“April, you listen to me and listen well. Did you physically put Jamie on the beach that night? Did you force him into the water, force the waves to grab him and pull him under?
I know what she is doing but it isn’t going to work. I might not have been the one who ended Jamie’s life that night but had I answered my phone I could have convinced Jamie to come over and he wouldn’t have been anywhere near the beach. He would still be alive. I have made many mistakes in my life but this is the worst. This one I’ll live with the rest of my life.
“No, of course I didn’t,” I reply. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not responsible, mom.”
She opens her mouth but dad is calling her from downstairs. “Anna, can you come down here for a minute?”
“In a minute,” mom shouts and rolls her eyes.
“Anna, Mrs. Clarke is on the phone for you,” dad insists.
Mom sighs and lifts herself off the bed and pats me on the arm. “I have to take this but you have to stop blaming yourself for this, April. You did everything right with him. You loved him through and through and he knew it. Everyone did. Nothing you could have done differently would have changed what happened that night. The universe has a plan and this was its plan for Jamie and you can’t fight it but you also can’t blame yourself.”
I smile and nod not because I agree with her but because if I don’t pretend to she’ll never leave and right now Jamie’s mom needs her more than I do. She kisses me on the cheek and heads downstairs to take Mrs. Clarke’s phone call. When Jamie was alive, my parents never spent much time with the Clarkes. But the last couple of day’s mom and Mrs. Clarke have been speaking on the phone every couple of hours. It’s weird how tragedy can pull people together like that. Not that Jamie and I needed our parents to be “besties” or anything but it would have been nice had their friendship developed for a better reason.
Knock, knock, knock. Amber wraps on the door lightly. “Ape?”
I didn’t know she was coming over before the funeral. I assumed I’d meet her there but I’m not surprised to see her.
“I’m decent you can come in,” I say, without thinking.
I have lived in this room for the last 17-years of my life and Amber has been in here every day for almost as long but as she walks toward me I feel like I’m standing in an unfamiliar place. Nothing looks the way it is supposed to. The friendly faces that cover my walls and ceiling look at me with judgmental eyes. They know what I did.
“You look nice,” she says and hugs me. The chain of her necklace snags in my hair. “Oh shoot, sorry.” She tugs at it until the caught strands of hair break off.
I shrug. My hair breaking is something I’ve become used to lately.
On most of the people that I know, a black funeral dress makes them look elderly and depressing. On Amber it looks like she has stepped out of an Old Navy catalogue. We always used to joke about moving to New York so she could become a runway model like Kate Moss but when she and Johnny Depp broke up Amber’s interest in the modeling industry died out. With Jamie gone the idea of getting out of Perkins Harbor and into a big city is pretty tempting.
“So,” Amber asks “Are you okay? I don’t mean the kind of okay where you pretend that you’re strong and not suffering, I mean the real kind of okay.”
“Would you be?”
There is only one answer. It is impossible to be okay when something this horrible happens. After this you know that you’re never going to be okay again.
“Ape,” Amber twirls her hair through her fingers and I can see them shaking. “I’m so sorry,” she sobs. “I wouldn’t let you call him. It wasn’t my place. I wouldn’t let you call him. I should have let you call him. I’m so sorry” am so, so sorry.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Amber. I had all night to call him back and swallow my pride but I choose not to. This is my fault, not yours. I don’t blame you.”
I grab Amber and as we cry together we hold onto each other tightly.
“Can I ask you something else then,” once again Amber lowers her gaze and bites the tips of her fingernails. “I’m not trying to upset you or make it harder for you but…” her voice trails off. “Do you regret it?”
“Regret what?”
“Jamie. Do you regret meeting him and falling in love with him now that he’s gone?”
I’ve asked myself this question at least a hundred times. It would be so easy to say yes because had Jamie and I never met I wouldn’t be feeling like today is the start of a lifetime of pain. If there were no Jamie I would still be the shy sophomore who is obsessed with a boy band, who wears a contraption that prevents her spine from curving any more than it already has, who is made fun of by her peers and who had no clue what her future had in store. That girl’s life was uncomplicated and easy because the only things she had to worry about was finals, finding clothing that would fit over the metal halo and whether or not the cafeteria would be serving day old pizza for lunch. That girl didn’t know what it was to love someone completely only to lose them in the end. But is it really that easy to wish for a redo?
-33-
In a second I am going to open my eyes and this will all have been a bad dream. When I wake up I will see the Dave Matthews Band poster that I bought for Jamie a few weeks ago. I will smell the Calvin Klein cologne he used to wear way too much of. I’ll feel the rigid fabric of the quilt his mother knitted for him, crumbled at the foot of his bed. I will see his gorgeous eyes looking at me like I’m the only person in the world worth looking at. I’ll go to say something but he’ll stop me and whisper, “I love you April,” and the world will make sense again. This is what I will see and hear when I open my eyes. I won’t see the mundane wallpaper that has been decorated with nonsensical portraits of woodland creatures. I won’t smell the musty scent of the molding carpet that probably hasn’t been washed in weeks. Jamie’s loved ones won’t be surrounding me dressed in their darkest suits and dresses and clinging to damp tissues. I am going to count to five and then open my eyes and this lump in my throat will be gone. When I get down to one this whole day will be over and Jamie will be standing in front of me laughing like this has all been a big joke.
Five…four…three…two…one.
I slowly open my eyes………...it's real, all of it. Jamie is really gone.
