In an Instant(58)
In an act of defiance, she chose to wear sunshine yellow for the black-tie event. Her dress is sleeveless with a wide skirt that billows from her tiny waist. Her sandals are silver with jewels of crystals on the straps, her toes still painted blood red. She is breathtaking, and I roar with applause as she and my mom walk toward the concert hall.
For a second, I think she hears me. Her lips curl at the corners, and her hand lifts slightly, a small wave.
Chloe has always been pretty, but suddenly she is exquisite. The scar on her forehead, jagged and pink, glows against her pale skin, drawing stares like flies to fire, eyes lingering before slipping down to discover her missing finger and toes—more enticing clues to her mysterious story—her wounds unabashedly displayed like shiny, curious glittery stones. She is fragile, strong, and utterly fascinating, and hearts quicken as she passes—men and women alike, the women slightly repulsed and the men mesmerized, all of them shifting and maneuvering to get closer, wanting to be near.
Chloe is oblivious. She walks beside my mom, looking at the stars and the people and the architecture.
My mom is nervous, like she is on a first date and wants to do everything right. “Would you like something to drink?” she says when they step inside.
Absently Chloe shakes her head. “This is beautiful,” she says, admiring the soaring entrance hall and undulating glass that drapes like waves of water from the ceiling.
“The glass is the clearest in the world,” my mom says. “No iron in it, the element that tints most glass green. The architect wanted it to be entirely transparent so the people inside the hall would be part of the facade.”
“Wow, that’s cool.”
It’s weird to see how alike they are. Only Chloe would find my mom’s extensive knowledge of such minutiae “cool.” Aubrey and I would have lost interest the minute we found out the subject matter was glass.
They make their way to their seats, and I watch the concert with them, though I have absolutely no appreciation for it. Violins wail song after song with no words. I inherited my dad’s musical gene, which means I don’t have one.
Chloe and my mom are lost in it. Their muscles tense with the crescendos and shudder to rest as the tempo slows, as if their pulses are tied to the notes, and again I marvel at their likeness and wonder if my mom was like Chloe when she was young and if Chloe will be like my mom when she gets older. My mom is more athletic and Chloe more sensitive, but the mettle in their blood is the same—an absoluteness of spirit as unique as the copper hair Chloe and I inherited from my dad.
Chloe’s eyes well during a sad song, and beside her, my mom smiles, more absorbed at the moment in her daughter’s experience than in the music.
After, when they walk from the warmth of the concert hall into the cool night, Chloe shivers.
“Here, take my sweater,” my mom says quickly.
“No, thanks,” Chloe says, spinning in a pirouette, her dress flaring and her face lifted to the starlit sky, taunting the heavens as the cold prickles her skin. You tried. You failed. I’m still here.
Beside the parking structure is a small fountain.
“Penny, please?” Chloe says in a fake English accent, her hands held out like a beggar’s.
My mom freezes. Like applesauce and fruit rolls, tossing begged-for pennies into every fountain was my thing, a Finn-ism.
Chloe pretends not to notice my mom’s hesitation. Her hands remain cupped in front of her.
Give her a penny, I scream. I’m sick of every memory of me being discarded, avoided, or embalmed in a shrine. I want my mom to smile when asked for a penny and to laugh when she walks through the meat section of the grocery store, remembering the time we baked a ham together with the clear plastic wrapping still on, how we basted it for two hours before noticing it looked strange. I want my dad to smile when he eats chicken wings and watches an Angels game. I want Mo to never pass a dandelion without blowing off the fluff and then running through it to catch the seeds in her hair.
Being dead sucks, but watching them destroy the life I had is worse.
Remember me, I scream. Celebrate me. Do not box me up and throw me away. Stop avoiding every memory of who I was. I lived, and I do not want to only be recognized for my premature death. That was only the end. Before that was sixteen years of life—good, bad, funny, fun. Finn.
Numbly my mom reaches into her purse and retrieves not one but two pennies, one for each of them. The coins are held to their lips as they make their wishes (another Finn-ism), and then they toss them into the water.
Way to go, Chloe.
71
My dad is drunk.
It’s near midnight, and he’s been up since dawn, but my dad rarely sleeps. Despite exhaustion, he lies awake, ignores the pain, and tortures himself with that night, flinching as the accident reverberates in his brain. His arms pull the wheel left to hit the buck instead of avoiding it, his fists clenched so tight his nails draw blood in his palms.
Tonight he drowns the memory with whiskey. He sits on my grandfather’s king-size bed, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his hand, his eyes hooded and his mouth suspended half-open.
Vance sleeps on the couch in the living room, completely done in from five days of searching for my brother. Each day he rappels his skinny butt down the mountain and, using only a compass, a map, and the knowledge my dad has given him, trudges through the woods for hours.