Where Hope Grows

by Third Cousins

  “You’re from there, right?”

  I nodded. “Sure am.”

  “Do you know any good places to stay? I mean, I know that it’s a weird thing to be worrying about, but I want to make sure that I’ve got a room booked.”

  I thought of the two motels that were at either end of the town. Neither of them could be described as good. Perhaps at a push, you could say that one was slightly better than the other. I shook my head. “It’s not really a tourist orientated place,” I told her.

  We walked on a few steps and then I said it. “If you want, you could just stay at my place.” the offer had seemed so casual in my mind. It was only upon hearing it that I heard all the implications that went with it.

  I looked over at her. Her cheeks had turned bright pink and although she was looking up at me, she wasn’t meeting my eyes. “I,” she started. “I wasn’t asking for you to let me stay with you,” she pushed out quickly. “I just meant, you know, like a hotel or something?”

  Crap. I’d made her feel awkward and I hadn’t meant to. “I know you weren’t fishing for an invite,” I said, so that she could calm down. “I just thought it might be easier. I mean, the motels in my town are dives. I have a house-proud mom who would love the extra company. It just seemed like a viable option.”

  “Oh, right,” she said and I could feel her eyes starting to inspect my face. “Are you sure? I can stay in one of the motels. I don’t mind dealing with a crappy room for a few days.”

  “Sure, I’m sure,” I said a little too quickly. “I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t.”

  We stopped outside a diner at the edge of the town. I pushed open the door and gestured for Lisa to walk in, before I followed her into the dingy building. We took a booth close to the window and waited for the waitress to take our order before the conversation picked back up.

  “What classes do you take?” she asked me once the waitress had walked away.

  “Classes?” I asked her dumbly.

  “At college,” she smiled.

  The question had seemed too simple. It hadn’t been about Sophie. Everything was about Sophie. I had to make everything about Sophie, so that she could live on. I was the only person she had. I was the only person who was going to keep her memory alive in the way it needed to be kept.

  CHAPTER 4

  The rain finally came. I woke up on the day that I was due to go home and I saw the lashing rain battering the window. The sky was thick with clouds. The clouds were so dark that they looked as though coal had been smeared over them. The rain fell hard. I could see it bouncing from the ground when it struck down against it with force. It was right. It felt right. The weather finally matched my mood and, I don’t know, it just felt the way that it should.

  Lisa knocked on my door at three minutes to ten. Her knock was so quiet that first I wasn’t even sure whether I’d heard it or whether my mind was just going crazy. The repeated sound of her quiet little knocks brought me to the door though and I opened it.

  “Sorry I’m early,” she said with an anxious look knitted into her face.

  “It’s three minutes,” I said to her with a small smile pulling at the corners of my mouth. “I think that it’s forgiveable.” I stepped aside, so that she could come into the room.

  Dillan was still sleeping, but I wasn’t really bothered whether we woke him up. He and I hadn’t spoken properly since the night that Sophie had died. He’d made a poorly-judged comment about being right and I’d lost it with him. His right eye was still purple and swollen where my fist had made contact with it. She wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t going to allow people to say that she was.

  “Are you ready to set off?” she asked me, as she glanced around my room. It was still pretty messy. The majority of the mess from Sophie’s freak out had been cleared away, but new mess had formed in its place.

  “Sure,” I said, as I nudged my overstuffed backpack, which was leaning against my bed.

  “What’s going on?” Dillan demanded in a muzzy voice, as he sat up quickly in his bed and looked at Lisa and then myself. “Who is she? Why are you both in the room? What time is it?” he demanded to know all at once.

  “She’s called Lisa. We’re getting ready to leave for Sophie’s funeral and it’s just past ten in the morning,” I told him, as I tried to think about whether he’d asked anything else.

  “You’re going to the funeral with her?” he asked in surprise. “Don’t you think it’s a bit,” he made an awkward kind of gesture and then lowered his voice, “you know, soon?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I snapped.

  He shrugged. “You dump your girlfriend so you can be with the girl you were cheating with her on. The bat-crap crazy girl, might I add. She dies. So then you bring a new girl to her funeral? I don’t know, man,” he said with his head slowly shaking from right to left. “It kind of seems a bit messed up to me.”

  “Say that again,” I roared, as I cleared the space between us, before he had a chance to blink. My body was shaking. My throat felt tight and I could feel my pulse beating behind my ears. I brought out my arm and wrapped my fingers around his thick throat. “I said, say it again,” I leant in, so that my face was right in his.

  “I see why you both got on so well,” he said to me, before glancing over at Lisa. “You want to be careful with him. He’s just as crazy as she was.”

  I pulled my arm back. I could feel every drop of anger draining from my body and buzzing around, as I started to bring it down towards his face.

  “He’s not worth it,” I heard Lisa call out. Something pulled on my arm. I could feel the force working against my own. I looked back. It was Lisa. I stopped and pushed Dillan away, so that his body fell roughly against his bed.

  “We should go,” Lisa said, as she glanced between me and Dillan.

  I nodded and walked over to my bag. I wanted to turn back around and lunge at him. I wanted to feel his face breaking under my hand as I brought it down into him.

