More of my original fiction! I've been on a major writing spree the past few days, so here you go. :)
Alice and I parted ways at my house, and I lifted my hand in a salute as she waved me away.
And then, as my clock was nearing two AM, a rock slammed against my window.
In the movies and books and fairytales, the boy goes and throws pebbles at the window of the girl he loves and she wakes up gracefully and it’s all ridiculously romantic. Alice and I were never very much a part of the fairytale world, however, so instead she threw the rocks (yes, rocks, not pebbles). And they did not softly cling against my window, they nearly shattered it, leaving large cracks. And I did not wake up gracefully, I fell off my bed in sheer terror.
Looking out the window, I saw her, dressed in the same clothes as earlier, a smile on her face. She waved at me to come down and I rolled my eyes, but got dressed anyway.
Her car was parked outside, and, on instinct, I jumped in.
“Where the hell are we going at two o’clock in the morning? I literally just got back from the hospital because of these trips.”
“You have no faith in me, Cooper. Really. Trust me.” A roll of the eyes.
“I do trust you. Just not at two in the morning.”
“Why are you so fixated on the time? Jesus.” She rolled her eyes and kept driving, one hand on the wheel loosely, the other dangling out the window. Her eyes were wide and bright, and she had a lopsided grin on her face.
“Because. It. Is. Two. In. The. Morning.”
“You know, enunciating every word does not make it any more meaningful or important. Besides,” she said, winking at me, “all of the greatest things happen when you’re up on too much adrenaline and too much imagination at two in the morning.”
I rolled my eyes, and told her I doubted this very much, and that if I got arrested, she would be paying my bail. At this, she laughed, slapping my arm playfully, and continued driving.
We pulled over shortly after, in our field – I’d come to think of like that; ours – and Alice parked the car. She hopped out and ran into the grass, her body completely crumpling to the ground like that very first time, and she looked so peaceful there, amongst the swaying weeds.
“One last time,” she hummed, her voice soft, and I lay down beside her.
We laid in silence for awhile, the gentle breeze blowing the grass around our bodies, our hands nearly touching but not quite there. “Cooper, can I tell you something?”
I turned to face her, but her eyes remained trained on the stars. I wondered what she saw in them. “Of course.”
“I have this dream sometimes,” she murmured, her hair splayed out behind her. “It’s dark. Everywhere. It’s nothing but blackness. And then there’s me – in this bubble, trapped, alone. And I can see people around me, people I care about, and they’re just standing there. Completely immobile, not even blinking as I scream and cry and thrash around. And I bang my fists on the walls of the bubble. I hit my palms against them until I realize my hands are cracked and bleeding, and that the bubble is made of cement.”
I watched her; I watched the emotions play out on her face, the way the words were tugged out of her mouth by the black sky, how they strung themselves in between the stars. I sat there in silence, thinking about this girl that I knew and yet didn’t know, whose past and future were completely foreign to me. I realized that I didn’t actually care; that it didn’t matter to me, who she was or who she would be. It only mattered that in that moment she was there with me.
Her eyes were closed and her lips were parted slightly, a quiet, shaky sigh escaping. I reached my hand over, interlocking our fingers together into a tight web. She turned her head towards me, and I could see the remnants of tears clinging to her eyelashes. It killed me, seeing her like that. So vulnerable and so brave and so beautiful, her face tired and beaten by the pain she suffered in silence.
I’ll never forget her face that night, the night of our last midnight session. I like to remember her like that, oddly enough. It shows that she survived. She beat the demons inside of her – the figurative ones, at least. She stood by the cage of her heart, sword in hand, that crooked smile tugging at the corner of her lip. And she whispered to that beast, “Not today.”
It took every muscle in my body to keep me from reaching forward and entangling our limbs together, folding her into my arms and protecting her from the pain that she had suffered through. And on our last night – night, but not day – in that abandoned field of wildflowers and dark dreams, I took Alice’s hand and watched the stars.
She was twelve years old when the earth shattered around her.
At twelve, Alice had read Gone With the Wind seven times. After she’d read it once, she’d picked it right back up again at the first page, reading until her eyes could memorize every line inked onto every page, until her heart bled for Scarlett as if it were she who was suffering. At twelve, Alice was bright and clever and growing into herself as a human being, developing ideas and thoughts, growing up.
At twelve, Alice sat in an office waiting room with her anxious mother by her side, wondering how the hell her life had turned into this.
