I Fell in Love with Hope(49)

I already know what she’s thinking.

“No. No, that’s not true.”

Hikari adopts my anger and takes it as her own. “What are they to you, exactly? Lonely dogs in the back of a pound whose days are numbered?” Disgust works through her tone, thinning her eyes heavy with judgment. “You’re just as bad as people who look at sick kids and see lost causes only alive thanks to pity.”

“You don’t understand!” I yell. “You don’t understand because you haven’t only existed in a world where people rely on hope like crutches to keep them upright. You’ve never held a boy who was just skin and bones crying for any god to see him for who he is. You’ve never had someone die right in front of you as you try to push the blood back into their body. You’ve never watched those you care about wither day by day. You’ve never lost anything, so don’t pretend to know what it feels like.”

I lose my breath. I feel like I’m running across that bridge, only it’s endless. I’m running after my friends, after our enemies who lead them into the dark. I’m running after him, away from him. Only I’m standing still on a rooftop, just praying that the stars won’t fall from the sky if I look up.

“I’ve been here my entire life,” I breathe, looking back to Hikari. “Never once has hope saved anyone.”

“Hope isn’t meant to save people,” she says, reticent now.

A wall rises, made of glass. Her color dims behind it, and the burning sensation on my wrist fades to nothing. She isn’t angry when she speaks, but she can’t look me in the eye anymore. “And just because it failed you doesn’t mean the rest of us have to give it up.”

The reason I’m afraid of her comes to fruition. It brings all the things I promised never to feel again to life. Hikari knows, I think. She knows what I really think. She knows why I can’t bear to touch her.

I am not afraid of her. I am afraid of loving her.

Because I wouldn’t just have to admit she was real.

I would have to admit that I’m going to lose her too.

Hikari wipes her nose. She runs her hands up and down her arms from the cold.

“You want to pretend you know me?” she asks. “Because we’ve spent the past month flirting on rooftops and exchanging secrets? Here’s a secret for you, Yorick. Hope did fail me once.” She traces the wound between her collarbones all the way down to the scars on her wrists. “You don’t realize how powerful loneliness can be till even hurting yourself isn’t painful enough to sate it.”

The gray skies form thunder clouds and lay her past out before us like a screen. The sensations of her memories play across her body, her mind, her eyes, till the words fall from her mouth like stones.

“I had a plan and everything,” she says. “After my parents left for work, I was going to walk down the road and swim into the lake. The water is practically black. It reflects everything. I was just gonna–” she stops, finding the right words. “–let the dark swallow me.”

I remember the day we met more clearly now. Something had happened, something her killer wasn’t responsible for, I was sure of it. I remember how she tucked that screwdriver and sharpener into her pocket. I remember the bandages on her arms. I remember everything she tried to hide.

Her injuries aren’t from her disease. They’re all her own.

When our eyes meet again, I can hardly breathe. Because how could I have missed it till now?

Hikari beams. She brings things to life, plants, broken things, and sick people who need a contagious smile to catch their lips. She gives people life only to deny it for herself.

“Hika–” I start to say her name, reach out, walk across the distance, but I can’t. She doesn’t want me to anymore.

“You might have seen more, suffered more, but don’t tell me I have no clue what loss feels like,” she says. The watch unclips from her wrist and falls onto the concrete. Thrown across the line she draws. “I’ve had enough people tell me it’s all in my head.”

She smiles. An empty smile with tears trailing down to the corners of her mouth. Then, she turns around, back from where she came, another sun setting, my fingers caught in the cold air.

The pain is sudden. It’s forceful, a propulsion. I want to open myself up and let it escape like steam. I fall into the concrete, letting my knees scrape against the ground.

My ghosts escape their caskets.

My memories come flooding down the river.

And I feel so empty I could die.





hope





BEFORE


My name wasn’t always Sam.

When I came into existence I had no name, no memories, nothing.

Blood is my first memory.

It stained the room, a large fleshy circle where a man’s leg should have been. He was screaming, the man. Women in white gowns dabbed his face with cloth and leather strapped his limbs to the bed. Another walked in, wiping off a metal saw slick with that same shade of red. She threw the thing down aimlessly, smacking her legs so the liquid would transfer from her hands to her once white dress. She grabbed a needle and injected the screaming man with clear liquid. He struggled against the binds and the women. It took a while for the screaming to die down. It digressed into unrhythmic moans till the man’s consciousness faded.