Amazing, Because It Is.

Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one. - Vladimir Nabokov.

“Alex is not gone.”

“Alex could not leave this world without knowing how much I love him.”

“If he’s not going to come back, I’m going to find him.”

I had an arsenal of positive mantra that I had made it my business to believe. Even if I still couldn’t quite fathom why Alex would like me, I did know that he couldn’t have possibly left me here. It was a small little tugging on my heart, like I could feel his presence in the world. Like something was trying to assure me that he was still here, so long as I went looking.

Winter was making its presence known in Baltimore, wrapping icy fingers around under-clothed bodies and painting cheeks a flushed pink, noses a Rudolph red. I bundled up, wrapping a checkered scarf around my neck and sliding mittens onto my hands, and squirming into a bulky winter coat that made my circumference twice what it normally was.

Coffee was the ultimate goal as I perused the kitchen downstairs, digging through cupboards. I desired to get out of the house for one of two reasons. The first being avoiding both of my parents, and the second, I had a bus to catch. I needed to get into the city, and without a car, there was one way besides walking, which wasn’t thrifty when your breath was freezing right before your eyes.

“Brooklyn?”

Christ on a crutch. I dropped the air-tight container I had been peering into straight onto the floor and its contents exploded across the tile. Rice. Not coffee.

“Who else would I be?” I mumbled, stooping to begin sweeping up the thousands of grains that littered the floor, stuck between the tiles in the grout.

“Just leave that,” my dad encouraged, offering me a hand up. I took it, though suspiciously. “I have something to show you,” he explained further, keeping my hand and using it as leverage to drag me out the front door.

“You got a new car,” I evaluated, staring down with obvious disdain at the navy blue Nissan that took up half of the driveway. What was with him? Wasn’t he the same man who would read the stocks to me out of the paper on Sunday mornings and grumble about the wealthy taking over the world? Now we were the wealthy, apparently.

“Not me,” he chortled, his arm still resting heavily on my shoulders. I had half a mind to shrug it off. “You!”

Me? Sure.

“It’s about time you got your own car, Brooklyn. You’re seventeen!”

Yet you would think that if one of your children had died in a car accident, you’d be at least a little cautious about letting your remaining child drive alone. Not at all. He tossed me the keys and returned inside without another word. I decided to get Starbucks.

Texting Jack, driving, trying to program my GPS, and drinking a Venti coffee. It was like I was asking for an accident to occur. Maybe I was. Maybe that would make it all easier, if everything just ended.

But Alex…

I set my coffee down snugly in the cup holder as I cracked a window slightly. The so called “new car smell” was getting a little nauseating, honestly. To compensate, I turned the heat up. They probably cancelled each other out, but I was too distracted to continue fiddling with it.

Jack: Do you really think he’ll be there?

Although I’m sure it wasn’t his intent, Jack was now sounding like the skeptic, which left me to act as the self-assured one, which was not at all how I felt.

Me: I’m hoping.

Although it wasn’t difficult to get where I was going, given my brand new GPS system, it was a lengthy trip. The time barely registered with me. I was withdrawn so far into my mind that hours started passing as minutes. Silence was my only companion. I should’ve turned on the radio, but didn’t. Maybe I figured that I deserved to be left to my thoughts like this, deserved to rehearse my worries and discretions, over and over.

If Alex wasn’t there, what was I to do?

I couldn’t live in a world where Alex was not.

I wouldn’t live without him. He was the only thing that numbed the incessant aching hurt that I felt now, a glassy, white pain that never dulled, never subsided, until it felt like just another extension of me.

He was the relief that I so desperately needed, and driving two hours to reach that morphine was absolutely nothing in the long run.

Eventually, I pulled up to a two-story brick house with white trim and fir trees in the yard.

There were no cars in the driveway; no lights on in the house.

Immediately, fear registered. This wasn’t right.

I put the car in park, left it running, and jumped out, sprinting across the lawn and up to the front door. The doorbell rang and I heard it reverberating throughout the house. But no sound of footsteps across the wood flooring followed. I waited only a minute at the door before hurrying around the side of the house, to the backyard.

I felt it now, stronger than ever, that tingly little presence of Alex.

He was here.

It didn’t take me long to spot him, sprawled out on the porch swing, his arm thrown casually across his eyes. I was filled with relief and utter joy so instantly that I could barely remind my shaky legs to carry me over to where he was.

