Anything but Ordinary(24)
“They said you would never wake up,” Greg echoed. “So I just sort of clung to the memories.”
Bryce nodded, thinking of one unseasonably warm Saturday night when she and Greg had lain next to one another with their hands behind their heads, Bryce in a sports bra and basketball shorts, Greg in his usual Carhartts cut off at the knee. “How do blind people dream?” he had asked her.
“I don’t know,” Bryce said slowly, pondering. She was staring at the slant of the barn ceiling, fading into darkness at the top. Occasionally the dark would rustle with the flight of bats or barn swallows. The light of their lantern only reached so far.
“Do they have dreams in sound?” Greg asked, his voice getting sleepy.
That night Bryce had dreamed of a world upside down, dripping in surreal colors. Greg was leading her through it with her hand in his. They had floated through the air like it was made of water. Bryce felt right at home.
Now she felt tears burn in the corner of her eyes. “Memories weren’t good enough, though.” It was both a question and an answer.
“No,” he said hollowly. “I moved on to these little dream scenarios. I wanted them to be real. I wanted it so bad.…” His voice choked. He looked away, shaking his head. “I thought about you opening your eyes. I stared at your face, willing you to open your eyes. Then you’d get up and we would leave the hospital together, we would go back to school, we’d graduate. Go to Vandy. And after that…” His voice trailed off, but his eyes said the rest. They contained an eternity. Where they would go, who they could be.
He was close enough that she could smell the wet wood scent that lingered on his clothes. He was inches away, and yet she couldn’t touch him. She couldn’t even hold his hand.
“Well, that’s not how it is,” Bryce said, ripping the words from her chest. She saw hurt flicker in Greg’s eyes. “It doesn’t matter how it could have been. You’re with Gabby now. You’re getting married.”
Bryce felt something crack inside of her. The last time she had said that word, married, had been in this barn. Their cheeks were red. Their hair was messed. The cicadas buzzed as they were buzzing now, and they had said silly, stupid things to each other. Love was being able to say anything you wanted, to say all the stupid things you couldn’t tell anyone else. But she had meant that one.
“I know,” Greg said sadly. Angrily, almost.
“I’m going to bed,” she said.
“Don’t,” he said. “Stay.”
But he didn’t protest when Bryce walked back into the summer night, trying to catch her breath. When she turned back, the light still shone from the barn’s old diamond-shaped windows. But she only looked ahead as she stepped through the wet grass, looking forward, for the first time since she awoke, to the soft darkness of a dreamless sleep.
ryce hung half out of the passenger-side window of the speeding white Honda. The rush of wind bit at her, flicking hair across her face, her mouth. This was a new kind of wind. It had a presence, a weight; it seemed to move like the bleeding colors only Bryce could see. She could feel it slip through her fingers and hair like liquid.
“Okay, here comes a big hill!” Bryce called to Carter, her knee braced on the busted leather seat.
He rolled his eyes, but a smile played on his lips.
“Go fast! It’s like a roller coaster!”
“You look like my dog,” he answered, but as soon as the words were out, the engine gunned and Bryce let out a whoop as they broke the crest of the hill, the skin of her cheeks pulled back by the air whipping across the empty country road.
The pavement flattened out, and Bryce flopped back onto her seat. “I can’t believe you let me do that.”
Carter scoffed. “Me neither. We’re lucky another car didn’t come by.”
“No cars ever do.” Bryce pulled her wild locks back into a ponytail and hung her hand out the window, catching the warm wind with her palm.
Carter shook his head, looking forward, but unable to hide his smile. “You’re crazy,” he muttered.
“Sorry,” Bryce said, but she wasn’t.
“You know where we’re going, right?” He readjusted the mirror.
“I couldn’t get lost if I wanted to.”
It had been a week since the night in the barn with Greg. He’d been calling, but she never picked up. It would be better to forget the past, she’d decided. It was better for both of them.
Carter had been coming around more often, and that was nice. But she found herself bringing him to all the places she used to go with Greg and Gabby, staring at the seats of the diner where they used to eat before practice, or searching for their faces at the mall, longing for them. Longing for a life that didn’t exist anymore.
The asphalt gave way to the crackle of unpaved road. “Pull up under this tree,” she said. It’d be strange to be at the lake without Greg and Gabby, but she had put off going for too long. Never had this much time passed in the summer before Bryce took a trip out to Percy. She couldn’t wait to see it, to feel the smooth, warm water. It was more pure than chlorine water. The lake’s algae was dark and slimy, but to Bryce it felt right. The lake was alive.
A single path led to a small, dirty beach scattered with a couple of coal-streaked grills and empty beer cans. Bryce hadn’t been to that beach since she was a kid. She grabbed Carter’s hand and pulled him off the beaten path, through the grass and ferns and tiny saplings, to a hedge of bushes and trees that hid the rest of the lake from view.