"Well...he'll totes show up, right?" Maggie says, not really caring as she bats her eyelashes at Boaz.
"Or not," I mutter.
Maggie pulls her hand out of his grip and flips her dreads over her shoulder to glare at me. "Are you kidding? If you died and this was your anniversary, there ain't no mountain high enough that'd stop me from getting here."
"I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be an armed guard at my vigil," I retort. "You'd think she was the Pope with all the police."
A group of teenagers shoot me a scathing look over their shoulders, peacock feathers twined into their blown-out hair, pink SAVE HOLIDAY shirts tied up around their belly buttons. What would Roman think if he saw them? Drool like every other guy is obviously doing, or would he start humming Aerosmith’s "Dude Looks Like a Lady" with that devious cheshire grin?
A hushed sound tickles my ear. I swat it away. One thing about South Carolina, it has the biggest fucking monster gnats known to mankind. So big they eat mice for breakfast.
But then I hear it again—a soft crinkling sound like footsteps. I glance behind me to the patch of woods beside the cemetery wall, but there's nothing there. No, wait. The fabric of a dress, the heel of a foot. I retreat a few steps away from Boaz and Maggie to see down the long cement wall.
"Something up, bb?" Maggie looks in the direction of the woods, too, but she doesn't see anything. "Raccoon?"
"I—uh—no, it was nothing." Because I swear there was someone walking along the wall just a few seconds ago, her hand brushing along the bricks. "Hold my purse."
"Why?"
"I have an idea...if something happens, we go to Plan B."
"Plan B," she deadpans, pulling my purse over her shoulder.
Boaz shifts his eyes between the two of us nervously. "This bro-ha doesn't do coat hangers."
My best friend puts a soothing hand on Boaz's shoulder. Plan B was invented by our desperate ninth grade selves. It was juvenile. It was simple. And, thank God, we've never had to attempt it. I hope we don't have to today. "Good luck," Maggie tells me with a quick hug.
Turning toward the woods, I curiously—and maybe morbidly—pursue the shadow down the outside of the cemetery wall. I run my hand across the smooth bricks, covered in kudzu and yellow jasmines, following it down until the bricks crumble away into the cemetery. Through it, I can see white headstones that look like giant teeth along rolling green hills. The hole is enough for me to squeeze through.
It's trespassing, and it's illegal. Three days ago, I would have seen the invisible line, and I would have never crossed it. But the Band-Aid on my hand is comforting, because the cut is still there, reminding me that there are no lines, and there are no boundaries except for the ones I make.
I don't even hesitate.
I just step through.
Chapter Twenty-Three
All cemeteries are the same. Green, wet, and freshly-cut. It always smells like freshly upturned earth and flowers. I hate that about graveyards. Aren't they supposed to smell like death? Rot and corpses and bones? But they never do. St. Michael's Cemetery is no different. Near the back of the cemetery, rows of sprinklers run in unison across the lawn. A gravel lane snakes between the green rolling hills like a broad gray river, and a handful of weeping willows scatter the grounds, hunching over old statues of marble angels and mausoleums.
The girl I saw earlier is nowhere to be seen, and I shiver a little at the thought. A part of me didn't expect me to find her, anyway.
From the other side of the gates, echoing like a distant memory, a radio plays "Ever for Always." I begin down a row of gravestones when my ears perk at the sound of a guitar. At first, I think it’s from the mourners' radio outside the gates, but the song is too different, and too familiar. The realization hits me so hard I lose my breath.
He’s here.
I duck down behind a gravestone and try to listen for where the sound is coming from. I don't know where Holly is buried, but then my eyes catch a glow of orange hair in the afternoon sunlight He sits cross-legged on the ground beside the small unassuming grave, a beat-up acoustic guitar cradled to his chest. Beside him is a vase of fresh pink orchids. There is a bittersweet lithe to his voice as he sings to the headstone. He's wailing on the song, his fingers plucking passionately at the notes.
What an odd song to sing—but then again how fitting. Like this was their song, the one they would've put on each other's mixed CDs and fixed as each other's ringtones. I creep closer because he can't hear me, his entire heart in the song, until her headstone comes into view.
