All This Time(21)

“I wanted to be just like her,” she adds, breaking the gaze and turning her face back to the flowers.

“How old were you when she—”

“We’d just turned fourteen.”

We? But before I can ask, she answers that, too.

“Twins,” she says.

Shit. “What happened?”

“Oh, I don’t tell sad stories,” she says. Then she smiles sadly, and it’s as if a curtain drops behind her eyes.

All right, then. That’s clearly a sensitive topic. We stand in silence for a long moment.

“Oh!” She slips the yellow bag she’s carrying off her shoulder and surprises me by pulling a single flower out of a side pocket. Her eyes clear, and she holds it out to me as if I asked her to bring it.

Cautiously, I reach out and take it, inspecting the circular yellow center, the petals around it perfectly even and white. I actually know this one.

“A daisy?” I ask.

“Flowers have different meanings,” she says, sensing my confusion. She nods to the daisy in my hand. “This one made me think of you.”

“Why? What’s it mean?” I ask, honestly a bit surprised flowers have any meaning at all. I thought they were just nice to look at.

“Hope,” she says simply.

Hope. Does she think I’m hopeful? I don’t hope for much of anything anymore.

“I’m happy to see you again,” she adds suddenly, not looking at me. “I wasn’t sure I would.”

I decide that I probably shouldn’t say I wasn’t planning on seeing her again. I just smile, and then almost as if we’d already planned it, the two of us find our way down the path and to the pond. We buy some popcorn from a vendor and then walk to her side of the pond, where the ducks are. They gather around her feet to reverently stare up at her, quacking so loudly I swear they must all be holding mini megaphones.

I watch as she reaches into the red-and-white striped container and throws some kernels to them, her hair falling in front of her face. I mimic her, taking a handful of my popcorn and scattering it in front of me. The ducks converge on it like they’ve never eaten in their entire lives.

“Do you come here a lot? To feed the ducks?”

She hesitates, a fistful of popcorn in her hand. “Not as much as I used to.”

I nod, but I don’t ask why. I know what it’s like to stop doing things you loved.

A duck snaps at the popcorn in her fingers, and she squeals, breaking the tension with a laugh. She jumps back and releases the kernel before he can take off her pinky. Her shoulder brushes against my arm, lightly enough to leave a trail of goose bumps behind it.

I clear my throat and take a step back.

We follow the ducks down to the water, their quacks leading the way. A few feet from the edge, Marley pauses to look up, her hand frozen on top of the kernels.

“It’s going to rain,” she says thoughtfully, her head tilted back to see the heavy, dark clouds above us.

I follow her gaze, nodding. Something about it reminds me of the sky on the evening of the graduation party. The same ominous gray, the clouds dense with rain.

I’m struck again with the feeling that I shouldn’t be here.

“Kim always liked it when it rained,” I say, shaking my head at the sick irony of that.

As I pull my eyes away, I catch sight of a blue butterfly fluttering over the dark pond, its wings struggling to move.

Something’s definitely wrong with it. It’s airborne, but just barely. It painfully inches its way toward us, closer and closer to the water with every pump.

“Kim,” Marley says. Hearing her name in Marley’s voice makes my scar throb uncomfortably. “The grave you always go to,” Marley continues. “She was more than just a friend, wasn’t she?”

“Yeah,” I say, an avalanche of memories rushing at me. I can feel my hand in hers as she pulled me down the empty school hallway during junior prom. See her running onto the football field after I’d thrown the game-winning pass. Feel her lips on mine that very first time, when she found my message in her diary. “She was more.”

I remember the pain I saw in Marley’s eyes earlier. Something tells me I can talk to her about this, that she could understand in a way that my mom and even Sam can’t seem to. But I don’t know how to even begin.

So I turn back to the butterfly and watch as it drifts closer and closer to shore. Almost… almost…

“Kimberly didn’t make it,” I say, forcing myself to try to talk about it, but I keep my eyes trained on the butterfly’s blue wings. They give out, and the butterfly drops onto the water’s surface, so close to the bank but not close enough. It twitches, struggling against the current. I hurry to the edge of the water and carefully scoop the insect into my hand.

I glance down at the water. Something’s not right. I look closer and realize… I don’t see myself. I just see the tree branches above my head, the outline of the leaves. The stormy gray of the clouds in the sky just past them.

Frowning, I lean closer.

There’s even the butterfly, but not… me.

Like I don’t have a reflection.

I swallow hard and try to collect myself as the familiar pain blooms in my head. I fight to keep myself here and not let my broken brain take over as the words in Dr. Benefield’s note pop into my head.