I Fell in Love with Hope(10)

Hikari doesn’t relax once they’re out of sight. If anything, her habit of observing doesn’t stray. The way I resume our escape like nothing happened strikes her more than it should.

“You’ve lived here all your life, haven’t you?” Another half question. This time the assumption speaks for itself. I told you that I see the same things day after day. Apathy is a symptom of repetition. I pay running doctors the mind you would pay a breeze.

“Life,” I say, “may not be the right word for what you’re thinking of.”

It finally dawns on her. That I may not be exactly like other patients or other people she’s met. Narrators are a natural part of the picture until you take a second glance at them.

“Who are you, Sam?” she asks and when she does, yellow flairs dance in her eyes. “Something tells me you’re more than just a familiar stranger?”

Look into a person and see someone you used to know and ask yourself if you believe in reincarnation. If you believe a soul is never truly dead, only passed on to another body, another mind, another life, another reality. If you do, I must ask, what do you think makes someone real?

Is it the ability to touch them? To feel the palpable nature of their heat, the texture of their skin, the pulse thrumming in their veins? Or is someone real simply when their name is said aloud? When you breathe it into otherwise empty air, and it fills with their notion?

Hikari moves closer, and an old fear I know all too well wraps its claws around my shoulders.

It may not make sense to you, but I’ve only ever known one person who could compare to the light she emits. You may think she looks like him, acts like him, and that’s why I’m so enthralled.

He’s dead. He’s a ghost, and so is what we shared, so I don’t compare the two. I compare only what they are. And sometimes suns are so bright that you’re forced to look away.

The fear takes over as it did when I caught her color on that bridge and whispers its rules:

If she is what I think she is, I must not, for any reason, fabricated or not, say her name. And I must not let us close that distance for any custom, invitation, or temptation. I must not let her be real.

“I’m–”

“Hikari!” Hikari’s face falls into an annoyed scowl. An older couple, each wearing visitor badges, calls for her, stomping down the hall.

“Sorry, stranger,” she sighs. “Fun’s over.”

“Give it to me,” I say. Hikari looks at my outreached palms, confused. “I’ll tell them it was my fault. That I stole them,” I say. “I’m an accomplice either way. You might as well let me take the blame.”

“Trying to be a knight in shining armor, are you?” Hikari slips the stolen artifacts into her pocket save the papers, which she uses to hide the bulge of the screwdriver and sharpener. “Don’t worry. One day you’ll have the chance to steal for me again.”

“Hikari!” her mother begins, worry wounding her face tight, her words coming out as loud scoldings in a language I don’t understand. Hikari doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even seem to care that she’s getting yelled at.

Although when her mother turns to me, frowning harder, and starts to say something, Hikari stands in front of me. She talks back to her mother with crossed arms, coming to my defense. I wish I could follow her when she gets taken away by the hand.

All I can think of the further she gets taken from me is that the more Hikari gets to know this place and the more it becomes a part of her, the more she’ll come to realize the truths only our killers can teach her: No matter what you steal, the nights are long and one day is as much an illusion as reason.

“Sam!”

Sony doesn’t always need her oxygen therapy. Her single lung fluctuates in efficiency, but she certainly isn’t supposed to run. Not ever. So when she and C come storming down the hall without a wheelchair following them, my stomach drops.

“Why aren’t you in your rooms?”

“It’s Neo,” Sony says. “He’s going into surgery early.”

“What?”

“His parents are here,” C adds, and all three of us know that if we aren’t quick enough, it’ll mean disaster.





resilience





THREE YEARS AGO


The hospital admitted a mean, skinny boy today. Pink shades flood his face in a butterfly rash, its wings kissing his nose.

He cradles a cardboard box in his arms, stalling at the door of his new room. It used to belong to someone else. Not knowing what state that someone else left in brings hesitance to his step.

Eventually, he settles on the bed, the way you do on a bed that isn’t yours yet. His legs hang off the edge, shoes weighing down his ankles like cinder blocks welded to sticks.

“I don’t need to change schools,” he says, looking out the window with a reclusive attitude.

“You should try to make some friends, Neo.”

Neo’s mother fumbles with the cross around her neck. She stands as far into the corner as she can. Her stress runs rampant, a kind of untouchable worry for her child that makes her grow distant.

“C’mon, son.” His father is a taller man, big-armed, big-voiced, the opposite of Neo. He looks like he calls coffee joe and complains about the government. “Just because you have to stay here for a while doesn’t mean you can’t meet some new people. Once you’re back in school, you’ll have a fresh perspective. Get your head out of those books, yeah?”