I park my car behind some willow trees and send a silent sorry to Ms. Capaldi’s lawn. I mean, she’s pretty old. Maybe she won’t see the tire tracks.
Before we got the guts to leave the neighborhood, before we found the Metaphor and the rest of the world, we used to come here all the time. It must have been second or third grade. We came every day, because Ms. Capaldi had this fantastic tree in her backyard—a real tree, not the wimpy toothpicks you see on everyone else’s lawns. The trunk was so wide that when Micah and I hugged it on opposite sides, we couldn’t get our hands to meet. The lower branches were too heavy to grow upward anymore, and there were places where gravity took them back, and they rooted there and grew again. I never climbed, really, but Micah did. No, he scurried. He pulled himself higher, higher, and I stayed on the ground and kicked the trunk because my climbing skills were pathetic.
I used to think this was the most beautiful place in the world. I used to think that this was the place where the world began. But then in third grade, we came after school and the tree was in pieces, hacked and ripped and ruined, and I burst into tears. Ms. Capaldi explained that the tree was dying, but I didn’t care. It was freaking tragic. Micah had to drag me away, and I cried all the way home.
So Ms. Capaldi ruined my childhood and I just ruined her backyard. I call it even.
Now there’s a stump, and when I peek around the side of the house, Micah is sitting on it with the next clue in his lap. Is he smiling? It’s too dark to tell. I think so. I hope so.
It’s a flashlight and a calendar page from the September of our freshman year and a bottle of peach vodka.
He’s too far away, but I feel him relax. I feel his laugh, even if I don’t see it—I feel the air shift, but only between the two of us. He clicks the flashlight on and casts it around, and I slam myself against the side of the house and suck in my breath. The light passes and I put my fingers behind my back. No shadow puppets tonight.
The light clicks off. Then on. Off on, on, pause.
Morse code? Code! I knew making him learn it would come in handy one day!
You’re the world’s biggest idiot, Janie Vivian.
And I’m grinning like it.
I hear his engine a bit later, and I tiptoe back to my car and follow. There are three texts from my dad telling me that he and Mom have checked into their hotel and to call them when I can. Improvement! Usually, there would be a few phone calls and a voicemail or seven. There’s hope for him after all. I send him a quick “I will later!” and drive to St. John’s Cemetery.
Which is actually, as far as cemeteries go, really pretty. Not overly groomed. Overly groomed cemeteries are so wrong. Cemeteries shouldn’t have lawn-mower tracks. They should have wildflowers and dandelions and wishes and tears. And tonight, under the angel with the wide, wide wings for a certain Michael van Pearsen, 1920–1977, I HAVE LOVED THE STARS TOO FONDLY TO BE FEARFUL OF THE NIGHT, there is also a clue.
(It was only the most perfect epitaph ever. I Googled it later—it was by Sarah Williams, and I am sososososo jealous because I didn’t die quickly enough to claim it first.)
We first came here two nights before the start of freshman year. I slid my bookshelf across the space between our houses and climbed into Micah’s room with a slim bottle of peach vodka that I’d (over)paid Beaver Rossily from across the street to get for me, and we walked 1.58 miles to the cemetery and got drunk for the first time.
I hadn’t wanted my first time getting drunk to be, I don’t know, sweaty. I didn’t want it to be at a party with people I didn’t know. I actually wanted champagne, but Beaver said I didn’t have enough money. It was fine, though. The peach vodka had burned, but we choked it down and laughed fire out of our noses.
I remember that the stars were huge. Enormous. They were worlds, and that night, ours was as bright as any of them.
I remember that it was endlessly funny that we were in a cemetery. I remember that we lay down under the angel and laid our hands over our stomachs like we were dead, but then Micah slid his hand into the space between our bodies and I took it, and it was warm and sticky with vodka. I remember threading my fingers through his and pressing our life lines together.
I remember planning our funerals. I wanted blue flowers, all kinds. Forget-me-nots and cornflowers and bellflowers, irises and pansies and hibiscus. I wanted them anywhere, everywhere, in my hair and on my coffin and on the tables at the reception afterward.
I had asked him if funerals had receptions.
No, Micah told me, weddings do.
Then I want blue flowers at my wedding too.
What else?
I want rain, I told him. I want thunder and sobbing. I want cursed wifi so people who use it will grow nose hair so long they trip over it. I want a hot minister and a church full of people and chocolate, honey cookies, and cinnamon candles and handkerchiefs the color of the sky.
For the wedding or the funeral?