I Fell in Love with Hope(57)

“Doesn’t matter. It gets the point across. Even if it’s boring,” he says. “You really felt that way this whole time?”

I nod.

He rubs the back of his neck, patting the butterfly rash on his face with a wet cloth, and nudges me with his fist. “Then it’s a good thing we’re here to make you go through with this.”

“Sam! Sam!” C yells my name from outside the room, practically tripping over himself as he opens the door. “She’s not in her room,” he pants, elbows braced on the doorframe. “Her parents were there. They said her doctors had some news, but they don’t know where she went. I checked the cafeteria already, but–”

“Did you check the roof?” Sony asks.

“I tried, the door’s locked.”

“The library maybe?” Sony tries to think.

I hold the box with one hand on the edge, the cardboard digging into the crease of my palm.

Where did you run to, my Hamlet? Your want to escape is what brought us together. The roof, the gardens, the library, ledges, and bridges– I search those places in my mind for you, but they come up empty.

“Guys,” Neo says. “She never told us what it is she has. But if she’s still here after this long maybe the news her doctors gave her isn’t what she wanted to hear.”

You never told me who your killer is. I always knew it lived in your blood, but I was never quite sure just how determined it could be.

A dreaded sort of cloud settles over us.

“C,” I say, swallowing on a rough throat. “What’s in your hand?”

He unfolds it to reveal a small piece of paper with a torn outline, some smudged writing at the center. “It was on her bulletin,” he says, sliding his thumb across the promise. Tucking its edge between his thumb and forefinger, he opens the cardboard box and places it neatly beside the books.

It reads,

For our newcomer,

I’ll steal you a broken thing

“I think,” C says, “Someone who loves broken things will do.”

Hee nuzzles against my leg. She purrs, her half-ear creased backward. Sony’s cat and my friends look to me for guidance, for where to go next.

I’ve always been a follower. I don’t know how to lead. It was always you who pulled me from the backgrounds, from the edges of the frame. It’s you who always knew how to read me. On an abandoned stretcher, in a nightly garden, on a ledge, in a place where broken hearts were once healed–

“I know where she is,” I whisper.

“Where–”

I break into a run, hopping over Neo’s bed and out the door.

“Sam!”

I have nothing in hand. Not our memorabilia, not my pen, not anything. There’s a faint image in my peripheral of C grabbing the box, Sony, and Neo pushing the door to follow me.

I get to the stairwell first and hurl myself down the steps.

I know where you are, Hikari. I know the places your soul finds solace because I know you and I do not need a letter to prove it.

You are compulsively readable. Your eyes, your glasses too big for your face, they never look too far ahead so for what you can’t see, you touch. You feel with freedom in a way I both envy and adore.

Your mind is a palace greater than the one we live in. Within it, you hide secrets and the details of peoples’ lives: The line of a song that made C sink into his seat with peaceful suspire. Neo’s favorite chair in the library, the one you always save for him. The candies Sony munches on and the properties she always buys in monopoly.

Let it be said that you are a sun, but you are also a girl and you are flawed in the most smile inducing ways. You’re messy, clothes strewn about your floor with no shelf empty of a plant. You never fail to get crumbs and chocolate on your face. You can be blunt and mean, but I know you don’t mean to be. Your humor is cynical, but I’ve never met a person quite so willing to dream.

There are scary parts of you, the darker parts of you. The thoughts of self-hatred bite at your pride because you fell into a pit with a greedy animal. It convinced you to cut away at your skin till it became hilled with scars. It ate your joy, your pain, everything you had until all that was left was the shell of your body, but you survived. You crawled out of the pit and left the animal to starve while you quenched your hunger with books, risks, and a little wind. I promised to protect you from it, from all the shadows, and to never cower would I need to stand between you and their jaws.

I cowered in the face of you instead because I am weak. I am a cowardly creature who couldn’t resist your warmth but was too afraid to let myself feel it.

You are warm. You are beautiful. You are kind. You are passionate. You are resilient. And you are lonely just as I am.

I know you may not forgive me for shutting my eyes and saying I couldn’t see your pain, but I am sorry. I’m sorry for letting my past keep me from appreciating the present you gave me.

I want to share it with you, Hikari. I want to show you, even in the darkness of a hall where hearts were once healed, that we can be more than victims of almost. And even if you can’t forgive me, I promise to protect you from the shadows, anyway.

I push past two doctors who yell over their shoulders that I need to slow down.

For the first time since I can remember, my voice is alive, and it is for you.

“Hikari!”