I Fell in Love with Hope(4)

C. Coeur. His mother is French, his father Haitian, both pretentious namers. Coeur means heart, which isn’t fitting. C’s heart is broken. Literally. He’s also the worst thief in our bunch. C is kind. Kind to the point of paying for things we’ve stolen. He used his brother’s ID to get the beer, but the lack of guilt in his eyes means he most definitely paid for it.

“How’d it go?” he asks, stationed at Neo’s handles.

Sony’s quick to show off her spoils.

“I saved twenty bucks with cancer!”

C cocks his head to the side. “On cigarettes?”

“And gummy bears,” I say. Neo tosses the bag over his shoulder into C’s chest.

“C’mon, C.” Sony puts her hands on her hips. “What would we be without irony but boring cliches, yeah?”

“Not using a wheelchair patient as a mule?” Neo tries to roll himself away, but C holds onto the back like you’d hold a shirt collar.

Neo rolls his eyes. He takes out another notebook from the side pocket, this one with the front torn off. As we start making our way across the street, back home, he adds, one by one, today’s conquests to our Hit List.

Cigarettes (the cool ones in bond movies.)

Beer

A lollipop and crappy sunglasses

Gummy bears

An afternoon outside

A heaping pile of jitters

We’ve only been stealing for a short time, Neo, Sony, C, and I. It’s been years since they’ve been in and out of the hospital, but it hasn’t been long since we became full-fledged thieves.

When Neo, Sony, and C go home, they don’t go home for long. Disease is greedy. It takes pieces of you till you no longer recognize yourself, and Neo, C, and Sony don’t recognize themselves outside of the hospital anymore.

Whether you’re sick or not, the night creates mirrors out of windows. In the past, it showed my friends images of corpses in the glass: skeletons with bones unwrapped by flesh, organs falling through their ribcage, blood seeping from the mouth. They trembled at the foretelling, their fingertips grazing the surface that entranced them. Diagnoses, pills, needles, and so many new mirrors they never meant to find encroached on their lives. Their reflections became their realities.

So rather than meet the new versions of themselves made vulnerable by the beds they slept in and the gowns they wore, my friends turned off the lights. They climbed a staircase and met on a rooftop. They let their fingertips graze the sky, no barrier to stop them from touching the stars.

Let’s steal the world, Sony said. Even with a low burning flame, she was brave. Let’s steal everything we can before we go.

Everything? C asked.

Everything.

Everything’s a long list, Neo said.

Time, disease, and death steal everything. I said. Why don’t we steal some of it back?

That was the day our Hit List was born.

So far, everything isn’t ours yet.

I lied to you back there. It turns out we’re quite terrible thieves.

Stealing is an art form, and we’ve yet to learn how to stroke the brush. Neo’s too sarcastic to woo strangers, too grouchy. Sony’s a wildfire, so loud it’s impossible to hide from justice. C is too elsewhere, always wrapped up in headphones and Neo’s poetry.

But it doesn’t stop us from trying.

“Baby, you are a pillar,” Sony says. The hospital building across the street looks down at her like a scolding parent. Sony ignores it, pride and comradery licking the underside of her teeth. “Without you, the mission would fall apart. Who else would keep track of our glorious histories?”

“Plus, you make a great shopping cart,” C adds, petting his head.

Neo smacks him away. “Ableist.”

“Cheer up, Neo!” Sony pats his back. “They’re sticking a metal rod in your body tomorrow.”

“Look Coeur, traffic.” Neo groans, pointing at the road. “Push me into it.”

Too busy chewing to speak, C shoves a handful of candy into Neo’s mouth before we make our way home.

Sony jumps the white lines of the crosswalk like skipping stones over a stream. C pushes Neo right behind her, two ducklings following in a row. I’m the tail end, the narrator. They always reach the finish line before I do.

Neo carries our Hit List in his lap, a glint of light catching on the metal spirals, fleeting like the sun decided to tease it. I look up to find it, staring beyond the line of cars that branch off after the intersection.

My heart drops.

Just past the cars, a river cuts the city in two. Its bridge is all that connects either side. A bridge I’ve known my entire life that creates an ache in my chest. Instead of laughing strangers and children throwing coins into the water, I see snow across the railing. I see the dark swallowing my memories.

Every glance I give that bridge, the sounds of my sobs and the love I lost shake in their graves. I go to look away, leave the past on its own, but something else emerges behind it.

Yellow.

Just a glimpse of it.

The gray cowers, strands of color carried by the river’s breeze. Did the sun descend to earth and decide to spend a day among its subjects?

I crane my neck to get a better look, but there are too many people on the bridge; the couples, the tourists, and the children block my view, and cities are impatient. A honk pulls me back to where I stand, my friends waiting for me just ahead.