Open caskets funerals are surreal. I’m sitting here staring at my boyfriend who gave me the best six-months of my life and I could swear he is just sleeping. But I know that his body is nothing more than an empty shell now, like in my dream. The boy that I loved disappeared the minute his heart stopped beating. When Grandma Maggie died, although it was sudden, it wasn’t entirely unexpected. She had lived a long and wonderful life and I knew she didn’t have any regrets. When she died there was nothing we left that was unsaid. When someone dies of natural causes you have time to get things right but when someone dies suddenly time is working against you and sometimes, like with me and Jamie, a lot is left unsaid and you’re forced to live the rest of your life replaying all of the things you should have said when you had the chance.
The room shrinks as everyone gathers in front of the casket to say a prayer or to say goodbye to Jamie. It seems like everyone from school is here, even Mrs. Honor who always gave Jamie a hard time. She is here sobbing with the rest of us. Erik is holding Amber close to him as they wait their turn to say goodbye. They’re both trying to be strong for the other. I don’t know everyone here but I feel connected to all of them, even Liza who is kneeling beside the casket with her head bowed. She’s whispering something but I can’t make it out. As she rises to her feet again she turns around and mouths to me, “I’m so sorry.” It is the first time that I don’t want to punch her in the face. Although I am sure that once I go back to school in a few weeks I’ll go right back to hating her and will look forward to seeing another one of her and Jeremy’s famous fights. There are just some things that nothing, not even tragedy, can change.
“April,” mom says, placing he
r hand on my knee, “it’s time to say goodbye now.”
This is it, the worst moment of my life. I’d wear a thousand braces for a million lifetimes to have Jamie back if only for a few minutes. I walk up to the casket and place my hands on Jamie’s chest. I thought it would feel weird touching him but it feels like the only easy thing I’ll do from now on. He looks peaceful and I swear he’s smiling. I close my eyes and pretend he’s standing in front of me. I can feel his hand brush the stray hairs out of my eyes the way he always did before he kissed me. I can feel the warmth of his touch and security of being wrapped in his arms.
“Tell me,” I hear Jamie say. “Now is your chance. I’m here and I’m listening.”
I lean in and push my lips against his ear and whisper, “You will never know how much I loved you Jamie” I say as tears pour down my face. “I am so sorry I let you go without resolving that ridiculous fight. Petty fights, that’s not us. Thank you for showing me that this brace doesn’t define me. Thank you for giving me the strength to look at myself and see past the cage I’ve been trapped in for the last two-and-a-half years. Thank you for making me feel beautiful and for choosing me. But most of all thank you for loving me.”
I keep my eyes closed as I kiss his forehead.
“I love you April,” I hear him say as I open my eyes. “I’ll always be with you, even when you meet the Backstreet Boys this summer but I will haunt you if you fall in love with one of them.” If he were standing here now I am sure he would make a joke like that. It wouldn’t be Jamie if he didn’t put a humorous spin on his own funeral.
I was so sure that I wouldn’t be able to breathe today or have the strength to say goodbye but I’ve found a way to do it. Even in death, Jamie is giving me strength.
I had something that most people will never have; I had love…the real thing. I had that romantic-comedy movie kind of love. It was messy and sometimes it was so complicated I didn’t think we’d make it, but despite the complications and mess what we had was real and it was ours and nothing, not even death could take that away from us.
-EPILOGUE-
It’s been two months since I lost Jamie and although it’s been hard I’ve managed to survive it. Things are different now though. I am stronger, more confident. This brace isn’t who I am it is just a thing I have to deal with and I refuse to let it define me anymore. I have also been spending a lot of time with Mr. and Mrs. Clarke. It is comforting being around them and reminiscing about Jamie. My parents have also been spending time with them and every Friday we’ve been getting together for family dinners.
I finished the book and titled it, Brace Yourself, Margo Hunch, and I plan on submitting it to literary agencies in the next few weeks. I don’t know where it will take me but I’m doing this for Jamie, because I know it’s what he would want me to do and I owe it to him to at least try.
Two weeks after the funeral Liza broke up with Jeremy. She came up to me during lunch one day and told me how sorry she was that Jamie died. She even apologized for trying to steal him from me. I asked her why she and Jeremy broke up.
“I want what you and Jamie had,” she said. “I realized that Jeremy would never love me the way Jamie loved you. I mean he really did.” It was weird to hear that but it was also really flattering. I love that Jamie and I were the type of couple that others have been compared to.
Tonight is the concert in Portland. Amber volunteered to take Jamie’s ticket and this time she promised I wouldn’t have to drag her. I thought it would be too painful to be there without Jamie but he went through a lot of trouble to get these tickets and passes for me and I owe it to him to go. Besides if I don’t go I know he’ll be looking down on me from Heaven and cursing me. So I will go for him but I’ll also go for me.
The day of Jamie’s funeral Amber asked me if I regretted having met and fallen in love with Jamie. I didn’t know what to say then but now I do. Jamie loved me in the way that made me want to live and enjoy every moment so that is what I am going to do. I am going to live for both of us and carry him with me until it’s my turn to join him.
I will always regret the choices I made the night Jamie died. I used to tell Jamie that he was my everything but that night I treated him like he was nothing to me. No one could be for me what he was and is. Instead of telling him how thankful I was to have him in my life I ignored him when he reached out to me and now he’s been taken from me; taken from this world too soon.
We had a developing and growing love and a story that will never have a conclusion -and THAT is the tragedy of loving Jamie Clarke; but do I regret meeting him and falling in love with him now that he’s gone? Not for one second.
* * *
[1] “The Witches” Roald Dahl, 1983 (Puffin)
The Tragedy of Loving Jamie Clarke Page 18
