take it. They have to open up their chest and give it to you willingly.
A few of the phrases make more sense to me. Absence can really make the heart grow fonder, but I think it’s better to show how much you like someone while they’re still around. I think Spencer has finally clued in to that.
And we all know how you can carelessly break someone’s heart.
Some people really do seem to wear their heart on their sleeve. I guess I fall into that category.
I watch Ally and Spencer standing together under the rain of flower petals, and Lizzie’s heart—mine now—feels so full that I don’t know how my body can contain it.
It won’t always be easy and that’s okay. Maybe everyone learns this lesson in a different way, maybe all friendships need to be tested and changed so you know that they still mean something.
I lean down and pick up a smooth stone and lay it on Lizzie’s headstone and smile. Whoever said “follow your heart” got it right.
Acknowledgments
Writing might be a solitary pursuit, but publishing takes a village. To Dana Allison Levy, Stephanie Cardel, and Carmen Erickson, who were always there to add their voices to the village of What Remains, THANK YOU, and LOVE, and ALL GOOD THINGS.
Immense thanks, also, to:
Levi Buchanan, Leah O’Brien Bernini, Cara West Aston, Suzanne Kamata, and Chris Tower, for reading and answering all of my crazy writer questions.
Robert L. Galloway Jr., PhD, for making sure my medical questions got to the people who could answer them.
Charlotte Rains Dixon, for the best five minutes of brainstorming imaginable. I owe you.
Beth Hull and AdriAnne Strickland, for stepping in at the thirteenth hour to save me from tripping over my own feet.
Tessa Gratton, who gave a wanna-be author just the right amount of encouragement and advice to see it through. I hope that someday I can inspire someone the way you inspired me.
The illustrious Andrew Smith and Matthew MacNish, for putting me through query letter boot camp and rewarding me with some amazing bourbon recommendations when I finally got it right.
The entire crew of SCBWI-MidSouth, particularly Courtney Stevens, David Arnold, Kristin Tubb, Rae Ann Parker, Alisha Klapheke, Ashley Schwartau, and Ashley Blake. You guys manage to make the business of publishing feel like the warmth of community. And to Parnassus Books and Stephanie Appell, for always supporting local writers.
Melissa Jeglinski, for finding a seed of this book in Authoress’s Baker’s Dozen contest and allowing it to make her cry in her office, and Beth Phelan, for being a sane voice in a crazy industry.
My editor, Brian Farrey-Latz, for a great debate and a wombat that was just too good to discard, and to Sandy Sullivan, Mallory Hayes, and the gang at Flux, particularly the art department who made my dreams come true and then turned around and did it again.
To Joe, who believed in ghosts and who haunts the Cave scenes of this book. I suspect you lurk somewhere in the Dungeon waiting for unsuspecting theater majors to lure you out.
Also, as What Remains is ultimately a love story of friendship, I’d be remiss not to mention my Kalamazoo College friends to whom this book is dedicated, as well as my father, Harold Baker, and his amazing “brothers,” Don David and Ed Kohl. You prove, every day, that friends are what make the world go round.
And to John and Keira, with love.
© Stephanie Saujon
About the Author
Helene Dunbar is the author of These Gentle Wounds (Flux, 2014) and What Remains (Flux, 2015). Over the years, she’s worked as a drama critic, journalist, and marketing manager, and has written on topics as diverse as Irish music, court cases, theater, and Native American tribes. She lives in Nashville with her husband and daughter, and exists on a steady diet of readers’ tears.
-webkit-filter: grayscale(100%); -moz-filter: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
What Remains Page 21