She had survived. She was a survivor. And yet, she hadn’t, not completely. She was still broken and damaged, more than she could comprehend at that age, but she was proud of herself. Proud of her mother. They had taken trips, the two of them, for months at a time, escaping reality and fleeing the hardness of the world they had once known. They rarely lived in one place too long, because then her mother was antsy to get on to the next place, to see the next thing. Alice thought it may have had something to do with her mother’s intense fear of companionship and relationships after her past, but she never mentioned it.
They sat in the office, and Alice thought it smelled like roses and death. It was terrifying, and her nails were bitten to the point that her cuticles had dried blood around them (a newly formed habit, and one her mother was not particularly fond of). It didn’t help that her mother had been an emotional, nervous wreck for three straight days since the strange man had called that first night, and she had refused to tell Alice what the matter was.
But she knew it was bad. She was not a stupid girl, she never had been. She could tell that something had gone horribly wrong; something wasn’t quite right. When they had entered the stale office at a quarter to two that afternoon, she had tried to comprehend the title that was emblazoned to the plaque on the door, but the word was one she had yet to encounter. It was a small sitting room, but nicely furnished, with green upholstered chairs and a small mahogany coffee table with a few magazines in the center.
Her mother had just submitted the paperwork back to the gentle-faced woman behind the counter – Barbara, she had said her name was. The woman had shoulder length brown hair that was feathered around her thin face, with a long nose and large brown eyes. They were sad eyes, Alice thought. And for some reason, she gave Alice a look of pity. Or was it sympathy?
She couldn’t keep the two separate. She detested both with equal measure.
“Alice Baker?” a man in a white coat asked as he opened the door directly next to where Alice and her mother were sitting. He had gray hair that was receding by the temples, square metal glasses, and a blue and white checkered tie peeked out from his coat. Her mother jumped up, hands trembling, and led Alice forward. The man gave her a smile that looked like a grimace.
With much trepidation, Alice stepped through the door.
Alice and I returned as the sun was still dormant, near four in the morning. I managed to get a few hours sleep and then decided it was time to get back to work. I walked over to Patrick’s house at around ten-thirty, leaning against his car until he departed his own house, keys rolling around his finger as he spun them, a cigarette already poised between his teeth.
“Look who decided to join the land of the unwillingly-employed,” he said as he unlocked the doors to the dusty black truck.
“Don’t I know it.” I rolled my eyes but got in all the same, and he peeled away from his house and then our neighborhood. We were silent for a little while, and I wondered when silence had become awkward for Patrick and me. I was so used to the two of us being nearly identical, being so similar that I could finish his sentences and he knew when I was in desperate need to get hammered without even asking.
We arrived at the theatre, neither of us saying a word the entire time, and clocked in. Taking our respective places, I considered how much had changed in the three weeks since Alice had moved in. I thought about how she had entered that day, with a wink and a simple request, and belittled my movie taste (which she had proceeded to do every day since we’d met). I thought about how Patrick had looked at me in horror, in shock, as I watched her walk out through those doors.
You don’t even know me, I had said.
And what had she said back? Yet.
Alice Baker hadn’t knocked on the door to my life and entered with a “thank you very much.” She had broken down the door, thrown herself through, locked it behind her. I was drowning in her entire being, suffocating under her influence. It didn’t feel wrong, though, or bad (although just a tiny bit frightening). It felt sane and normal and inevitable. It felt like Alice was always destined to be in my life, that she was always supposed to be a fragment of me. She was embedded in my system.
And with that, I came to the crashing realization that Patrick was not.
He had been my best friend for more than a decade, and for the majority of my life. We had grown up together, gone to school together, experienced our first kisses in the same week and learned about drugs and alcohol together. We were practically joined at the hip from the age of six and upward, his parents were like my second parents, his home my second home. We knew how to have fun together and get in trouble and it was great, it really was.
But he and Alice were different, in a lot of ways. They existed on separate wavelengths in my mind; Alice was so far removed from our inconspicuous town as a whole that categorizing her with Patrick felt wrong. For some reason, though, that separation had forged a wedge between my best friend and me. We started going on different paths, my life had two different roads: the one with Patrick, and the one with Alice.
As I sat behind the food counter, watching as the first trickle of customers entered the theatre for the eleven o’clock showing of some movie I’d never bothered to learn the name of, I watched Patrick dole out tickets. And I started to wonder if maybe, just maybe, things were about to change.