HOLLY VIRGINIA HUDSON.
BELOVED DAUGHTER
STAY WEIRD.
1994-2012
When the song finally fades, his hands fall away and very quietly I say, "'Only the Good Die Young.' Billy Joel."
He jerks around to face me, taking off his guitar. The stickers are peeling, the finish dull. It looks like him, worn and haggard, but still somehow existing. He narrows his eyes. "You."
Go ahead, say it. I want him to tell me about all the venom he has in his eyes. I want him to just let it out. It isn't that I'm a glutton for punishment.
"I...thought you needed a hug," I finally say lamely.
"A hug?" he deadpans.
"What are friends for, right?"
"We're friends?"
I dart my eyes up to his again, pools of melted emeralds and summer grass, completely unreadable. "I thought....you might need some for a change."
He doesn't smile. His face barely moves. It's as if he can't now, or that every other smile and every other grin were just masks to hide something much deeper and broken. "What good could you do now? Did you like your fifteen minutes on the tabloids?"
I squat down beside him and reach my hand out to his. He doesn't pull away; he just stares at my hand atop of his on his knee. "I know how you feel," I say softly, and my voice cracks a little as I gather up the courage to say to him what I haven't been able to admit in a very long time. "My dad took the midnight train too early, too."
But he just shakes his head. "He owns that bar of yours, doesn't he?"
"He did, but he died in November. I don't talk much about him...I'm scared that if I do, then it'll...I don't know. I'm scared that if I say it too often, then people will forget about him. So...I know how you feel. It's hard to visit someone who doesn't exist anymore."
"I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry too. But it's going to be okay."
He bites his bottom lip and lowers his head, and it's almost instinctive when I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him into a hug. He dips his face into my shoulder and cries. I hold him, fingering through his orange hair soothingly, letting his tears dampen my shirt. There is nothing to say. There are no words I could say to make him feel any better, or any fuller, with that sort of emptiness aching inside of him. I have that hole, too. I can pinpoint it, mark it with a arrow, draw dashes to it on a treasure map because it is so familiar to me like a old, deep scar.
"Thank you," he says into my hair, even though I did nothing to deserve it.
I wish I could peel the melancholy from his voice, cut it away from his heart, but I'm afraid there would be nothing left. Does he think Holly's death is his fault?
It's not your fault, I want to say, just as Dad's death wasn't mine.
I could show him the pictures; I could tell him it was John's fault for not calling 911. But then, I'm sure his mind would begin to wander along the what-ifs and maybes. It would begin to weasel doubt into his blood, burrow it into his bones, until he was nothing more than a body bag of guilt and heartache. Not even the memory card can cure that.
"Come on now," I say finally, pulling away. I thumb away the tears from his eyes, pressing my forehead against his. He sniffles, chewing on his lip. He's such an ugly crier, but it only makes me love him more than I already do. "It'll be okay. Stuff like this? It'll happen. She's still in your heart and in your head, where you can visit her in your dreams."
"It was my fault." He gather
s my hands in his and puts them back into my lap. "We had a fight earlier that night...about another girl. Did you know she loved me? Holly. That she honest-to-God did?" He shakes his head. "A few weeks before, she fell and sprained her ankle. She was a complete pansy about it.” Unconsciously, he rubs his tattooed arm, the tiger and the phoenix. “It’s funny, but no matter how hard I tried to be the limelight, it was her everyone loved. She’ll always be the comet, and I her fucking tail. I should've died. I made all the piss-poor decisions. I drank, I screwed around, I fucked myself a thousand times over. I wish I would've died instead.”
“Roman…” I mutter helplessly, glad in my own selfish way that he hadn't died because then I would've never met him. But I feel dirty for thinking that, and despicable for being glad that he is the one alive, because without him...
Without him, I wouldn't have hated him. Without him, I wouldn't have loved him.
Without him, I would be infinitely different, and I am thankful beyond words that I am not.
"Roman, I—"
He shakes his head, as if dismissing the entire thing, and rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand. They're swollen and red, but he doesn't look about to cry anymore. “How did you get in here anyway?”
