Thursday Mourning

Hot and humid. Like always. But today, the day was almost unbearably hot and humid. It had just rained, and steam was now rising off the pavement in little swirls of heat. I had almost stayed home in the cool, but I had a ritual to perform and rituals can't just be broken because of the kind of day they fall on.

My feet found their way off of the sidewalk, and I walked over the dewy grass. Then the grass turned to dark cheddar chips. After wiping the water and mud from the seat, I sat in the swing. My arms wrapped around the chains, my fingers grasped the warm worn metal, and my body began to do what I came here to do.

Back and forth I went. Each time I got a little higher, a little closer to the cloudy sky. When I finally reached the highest I could go, I jumped. The sense of weightlessness always got to me. I never really did like the feel of falling, but at the same time I did. It didn't make any sense to me, but Jason always laughed and said it did.

I flew past the wood chips and landed on my feet. But the force of the fall or gravity or whatever caught up to me and made me fall to my knees anyway. Mildly irritated, I stood and brushed off my mud-covered knees. Taking one last look at the swing set, I said, "See you next Thursday."

When I got home, I sat on the couch. After a while, my brother came by on his way to the refrigerator.

"I thought you had that thing to do on Thursday," he said to me.

"Already been" was my answer.

Having retrieved the soda he came down for, he returned to his room.

Instead of turning on the television like I would any other day, I stared at the wall trying at first to find some soft spot and then later trying to see through it to the outside world.

The sun was starting to set when my sister came in with two of her friends.

"Why is she staring at the wall like that?" asked one of them.

"It's a bit creepy," said the other.

"It's Thursday," said my sister.

"What does that have anything to do with it?" asked the first.

My sister was about to answer when my mom came through the door. "Ramona, take your friends upstairs, please. I'll bring up some snacks in a moment."

They did as she commanded, and I was left alone. She leaned over the couch and wrapped her arms around me in a loose type of hug.

"Risa, you have to get over this someday, you know," she said, speaking almost directly into my ear.

"I am."

"Going to the park every week no matter the weather isn't getting over it," she reasoned. "Sitting on the couch staring at nothing isn't getting over it. Saying hardly anything -- especially on Thursdays -- isn't getting over it either."

"Mama, I," I paused and she waited patiently for me to begin. "I don't think I'll ever truly get over his death. But I am coping. I would mope around the entire week, but I don't for you guys. So just let me have my Thursdays, okay?"

She kissed my cheek. "Okay, fine, but I want my Laughter back."

I grinned for her sake at the pun.

After seventeen years, the joke was no longer all that funny to me. My mother and father had gotten into an argument over my birth. Technically, it was an argument over my name. My brother Raul hadn't been born yet, and my father, fearing he would never get a son, wanted to give me a masculine name. (Why he thought he couldn't play catch with a daughter is beyond me.) But my mother insisted on the name Gabriela. While they were arguing, as the story goes, I burst into laughter. My parents thought this was hilarious, so they quit their petty arguing and named me Risa Grabiela. They thought it was pretty clever that Risa means "laughter" in Spanish. And still to this day they would tell that story to everyone. If didn't matter if you were a mailman, a cashier, a waitress, or a even car salesman. If you ran into my parents, you heard the story. No one was spared.

Shortly after Ramona's friends left, Papi came home, and it was time for supper. We gathered around the round table and filled our plates with food. As we ate, everyone talked except for me.

"Ask your mother," my father said.

Raul faced her. "So, Mama, will you?"

"Ask your sister," she responded.

"Ramona," Raul began.

"No. I have things to do."

My not-so-little little brother looked at me. "Risa, please?"

I nodded my head. "I'll take you."

Raul grinned. "Muchas gracias!"

"De nada," I returned.

After dinner, I was about to go upstairs when my mother stopped me.

"Risa, you don't have to take your brother if you don't want to. He could go with one of his friends. Or I'll take him."

I hated when she tried to baby me. I was the middle child, wasn't I? She was supposed to leave me alone. I was supposed to be neglected because I wasn't the firstborn or the baby.

"I don't mind," I said. And I didn't. Not because I wanted to do something nice for Raul or because I genuinely thought I would have fun, but because I just didn't care. "It'll be fun," I added for good measure.

She studied me then nodded. "Alright then."

The next day I took Raul to the pier. He'd been wanting to go for the random rides and games, but my parents didn't want him going alone. Finally after months of putting him off, they agreed to let him go, but only if he took one of us. Papi had to work, Mama would be running errands all day, and Ramona wanted to hang out with her friends. Which left me. I had no excuse because all I ever did anymore was watch TV, sleep, eat, surf the Internet, and sometimes read. There were no friends, so there were no plans that I could use to get out of doing things.

Raul swerved happily through the crowd of tourists. He wanted to ride that one, and that one, and maybe even that one. He wanted to play this game, and then that one, and then that one over by the hot dog stand. I let him go do whatever, but I kept an eye on him so he wouldn't be taken by kidnappers. (Though, if kidnappers did take him, we'd just come into some money. They would pay us just to get rid of him.)

As he was riding the Ferris wheel, a guy who looked about my age came up with a hot dog.

"Mind if I sit here?" he asked.

When I said nothing, he sat across from me.

"I'm Tyler. Tyler Chapman," he said. He took a bite of his hot dog. "What's your name?"

He waited for me to say my name, but I said nothing.

Even though I didn't say anything, Tyler kept sitting there looking at me. Couldn't he see I was messed up and broken? He bit into his hot dog.