Two hours into my shift, Alice came.
“Don’t tell me you bought a ticket just to see me,” I faux-gushed, a hand held over my heart.
“Don’t be stupid,” she retorted, smirking. “I found that back entrance the first day I got here. Obviously I came in that way.” She jumped up on the counter and slid her legs over, collapsing onto the floor in front of me with her arms propped on her knees. “But I did come to see you,” she added, with a wink.
I made her a Coke slushie and threw her a packet of Mike and Ikes. I retook my seat on the stool, leaning against the popcorn machine behind me. The theatres were all full and there weren’t any more movies until nearly four, so the lobby was deserted.
“So did you finally realize that our late-night trips are becoming a bit ridiculous?” I asked after a moment.
“Ridiculous? No. Slightly unsafe to both of our health? Yes.”
I laughed and she held the box of candy out. I took a handful, pondering as I chewed. “Hey, you actually got to sleep. I, on the other hand, had to come in and work every day.”
“If you call it working,” a voice said.
I looked up, and Patrick was glowering at Alice, stepping over her none-too-gently to find his lunch stowed under one of the stools near me. Warily glancing at him, I said, “Patrick, you’ve met -”
His voice was curt, and he gave me a pointed look as he started to leave. As he exited, he added, “You know, that food is only complementary for the employees, not the employees’ annoying girlfriends.” And with that, he left.
I stared after him, my mouth slightly agape, and I looked down to Alice. Her face seemed relaxed enough, but there was a sliver of hurt and something else I couldn’t quite place in her eyes. “Well, he clearly doesn’t like me,” she muttered after a moment.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know why he’s -”
“It’s fine. Really. We… we didn’t get along very well during your stint in the hospital.”
I looked at her. “What? Why?”
She shrugged, picking at her thumb cuticle with her pointer finger. “I don’t know. We spent a lot of time there, waiting for your stupid ass to wake up, and we were exhausted, and we said things we didn’t mean. We don’t know each other well enough to have opinions like that.”
Alice paused, shrugging again. “Stupid, silly things, honestly. We called each other names and he told me I was a bad influence and I told him that he was a jackass. He blamed me for your hospital stay, which was technically true, I guess, but it’s not like you were going to die. No offense,” she added. I laughed.
“I don’t know, really. I think he feels… replaced.”
I hesitated, and then sighed. “I’ve been meaning to talk to him. Things just seem weird lately. I don’t really know.” Frustrated, I ran a hand through my hair.
Alice smiled slightly, and at that moment, three of the theatres emptied out. I stood up and stretched, Alice following suit, smiling at me again before she disappeared around the corner with her drink in hand.
With a sigh, I glanced back to where Patrick was working, his head whipping away the instant I turned my head in his direction. I pinched the bridge of my nose, and wondered when the hell my life had become so conflicted.
The car ride home was deadly silent. It was permeated by the slight buzzing of the engine. Patrick pulled into his driveway and got out of the car without a word, and, bracing myself, I stepped out. I shut the door, and as I was on the brink of speaking, he whipped around, his dark hair in his eyes.
“I’ve been your friend for your entire fucking life, man, and you are not allowed to do this to me.”
“Do what to you?” I was shocked by how calm both of our voices were, but even so, I was glad none of the kids were out.
“Leave me like this. You think that some hot girl shows up, takes an interest, that means anything? You’re wrong, man. Dead wrong. And you know what? When this shit blows up in your face, I’ll still be here for you. Because that’s what friends do.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“Me? You’re the one running off with some strange girl you’ve known for three fucking weeks, staying out all night, getting yourself fucking hospitalized from hanging out with her. She’s not good for you, man.”
“I’m fine. Totally fine. Sure, I should’ve slept more. But I’m fine!”
“No, Cooper, you aren’t!”
“And how do you figure that?”
“You’re in love with this girl, and it’s not going to be good for you!” he yelled, his dark eyes nearly burning with frustration and rage.
I paused, my face softening slightly. “Pat, I’m not in love with anyone. I’ve known her for a few weeks. We’re friends.”
He shook his head, laughing. “Sure, whatever, man. What’s it to me? It’s not like I have your best interests at heart.” He waved me off.
Patrick stood on his porch, his voice noticeably quieter, his face more relaxed. “You are in love with her, Cooper. And that’s fine. Whatever. Just promise me you aren’t going to get messed up over this girl.”