“I, uh, there was a hole in the wall and…” I point behind me, vaguely in the direction of the crumbled wall.
"Ah." He doesn't even look for the hole in the wall as he absently reaches over and plucks the Jeopardy theme absently on his guitar. "And you're still sticking to your guns that you didn't tip him off?"
"I wouldn't be here if I did," I offer lamely, because the moment I could've told him my heart has disappeared. And what would he do if I did admit it? Tell me to join the club with millions of other teenage girls? Or tell me very gently that there's someone else, but thanks for the admission? But what would it hurt, in the end? I'll never see him again. Balls to the wall, as Maggie put it. "And, Roman?"
"Mmh?"
"I—"
"Fuck." His eyes go wide, staring off in the direction of the entrance to the cemetery, and he jumps to his feet, pulling the guitar over his head. Then he looks at me, and suddenly I know that there is no way in hell he could ever love me back.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It's not John this time, but the fine men of the Horry County Police Department. And they are heading straight toward us. Roman scowls, whirling back to me. "You told them! You—"
"Stop blaming me!" I snap, grabbing him by the forearm and tugging him toward the crack in the wall. I'm having flashbacks to the night we broke into the put-put course, but somehow I think the repercussions of this will be worse. Breaking in to hit balls off a fake pirate ship is one thing, but breaking into a cemetery during a vigil? Well.
"You there! Stop!" One of the policeman calls after us, but his voice only propels my feet to go faster. Under my fingers, Roman's practically vibrates with anger.
"Front page not enough, huh?" he hisses as we dash over a hill of gravestones. We cut around the statue of a weeping angel. "Fuck. A whole fucking year in Super 8 Motels and fuck good that did me. You come along and wham! Oh, look, I'm a household name again!"
"Oh please," I snap, because his temper's getting old—fast. "You love the attention."
"Not as much as you, apparently. You think that hair's bright enough?"
"And yours isn't?" I almost get sideswiped by a knee-high headstone, and I stumble. "And just so you know, I didn't give him that memory card. Those photos were on the local memory, asshole! Totally not my fault! If anything, it's yours for taking me with you!"
He shoots me a glare as we duck under a curtain of weeping willow vines. "You could've said no!"
"I did, back when you wanted to buy me ice cream."
We hit the back end of the cemetery, and the hole isn't here anymore. Did I get turned around? I scan the walls, but it must be hidden behind a willow? Stupid me—did I even come to this side of the cemetery? Roman curses and kicks the cement wall.
"I hope you and John are happy," he grumbles. "Tell him your life story. Go on. I'm sure it'll be a best-seller."
"Why the fuck would I tell him anything?"
"Because you hate me!" he roars.
I purse my lips. Nothing could be further from the truth.
"You know, this? This here?" He jabs a finger between us, so close I can smell the cinnamon and wet grass on his clothes. "There's a reason I don't make friends."
"Because you just wanted someone you could pull along for a while, right? You saw me and I tickled your fancy. I don't know why. I'm not pretty. I'm mundane. I'm going nowhere—even my boyfriend kept me a secret. Thanks for solidifying what I already knew."
"Well, you know what they say," he sneers. "Secrets don't make friends."
I fist my hands. The police appear over the last crest. Two of them have tasers out. Neither of us wants to be tased. Where the hell is that hole in the wall? If looks could kill, I'd be in the lowest circle of hell right now.
But then a flash of magenta catches my eyes, past the policeman. My heart leaps into my throat. Maggie. She jumps up on one of the thicker headstones and whips her shirt over her like a lasso. A lumpy policeman passes her, huffing, and his eyes grow as wide as saucer plates.
This is it. Plan B.
Taking the memory chip out of my pocket, I cram it into Roman's hand. "Look at it when you get a chance. It's from John—with love. And do me a favor? Fight for your Madison gig. If she means so much to you, you should fight for it."
His lips curve down into a scowl. "You don't know anything about it."