  I knew that Lisa was right, though. I knew that I couldn’t hit him. It would only lead to trouble and trouble wasn’t something I needed with Sophie’s funeral looming over me.

  CHAPTER 5

  My home smelled like my past. It was warm and familiar and good to be around. I knew the squeaks that went with the stairs. I knew the peeling wallpaper that should have been replaced years ago, but had instead had pictures or furniture put in front of it. It was good to be home. I was home for the worst reasons, but even still, it felt good.

  My mom liked Lisa. I could tell from the thousands of questions she had asked her and the approving nods that had met Lisa’s answers. I noticed her watching us carefully. She knew that were weren’t together. I’d made that clear straight away, so that no uncomfortable situations came up, but I could tell that if my mom had her way, that would soon change.

  I suppose I had to admit that it wasn’t just my mom’s way. I kind of wanted that, too. There was something about Lisa. She made my life feel gentler. She reminded me that there was still good in the world, even though there was bad too. She had become my grounding through the craziness and her eyes had become the picture I saw when I closed my own.

  “You did the right thing,” my mom told me, as she straightened my tie. “I know that it’s hard. I know that deep down you’re probably blaming in yourself in one minute and wishing you’d never even met her in the next, but you did the right thing. You did everything right, you are not to blame and you touched that girl’s life. You were there when no one else was, and that matters.”

  I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t. My throat felt too tight. I reached up and stuck my fingers between my neck and my collar. I was sure that my mom had tied my tie too tight, but I found plenty of room between them.

  I looked at my mom and she smiled at me sadly. “I know it’s hard, but it’s going to get better. You’ve just got to keep counting those sunrises, until you wake up one day without the weight against your chest.”

&n
bsp; I nodded. I’d given up on speaking.

  The stairs creaked behind me. I turned. Lisa was walking down the stairs. Her small, curvy frame was wrapped in a black dress which fell to her knee. Her legs were wrapped in translucent black tights and her shoulders in a small, armless cardigan that pulled across her cleavage and covered everything that might be deemed inappropriate for a funeral.

  My thoughts were inappropriate. She looked hot. Her legs were slender and toned. Her dress led me to wonder what I might find underneath it. Did her underwear match? Was she wearing black lace? She’d look good in black lace. My cheeks felt hot, as the image of her standing in nothing but a lacy bra and thong crept into my mind.

  “Do I look okay?” she asked, as she observed my vacant stare in her direction.

  Her voice pulled me back. My eyes glanced over to hers and for a moment I felt nothing but embarrassment. I was sure that she could read my thoughts. I was sure that she could see them in my eyes. She smiled at me nervously. She couldn’t see anything. She could just see me staring at her and not saying a word. “

  You look beautiful,” I told her honestly, and I saw my mom smiling from the corner of my eye.

  “I’ve never been to a funeral before,” she told me, as she reached the bottom of the stairs and walked over to where my mom and I were standing.

  “I haven’t either,” I told her.

  “If you’re both ready, then I’ll drive you over,” my mom said after a second or two had passed.

  CHAPTER 6

  The silence in a funeral is heavy. You can feel it from the moment you walk in. It’s like all the energy that has ever been spent in the room had been trapped in the room.

  She was at the front. She was center-stage, in a light wood box that glistened where the incandescent light struck off it. There she was for the last time, and she looked nothing like she had when I’d known her in life.

  I couldn’t see her hair. I couldn’t see what color it was. She had always been known for her hair. It had been bright pink the first time she’d dyed it. She’d been the only person in the entire town who had bright pink hair.

  I wanted to see her hair. I wanted to say goodbye to something that made her the person that she was. She wasn’t a box. Her hair hadn’t been the light oak color that was surrounding her. How could I say goodbye? How could I say goodbye when nothing about this reminded me of her?

  The clergyman read some prayers. He spoke about the girl he’d heard about. He spoke about the troublemaker. He spoke about the girl who couldn’t face her demons and ended things too early. He spoke about the puzzle without any idea about what the picture looked like. He was blind to her. He was blind to the person she really was and he was getting everything wrong.

  I wanted to stand up. I wanted to scream at him. This was Sophie’s final goodbye and it wasn’t right. She deserved for it to be right. It was the least she deserved after the crappy hand, she’d been dealt in life.

  Lisa’s hand was wrapped around my own, though. It had found its way there at some point after we’d taken our seats and it was keeping me down in my seat. She wasn’t forcing me down. There was no pressure to her touch, almost, as though she was afraid to rest her hand down too much, but her touch was calming me. It was reminding me that a funeral wasn’t the final goodbye.

  There was never a final goodbye. What the vicar said didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I knew the person she had really been and that I remembered that person.

  The funeral ended and she was taken away. Music played. I don’t know what song it was. It wasn’t anything that Sophie would have listened to. I stood up. Lisa was by my side and I looked to find her eyes were swollen and red with tears that had been cried.

  I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her into me. “It’s going to be okay,” I whispered to her. “It doesn’t feel like it now, but it’s going to be okay.”

  She sniffled. I could feel my shirt getting wet underneath the place where her face was pressed. I brushed her hair away from the free part of her face, so that it wouldn’t grow damp with tears and I waited until she was ready to go.