He laughed again, and smiled sadly at me. “I don’t believe you.” He closed the door behind him, leaving my standing alone next to the truck, the sky streaked with a blood red.
Promise me you won’t get messed up over this girl.
I don’t think you’re boring.
The words wouldn’t stop circling my brain, and I couldn’t sleep. My mind refused to turn off, those five words haunted my thoughts, burned to the backs of my eyelids every time I closed them. You’re in love with her. I was sixteen years old. I was going to be a junior in high school. How the hell would I know what love was? Especially in two weeks?
Who cared what he thought, anyway? He’d been negative towards Alice from the very start. He hadn’t wanted me to even be friends with her, let alone fall in love with her. And who said I was in love with her? That fact had yet to be proven.
I thought about it. Really thought about it. I thought about our first meeting, about her dimple, about the way she laughed at my stupid jokes, the way her voice was both beautiful and yet horrible as she sang along to that song in the car. I thought about how she had let me hold her hand, how we had our own unspoken agreements and understandings, about how she had looked when she had told me about her dream.
I thought about her smile. I thought about the way she said my name, and her fucking wink, and her obsession with Coca-Cola flavored drinks.
The clock neared two o’clock, and the sky was an black canvas dotted with tiny balls of fire, and I thought of how much brighter they looked in our field.
And I realized I was falling in love with Alice Baker.
“Treatable,” the man in the white coat had said. “Nothing that isn’t doable.”
Her mother was crying, and the man seemed to be trying to say these things delicately, but Alice didn’t understand. Her mind was spinning a thousand miles a minute, trying to take in every single word the man said, but she didn’t comprehend. They were things she hadn’t met in those thick books with their small print. Strange words, scary words.
The man – her mother had called him Doctor – was explaining things to her mother, showing x-rays and circling things in red marker. Her mother was listening intently, trying to grasp what the man was saying, and if she didn’t, she asked him to explain it further. And he did.
“We’re going to do our best to make you and your daughter as comfortable as possible.”
She could hear him speaking.
“You shouldn’t worry, not at all.”
Surely the words were important. They had to be important.
“It’s a scary thing to deal with, especially on your own, but just know that we will do everything possible to help Alice.”
Think, Alice. Pay attention.
“If you ever have any questions or concerns, please feel free to call me.”
You’re smarter than this. Figure it out.
“If I am unavailable, my assistant will make sure that I return your call as quickly as I can.”
Alice looked between her mother and the man, watched her mother’s teary eyes, saw her thank him. They shook hands, the man in the white coat grasping her mother’s shoulder simultaneously, a look of both pity and sympathy (those stupid emotions again) in his eyes.
The man then turned to Alice and knelt down so that they were eye-level, with her still perched in the green chair. Just like the ones from the waiting room, she thought.
“Alice, I don’t want you to worry one bit. The nurses and I are going to take such good care of you. I don’t want you to worry.”
Alice glanced between the man with the kind eyes and her mother. And, finally breaking her silence, she said, “I don’t understand.”
Her mother stifled a sob into her fist.
I don’t know what made that summer the best, or why I felt like I was flying every single day, or why, for some reason, I felt infinite, sitting there in that beat-up Sudan with the windows rolled down and the music shaking the car. It was so simple, really, our days; we drove, and we discovered, and we talked. I listened and learned and experienced. She dreamed and danced and drove. The pair of us could’ve accomplished anything in that damn car, so long as we were together. That’s how it felt, anyway.
Patrick and I weren’t on speaking terms. Alice drove me to work, since I lacked my own car, and she came back to pick me up after closing. Then the two of us would find somewhere to eat and talk under the dying light until we figured our parents would be wanting us home.
But even with the loss of my best friend, I was surprisingly okay. I could stomach the fact that there was a piece of me missing because it was being filled with Alice: her smile, her laugh, her constant exuberance. She made me forget, and she made me happy. And that’s how I like to think of that summer – the summer that I was unabashedly happy.
It was one morning, a week and a half after the severance of my friendship with Patrick, that she invited me to dinner. “My mom’s cooking,” she explained, and I didn’t understand the slight nervousness to her voice. “She never cooks. So. She – we – were wondering if you’d like to come.”
“Yeah. Sounds good,” I shrugged. “Please tell me I don’t have to wear something formal.”
She snorted. “Yeah. Because in my house, we were black-tie optional to dinner every night.”