"You don't talk much, do you?" he asked conversationally. He waited for me to say something, but I didn't so he spoke again.

"That's your brother over there, right? It looks like my sister really likes him." He pointed and I followed his finger to the line for the teacup ride. Sure enough, a girl with the same brown hair was talking excitedly to my brother.

I turned back to see Tyler gulp down the last bite.

"Listen," he said seriously, "I know about . . . well, I knew him too. He was a good guy. And I remember always seeing you two together so I assume you were really close."

"Yeah," I said. He looked surprised that I finally said something. "Jason was my best friend. Then, he was my boyfriend."

"I'm sorry," Tyler Chapman said earnestly. I believed him. God, did I believe him. And before I could stop myself, all the thoughts and feeling I had kept from my family and friends for the last six months came pouring out.

"Jason was our age. He shouldn't have died. He had his whole life ahead of him. He was special to us, so how could God take away someone like that and leave us with this gaping hole?"

Tyler shook his head. "You mustn't think like that. It's not going to help you."

"What if I don't want it to help?" I snapped. "What if I want to feel this way because Jason was that important?"

"Then don't blame God," he answered.

"My philosophy," Tyler continued, "is that life is one big game of baseball. If you choose to play, then you're bound to get hurt. But you don't mind the pain because you know you're going to have it in order to win the game. Sometimes the umpire chooses to make a call you don't agree with. You can moan and groan all you want about how he didn't see what you saw and yada yada or you can admit that it was a travesty and try to get on with the game."

I had nothing to say about his metaphor. But I did have something to say.

"How can I get on with the game?"

He smiled slightly. "Slowly. And with a lot of support from your teammates."

After a long day at the pier, I was ready to go to bed and die. My head had just touched the pillow, and I was thinking about someone other than Jason for the first time since he died when a I heard a thud. Then another.

I got out of my warm bed and headed to the window. Peering out the window, I could see only a silhouette.

"Hello?" I called out.

"Hey! Hey, uh, well, I still don't know your name. It's me, Tyler!"

Why was Tyler Chapman in my backyard at midnight?

"What do you want?"

"I want to show you something. Vamos!"

He had some nerve coming to my window in the middle of the night. I didn't even really know him, but he wanted to take me somewhere?

"And what if I don't want to go?"

"Do you really want to know?" he asked playfully.

"Yes?"

"I'll wake your parents. Don't try me. I will. I swear it!"

I laughed unintentionally. "They won't get on to me if I tell them it's some creepy stalker."

"I take offence to that madam. Really I do. I am not a stalker. I found your address in the phone book."

My eyebrows furrowed. "But you don't know my name."

I could feel his grin even though I couldn't see it. "No, but my sister Mallory knows your brother's."

After a moment of deliberation, I finally said, "I'll be down in a moment."

I decided that I wasn't going to change out my comfy pajamas just because he wanted to take me somewhere. Besides, for all I knew, he was just going to take me up the street and point at the streetlight. But when I stuck down the stairs and out onto the street, I found myself self-conscious about the pattern on my pajamas. Sure enough, Tyler said something.

"Penguins?" he laughed once we passed under the streetlight.

"Shut up. Spiderman."

We walked for a while. And I then I realized where we were headed.

"The playground?" I asked breathlessly.

It wasn't Thursday. I shouldn't be here. I really, really shouldn't be here.

"I have to go home."

"No, you want to go home, and I'm not going to let you do that."

"But this is -- this is where Jason and I met. We grew up together on this playground. He asked me to be his girlfriend on the swings. I can't be here without him."

Tyler calmly disregarded my hysteria. He took my hand in his warm one. "You have to get over his death sometime."

"I am," I pleaded. Being here was wrong, so wrong.

"No, you're trying to. You used to come here everyday and stay for hours at a time. Granted, you now only come on Thursdays and swing til the highest point, but still. That's too much mourning."

"How do you know this?"

"It's simple really," he answered. "I live down the street. I can see the playground perfectly from my window."

We finally made it to the wood chips. Tyler stopped and waited for me to be the first one to step on them. When I did, he followed me to the swing set. After sitting for a while, I finally said, "Thursday, January 26 was the day he died."

Tyler remained silent, urging me to go on.

"I had a doctor's appointment that day, and I left school early to go to it. Later that day Jason was heading home when the car hit him." I flinched. Whenever I imagined it, it always felt like I was the one being hit. "If I had been there, we would have made a bigger sight. The car would have seen us. It wouldn't have hit him."

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do."

He shook his head. "You can't know it. There are so many variables in life and so many what ifs. What if you had been there? Well, either you both would be here today, you both wouldn't, or one of you would have died anyway. You can't know for sure what would have happened. So you can't blame yourself for chance."

There was a long silence. Behind me in the grass, I could hear crickets chirping. What happened when they mowed the grass? Wouldn't some of the crickets be in the way of the mower? Wouldn't some die? I wondered if crickets had the capacity for emotional pain. Probably not. But maybe. If they did, how long would it take them to forget?

I began to swing then. My eyes closed but a few tears still managed to escape. Higher and higher I went.

Jason, I'll never forget you.

I opened my eyes. I hadn't heard or seen when Tyler began to swing, but he was at the same point as me so he must have started when I had. My right hand found its way around the front of the chain. Knowing what I wanted, Tyler did the same to his left hand. Our fingers intertwined, and we jumped.

The sense of weightlessness always got to me.

We landed on the dewy grass hard, but still our hands remained together. Getting up from the grass, I said, "My name is Risa Grabriela de la Vega. It's nice to meet you Tyler Chapman."