“I’ll take care of Plain,” I said. “I promise.”
He drew a deep breath of me through his nose again and let it out into my hair. “I know.”
“And I’ll miss you.”
“Don’t say that,” he whispered softly.
“Why?”
“Because I won’t go if you say things like that.”
“Yes you will. You can separate yourself from it, Alex. You’re good at that.”
“From what?”
“From what you feel and what needs to be done.”
“Is that what you think?” His arms came away from my waist. I felt unwanted there in his circle then, so I shifted away, sitting opposite him again.
“It’s how you are these days,” I explained. “I don’t see why you’re so offended.”
“I’m offended because it means you don’t know a darn thing about me, Red.” He got up.
“What don’t I know?” My eyes followed him to the other side of the hallway. He leaned on the wall and put both hands in his pockets. “Finding this cure,” I added, “is the most important thing in the world to you. I get that, and—”
“Just…” He put his hands to his ears. “Just shut up, ’kay?”
I did, but only because I was hurt that he told me to shut up. Deeply hurt.
He looked up from the ground then and shook his head when he saw my face. “I can’t measure it, Red.”
“What?”
“What matters. I can’t measure what matters in here against what matters… out there.” He pressed his hand to his heart and then stretched his arm straight to present the world. “And you don’t get it. And I can’t… I can’t tell you.”
“Can’t tell me what? And why can’t you tell me?”
“Because you won’t understand.”
“What won’t I understand?” I got up, but he put both hands up, shaking his head at me.
“I don’t want to tie you down—to me. To my father. You’re great,” he said, teary eyes showing his defeat. “You’re so great, Red, and you’ll be wasted here with us.”
“What do you mean?”
He looked at his watch, dropping his wrist after. “It’s late. I need to get Plain home.”
“Alex.” I started after him.
“Just… don’t.” He turned back, hands up. “I can’t talk about this tonight. I need to think.”
“About what?”
“Everything.” He sighed, shutting his eyes for a moment. “Just give me time.”
“Time?” I was utterly confused. “Time for what?”
He didn’t answer, though. He just turned and walked down the stairs, leaving me alone up here with his headphones still on the seat where we’d been sitting.
***
Work made my legs tired. I got it. Totally. Mom wanted me to fight for my dreams, and that meant not accepting the silver platter Theo offered me. But man, it would be so much easier to have said yes.
I laid down in the lush grass by the swing, stealing the shadow of the tree to hide my tired eyes. Two days. I had two free days to do whatever I wanted, and if I never saw Joe’s Ice-cream Shack ever again it would still be too soon. Two days just wasn’t enough. I wished now that I’d opted for college and a part-time job. Eight hours a day scooping ice cream was not my idea of how things were supposed to turn out. But, I had to remind myself it was a means to an end. And I did at least have Mom matching me dollar for dollar. In two years, I’d be able to pay my first six months’ rent on the building I’d chosen for the shelter.
Laying here like this, without Alex, without George, without even Sacha or Max, I had a lot of time to think. So I thought about Luther for some strange reason. A part of me still saw hope for him, even though he was dead, and I realized I still hadn’t come to terms with what I did. Or that I was now technically a widow. I was okay, mostly, but every now and then I felt really bad for killing him. I knew it would just have to be one of those shadows I pushed behind me, but then sometimes I would also just have to acknowledge that I felt bad. It was okay to feel bad. I did a bad thing. There was no escaping that.
I rolled over and pressed a fingertip to a sharp stick, breathing deeply the scent of wet soil and deep sunshine. I thought about how cool grass is—every tiny, miraculous detail—and, from that how I was made; not the whole birds and bees thing, but what happened after that—what shaped me into who I am and how I feel about things. What was it that made me see things the way I did, the way Alex did, when others had come into our world and poked fun at it?
In my mind, in my heart, I thought it meant Alex and I were right for each other—that we were the same and that maybe we should always be together. But he distanced himself from me. And I hadn’t seen him since that day I arrived to drive him to college and was told instead that he couldn’t go. He didn’t give me a reason. He said he couldn’t talk about it yet, and when I asked why, he simply looked right into my soul and said that if I didn’t already know that then it was even more reason why he shouldn’t say anything.
I wanted to think it was because he had fallen deeply in love with me and couldn’t bear for us to be apart, but if that were true then he would’ve returned my calls. So then I thought maybe it was because he needed to be here for Plain. But I was here, so he didn’t need to be. And then I figured maybe he didn’t want me to get tied down caring for Plain when he wasn’t my ‘responsibility’, which would explain the ‘wasted here with us’ statement he made at the graduation dinner. Or maybe it was all because Alex might one day go mad. Maybe he thought there was no point trying to become great when it would all come to an end so soon.
Mom, of course, believed it was because he loves me. And if that was true, she’d said, it was a waste of a brilliant mind to let him stay here just for love. But I disagreed. If he loved me, and that’s why he was staying, how was that a bad thing? I mean, yes, he wouldn’t go to the best college in the whole world, but brilliant minds were brilliant no matter where they went to school, right? He could do great things still. He could just do them here, closer to me.
