dead? What are you talking about?”
“Ellie.” I see it in the tremble of your lip and the way you swallow hard. The tension bunches your shoulders; the tears are caught somewhere in your eyes, but you won’t let them out.
I don’t think I have ever seen you cry.
I don’t think I want to.
I don’t think I can.
I start to back away, to run from the wave of emotion that I feel is about to crash against the Matthews’ house, and as I step over the threshold, it happens.
Your mom gathers you into her arms and you bury your head in her shoulder. It is strange to see someone so large needing to collapse on someone so small. I turn to run, but I hear your muffled shaky voice, “She’s dead. She’s dead. She’s dead.”
The tide has washed me in and I can’t leave.
I don’t know how long you cling to your mom, but I know she isn’t the one to let go.
* * *
Now you are in the middle of your room, sitting in one of those rotating chairs, and you swing slowly around, over and over again. I have never been in your room. It almost feels wrong to be here now.…
You stop turning finally. I am sitting on your bed. The blankets look soft. Your walls are plastered with posters. Posters of bands, T-shirts, and sketches. I remember you used to invite me to concerts. I remember always saying no.
I don’t notice the two small photos that are tacked up between the glossy designed posters until you stand up to touch them.
One is a picture of the inside of the red barn bridge. Our red barn bridge. The one below it is me. Not me from years ago when we played in our little cove of trees and when you carried a Walmart disposable camera around. But me, from one year ago. I don’t know how or when you took it, but you did.
I was sitting at a picnic table. It was a school day; we were released early. I hadn’t wanted to go home yet so I went to the park. How did I not see you there? Watching? Following? Why didn’t you say anything?
I had taken out my notebook and started to scribble in the corners in my strange way. I didn’t like to write on the ruled lines until the words came, the right words. I curled my script down margins and used arrows to point at good ideas. I must’ve found a good one, because there in the picture I sat, pencil in hand, staring at the page, and I was smiling.
I don’t know what it was that I thought or read. I don’t know how I didn’t hold on to it and treasure it, because looking at the photo, my eyes alight with something like satisfaction, my lips quirked up so much that my eyes were almost squinty, I was …
I can’t say the word or think it without my stomach twisting.
Beautiful.
Maybe it was how you took the picture, how the light hit my face in a brilliant golden way, how my freckles somehow made my face look happier.
I don’t know what magic you used to make it so. I wish I had seen the picture before. I wish I had known what I could look like. What I could be.
I wish I had known what you saw when you looked at me.
Your eyes are red. You trace your fingers over the photograph. Reverence, sweetness.
I know what those fingers feel like.
The truth of that shocks me, because here in your room, I can’t remember. I can’t remember when you would’ve touched me or why, but when I look at your hands, I know they are gentle. I know that even though they are precise with a pen, they are hesitant on skin.
I swallow hard and wish I could feel them now.
Your slender fingers pause and curl around the edges of the photo. Your jaw clenches and rage flickers across your face. You crumple the photo in your palm. You turn around and fling it against the opposite wall. I stand bolt upright and stare at the place where it falls on the ground. I don’t see when you pick up your chair, but I hear it as it slams against the drywall. I flinch at the crashing sound. I cover my ears as if it could rupture my eardrums. Your guitar is in your hands and you swing it like a bat and