Beautiful Chaos(131)

subtract they say

don’t cry

back to the desk

try

forget addition

multiply

and i reply

this is why

remainders

hate

division





I rested my head against the wall next to the words.

Lena.

She didn’t respond.

L. You’re not a remainder. You’re a survivor.

Her thoughts came slowly, in a jagged rhythm.

I won’t be able to survive this. You can’t ask me to.

I knew she was crying. I imagined her lying in the dry grass at Greenbrier. I would look for her there next.

You shouldn’t be alone. Wait for me. I’m coming.

There was so much to say that I stopped trying to say it. Instead, I wiped my eyes with my sleeve, and opened my backpack. I pulled out the spare Sharpie Lena kept there, the way people have a spare tire in the back of their car.

For the first time, I uncapped it and stood on the girly chair in front of her old white dresser. It groaned under my weight, but it held. And I didn’t have long, anyway. My eyes were stinging, and it was hard to see.

I wrote on her ceiling, where the plaster had cracked, where so many times other words, better words, more hopeful words had appeared above our heads.

I wasn’t much of a poet, but I had the truth, and that was enough.



I will always love you.

Ethan





I found Lena lying in the charred grass at Greenbrier, the same place I had found her the day she shattered the windows in our English class. Her arms were flung over her head, the same way they were that day, too. She stared up at the thin stretch of blue.

I lay down next to her.

She didn’t try to stop the tears. “It’s different, you know that? The sky looks different now.” She was talking, not Kelting. Suddenly talking was special. All the regular things were.

“It does?”

She took an uneven breath. “When I first met you, that’s what I remember. I looked up at the sky and thought, I’m going to love this person because even the sky looks different.” I couldn’t say anything. My breath was caught in my throat.

But she wasn’t finished. “I remember the exact moment I saw you. I was in my car. You were playing basketball outside with your friends. And the ball rolled off the court and you went to get it. You looked at me.”

“I remember that. I didn’t know you saw me.”

She smiled. “See you? I almost crashed the hearse.”

I looked back up at the sky. “Do you believe in love before first sight, L?”

Do you believe in love after last sight, Ethan?

After death—that’s what she meant.

It wasn’t fair. We should have been complaining about our curfews. Trying to find a place besides the Dar-ee Keen where we could get summer jobs together. Worrying about whether or not we would get into the same college. Not this.

She rolled away from me, sobbing and pulling at the grass with her hands. I wrapped my arms around her, holding her close. I brushed her hair aside carefully and whispered in her ear. “Yes.”

What?

I believe in love after death.

She took a ragged breath.

Maybe that’s how I’ll remember, L. Maybe remembering you is life after death for me.

She turned to look at me. “You mean, the way your mom remembers you?”

I nodded. “I don’t know exactly what I believe in. But because of you and my mom, I know I believe.”

I believe, too. But I want you here. I don’t care if it’s a hundred degrees and every blade of grass dies. Without you, none of that matters to me.

I knew how hard this was for her, because all I could think about was how much I didn’t want to leave her. But I couldn’t say that. It would only make it worse.

We’re not talking about dead grass. You know that. The world will destroy itself, and the people we love.

Lena was shaking her head. “I don’t care. I can’t imagine a world without you in it.”

“Maybe you can imagine the world I always wanted to see.” I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the folded, beat-up map, the one that had been on my wall for so many years now. “Maybe you can see it for me. I marked the routes in green. You don’t have to use it. But I wish someone would. It’s kind of something I was planning for a while—my whole life, actually. They’re places from my favorite books.”

“I remember.” Her voice was muffled. “Jack Kerouac.”

“Or you can make your own.” I felt her breath catch. “Funny thing is, until I met you all I wanted to do was to get as far away from here as I could. Kind of ironic, isn’t it? Can’t get much farther away than where I’m going, and now I’d give anything to stay.”

Lena put her hands on my chest, pushing herself away from me. The map dropped on the ground between us. “Don’t say that! You aren’t doing it!”

I bent down and picked up the map that marked all the places I’d dreamed of going, before I finally figured out where I belonged. “Just hold on to it for me, then.”

Lena stared at the folded paper like it was the most dangerous thing in the world. Then she reached up and unhooked her charm necklace from around her neck. “If you hold this for me.”