As I rolled over and my eyes happened to sweep past his house and past his bedroom window, I caught him looking out at me. He slinked back into the shadows quickly, embarrassed, so I got up and walked over to his fence.
“Alex!” I called, cupping my hands around my mouth. “Alex, come down!”
The back door opened a few seconds later and Alex just stood there looking at me, a Slinky on his arm, his hair wild.
“Hi,” I said, moving to the gate.
“Hi.”
“Wanna come out and look at clouds?” I offered.
He ducked his head a little to look at the sky past the trees in his yard. “There aren’t any.”
“We can imagine some.”
He thought about it, then he eventually nodded and closed the door as he came down the steps toward me. My whole body sung with joy, but I remained calm and collected.
“So, is everything okay, Alex?” I asked, staying about a step ahead of him. I sat down on the swing and he planted himself in the grass, unable to look at me.
“Not really.”
“What’s wrong?”
“A lot. But there’s one… there’s this one problem that’s been plaguing me for nearly two years.”
About as long as we’d known each other. I hugged the ropes of the swing, hoping I wasn’t the problem. “What’s that?”
“Red, I don’t know what’s gonna happen in the future,” —he looked up at me, squinting in the harsh light— “or how I’ll feel even a year from now, but I wanted you to know that, in this moment of my life, right now…” he looked down shyly at the ground, plucking a blade of unfortunate grass to distract from his emotions, “I love you.”
I choked on that for a breath, and when I went to speak, he stopped me with a raised hand and a sweet smile.
“I don’t need you to say anything, ’kay?” He got up and walked behind me. “I just wanted you to know.”
/> As he wrapped his hands around the ropes of the swing, I angled my head back to look at him, a bright gold sun sitting like an orb in the leaves above him, giving his curls an ochre halo and making the leaves a pale, sort of sunny green.
I knew I’d remember this moment for the rest of my life. Not just because it was the first time a boy said that to me—and meant it in the way I wanted him to—but because of the colors. Every time I saw orange light through pale green, I’d think of Alex now, no matter where our paths took us. And as I swung high into the air, feeling his hands press lightly against my back each time I came down, I smiled.
He said he loves me.
And I knew that when he said he didn’t need me to say anything back, it wasn’t because he didn’t need my love in order to admit his own. It wasn’t because he didn’t care if I loved him back; it was because he already knew that I did.
“Why didn’t you just tell me how you feel?” I said. “We could’ve stopped avoiding each other months ago.”
He laughed. “Probably the same reason you didn’t tell me.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense when you put it like that. So… is that why you’re not going away to college?”
“Kind of. But it’s not just that, Red. You know my dad needs me.” He gave me a good push and then stepped away, coming to stand where I could see him. “He’s getting worse.”
“How so?”
“I find him sometimes in the dark, talking to Mom like she’s still here, and when he sees me he asks me why I’m not at school today.”
I pouted, digging my toes into the grass to stop the swing.
“Besides,” he added, “I realized something after I had this super long conversation with someone yesterday. See, I’ve been thinking like maybe I’ll have to go to the local college so I can be with Dad, you know, maybe just become a teacher or something like that, but…” —he sat down in the grass, patting the spot next to him— “this person… she said that someone very important to me had given her a piece of inspiring insight.”
I sat down cross-legged near him. “Which was?”
“She said that brilliant minds can be brilliant anywhere,” he said, holding my gaze. “And I realized she was right; that I can go to a local college, still be here for Dad, and still do amazing things to help the world.”
I grinned. “So you’ve been talking to my mom, huh?”
“Of course.” He laid back, his chest open to the sky with his arms behind his head. “How else do you think I got the guts to just come right and tell you how I felt? But,” he added, “she actually came to me, so don’t get mad at me for talking about you with her.”
“She did? Why?”
“Because apparently you’ve been as miserable without me as I’ve been without you. So—” he shrugged, “—someone had to do something, right?”
That’s it! I was going to have firm words with her when I saw her tonight. “She could’ve ruined everything,” I said.
“How so?”
“What if you didn’t feel the same and you stopped being friends with me?”
“Red, it’s not like we’ve exactly been friends lately.”
“True. I guess.”
He sat up a little and looked at me, his lazy curls hanging loosely in his eyes. I loved him even more then, for no real reason at all.
“And the magic isn’t gone, by the way.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean, I know you think it died when George did, but it didn’t. I’ve just been shutting it out.” He laid back down. “But I have a confession to make.”
“What’s that?”
“I read your story.”
“My story?” My blood ran hot and then cold all through me.
“Yeah, and I realized how stupid it was—to shut out something so harmless, you know? The magic in my life didn’t cause my pain; it didn’t take George; but it did give me you.”
“Um… okay, hold on. Rewind. How did you get that story? I wrote that when I was living at Ravenswood, and I hid it in my room!”
