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Still, it was good to see and reminisce with him. Good to know there were still some things in town that hadn’t changed at all.
I turned left after three more lines of headstones and began walking the next row. My legs felt suddenly heavy. My feet weighed fifty pounds each, like I was wearing cinder-block shoes.
Easy…
It was a long time since I’d been here last, except in the hallways of my mind. I used to come all the time. I used to—
My feet stopped mechanically, as if they knew exactly how many steps I’d taken. I looked down, squinting through a haze of memories, and saw my own last name.
“Hi mom and dad.”
Their names were engraved side-by-side, on some book-looking thing I’d picked out because it was chipped on one corner, and therefore the cheapest. I hated it, but it had to be that way.
“Long time no see.”
I knelt and began working to pull away the weeds and crabgrass that encroached on everything. At one time I’d kept their grave beautifully. I planted annuals in the spring, mums in the fall. Daisies and impatiens, sometimes cornflowers because my mother loved the deep, beautiful blue.
Silently I knelt, letting the memories of my childhood wash over me. I focused on the good times of course; the birthday parties and Christmas mornings. The picnics and holidays and fun things we did as a family, all the way up to the day that they died. There was lots of good, and very little bad. I supposed the mind worked like that, eliminating the things you didn’t want to remember and embellishing the stuff you did.
“Hey…”
I should’ve jumped when the hand closed over my shoulder, but instinctively I expected it. It was inevitable, really. In a town this small, you could only run so far.
“You okay?”
I stood up and turned. Adrian’s handsome face was stoic and solemn. He was holding a bouquet of flowers in one hand. The hard angle of his grimly-set jaw made him seem like the personification of some Roman God.
“It’s crazy how fast life can change,” I said softly. “One minute you’re the homecoming queen, the next you’re nothing. A stranger in your own town.”
“You were never the homecoming queen,” Adrian pointed out.
I sighed softly. “In my mind I was.”
The wind picked up, whipping my hair across my face. A tattooed hand reached out and swept it away. The move was so slow, so gentle, it almost didn’t seem real.
“Your parents die,” I went on, “and suddenly no one will go near you. They shun you like a leper, or treat you with kid gloves. They can’t process their own emotions, so they try to process yours.”
Adrian said nothing, which was the right thing to say. He stepped closer to me though, shielding me from the wind.
“I couldn’t stand the pity,” I said. “The way they looked at me, even weeks and months afterward. That’s one of the bigger reasons I left. You know that, right?”
He nodded solemnly, slipping his hand into mine. It felt rough yet warm. Calloused but welcoming. In my other hand, I held Elizabeth’s mass card. From the depths of my pocket, I’d been rubbing it between my fingers all day.
“You go through life trading in the people you love for these little plastic cards.” I shook the card and laughed bitterly. “And when you finally have a full set? Boom — you’re dead.”
Adrian plucked the mass card from my hand, reading the inscription in the dying light. He turned it over, to where a photo of Elizabeth was forever laminated in shiny plastic.
“It really sucks,” he said simply.
“Yeah. It does.”
The understanding in his eyes was a reflection of my loss, because he’d lost too. His mother was gone, his father locked away during a time when he should’ve been playing catch and teaching his son how to fish. These things changed him during his formative years. Ingrained in him a sense of stoicism and aloofness.
So yes, Adrian knew the same loss I did. Even if it was in a different way.
“It’s getting dark,” he said, and handed me the flowers. “Did you walk all the way here?”
“Yes.”
