“Is it all right if I join you?”
She patted the rock beside her. I boosted myself up. The hill faced east, and the horizon was now glowing a deep, intense azure. We didn’t talk for a while, but it wasn’t awkward. We were just getting ready to talk, that was all.
“I’m sorry I disappeared like that,” she said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You’re allowed to disappear.”
“No, I should explain.”
“You don’t have to.”
“But I want to.”
“Okay. But before you do, I have a confession to make.”
I told her how I’d followed her to the hospital and spied on her with her mother. It sounded even worse when I said it out loud.
“Oh.” She thought about it. “No, I get it. I probably would’ve done the same thing. Kind of creepy, though.”
“I know. It felt that way even at the time, but I couldn’t stop myself. Listen, I’m just really sorry. About your mom.”
“It’s okay.”
But she choked on that last word, and her face crumpled, and she crushed her forehead into her knees. Her shoulders shook silently. I rubbed her back. I wished more than anything that I could spend all of my monthly one-in-a-million miracles at once, forever, to make her sadness go away. But things don’t work like that.
“Margaret, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Birds were twittering joyfully now, tactlessly, all around us. She busily wiped away tears with the back of her wrist.
“There’s something else I have to explain,” she said. “The day before this whole thing started I went to see my mother at the hospital, and the doctors told me they were stopping treatment. There was no point—”
She squeaked that last word, and the sadness strangled her again, and she couldn’t go on. I put my arm around her shoulders and she sobbed on my neck. I breathed in the smell of her hair. She felt so thin and precious, to have all that grief inside her. She’d had it this whole time, all by herself. I wished I could take it from her, but I knew I couldn’t. It was her grief. Only she could carry it.
“When I went to bed that night, all I could think was that I wasn’t ready.” She swallowed. Her eyes were still red, but they were dry now, and her voice was steady. “I wasn’t ready to let go. I’m only sixteen, I wasn’t ready to not have a mom. I needed her so much.
“That night, when I went to bed, all I could think was that tomorrow cannot come. Time cannot go on. I am pulling the emergency brake of time. I even said it out loud: ‘Tomorrow cannot come.’
“And when I woke up that morning, it was true. It was the same day again. Time had stopped for me. I don’t know why; I guess it just didn’t have the heart to keep going. Somebody somewhere decided that I needed more time with her. That’s why I ran off that plane to Tokyo. I was afraid it would work, and I wasn’t ready.”
We were silent for a long time after that, while I thought about the love inside Margaret, how much of it there must have been that even time couldn’t stand up to it. There were no fourth-dimensional beings. It was Margaret’s heart, that was all. It was so strong it bent space-time around it.
“But I knew there was a catch. I always knew it. The catch was that if I fell in love, it would end. Time would roll forward again, like it always does, and it would take my mom along with it. I don’t know how, but I knew that was always the deal. When I could fall in love with someone, that’s how I would know it was time to say good-bye to her for real.
“I think that’s why you’re here. For me to fall in love with. That’s why you got sucked into this. I knew it as soon as I saw you.”
The sun was almost up, the sky was getting bright, and it was like I could feel a sun rising inside me, too, bright and warm, filling my whole self with love. Because Margaret did love me. And at the same time I was crying—the sadness didn’t go away, not in the slightest. I was happy and sad, both at once. I thought about what time is, how we’re being broken every second, we’re losing moments all the time, leaking them away like a stuffed animal losing its stuffing, until one day they’re all gone and we lose everything. Forever. And then, at the same time, we’re gaining seconds, moment after moment. Every one is a gift, until at the end of our lives we’re sitting on a rich hoard of moments. Rich beyond imagining. Time was both those things at once.
I took both Margaret’s hands in mine.
“Is it time? Is this the last day?”
She nodded solemnly.
“It’s the last one. The last August 4th. I mean, till next year anyway.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks again, but she smiled through them. “I’m ready now. It’s time.”
The sun cracked the edge of the world and began to rise.
“You know what’s funny though?” she said. “I keep waiting for the thing to happen. You know, the perfect thing, the last one. The way it’s supposed to on the map. But maybe we missed it while we were talking.”
“I don’t think we missed it.”
I kissed her. You can spend your life waiting and watching for perfect moments, but sometimes you have to make one happen.
After a few seconds, the best seconds of my life so far, Margaret pulled away.
“Hang on,” she said. “I don’t think that was it.”
“It wasn’t?”
“It wasn’t perfect. I had a hair in my mouth.”
She swept her hair to one side.
“Okay, kiss me again.”
I did. And this time it was perfect.
ANTHOLOGIES ALSO EDITED BY STEPHANIE PERKINS
MY TRUE LOVE GAVE TO ME: TWELVE HOLIDAY STORIES
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Leigh Bardugo is the New York Times bestselling author of Six of Crows and the Grisha trilogy. She was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Los Angeles, and graduated from Yale University. These days, she lives and writes in Hollywood, where she can occasionally be heard singing with her band. Visit her online at leighbardugo.com. Or sign up for email updates here.
Francesca Lia Block is the Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award–winning and bestselling author of Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books and more than twenty-five other works of fiction, nonfiction, and collected short stories and poetry for adults and young adults. She lives in Los Angeles. Visit her online at francescaliablock.com. Or sign up for email updates here.
Libba Bray is the New York Times bestselling author of the Gemma Doyle trilogy, the Michael L. Printz Award–winning Going Bovine, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist Beauty Queens, and the Diviners series. A horror fan who rarely dated in high school (where was the love, boys of Denton, Texas?), she now lives with her family in New York City. Visit her online at libbabray.com.
Cassandra Clare is the New York Times bestselling author of the Mortal Instruments series and Infernal Devices trilogy. She was born overseas and spent her early years traveling around the world with her family and several trunks of books. Cassandra lives in western Massachusetts with her husband, their cats, and these days, even more books. Visit her online at cassandraclare.com.
Brandy Colbert is the author of the critically acclaimed Pointe, and two forthcoming young-adult novels. She lives and writes in Los Angeles. Visit her online at brandycolbert.com.
Tim Federle left Pittsburgh as a teenager to dance on Broadway before writing his first book for young readers, Better Nate Than Ever, followed by a sequel that won the Lambda Literary Award. Tim’s young-adult debut novel, The Great American Whatever, was just released. Visit him online at timfederle.com.