She crosses her arms and speaks more softly. “They don’t, Ryden. They’re not here. Maybe she never got the chance to mark the other two and put them where we would find them. Or maybe she forgot about it. Or maybe she died before she could finish them. She was really weak and totally out of it toward the end, you know.”
What, she thinks I don’t remember exactly what Meg was like in those final days? Her body thin and brittle, her stomach round and looking more like a tumor than any of the actual tumors inside of her. Her lips dry, her eyes unclear. Asleep most of the time, and the rest of the time too exhausted to do much more than walk the short distance to the bathroom. But still looking at me with more love than I’ve ever known in my life.
And then, one day, gone.
“She finished the journals,” I say. “I know it. And I’m going to find them.”
Mabel pushes the boxes against the storage room walls, picks up Hope’s car seat, and walks to the car. I follow, closing and locking the garage door.
The drive back to her house is silent. Before she gets out of the car, she turns to me and says, “I’m done, Ryden. You’re on your own. I have to move on.”
I nod. I guess I kinda knew that was coming. “Call me whenever you want to see Hope.”
“Thanks. See you at school on Monday.”
She walks up the path toward her giant, cold house.
The thing is, now I’m even more determined to track down the journals. There was something Meg wanted us to know, me to know, and now I’m the only one left who wants to hear what she said just as desperately as she wanted to say it.
? ? ?
“Brooks!” Coach shouts as I run onto the field. “That little conversation we had on Monday wasn’t for my health. That’s it. You’re sitting out next Friday.”
“But, Coach! That’s the first game of the season!”
“I’m aware of that. Two miles. Go.”
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck! My teammates have stopped what they were doing and stare at me as I switch from cleats to sneakers and start my eight laps around the track. Most of them are looking at me like Coach is looking at me—pissed off for my being late again and for forcing Coach to take me out of the game, which means we’ll probably lose. Well, guess what? I’m pissed too. But some of the guys, like Dave, are looking at me like they feel sorry for me, the same way Mabel looked at me earlier this morning. Poor Ryden Brooks. His life is so fucked that he can’t even keep his head straight.
And the saddest part is, they don’t know the half of it.
The track is like a belt around the soccer field—on my left, inside the belt, the team is practicing. On my right are the stands. I pass by the home stands, then the visitors’ stands, again and again. As I approach the home team side for the third time, my eyes land where Meg and Mabel sat during the championship game last December. Meg was six months pregnant and looked like a shell of her former self. But she pushed herself out of the house and cheered so much during that game that if you didn’t look at her, just listened, you would never know how sick she really was.
She was my good luck charm. Downey won its fourth state championship in a row last year, and Meg was there for all of it.
You know, that may have been the last moment things were truly great.
? ? ?
There is one place I haven’t checked yet.
A few days later, I get up early and drive to Meg’s and my secret spot at the beach. I haven’t been here since she got too sick to come with me. It looks exactly the same, right down to the half-empty Sprite bottle stuck in the sand that we must have forgotten to take home with us last time.
I scan the area for a journal peeking out of the sand or sitting in the grass. I even look up at the trees to see if there’s anything nestled in the branches. There’s nothing here. I don’t know what I was expecting. Even if there had been a journal here, the weather would have gotten to it by now.
Hope sits in her harness on my chest. Her wails feel all wrong here; they don’t mix with the serenity of this place. But then, this moment is strange for lots of reasons. This is the spot where she went from being a whole lot of nothing to the smallest beginnings of a something.
I bounce her up and down to try to keep her calm. It sort of works.
I sit in the sand and close my eyes, letting the sounds and smells and memories of the place fill every empty part of me. It all happened right here. It’s still happening right here, like one of those weird sci-fi movies where time is stuck in a loop, and the people in it are trapped, destined to repeat a moment over and over without ever moving forward.
May 24…
“Turn left up here,” Meg said. It was the night of the dance—the one we were skipping. I’d just picked her up from her giant house and met her pod people parents for the first time. They hadn’t been very welcoming.
“Uh, why?”
She gave me a sly smile. “Just do it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”