Where the Staircase Ends(59)

I cried. I couldn’t help it. My tears mixed with the rain, and my sobs sailed away on the gusts of wind, drowned out by the cracking thunder. I wished I hadn’t seen it. I wished I was still ignorant to Sunny’s motives. I wished I didn’t know how she interpreted the conversation with Justin, or how alone she really felt.

“Please,” I whispered to the storm. “Please. No more.”

Before Sunny, my world was bland. Without her, I would have always colored inside the lines, which by all appearances may have made for an easier life, but it would not have been a life without Sunny.

I would have given anything to take back the last few weeks and tell her I was sorry, to tell her what I really saw when I looked at her. Sunny would always be my best friend, but I’d never get to tell her. She would never get to know how much I loved her.

More images flashed behind my eyes. My parents. Sunny. Alana James. Brandon Blakes. Logan. Jenny. Amber. Justin. All of them swirled around me like the storm clouds, and all of them were tinged with regret and longing.

Regret was an angry monster. Regret was the storm that swirled around me, pushing me against the steps as I rocked myself back and forth.

“Please. I’m sorry. I wish I could take it all back. I wish … ” I whispered to the storm, my words drifting unheard onto the stairs. “Please forgive me. Please make it stop. Please just make it stop!”

And just like that, it stopped.

The thunder stopped, the rain halted, and the cold wind was replaced with the warmth of a sunny afternoon. When I finally lifted my head from out of my hands, I saw that the sky was back to its perfect cornflower blue. There were no clouds; there was no wind. My clothes and hair were perfectly dry. It was as though the storm never happened.

I sat there for a few minutes before trying to stand. My legs were shaky and my eyes raw and itchy from crying so hard. Slowly, I eased myself up off of the step. My breath caught in my throat.

A few steps ahead of me there was a door.

I rubbed my eyes a few times to make sure it wasn’t a mirage, but when I opened them again it was still there, as real as anything. Has it been there all along? Was it raining so heavily that I wasn’t able to see it?

It didn’t look like anything special—just a plain white wooden door with a brass knob, like you’d find inside someone’s house. It was set inside a blue wall, but as I looked out past the stairs the wall seemed to become part of the sky, so I couldn’t tell if the wall was the sky or the sky was the wall or if they both melded into one continuous space.

I climbed the remaining steps and stopped in front of the door. There was a peephole in the center, staring back at me like a small, round eye. The afternoon light reflected off the glass circle, and for a second I got the impression it blinked at me. Was there someone on the other side of it, watching me?

I reached my hand out toward the knob, but then stopped. It felt strange to open it and walk through after everything that had happened. Should I knock first?

I lifted my fist up, but before my fingers hit the wood I heard a click. My stomach did a double back handspring as I watched the brass knob slowly turn.

The door opened outward a few inches, creaking as though it had rusted over from waiting for me so long.

A soft, warm light filtered through the open space between the door and the wall. It was brighter than the sunlight and warmer than the air around me. It shimmered, glittering against the air as though made of something more substantial, but so clear and sharp that it split the air into tiny particles of color, like the light itself was a prism of glass refracting everything that filtered through it into tiny rainbows. It was as brilliant as the trail left by the dragonfly, and for a moment I wondered if it had been around me the whole time. Maybe the staircase was a veil I had to lift to see the real wonder awaiting me.

A hand slowly emerged from the opening. It glowed like the light spilling from the crack in the door, but I couldn’t tell if the light caused the hand to glow or the hand created the light. The skin was the color of wet sand, not white or black, but somewhere in between it all. Small, square nails sat atop of each finger, neatly trimmed and manicured into perfect little window-shaped tips. The hand flipped over so that it was open, palm up. Normally alarm bells would have gone off inside my head, screaming stranger danger! But I was not afraid.

I placed my hand inside the stranger’s, feeling the warmth of their skin against mine.

In that moment, it hit me like a jolt of electricity. Fire and ice raced through my veins all at once, and the sensation of being filled with something warm and harmonious rolled across my body like waves against a shore. And just like that, I got it. Oh man, did I get it. I could barely see through the tears in my eyes, and yet I saw so much. Like how there was forgiveness enough for all if we only asked, and how we were all exactly where we were supposed to be even if it didn’t feel that way.

Everything stretched out before me, perfect, seamless, and uncomplicated, exactly like I’d asked for the night when I’d watched the stars from my bedroom window and wished to disappear. But underneath it there was something else—regret? Longing? I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but then the hand squeezed mine and I understood.

I had a choice.

Two paths stretched out before me. One was paved with the easy escape I’d wished for, where Sunny would become the ellipsis where my life left off and the world would keep on moving even though I was no longer a part of it. The other path led me back to everything I’d wished so desperately to leave behind—back to the very place I wanted to escape, where people believed I was a horrible person and Sunny was no longer my best friend.