I believe, too. But I want you here. I don’t care if it’s a hundred degrees and every blade of grass dies. Without you, none of that matters to me.
I knew how hard this was for her, because all I could think about was how much I didn’t want to leave her. But I couldn’t say that. It would only make it worse.
We’re not talking about dead grass. You know that. The world will destroy itself, and the people we love.
Lena was shaking her head. “I don’t care. I can’t imagine a world without you in it.”
“Maybe you can imagine the world I always wanted to see.” I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the folded, beat-up map, the one that had been on my wall for so many years now. “Maybe you can see it for me. I marked the routes in green. You don’t have to use it. But I wish someone would. It’s kind of something I was planning for a while—my whole life, actually. They’re places from my favorite books.”
“I remember.” Her voice was muffled. “Jack Kerouac.”
“Or you can make your own.” I felt her breath catch. “Funny thing is, until I met you all I wanted to do was to get as far away from here as I could. Kind of ironic, isn’t it? Can’t get much farther away than where I’m going, and now I’d give anything to stay.”
Lena put her hands on my chest, pushing herself away from me. The map dropped on the ground between us. “Don’t say that! You aren’t doing it!”
I bent down and picked up the map that marked all the places I’d dreamed of going, before I finally figured out where I belonged. “Just hold on to it for me, then.”
Lena stared at the folded paper like it was the most dangerous thing in the world. Then she reached up and unhooked her charm necklace from around her neck. “If you hold this for me.”
“L, no.” But it was hanging in the air between us, and her eyes were begging me to take it. I opened my hand, and she dropped the necklace—the silver button, the red string, the Christmas tree star, all of her memories—into my hand.
I reached out and lifted her chin so she was looking at me. “I know this is hard, but we can’t pretend it isn’t happening. I need you to promise me something.”
“What?” Her eyes were red and swollen as she stared back at me.
“You have to stay here and Bind the New Order, or whatever your part is in all this. Otherwise, everything I’m about to do will be for nothing.”
“You can’t ask me to do that. I went through this when I thought Uncle Macon was dead, and you saw how well I handled that.” Her voice cracked. “I won’t make it without you.”
Promise you’ll try.
“No!” Lena was shaking her head, her eyes wild. “You can’t give up. There has to be another way. There’s still time.” She was hysterical. “Please, Ethan.”
I grabbed her and wrapped my arms around her, ignoring the way her skin burned mine. I would miss these burns. I would miss everything about her. “Shh. It’s okay, L.”
It wasn’t.
I swore to myself that I’d find a way back to her somehow, like my mom found her way back to me. That was the promise I made, even if I couldn’t keep it.
I closed my eyes and buried my face in her hair. I wanted to remember this. The feeling of her heart beating against mine as I held her. The smell of lemons and rosemary, which had led me to her before I even met her. When it was time, I wanted this to be the last thing I remembered. My last thought.
Lemons and rosemary. Black hair and green and gold eyes.
She didn’t say a word, and I gave up trying, because you couldn’t hear either one of us over the shattering noise of hearts breaking and the looming shadow of the last word, the one we refused to say.
The one that would come anyway, whether or not we said it.
Good-bye.
12.21
Broken Bottles
Amma was sitting at the kitchen table when I got home. The cards and the crosswords and the Red Hots and the Sisters were nowhere in sight. Only an old, cracked Coke bottle sat on the table. It was from our bottle tree, the one that never caught the spirit Amma was looking for. Mine.
I’d been rehearsing this conversation in my mind from the moment I realized the Crucible was me, not John. Thinking of a hundred different ways to tell the person who loved me as much as my mom had that I was going to die.
What do you say?
I still hadn’t figured it out, and now that I was standing in Amma’s kitchen, looking her in the eye, it seemed impossible. But I had a feeling she already knew.
I slid into the seat across from her. “Amma, I need to talk to you.”
She nodded, rolling the bottle between her fingers. “Did everything wrong this time, I reckon. Thought you were the one pickin’ a hole in the universe. Turns out it was me.”
“This isn’t your fault.”
“When a hurricane hits, it’s not the weatherman’s fault any more than God’s—no matter what Wesley’s mamma says. Either way, doesn’t matter to those folks left without a roof over their heads, now, does it?” She looked up at me, defeated. “But I think we both know this was all my doin’. And this hole is too big for me to stitch up.”