“No, you left it in your room at the mansion, and when Theo returned a box of your stuff one day while I was at your house, it was on the top. I saw it. I stole it. So shoot me.”
“When?” I crawled over and leaned right above him, shadowing his face.
He bumped one shoulder up. “I guess I took it about a year ago, put it away for in case you felt like destroying it to forget the pain. But I didn’t read it until a few hours before graduation.”
“And?” I waited, my heart thumping. “What did you think?”
He opened one eye and rolled it up to look at me. “I think you should stop trying to save money for a dog shelter, Red. I think you should send that book to a publisher and write a million more like it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” He sat up and then spun around on his butt until he was facing me, arms around his knees. “I mean it. You gave me back the magic. It’s like I showed it to you, and you held onto it, kept it safe all this time until I was ready for it again. And then you gave it back to me.”
I smiled, not sure what to say; wishing I could reach out and grab hold of this Alex, keep him here forever.
“And I was thinking,” he said, “now that I know how you feel about me, instead of telling you to go to some fancy college in the city and become a writer, I think maybe you should go to Grimmtown Community College—with me—study writing there.”
Oh man, that sounded so appealing. The passion for a dog shelter just wasn’t driving my long days at Joe’s Ice-cream Shack right now. I loved dogs, but lately I’d been thinking I’d just be happy to have a few of my own—maybe six or seven. Ten, even. “How do you do that?” I said.
“Do what?”
“How do you completely turn my world on its head and make it all gleam like glitter?”
Alex laughed, moving his chin shyly toward his shoulder. “I guess I just know you better than you know yourself.”
“But how? How can we be like this with each other? It’s…”
“Magical?” he offered, scooting a bit closer and closing me up between his knees and his arms. “Maybe we were just made for each other, that’s all.”
“I thought the same thing once.”
“And now? Do you think differently now?”
“No. Now, I don’t think we were made for each other. I’m pretty certain we most definitely were.”
He laughed sweetly, but then his eyes drifted away in deep, brooding reflection. “So you really don’t mind that I might one day go mad?” he said. “Because that’s kinda been holding me back for a long time, too—makes me think maybe I should leave your life now and save you all the grief—”
“Alex.” I sighed, frustrated because I didn’t know how to make him understand. And then I thought of some lyrics from a song, and in a roundabout way it helped me explain it to him. “If you go mad, it’ll be hard for me, and might feel empty and alone sometimes. But I’ll feel just as empty if I leave you now for a supposedly better life. Don’t you get it? Whether we get a day, a week, a month or a century together, mad or sane, that’s better than my life without you in it.”
Alex fought hard to hide just how much those words touched him, brushing it off with, “As long as you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.” I made a circle around my heart with the tip of my finger. “You’re my world, Alex. The only world that feels real anymore.”
“Well,” he said, smiling sarcastically, “technically this is the only real world.”
“And you know what? Corny as this sounds, my real world is kinda better than all the story ones now.”
“Mine too.” Alex pursed his lips in thought; I waited, knowing he had something else to say. “But aren’t you scared, Red?”
“Of what?”
“What happens next?”
“What does happen next?”
“That’s just it,” he said. “I don’t know.”
<
br /> “Isn’t there adventure in the not knowing?”
“I guess.” He sighed. “But there are some things that are certain, and they scare me.”
“Like what?”
He bumped one shoulder up shyly. “Death. Madness.”
“Madness doesn’t scare me.”
“Does death?”
I had to think about that. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know,” I said, but secretly I think I was beginning to understand.
Alex kissed my head then, and as the urge to kiss his mouth rose inside of me, for once free to roam as it pleased, I angled my face up and let my lips touch his. They were soft and so inviting, his cool hands grasping my jaw like he’d waited his whole life for this. It wasn’t a kiss to end all kisses, but it was our first kiss.
Our get-to-know-you kiss.
Our never-gonna-be-the-last kiss.
It was perfect in that moment, and as all moments usually are, it was infinite—it held the hope of things to come, even if those things were sad. What happened after that kiss wouldn’t matter until we looked back on it all in the future because, for now, as we were today, this was love. And love was consuming. Love was pretty darn awesome. Better than all the story worlds coming together, because it was real, no matter what happened from here—happy, sad, insane, or insanely unremarkable—our lives were finally on the same path.
And I wouldn’t want to miss a thing.
I once thought my world was made up of only Before Alex and After Alex, and the nightmare in between, but now I could see something else in both the looking forward and the looking back. Now, I could see so many paths within each path, and so many divisions within each division, that I suddenly didn’t feel the need to split my life into sections or chapters to make sense of it all. Life was not a story. And for that it never truly made sense, or needed to make sense, until you looked back on it; never truly showed its chapters until we created them with new knowledge of how things turned out. Never truly needed “The End”, because as long as you love someone, and they love you back—whether it lasts or ends or maybe you die—you live on in that love, like characters in a book.
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