She pulled up to the theatre and parked, letting me out. “So at seven then?” she asked. I nodded, winking at her, and she smiled. God, her smile. I wish you could see it. It was like the sun had been implanted into her face, and when she opened her mouth in that lopsided grin, radiance emanated out.
Jesus, that girl was something.
“Bye, honey! Have a lovely day!” she chirped as she sped away, her hand waving. I gave her the middle finger. I could hear her laugh being caught by the breeze as she sped away.
Work was unbearable. And that was an understatement.
Patrick still refused to speak to me, let alone even acknowledge my presence, and I’d had all of our coworkers – including our boss – ask us varying forms of “what the fuck is going on?” My boss had used those exact words, to be fair, but the others were slightly more subtle.
I wondered when things would get back to normal. When Patrick would realize that Alice was not filling the Patrick-shaped hole in my heart, but rather masking over it. She was duct tape over the empty socket. I needed cement. And Patrick was the only person who could ever refill that place.
Alice picked me up when my shift ended, at six, and she dropped me off at my house with a parting wave and a reminder that dinner was promptly at seven. I knew she was lying (she and her mother were truly awful at punctuality) but I nodded and agreed, and went inside to shower and change before heading over.
“Where are you headed?” my dad asked, his eyes not leaving the paper in his hands, his reading glasses pushed down on his large nose.
“Alright. Have fun. Don’t do anything stupid.”
With a small salute, I left the house, shoving my hands in my pockets as I walked the short distance to Alice’s. The sun had already sunken beneath the tree line, a watercolor of oranges and purples darkening the sky. It had been a slightly cloudy day, the white fluffs dyed crimson, and the sky looked as if it had just burst into flames.
I took a deep breath as I stood on her doorstep. Just as I was about to knock, the red door swung forward, Alice’s smiling face directly in front of my clenched fist. I jumped slightly, pulling my hand back, and she just laughed. Alice was wearing a light green sundress, and it highlighted her features surprisingly; her grey eyes were brighter, her hair darker, her freckles more pronounced.
She looked fucking beautiful.
I cleared my throat, and she leaned against the door with her arm outstretched towards her home, beckoning me in. I smiled at her and entered.
The house looked just as I remembered, but I had never been further than the entryway on that day everything changed. He’s just trying to be your friend, Alice. And how things had altered since then. That was the beginning of it all, the day we transitioned from well-acquainted strangers to full-fledged friends, the day she had silently told me everything I already knew, the day we became more than just two people taking some trips before dawn.
I thought about last night, about Patrick, about the dreams that had swirled in my head all night long. The kisses and the way she smiled when I told her the truth. But those were dreams, and this was reality, and I had to fucking focus, damn it, because I couldn’t tell her. Not yet. You’re in love with her.
Physically shaking my head to clear my thoughts, I followed Alice through the kitchen into the dining room, where dinner was already set. I frowned. “I’m not late, am I?”
Alice laughed. “No, not at all. My mom is just ridiculously punctual when guests come over.” She paused. “Obviously, that doesn’t apply on normal occasions. Since we’re late literally anywhere we go.” A laugh.
“Sorry, sorry, I’m here,” Alice’s mother muttered, entering. Alice raised her eyebrows at me, as if to say, See? I smiled at her. “Cooper, I’m so glad we could finally have a normal conversation,” her mother continued. She ignored Alice’s reaction to her entrance. Ms. Baker looked up at me, and the sadness still present in those grey eyes that were so similar to Alice’s devastated me. And then, suddenly, it was Alice’s eyes, not her mother’s. My chest constricted, and I had to physically pause and inhale deeply. I blinked several times.
Then: “I agree, Ms. Baker.”
“Oh, please, call me Jen,” she said, waving away my words after shaking my hand.
I smiled at her, and she gestured for us to sit. Jen sat at the head, Alice to her left and me to her right, and we served ourselves. It was steak with potatoes and green beans. (“She wants to be European,” Alice explained. “Nothing but meat and potatoes.)
“Cooper, your mother is so lovely. We’ve had some really good talks,” Jen said as we dished out our food.
I nodded and chewed. “Yeah, she told me about those. She enjoys them too.”
“I’m glad. It’s nice to have a…” Jen paused, her face crinkling slightly. Alice watched her carefully. “A friend,” she finished, quieter. I smiled.
“She thinks you’re great. Really.”
