Even though it was four in the morning, I walked outside in my bare feet, clutching the vase, and started the scooter. The drive to the foot of Willit Hill took me ten minutes.
No one had ever put up a cross or a sign that said what happened here, but the pine trees bore the evidence. Even the trees had scars. I froze on the side of the road, realizing I hadn’t been back here in a year.
Mom had avoided this road.
Dad had avoided this road.
I had avoided this road.
I wasn’t avoiding it anymore. I left the scooter by the rumble strip and hiked down to the site of the accident, the ground punishing my feet. Balancing myself against the tree, I kneeled down as if I were in a cemetery, and I talked to Trent.
“It’s been a year. It’s been a really hard year without you. Losing you felt like jumping off the bridge and forgetting which way was up. I don’t think I’ll ever be over it, but I’m starting to find my way through it. Mom said when a person dies, you don’t get over it by forgetting; you get through it by remembering. I’ve been remembering everything lately.
“I told Max and Gray and Gina about you. They’re dealing. And you know, I think they would have dealt if you’d told them. You were worried about that, but they love you. Same as me. Max even spent some time with Chris. I thought you’d want to hear that. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find myself. Exploring. You were supposed to be with me for searches like that. Sometimes I can’t handle the injustice that you’re not. Sometimes, I stand still while the world moves. You’d hate it. You’d hate this version of me.
“So I want you to know . . . today, I’m starting over. Without you.
“I’m going to leave something to keep you company. You were the first one to stuff a fortune inside Big. And practically everything in him is what you loved about me and our friends. I’m going to leave them here, with you.”
I dug down into the pile of pine needles and made a place for the vase.
I covered it up with needles.
I covered it up with tears.
And I told my friend good-bye.
When I listened for his voice, for that chorus of last words, there was only silence.
I guess he’d finally said good-bye too.
The stars were still out as I climbed the ditch to the Spree. I gazed up at the constellations, allowing myself a moment of observation and, perhaps, hesitation. I remembered a conversation Trent and I had when we were kids.
He’d just come back from space camp in Huntsville, and we were lying on the dock for an hour of Star Time.
“Sadie, did you know we can see nineteen trillion miles with our eyes? Nineteen trillion miles.”
This clearly impressed him. He went on about it, pointing out the stars and telling how far they were from Earth. One week at space camp hardly made him an expert, but he didn’t know that.
Space camp or no, I wanted to show him it mattered to me. That I’d done my own space camp that week with Google and books from the library.
“Cool. Watch this,” I told him.
I lifted my thumb into the air, closed my left eye, and made Orion disappear. “Did you know Neil Armstrong did this after he got into space?”
“Did what? Gave Earth a thumbs-up?” he asked, interested.
I loved that I knew something he didn’t.
“Yeah, so Armstrong said he realized that from where he was in space he could lift his thumb into the air and make all of Earth disappear. He said he didn’t feel like a giant, though. I read it in a book while you were gone.”
Trent lifted his thumb into the air, closed one eye, and blocked out the Big Dipper.
“Crazy,” he said. “Sometimes a small thing is bigger than a big thing.”
The wisdom of Neil Armstrong, Star Time, and a thirteen-year-old came back to me as I stared up at a perfect sky, balanced with equal parts light and dark.
I held my thumb out to the past until I couldn’t see it anymore, and then I drove home.
Sometimes a small thing is bigger than a big thing.
I’d just done a small thing.
CHAPTER FORTY
Max knocked on my window at six thirty a.m.