Page 87 of Reckless At Raleigh High
My younger brother’s voice remains quiet in my head this time. Even my own subconscious can’t think of anything to argue that point. The fact is that I’m nevernotgoing to feel responsible for this.
Across the cemetery, a woman bows down before a headstone, kneeling in front of it. It’s still early, eight maybe, but she’s dressed in a suit, ready for the day. She’s probably going to work once she’s done here. She’s calm. Serene, even. She made her peace with the death of her loved one some time ago, and this morning’s brief sojourn amongst the headstones feels more like visiting an old friend than trying to dig broken glass out from underneath her skin. I’m making assumptions by the handful, naturally, but the way she laughs quietly as she talks to her loved one sounds easy and relaxed.
It’s going to be a long time before I’ll be able to affect that same level of ease in front ofthisheadstone.
The ground’s so fucking cold. I laid my leather jacket out before I laid down on the damn grass, but the chill from the earth has managed to seep through it and into my bones without a problem. I try not to think about how cold it must be for Ben, eight feet beneath me, lying in his coffin. I try not to imagine the state of decomposition his body is in now, four months after his death. Another tear slips past my defenses, a fresh surge of pain lancing through my side, right into the center of my chest.
“Oh, fuck…” I drag in a shallow sip of air, trying to force the agony into submission, but it won’t be leashed. “Fuck, I’m so sorry, Ben.” I throw my arm over my eyes, blocking out the sun, pretending not to feel the fresh onslaught of tears that fall. For the first time ever, I hate myself for not believing in God. If there’s no God, then there’s no afterlife, and that means Ben can’t hear me now. Thereshouldbe an afterlife. If anyone deserved one, it was my brother. He was just a fucking kid—
“I find counting helps.”
I jerk upright, coughing for no good fucking reason. It feels as though I just got caught doing something dirty. The woman from across the cemetery is standing eight headstones over with her purse clutched tightly in her hand. She’s blonde. Forty. Forty-two. In a light black trench coat and a formal black pant suit, she looks like she could be a bank manager. With a sorry tip of her head, she looks at the carved marble behind me and sighs. “When children die, the world never seems to be able to right itself on its axis again. I’m sorry for that.”
I don’t know what to say. I just stare at her, willing her to leave so I can pretend like I wasn’t just sobbing in public. With a cursory swipe of my hands, I scrub my face, sniffing hard as I breathe in sharply. “Yeah. Well.” That’s all I’ve got.
The woman hangs her head. “Like I said. Counting helps. In for four. Out for four. That’s how I remembered to breathe for a really long time. Eventually, you’ll be able to pause in between and it won’t even feel like you’re about to crack open.” She smiles sadly again, nodding like she’s fielding some pretty painful memories of her own. “Something to look forward to, I guess.”
She goes. Doesn’t try to talk me out of crying, alone, in a graveyard. Doesn’t ask if I’m okay. Doesn’t try to convince me that I should leave, or get better, or get on with my life. She continues on her way, without telling me her name or asking me mine, because our names aren’t important. We understand each other just fine without them. And we both know words are pointless when it comes to this kind of hurt.
“You should go home, Alex. Silver’s gonna be worried about you.”
“I know, man. I know.” She’ll have woken up by now and found my side of the bed to be empty and long-cold. Bailing on the apartment first thing was a shitty thing to do, considering that she’s been planning on cooking a birthday breakfast for me for weeks now, but I needed to get this out of the way. If things had been different, I’d have been on my bike this morning, sitting outside Jackie’s house before the dawn, ready to take Ben back home with me, come hell or high water. He would have been expecting me. When I woke up at four this morning with this restlessness in my soul, this tremendous weight sitting on my chest, it felt like he wasstillexpecting me, and to get up and eat breakfast and go about my day without going to him first? Well, I just couldn’t do that…
Now that I’ve visited my brother and said my piece, itistime to get back to Silver. I take one last long, shuttered breath, trying to manufacture a little positivity for the day ahead, when I look up and there she is, walking toward me across the cemetery with a large basket in her hand.
I blink, making sure I’m not seeing things, but the image of her, dressed in blue jeans and a pretty, white, lacey top beneath her red peacoat persists instead of vanishing. She’s here, in the cemetery. It’s as though I’ve conjured her here, simply by acknowledging how badly I need her all of a sudden.
