Chapter 43

MY MIND DRIFTS awake when Zahira gently shakes my shoulder.

“Hey,” she says. “We’re here.”

I slowly open my eyes. I don’t remember falling asleep. For a moment I’m not sure where here is, and the cloud is slow to leave my mind.

Suddence. We’re here.

I sit up a little straighter. The world is brighter now, soft and peachy from the dawn. The town doesn’t look so scary now. Just lost, and lonely, and somewhere in my cottony mind I’m glad I’m here when it’s morning.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

It takes a second to put together what she’s asking. I press my fingers to the key, trying to remember the number. “109,” I say. “House 109.”

We wind through the neighbourhood. I watch the passing houses, dyed pink in the dawn, and imagine living here. But what I picture is me and Marisa in our little townhouse, old and cozy and ours.

Zahira stops in front of #109 and helps me out of the car. I have to hold my side tightly now, but when she asks, I tell her I’m alright. It doesn’t hurt too much. I’ll be okay.

She helps me up the steps to the front door. My hands shake as I gather the key from under my hoodie. I’m standing where Marisa once stood, holding a key she once held, and the thought makes me a little dizzy.

I slide the key in the lock, my heart skipping hard and heavy, and when the door unlocks, the relief makes me a little dizzy, too.

I manage to step in on my own. The entryway is small, like the townhouse we used to live in. The place is covered in dust. I can see it floating in the weak rays of sun shining through the windows.

In the dining room, a chair is knocked over, a plate shattered on the ground. But otherwise, the house is peaceful, glowing in the morning sun. Like nothing was ever wrong.

“Upstairs,” I say, and Zahira comes to help me up the steps. Pictures line the stairway wall. Marisa, younger. Her parents. A dog.

I reach for a photo of Marisa with her parents at the town’s grand opening. A big bright banner says, Welcome to Suddence! and balloons line the street. Before everything went wrong. When they were still happy.

“You want the picture?” Zahira asks, and I nod. She takes it down for me. I brush the dust off of it and look closer at Marisa. It’s strange seeing her as a kid, with messy hair and freckles and bandages on her knees and a wide smile showing off her pink braces. I don’t understand it. I don’t think I ever will.

On the second floor, Marisa’s door is marked with a hand-drawn sign and instant camera photos of her dog, a big golden retriever. I take one of them. I wish I knew the dog’s name.

“Should we go in?” Zahira says, her hand hovering over the golden knob.

I nod.

She opens the door. My eyes land on the bed. The blanket has patterns on it. I don’t know why that’s the first thing I notice. Rocket ships and stars and moons. The bed is unmade, and the carpet is messy with paper and cardboard.

I step in, taking in Marisa’s childhood room. The white dresser and small desk and round mirror surrounded by pictures of her friends. Trinkets line a shelf filled with books. Marisa likes to read. When we’re hiding in motels, she’s always reading. I don’t know what her favourite book is. I never thought to ask.

I stop in the middle of the messy carpet. There’s a half-finished card by my foot. The construction paper lettering isn’t done, but clearly it was supposed to say Happy Anniversary, and underneath it is a pencil sketch of her parents.

I close my eyes. The world is swimming.

“Dany?” Zahira says, lingering near the door.

I let go of a small, skittering breath. “I’m okay.”

I collect the card and the pictures around the mirror. With a hard blink, I realize one of the photos is Lilian. She looks so different, with glasses and pimples and fuzzy hair tied in two buns.

Tentatively, Zahira says, “Do you need anything else?”

I shake my head. I can’t bear being in this room for another second.

“What now?”

I feel sick. I want to lie down in Marisa’s bed, curl up and never wake up.

But it’s almost over.

Now, I bury her.

I tell Zahira to take me to the backyard, where the grass is up to my waist and the trees are leafless in the cold winter air. I ask her to dig a hole for me, just a small one, and she leaves me on the back porch steps so she can find a shovel in the garden shed.

I unshoulder my backpack and take out the candy tube. Carefully, I lay out what’s inside.

A special coin I was going to give Marisa for her birthday, with a little rabbit on it.

A lock of my hair, the part she dyed for me.

The charm on her cellphone, a scuffed cartoon cat, taken before I threw the phone in the river.

Lastly, from the side pocket of my backpack, I take out her sunglasses, which I found in her purse after the high school, and I leaned over it and cried and cried.

This is all I have left of her.

“Dany,” Zahira says. She’s dusting the dirt off her hands, a hole in the grass by her feet. I bring everything over, along with what I collected from the house. I bury what I can in the tiny hole, and the rest of it, the framed picture and the card and her sunglasses, I leave around it like offerings. At last, I slip the key from around my neck and lay it in the circle of bare dirt. I keep my hand there, trying to think of what to say.

I love you, I think hollowly. Good bye.

And then it’s done.

I wait. I don’t know what I’m waiting for. Maybe I thought if I buried her, if I finally let her go, I would feel better. I would feel peace. I would feel some kind of surge, some kind of need to keep going, that I’m free now, that I can move on. Different. Different, somehow.

But kneeling here, looking at the little patch of dirt in the grass, all I can think is one thing.

Marisa’s gone.

She’s really gone now.

Pain twists in my chest, but I don’t have the strength to cry anymore. A dry sob escapes, and then it’s like all the air goes out of me. I sag over, pressing my head to my hands, and what I really want to say comes tumbling out.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.

Come back.

The world goes numb, shifting and swaying. Across the sea, I hear Zahira saying my name, and there’s worry in her voice, but the pain in my side is a roar of blood in my ears, and I’m not sure where I am anymore. Somewhere warm. Somewhere cold. Somewhere where the pain is shards of ice prickling through every cell in my body, and breathing feels like drinking molten-hot metal. Somewhere where I’m floating, and nothing matters anymore.

“Dany.” Zahira drifts over me in a ring of darkness, like I’m sinking down a well. “Dany, hang on.”

She lifts me up, and I feel her running.

A car door slams shut. I’m lying in the backseat. The engine starts, but it stalls and stalls and stalls.

“Just hang on,” Zahira calls over the sound. “Dany, just hang on.”

It’s okay, I want to tell her.

This is what I wanted, anyway.

I could never picture myself growing up.

My life ends here. It ends on the road.

The engine starts, the sound rumbling through me, and I close my eyes.

Marisa is driving through the night. When I wake up in the morning, I’ll be in the next motel, tucked away in bed. Marisa will bring me breakfast. I'll turn  on the TV, flip through the channels, hoping this stillness will last.

When I wake up, I’ll be with her.

-END OF PART 4-