“Alex?” I called hesitantly, softly, but I knew that he would hear.

“Go back home, Brooklyn,” he sighed, recognizing my voice right away. His mouth formed a hard line, and he made no effort to sit up, made no move to meet my searching eyes. His rejection hurt, like someone shoving a hot poker into my chest, but I’d come all this way, and I wasn’t ready to believe that he didn’t want me here.

“No,” I retorted insistently, my voice filled with more conviction than I even knew I was capable of. He moved his arm and looked up at me, questioningly. “Alex, what are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” he mumbled, being the first to break eye contact, his eyes instead wandering the backyard.

“When we bought the house from your parents, they left their new address,” I explained, nudging him aside slightly so that I could perch on the edge of the swing.

“How did you know I’d be here?” he quizzed, pulling himself up into a seated position. I couldn’t read him as well as I would’ve liked; I had no idea what he was feeling. It was beyond frustrating.

“I didn’t, but I had to try,” I answered in something so near to a whisper I was almost sure he’d ask me to repeat myself.

“They moved here for the same reason you moved into our house. Isn’t that ironic?” he chuckled humorlessly, staring down at his hands. “I grew up in that house, and they couldn’t stand to live there without me. They’ve moved on, though. I don’t know why I came here. I don’t know what I was expecting to see.”

“Alex, they haven’t moved on,” I shook my head, laying my hand gingerly on top of his. “My parents pretend like they’re over Jeremy’s death, but they’re not. It still hurts them. It probably always will.”

“I was grounded that night,” he sighed, shaking his head. I had no clue what he was talking about, but knew he’d explain himself. “My parents were mad at me for something. Something stupid enough that I’ve forgotten, obviously. But I went out anyway. I had graduated junior year, and I wasn’t going to miss any of the parties.”

He was telling me how he died. My heart skipped a beat, pounding hard. I clutched his hands tighter, urging him to continue.

“I went to the big party at the rich kid’s house. No one even knew the kid, but he had tons of booze and a giant house. I drank a lot; I had a good time. And then I got a text message telling me to go check out the upstairs bedroom to the left. I was drunk enough not to question it. I opened the door, and there was my girlfriend, boning the quarterback. At that time, I had no idea who had sent me the message. Now I know it was the Mayhems. But anyway, I was so pissed; I just had to get away. So I got in my car, and I drove. I drove fast, I was reckless, and I crashed. The last thing I remember was the ambulance arriving and the jaws of live.”

I distinctly felt my heart breaking as I looked into his eyes.

They were dead, like the eyes of that token kid of every high-school. The kid that hid behind an untamed mass of scraggly hair and usually avoided making eye contact, the one that when he did finally meet your eyes, you couldn’t even read any emotions; anything human, which made you sure that he’d show up to school some day with a bomb in his backpack. You only hoped that he’d call you the day he did and tell you not to come to school. That’s what Alex looked like, and it physically hurt to see him in that kind of pain, to see him dealing with that kind of turmoil.

I pressed hands on either side of his cheeks, insisting that he looked in my eyes, forcing him to.

“We’re both messed up, Alex. Maybe beyond repair. But if you lose hope, then I’ll lose it too. There has to be a way to get through this. You have to believe that. I can’t believe unless you do,” I kept eye-contact, and tried to convey to him emotions that were so raw, that stung so freshly, that it worried me to share them. Worried me that he wouldn’t accept me for how damaged I was. Maybe I was worse off than I thought.

“Brooklyn,” his voice broke, and I knew it was the closest to him sharing everything with me that he could get and still keep his dignity. “I’m not changing my mind. I can’t be your friend. It hurts too much.”

“Then don’t be my friend, Alex!” I shouted, hating that he couldn’t see how in love with him I was. Was he that blind? “Because I don’t want to be yours.”

“What are you saying?” he questioned, sending me past the realm of exasperation.

Boys are so stupid.

“I’m saying that I like you! Probably even more than you like me! Always have, always will. And just know that every time you disappear, every time you leave me, I’m going to look for you. I am not going through my life without you. It sucks too badly to not have you there with me.”

As soon as all my breath ran out, his grin exploded, stretching his mouth, baring all his teeth. He looked ridiculous and breathtakingly beautiful all at once. His eyes were alive again, and he was mine.

He kissed me, and I forgot everything. While his lips were pressed against mine, I couldn’t even recall my name. It was the freest feeling in the world, like everything would be right and good, so long as we were together.