She stops five feet away, smiling gently at me. Strands of her golden-bronze hair, already lightening from the little spring sun we’ve had here in Raleigh, dance on the soft breeze that sighs between the headstones. With the cool early morning sun bathing her face in light, she looks stunning.
Hell. She’s such a beautiful creature. This girl is beyond the realm of comprehension. Shecan’tbe fucking real. Most days, I’m convinced that I’ve hallucinated her into existence. My mother hallucinated shit on the regular. No reason why I shouldn’t be following in her footsteps. I can’t quite muster the appropriate level of concern when I think things like this, though. If Silverisa hallucination, then so be it. Let me go mad, if it means I get to spend the rest of my life with her. I will descend into lunacy, and I will go gladly. So far, my experience of madness has been sublime.
With a casual nod of her head, Silver points with her chin off to the left, sighing gently on a long exhale. “Thought about grabbing a breakfast ice cream for you from the truck in the parking lot. Then I got to wondering why anyone’d be callous enough to set up their ice cream truck in a cemetery parking lot, and I didn’t wanna support that kind of shady business practice.”
Holy hell. She’s stunning, she’s strong as fuck, and she knows how to defuse a tense, potentially awkward situation in a heartbeat. I laugh, hanging my head for a second. The last thing I want is for Silver to catch me post-breakdown, but too late to do anything about it now. My eyes are still burning, and my cheeks are likely still flushed from my crying jag. I just need a moment to regroup and separate myself from my heartbreak before I give myself over to her completely. “Pity,” I say, clearing my throat. “Could have done with a Screwball right about now.”
“I mean, I haven’t heard Greensleeves yet. They’re probably still there,” Silver teases. “I felt like a Choco Taco myself, but I didn’t wanna look like an insensitive graveyard tourist.”
“Oh, yeah. I hate those fucking guys.”
“Me too. They’re the worst.”
I laugh again, but the sound is strangled this time. Silver doesn’t say anything. She sets down the basket she’s holding next to Ben’s headstone, then she quietly arranges a thick blanket on the ground, kneeling down on it as she then begins to unpack the items she’s brought with her.
Three containers covered with metal foil; one thermos flask; knives and forks; plastic camping plates; and a small cardboard box that looks like it came from the bakery across the street. A cacophony of smells hit the back of my nose as I finally steel myself, finally exiting the stormy emotions that had ahold of me before she arrived. Took me too long, but I meet Silver’s gaze, nodding back at her when she nods at me. She doesn’t need to ask her question; it’s written all over her.
“I’m okay,” I confirm. “Just…tough morning, y’know.”
“I do,” she says, scooting to sit beside me. “I packed most of this up last night. I figured you’d wanna make a trip here and have a moment with him before you could face anything else. And I considered staying back at your place and waiting for you there, too, but I got to thinking that you might eventually need some company, so…I hope you don’t mind?”
“God,Argento, I’m so glad you’re here, I might start crying all over again,” I joke. The joke falls flat though, mostly because of my miserable, borderline-pathetic delivery. Silver leans into me, resting her head on my shoulder. Like the class-act that she is, she doesn’t mention the whole crying thing, even thoughIwas the one to bring it up.
“I’m so sorry, Alex. This is the worst day in the world, isn’t it?”
Yes. For me it is. After the day Maeve showed up on my doorstep with tragic news, and the day I watched Ben being lowered into the ground, today reallyisthe worst day in the world. It should be a momentous, happy day. Birthdays are supposed to be celebrated and enjoyed, but I’ve been dreading today ever since I properly processed the fact that Ben was dead, and I wasn’t going to be bringing him to live with me the very second I turned eighteen.
I’m so grateful that Silver’s not trying to ram rainbows and butterflies down my throat right now. It would have been understandable, forgivable, even, if she’d wanted to try and spin today in a positive light and make a big deal out of it. But sheknowsme. Shegetsme. Shelovesme, and she knows today could never have been anything other than a somber affair.
I turn and kiss her on the temple, closing my eyes as I lean my forehead against her hair. She smells of flowers, and sunshine, and the laundry detergent I washed my bedsheets in yesterday when I knew she was going to be spending the night. “Do you know how much I love you, Silver Parisi?” I murmur.