  I wasn’t sure at first whether I should say something more, but I realized quickly that it wasn’t words she needed. She just needed to not be alone. She just needed for her tears to fall on someone and not on a pillow. I was that someone. I was happy to be that someone. At least I was being useful that way.

  The sound of footsteps behind me captured my attention and I turned my head. I glanced at the person they belonged to. It was Sophie’s father. A police officer was by his side, as he walked slowly from the pew towards the place where his daughter had been.

  I had Lisa in my arms. He owes her his life. If she hadn’t been in my arms and I had been there alone with him, I would have ended him. The police officer wouldn’t have stopped me. I doubt that anyone would have even blamed me.

  Sure, I would have been arrested. Sure, I would have gone to prison, but I would have gone to prison a hero. Sometimes the lines between good and evil get crossed. But if you ask me, if a bad person is being taken down, then it’s always the right thing to do.

  He walked up to me. His dirty brown eyes met mine and he held my stare. His handcuffs chinked as he walked. It was the only sound in the room beside Lisa’s sniffling. He stopped in front of me and lowered his eyes to Lisa. I fought the urge to cover her, so that his eyes couldn’t taint the space around her.

  “You know, she weren’t worth crying over,” he said slowly to Lisa.

  Lisa looked up at him in surprise. “Who the hell are you?” she demanded with a fire I’d never seen in her before. I stood back a little. I hadn’t been expecting a volcano to go off in my arms. “Did you even know this girl?”

  Sophie’s dad laughed. “I sure did seeing as though I’m her daddy.”

  Lisa looked conflicted. Her cheeks started to turn a slight shade of green and I wondered whether she was going to throw up over him.

  “You’re her father?” she asked. He nodded. “You’re her father and you said that? You’re sick. You’re sick in the head. No wonder your daughter couldn’t cope. How could she with someone like you to look up to? Her life is on your hands,” her voice had steadily risen to a scream. “You’re the fault that she’s not here any more.”

  I stepped forward again and tried to pull her away from him, but she shrugged off my hand. I could see her staring him down. I could see her hands shaking with anger. I could see the injustice of it all burning through her heart.

  “I’m the reason her mommy died, too,” Sophie’s dad taunted.

  “All right, that’s enough,” the officer said and he shoved at Sophie’s father so that he would start walking again.

  Lisa turned to look at me. I could see horror and devastation in her eyes. I think, although I can’t be sure, that that was the moment her childhood died. I don’t think she had ever been able to believe that people could be so evil. I don’t think she’d ever been able to believe that anybody could be so uncaring.

  “We should go,” I told her firmly, so that she would let me lead her out of the oppressive room and back out into the open.

  “Did he really do that?” she asked me as she stepped forward. “Did he really kill her mom?”

  I hesitated and then I nodded. I had kept Sophie’s secret as she had asked. It had been her father who had told Lisa, but that didn’t stop me from feeling like I betrayed her.

  “He’s an alcoholic. He beat her mom up for years. I don’t know if he ever did anything to Sophie. I never asked and she never brought it up. A few days before Sophie died, she got a call about her mom. Her dad had beaten her to death. It sent Sophie into this kind of downward spiral. She was convinced that she was evil like him,” I stopped, as I thought back to the desperate look that had been in her eyes, when she’d been standing at the edge of the cliff.

  “She thought that she was like her father?” Lisa asked with wide eyes. “I hardly knew her, but I know that isn’t true.”
>
  “The night that we first met and you pointed me in her direction was the night she found out. I found her out by the ocean. She was hanging over the edge of a cliff. She wanted to end everything, but I managed to talk her about of it. I managed to get her to come back to the dorms so that she could get some sleep.”

  “You think you could have done more?”

  I nodded. “I do, but I know that doesn’t change anything now. I went to see her the day after, but she was really hostile to me and then my girlfriend came over. She was crazy jealous and I couldn’t tell her the truth about why I was so worried about Sophie, so we broke up. I went over the next day to see Sophie, but it was too late,” I could feel my words starting to choke me, as I spoke. “The last time I spoke to her, she said that she was fine,” I finished numbly.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Lisa said. “You couldn’t have known that she would try again. She had clearly thought things through. Perhaps, it would have been cruel to force her to face an endless amount of tomorrows when she couldn’t even face the day.”

  Lisa was right. Sophie had made her choice. It was a choice forced from a life of hardship, but it had been her choice all the same.

  CHAPTER 7

  I was standing outside of Lisa’s dorm building. I wasn’t sure whether I should offer to walk her to her room. She was looking at me in a strange kind of way. She sort of looked happy, but it was a confused happy. A happy where she wasn’t quite she whether she was happy or not.

  “Do you want to have coffee again sometime soon?” she asked reluctant to leave without making plans to see each other again first.

  I nodded. “Yeah, I think that would be nice,” I said with a smile.

  She smiled back at me and then she leant forward quickly. My pulse raced. I could feel it pounding against my ears, as I watched her pink lips come towards me. I leant back and held out my hands, so they would stop her, before she crashed into me. Her cheeks burned red.