"You're right," I reply, pulling off my shirt and tossing it aside. "But I know what I'd do." He stares, flustered, as I wiggle out of my shorts. Thank God, I have on matching underwear today. When I pop back up, he's staring, startled, at my chest. "Yes, they're real. Go through the hole in the wall, and do me a favor—don't get caught, got it, RoMo?"
"You're not seriously..." he starts, choked, but I start running back toward the policemen, waving my hands in the air to flag their attention.
"HEY!" I shout, jumping up onto a marble bench. I reach back to unclasp my bra. Out of the corner of my eye, Roman gapes. A grin breaks out over my face. "FEAST YOUR EYES..." I sling off my bra and throw it at the nearest policeman as I jump off the bench and dodge through a row of tombstones.
"BOOB-A-BUNGA!" Maggie howls, slinging her bra up in the air like a lasso. "LONG LIVE ROMAN HOLIDAY!"
The policemen turn to follow us, and the second they do, Roman ducks down behind a gravestone, memory card in hand, and makes a break for the crack in the wall. I give the police the middle finger and hurtle over a gravestone, and Maggie rings her double D bra on a weeping angel. We grab each other's hand and streak through the cemetery screaming Maggie's favorite song, "Crush on You."
Halfway through the crowd, our Roman Holiday underwear go sailing into the air.
I hope Roman enjoys the irony.
Chapter Twenty-Five
You know how in every cop drama the police station is always busy no matter what hour of the day? Yeah, they all lie. As we're processed into the system—mug shots, fingerprints, the whole nine yards—I can count the number of officers in the building on one hand. One hand.
"It's a Thursday night," our police officer, a guy named NESKY with a handlebar mustache, shrugs off. "We got public drunks to apprehend."
"It's six-thirty," I say.
"It's the beach."
Maggie nods in agreement. "He's got a point, bb. I mean, they probably do more than chase beautiful half-naked women around cemeteries." She bats her eyelashes at Officer Nesky who isn't swayed in the slightest. He tells Maggie to face the other direction and takes her last photo. "This is my best side, anyway. I'd look better in chartreuse, though. You got any chartreuse shirts back where you pulled these hid-vicious gray things from?"
The officer rolls his eyes. "No."
"Do get a lot of people like us?"
"Streakers?" he clarifies, filling
in the rest of the paperwork, before motioning for us to follow him through the door to the holding cells. "Yeah, we get a few. You're in luck. There aren't many felons here yet. Later tonight though, mind your elbows."
He opens the cell door for us and takes our handcuffs off as we go inside. I rub my wrists where the metal indented into my skin, hoping it won't leave any bruises. Officer Nesky nods to the guard on duty by the desk, and I begin to ask him when we're getting our clothes back when he shuts the door behind him, leaving us with the guard.
Maggie sits down on one of the benches. "You know, I didn't think I'd be free-tittin' it either, bb. I hope RoMo and Boaz are halfway to China by now." She gives two men on the opposite side of our cell a sharp glare. She snaps her fingers towards them. "Hey—Hey, my face is up here. Creep."
Our guard has his back turned to us. He has a box of pizza open, but only the crusts are left, as he watches the small TV up in the corner of the room. Of course, it's turned to the live coverage from the cemetery. The candle lighting is supposed to commence any moment now, but they keep replaying the moment a particularly burly policeman grabs me by the shoulder just after we've surrendered at front gate and pushes me to the ground. There's a scrape on my knee from that.
"At least they're classy enough to blur us out," I comment, leaning back against the cold wall.
Maggie groans. "Yeah, but it makes my butt look so gigantor."
"At least you don't look like a crazed fan. What's up with my facial expression?" I try to mimic it, tongue splayed out, eyes rolled up, and Maggie giggles so hard she has to clutch her chest.
"Oh my God, don't do that! I might pop myself a black eye!" she howls. One of the homeless men wiggles an eyebrow, and her face quickly falls. "Not in a million years, you homeless perv."
"We're not homeless," the pervy guy's friend argues. He scratches his scruffy brown hair. They're probably in their mid-thirties, crinkled clothes, dirt smudges. One of them is even missing a flip-flop. If they aren't homeless, they could definitely win a Halloween contest looking like that. "I was trapped on a roof."
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