Page 41 of Find My Way Down to You

“Auggie?”

Mom’s voice cuts through the waves crashing around myskull. I flinch. Her eyes watch me. Then she looks over her shoulder. Reality unfolds across her face.

“Oh, August.”

“Mom, don’t,” I beg.

“The anniversary is soon.”

She says it like I need the reminder. As if I’ll ever forget the night it happened.

Gingerly, she asks, “Do you want to go by his grave?”

Last year, I was too shattered to do anything other than let grief consume me. My parents came to visit. Max sat with me in the dark. London’s parents tried calling. I didn’t answer.

What could I say to them?

My throat is raw when I say, “Yes. Will you come with me?”

Mom doesn’t hesitate. “Of course, Auggie.”

Later that afternoon, Mom drops off the box.

“It’s just a few things,” she promised. “Your favorite snacks. Things for Max. Some of your old clothes.”

I almost trip over Diana when she weaves between my legs as I carry it to my bedroom. She watches as I sit on the end of my bed to peel open the flaps. Immediately, a laugh bubbles up in my chest.

There are bags of sour candy. The brands I’d demolish as a kid until my mouth was raw and puckered. Underneath that are packs of seedlings. Mom still believes I’ll discover my green thumb. For Max, she’s packed art books.

Next, I find a leather journal. It has a soft, rustic feel. I hold it gently. I know what Mom’s hoping. That I’ll use it to write new songs, find my love for music again.

Frowning, I rest it on the floor.

At the bottom of the box is a stack of neatly folded clothes. Mainly shirts I outgrew when I turned sixteen and my growth spurt hit. The last item is a thick navy hoodie.

Tension latches onto my body. Water fills my vision. Without unfolding it, I know this isn’t my hoodie.

It’s London’s.

No, itwashis. Death is awful like that. A constant reminder that everything it touches belongs to the past now.

My thumbs brush over the soft fabric. Like I’ll still find the grainy bits of sand from our trips to Hendry’s Beach there. The times he wrapped it around my shoulders on cool nights walking around downtown.

Absently, I inhale. His scent is gone. Just like him.

When my eyes close, I see him in it. The first time—after he ran up the clock tower to tell me he wanted to go to UC Santa Barbara. Before he gave me a matching sweatshirt. Asked me to come with him.

The times he’d sit at my kitchen table with his laptop. When he’d plan out our lives post–high school with confidence blazing in his green eyes, his weird smile pointed at me. He’d settled on engineering for his major. Journalism for mine.

“You can do music on the side,” he suggested. “Journalism will be better for a degree. For a career.”

I didn’t argue. Part of me thought to, but it didn’t matter. We were going to be together.

Our future was set.

Then one red light turning green took everything from me. My carelessness stole all of London’s dreams from him.

I fall back on the bed. Tears trickle from the corners of my eyes. Guilt piles onto the ache in my chest. Thick, weighted, unending. My fingers dig into the hoodie.