Jen smiled at me, almost gratefully, and nodded. Alice winked at me. That damn wink. We were all silent for a brief moment, and I could hear the cars of the husbands and wives coming back from work. Their headlights would permeate the room every so often, the sun fully hibernated for the night, the sky melting from a deep indigo into an inky blackness. The first sight of stars was appearing, twinkling like little candles in the canvas of sky.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you something, as well, Cooper,” Jen’s voice started, her tone making me suspicious.
“Yes…?” I asked nervously. I looked at Alice and her brow was dented with confusion and wariness.
“Well, Alice told me that you knew about her… situation.” I nodded. “Right, well, I just wanted to thank you. Not just for understanding, but for being there in this time, because a lot of people haven’t. And when we first found out her -”
“Mom, that’s enough.” Alice’s voice was like a whip. It didn’t sound like her; it was curt and cold and afraid. It wasn’t Alice. I looked to her, a question in my eyes, but her own were trained on her mother pointedly. An uneasiness invaded my stomach as I watched the exchange, and I could practically feel the tension gripping my muscles.
“What?” Jen asked, genuinely confused. “I was just -”
“No, Mom. Let’s drop it, okay?” She quirked an eyebrow, easily severing the discussion with that simple movement. I could tell that Alice was speaking silently to her through her eyes, that this was something they didn’t want me to know. Or – that Alice didn’t want me to know. Yet, I reminded myself.
Jen seemed to understand very quickly, and a sadness overtook her face briefly. Then, recovering quickly, she smiled at me. “Who wants dessert?”
Jen had made a chocolate cake, which Alice warned me might be hazardous to my health, but I chanced it anyway. And she was right – it was awful. But her mother had made it, and I appreciated it, so I ate every last bite. Alice barely touched hers, and Jen had laughed at my disturbed facial expressions while eating it, but it didn’t matter; I was relaxed and genuinely happy there, for once in a very long time. I felt at ease amongst the lackluster furniture and warm-colored walls.
Dinner ended too soon for my liking, and I offered to clear the table and do the dishes, so Alice came in to help me. We stood in silence, me washing while she dried. (They didn’t have a dishwasher. “It’s too complicated,” Jen had said. “Besides, washing dishes is soothing.”) As I handed Alice one of the final plates, I asked quietly, “What didn’t you want your mom to tell me?”
She hesitated. I couldn’t tell if it was because she was afraid of the truth she was about to reveal, or because she didn’t want to tell me the truth in the first place. I had hoped we’d moved past the latter option; that, after everything we’d discussed at that point – her parents’ divorce, her abuse, her past, my bunnies-and-rainbows life – she would feel comfortable around me. I wanted that, for her, for me. I wanted her to trust me.
I wanted to hold her shoulders and scream that terrible truth in her face. “I’m falling in love with you, Alice.” I wanted to hold her face in my hands and look into her eyes so she knew it was true. I wanted her to see the truth in my gaze, to feel it in the way I clung to her face as if she were my last link to this earth. I was beginning to think that she was. That, after everything she had been through, after all that she had suffered, that I needed her – brokenness and all.
People pretend like scars are beautiful. They believe someone is going to come and kiss their bruises and bandage their broken parts, but that’s not true. And that’s not why I was falling for Alice. Her past – the horrors she had lived through – had come later, after the fact. I think I had started falling the day I met her. I would never forget that day, I was sure of it. And, Christ, I wanted to tell her all of that. I wanted her to know that. That I wasn’t falling for her because she was damaged and I thought it was beautiful, but because she was beautiful and I wanted to help her so she realized she was no longer damaged.
She cleared her throat, and murmured, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I nodded once, handing her the last dish, and after telling she and her mother goodnight, I left her house feeling slightly less hungry and slightly more heartbroken.
When I walked into my house, I collapsed against the door, my knees propping up my elbows and my head in my hands.
My mom entered, hearing the slam of the door, and she rushed forward to me, her eyes searching my body for signs of injury. “Honey? Are you alright? Are you hurt?” Her voice was frantic, and I wondered if she had been more worried about my hospital stint than she let on.
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” I muttered, rubbing at my eyes. Stop it. It’s just a girl.
Just promise me you won’t get messed up over this girl.
I don’t want to talk about it.
I could feel my mother’s presence, but she was drifting; I could feel my chest tightening again, my heart pounding harder than it should have been. She still didn’t trust me. Yes, it’d only been four weeks. Yes, we became close too quickly. But after everything else? Everything I knew, and believed, and accepted about her? After I held her hand and watched her sleep and saw her at her worst and her best?
