The Astonishing Color of After(98)

I could pinpoint the exact spot where my mouth had touched his. It was a speck of the hottest fire.

His wide eyes were twin suns burning into me. We stared at each other, our hands still on the other’s arms, knees touching, breaths short and fast but in sync.

Axel was the first one to let go. There was coldness left on the parts of my arms where his hands had held me. Ultramarine waves pouring through my body.

Then his fingers were sliding off his glasses.

He pressed in close.

I could feel that gentle breath against my lips.

I made myself gaze straight on and watched as his face loomed so large I couldn’t see the edges anymore.

We kissed, and I was every color in the world, alight.





97





My fall through the darkness slows until I’m just drifting, afloat. It’s freezing. This is the blackest black. My eyes take in nothing. I can’t even see my own hands, but there are times when I hear and feel things. Voices somewhere above me. Something cold on my forehead. A drop of water trickling down my temple.

A burst of light, and suddenly I see my room in my grandparents’ apartment. Everything too sharp and oversaturated.

There’s my father, helping me up to sit. Somewhere behind him, I can hear Waipo muttering in Taiwanese.

Two pills on my dry tongue. I sip at a glass of water.

My body is so, so heavy. I just need to close my eyes. Just for a second.

I’m falling again, fast and hard, spinning through the black.

The wind picks up, pressing against my skin as I drop. At some point, the darkness begins to pale. The black turns to a murky indigo. Indigo fading to dioxazine purple, shifting to cobalt blue, then cerulean, and taking on a shine like a watercolor wash. The palest bit of rose seeps in like a touch of sunrise. Swirls of white blossoming, unfurling, expanding like an inhale.

I’m drifting through a sky.

“Hey, Leigh.” It’s Dad. I turn to try to find the source of his voice, but I can’t see him anywhere. “How you feeling, kiddo?”

He hasn’t called me kiddo in years.

“I’m okay,” I answer.

As the air warms, I hear the tinkling of a piano. It grows louder, until I can pin down what the music is: Pavane pour une infante défunte by Maurice Ravel.

“Remember this piece?” Dad whispers.

“Ravel. One of Mom’s favorites.” She used to play this one when she was in a quiet but good mood. Pavane for a dead princess is how the title translates. I always wondered: Who is the dead princess?

The music ends, and the sky goes quiet. Something settles into the space between my ribs. Something that feels full and achy and sad all at the same time.

I can tell Dad’s feeling it, too, when he says in a quiet voice, “Remember how if you did something weird, she would say, ‘Oh! My god!’ like it was two separate phrases?”

I laugh a little. It feels strange but good. “Yeah. And remember how if you tried to make a joke? She would shake her head and say, ‘You are a funny man, but you are not funny.’”

Dad snorts. “Yeah.”

“Remember when you gave her that first waffle iron for Christmas and she looked so confused when she opened it—”

“You remember that, Leigh? That was ages ago. You must’ve been four.”

“She said, ‘It’s for making the cake that looks like a fence?’ And then she called it ‘fence-cake’ for the longest time.”

“I don’t think she even liked waffles at first,” he says, and I can hear him smiling around the words.

“I remember she kept trying to improve them by adding ingredients from the Asian grocery store.”

“Oh yeah,” says Dad, chuckling a little. “Like the waffles with the red bean paste, and sesame seeds on top.”

“And then the ones she made with the matcha powder. They were pretty good.”

“Those were good! And she only made them that one time.”

I feel my face stretching into a smile of my own. It warms my body. “We could try making some ourselves.”

“And then she started doing those waffle sandwiches?” says Dad.

“Wow, I’d totally forgotten about that.”

“She tried to make that BLT with cheese, but in between two waffles?”

“I think it would’ve been good if she hadn’t used the Kraft singles,” I tell him.

He starts to laugh in his belly, and it’s such a good sound. Warm and reassuring, something I haven’t heard in a long time.

The sky turns cadmium orange.





98





I blink, and there’s no sky at all. There’s a ceiling. My father, sitting backward in a chair, his arms resting on top. I’m in bed under a thin blanket, and suddenly I’m too hot. Sweating. I kick the blanket off.

“You’re looking better,” says Dad. He puts his hand on my forehead. “Your temperature’s gone down.”

“I had a fever?”

“For like three days.”

Three days.

I missed the forty-ninth day. My eyes sting.

“You crashed hard,” he says, and I can hear the concern lining the edges of his voice. “You had us all pretty worried. Your grandmother said you weren’t really sleeping—insomnia can do some pretty severe things to the mind and body, you know.”