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How could there be?
“What if I can’t do it? What if I’m not enough?” I asked. We both knew I was talking about X.
“You’re exactly what you believe you are,” my dad replied.
He turned and walked away from me, and suddenly I spotted it. The Elysian Fields. The grass was almost golden, waist high, and the sky was impossibly blue. In the distance, houses dotted against the horizon and people moved about. The people whom the gods honored by giving them an afterlife fit for a god. Cheer beamed in my chest at seeing the happiness that lay within reach, the one thing that could finally end my fight to try to be better, to strive despite always failing.
I could follow my dad now and I’d see my family. The view I spied would be mine for eternity. It would be my reward for fighting as hard as I had, for being who I was.
But there would be nothing more. No improvement, no growth. And I’d be nothing more than I was now.
Was that enough?
My dad stopped a few feet away and looked over his shoulder. “Are you coming?” he asked, a hardness to his expression.
I looked at the Fields again and shook my head. “I can’t.”
He smiled at me, his eyes glittering. “I knew you were special the day you were born. My baby girl, the savior of the world.”
“If I don’t come with you, I won’t ever see you again, will I?” I asked.
I didn’t know how I knew. But something told me I wasn’t going to see the Elysian Fields again if I turned my back now. Where else would I go if I died? I didn’t know. But I had unfinished business on Earth.
“We will always be with you, Elyse,” my dad said. “It’s in your blood.”
“What does that mean?”
But he lifted his hand and waved at me, still grinning, his face filled with affection and pride. Farther behind him stood my mom and brothers waving as well, and my chest clenched while my eyes stung with tears.
“You are the best thing I’ve ever done. We’ll love you forever.”
He turned without answering my question and strolled toward the Elysian Fields. I took one step toward him, toward what could be my destiny. My chest drew me to him, the pull to leave it all behind and be with my family damn strong. Except this wasn’t where I was supposed to be. Dad said so, but I felt it in my bones too.
I hesitated, but no, going there wouldn’t be right.
When he disappeared into the fields, he and the scene started to fade away. It didn’t take long before darkness surrounded me once again. Fear wrapped itself tightly around me and a sharp pain shot into my chest, making it hard to breathe.
But this was the decision I’d made. And pain was an old friend. I could handle it. I turned to the light behind me in the distance and started walking.
