I quickly finish off my hot dog, abruptly standing as I push my fries over to her. “Uh, you can have the rest of these,” I say, avoiding her eyes, because I know if I meet them, I’ll probably stay. “I have to go. My mom needs help with—”
“Maybe I’ll see you again,” she says, cutting off whatever lie I was in the middle of coming up with. Like she sees right through it but doesn’t care. She gives me a small, shy smile.
“Maybe,” I say, though I’m almost certain that she won’t.
I turn on my heel and limp away down the path.
* * *
I’m still thinking about the divided condiments and her small dusting of freckles and the green grass by the pond when I walk in the front door almost a half hour later. As if on cue, my mom’s head pops out of the kitchen to greet me, the door barely closed behind me. She eyes my pressed button-down and dress pants.
“Did you finally go to the cemetery today?” she asks, her grip tightening on the spatula in her hand. I let it slip after Sam left that I was thinking about going, and she’s been asking me about it every day since.
“Yeah,” I say curtly, but I don’t elaborate. It wasn’t exactly a rousing success.
“I’m just starting dinner. We can talk about it.”
“I already ate,” I say as I keep pushing toward my room. I’d rather rebreak my femur than talk about my day.
I hobble down the basement steps and pause in front of my closet to put my jacket away. When I open the door, my eyes land on the box tucked into the back corner.
The box filled with what they were able to salvage from my car after the accident.
I pull it out and place it on the floor of my room. I sit across from it for what feels like hours, trying to work up the courage to open it. If I couldn’t get anywhere at the cemetery today, I could at least try to do this.
I find myself staring at a piece of filmy white fabric peeking out from underneath the folded corner. I don’t know what it is, but something about it makes me afraid to unfold the flaps. To see what else is inside.
I work up the nerve to reach out and peel back the layers. As I slowly sift through the contents, the bit of fabric unfurls into a scarf. Underneath it, a purse. A single shoe.
Tiny parts of her, never to be worn again. Never to be wrapped gracefully around her neck, or slung around her shoulder, or kicked off into the corner of my room after a night out.
I dig some more and find the disco ball ornament, completely intact.
I hold it up so the light from my bedside table reflects off it and sends tiny shards of light around the room. A jolt of pain slashes across my scar, and I see the tiny disco ball ablaze as the headlights of the truck rush toward us, the freckles of light dotting Kimberly’s horrified face. My heart rate picks up and my vision blurs.
I drop the ornament, closing my eyes, the pain receding as the memory fades away.
When I open them, my eyes land on a small velvet box at the very bottom. Carefully, slowly, I pick it up and open it to reveal the charm bracelet. I wrap my fingers around it, the cool metal sitting gently in my palm.
My finger traces the charms, finally making its way to the empty links, the spot I saved for our future memories. Memories that she would’ve made alone, at Berkeley.
Now I’m the one making my own memories without her.
I think of Sam’s words the other night at my house. What Kim would’ve wanted. Of my mom and her “Always forward. Never back.” Of Marley, standing by the pond. Our pond.
I place the charm bracelet carefully back inside the box and put it away. It’s too soon. I went today because I thought it’s what Kim would have wanted.
So why does every new minute still feel like such a betrayal of all the old ones?
10
A few days later I find myself back at the cemetery, at Kim’s grave, just wanting to feel close to her. Not in the creepy-vision kind of way, but in more of an I-don’t-know-what-else-to-do kind of way.
I lay a fresh bouquet of tulips next to my wilted irises, but a larger bouquet of them is already resting against the headstone. I wonder how many bouquets Kim’s parents left before I even came once.
At least this time I brought the right flowers.
I take the silky scarf out of my pocket and drape it gently over the headstone, returning it to its owner.
“Well, Kim,” I say as I pull away. “Like always, I’m finding it difficult to figure out what it is exactly you want. I keep thinking I know, but…”
I pause, half expecting her to answer me, but there’s only the sound of the wind in the trees, the leaves rustling above me.
I sit down and rest my back against the headstone, silently waiting for a moment of clarity. Five minutes pass. Then fifteen. But nothing comes. And the same questions roll through my head like a news ticker that can’t unloop.
I look around and spy the sea of pink flowers two plots away. Pushing myself up, I let my curiosity get the best of me.
I reach out and touch one of the flowers, the petal soft underneath my fingertips.
“Stargazer lilies,” a voice says from beside me.
Jesus Christ. I jump, nearly having a heart attack as I look over to see Marley standing next to me, her long hair pulled back with a yellow hair tie. She plucks the Stargazer I was touching, her hazel eyes studying it.
My eyes study the headstone nestled within the pink blooms.
“My sister. Laura,” Marley says softly, before I can ask.
“She was my hero. Loved me just the way I was,” she says, as if we’re picking up a conversation we’d already begun. She places the flower on top of the headstone. “It didn’t matter to her if I was different. Or sensitive. Or quiet.”
She looks up at me, and I can see finally where the intensity in her eyes is coming from. It’s loss, buried in the deep hazel, a familiar pain wrapped around the irises. I know that pain. It’s like looking in a mirror.
“I wanted to be just like her,” she adds, breaking the gaze and turning her face back to the flowers.
“How old were you when she—”
“We’d just turned fourteen.”
We? But before I can ask, she answers that, too.
“Twins,” she says.
Shit. “What happened?”