Her: On my way.
—
An hour later, Daisy and I were lying next to each other on my bed, computers on our stomachs. I was reading the new Ayala story. Every time I giggled at something, she’d say, “What’s funny?” and I’d tell her. After I finished it, we just lay there, in bed together, staring up at the ceiling.
“Well,” Daisy said after a while, “it all worked out in the end.”
“How’s that?”
“Our heroes got rich and nobody got hurt.”
“Everyone got hurt,” I pointed out.
“What I mean is that no one got injured.”
“I lacerated my liver!”
“Oh, right. I forgot about that. At least no one died.”
“Harold died! And possibly Pickett!”
“Holmesy, I am trying to have a happy ending here. Stop screwing it up for me.”
“I’m so Ayala,” I answered.
“So Ayala.”
“The problem with happy endings,” I said, “is that they’re either not really happy, or not really endings, you know? In real life, some things get better and some things get worse. And then eventually you die.”
Daisy laughed. “As always, Aza ‘And Then Eventually You Die’ Holmes is here to remind you of how the story really ends, with the extinction of our species.”
I laughed. “Well, that is the only real ending, though.”
“No, it’s not, Holmesy. You pick your endings, and your beginnings. You get to pick the frame, you know? Maybe you don’t choose what’s in the picture, but you decide on the frame.”
—
Davis never wrote me back, not even after I texted him a few days later. But he did update his blog.
“And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, / The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, / The solemn temples, the great globe itself, / Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve / And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, / Leave not a rack behind.”
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
I get that nothing lasts. But why do I have to miss everybody so much?
TWENTY-FOUR
A MONTH LATER, just after Christmas vacation ended, I got up early and poured a couple bowls of cereal for Mom and me. I was eating in front of the TV when she walked in, still wearing pajamas, flustered. “Late late late,” she said. “Hit snooze too many times.”
“I made you breakfast,” I told her, and when she joined me on the couch, she said, “Cheerios aren’t something you make.” I laughed as she took a few bites, then ran off to get dressed. Always a flurry of movement, my mother.
When I turned back to the TV, a red breaking news band was scrolling across the bottom of the screen. I saw a reporter standing in front of the gates of the Pickett compound. I fumbled for the remote and unmuted the TV.
“Our sources indicate that while Pickett has not been positively identified, authorities believe the body found in an offshoot of the Pogue’s Run tunnel is indeed that of billionaire construction magnate Russell Davis Pickett, Sr. One source close to the investigation told Eyewitness News that Pickett likely died of exposure within quote ‘a few days’ of his disappearance, and while we have no official confirmation, several sources tell us that Pickett’s body was discovered by police after an anonymous tip.”
I texted Davis immediately. Just saw the news. I’m so sorry, Davis. I know I’ve said that to you a lot, but I am. I’m just so sorry.
He didn’t reply right away, so I added, I want you to know it wasn’t Daisy or me who tipped off the cops. We never said anything to anyone.
Now I saw the . . . of his typing. I know. It was us. Noah and I decided together.
Mom came in, putting earrings in while slipping on her shoes. She must’ve overheard the last bit of the story, because she said, “Aza, you should reach out to Davis. This is going to be a very hard day for him.”
“I was just texting him,” I said. “They were the ones who told the cops where to look.”
“Can you imagine, that whole estate is going to a lizard?” They could’ve waited seven years, at least, before Pickett was declared dead—seven more years of that house, seven more years of getting anything they wanted—but they’d decided to let it go to a tuatara.
“I guess they couldn’t leave their dad down there,” I said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told him about the jogger’s mouth.” This was, after all, my fault. An icy dread passed over me. I’d forced them to choose between abandoning their father and abandoning their lives.
“Be kind to yourself,” Mom said. “Obviously knowing the truth mattered more to him than the house, and it’s not like he’ll be thrown out onto the streets, Aza.”
I tried to listen to her, but the undeniable feeling had sprung up in me. For a moment I tried to resist, but only a moment. I slipped off the Band-Aid and dug my nail into the callus of my finger, opening up a cut where the previous one had finally healed.
As I washed and rebandaged it in the bathroom, I stared at myself. I would always be like this, always have this within me. There was no beating it. I would never slay the dragon, because the dragon was also me. My self and the disease were knotted together for life.
I was thinking about Davis’s journal, of that Frost quote, “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life—it goes on.”
And you go on, too, when the current is with you and when it isn’t. Or at least that’s what I whispered wordlessly to myself. Before I left the bathroom, I texted him again. Can we hang out sometime?
I saw the . . . appear, but he never replied.
“We should get going,” Mom said. I opened the bathroom door, pulled a jacket and a knit hat from the coatrack, and entered our frigid garage. I shimmied my fingertips under the garage door, lifted it up, and sat down in the passenger seat while Mom finished making her morning coffee. I kept looking at my phone, waiting for his reply. I was cold but sweating, the sweat soaking into my ski hat. I thought of Davis, hearing his own name on the news again. You go on, I told myself, and tried through the ether to say it to him, too.
—
Over the next few months, I kept going. I got better without ever quite getting well. Daisy and I started a Mental Health Alliance and a Fan-Fiction Workshop so that we could list some proper extracurriculars on next year’s college applications, even though we were the only two members of both clubs. We hung out most nights, at her apartment or at Applebee’s or at my house, sometimes with Mychal but usually not—usually it was just the two of us, watching movies or doing homework or just talking. It was so easy to go out into the meadow with her.
I missed Davis, of course. The first few days, I kept checking my phone, waiting for him to reply, but slowly I understood that we were going to be part of each other’s past. I still missed him, though. I missed my dad, too. And Harold. I missed everybody. To be alive is to be missing.
—
And then one night in April, Daisy and I were over at my house, watching the one-night-only reunion of our favorite band, who were performing at some third-tier music awards show. They’d just brilliantly lip-synced their way through “It’s Gotta Be You,” when someone knocked. It was almost eleven o’clock, too late for visitors, and I felt a shiver of nerves as I opened the door.
It was Davis, wearing a plaid button-down and skinny jeans. He was holding a huge box.
“Um, hi,” I said.
“This is for you,” he told me, and handed me the box, which wasn’t as heavy as I expected. I carried it inside and placed it on our dining room table, and when I turned back, he was already walking away.
“Wait,” I said. “Come here.” I reached my hand out for his. He took it, and we walked together into my backyard. The river was swollen, and you could hear it churning down there in the darkness somewhere. The air felt warm on the skin of my forearms as I lay down on the ground beneath the big ash tree in our backyard. He lay down next to me, and I showed him what the sky looked like from my house, all split up by the branches that were just beginning to sprout leaves.