It wasn’t just a girl. Alice Baker was a lot of things, but she was not that.
You are in love with her, Cooper.
I don’t want to talk about it.
There were words and images and they were flashing against my lids like some kind of morbid montage, and I couldn’t think or breathe, and I just wanted to cry and scream and yell at her. Yell at myself. I’m falling in love with Alice Baker. You are in love with her, Cooper.
“You don’t even know me,”I had said. Yet. And we knew each other now, we did. We were interconnected, our lives woven together intentionally or by fate, our futures and pasts and presents knotted like a shoestring. She wasn’t just any girl, and she didn’t think I was boring, and she was beautiful and I was ordinary, but we worked. She was wild and passionate.
She was everything I wanted and everything I couldn’t have.
“I’m not fine,” I stumbled out, my voice cracking as a determined tear fell away from my trembling hands. “I’m not fine.”
The razor was on the counter. Alice looked in the mirror, biting her lip, fingering her dark hair with trepidation. “I don’t know,” she murmured, looking to her mother’s reflection for confirmation. Her mother’s eyes – so similar to her own, she realized suddenly – were full of warmth and heartbreak. It killed Alice, to know she was causing that. After everything they’d been through, all the pain her mother had suffered, Alice thought this might be the worst type. And what she hated most was that she was the cause of it.
“Sweetheart, it’s not a bad idea,” she murmured, her hand placed on Alice’s shoulder. She was rubbing soothing circles into her skin, her eyes never leaving Alice’s. “Trust me.”
A sigh. “I do, Mom, but… no one will talk to me. No one will…” She hesitated, fought back the tears in her eyes. I am stronger than this. I am stronger than tears.
“Will what?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
The words cut through the silence sharply, and Alice could practically feel her mother’s anguish transmitting from her skin to Alice’s through her hand. Jen gave her a devastated look and, drooping her head, she turned Alice to face her.
“Alice Baker, you listen to me,” she said, her voice surprisingly firm for the tears wavering in her eyes. “You are beautiful. You are strong. You are brave. You are Scarlett, remember?”
Alice nodded, not even bothering to mask the sobs threatening to escape her throat. “And you will always be loved. One day, you are going to find someone who looks at you and doesn’t see the pain or the scars. They are going to look at you and see you, and then love you even more because of everything else.” Alice couldn’t stop nodding. Her face was crumpling and the tears had fallen, at that point, running down her face and making her chest heave.
“They will love you and you know what? You’re going to love them back. Because they’re going to be it for you. And you will be it for them.”
A throaty sob filled the room, and Alice clamped a hand over her mouth, shaking uncontrollably. Jen enveloped her in her arms, cocooning her against the pain of the outside world, holding her daughter’s head to her chest. After a moment, Jen pulled her thirteen year old daughter out to look into her eyes once again. She wiped away the tear stains, smiled at the red, puffy remains of her anguish.
Alice nodded again, once, and turned back towards the mirror. With quivering lips and terrified hands, she reached forward and turned the electronic razor on, handing it to her mother without looking away from her own reflection.
And Alice stood still, watching her beautiful dark hair fall in scraps to the floor around her. She let the tears fall, hopelessly and unabashedly, but she did not break. She was strong. She was brave.
And, fuck it all, she was beautiful.
When I woke up, I was on the couch, a blanket wrapped around me and a pillow beneath my head. I could feel a migraine pounding behind my eyes, and I rubbed them, frustrated. Then it all came back like a tsunami wave; it crashed over me, not slowly, but all at once.
And it was too much. Too many thoughts. So I did something either really stupid or really important. Perhaps both.
On tired legs, I stumbled off the couch and ignored the note on the counter from my mom, telling me she wanted to talk to me when she got home. I marched over to Alice’s house with groggy eyes and a half-severed heart, pounding on the door without a thought to the hour. I could hear yelling, and – in a moment of lucidity – thought perhaps I should leave.
But then the door flew open, Jen standing in the doorway with her hair disheveled and red-rimmed eyes. “I need to see Alice,” I said before I could stop the words from tumbling out.
“Cooper, I’m sorry, but not today.”
I was surprised by how firm her voice was; she was not going to back down, not going to coax Alice down from her room to forgive me. Instead, she sent a furtive glance to the living room, and I thought I saw a crumpled heap of a human sitting there, dark hair falling across her features like a curtain of secrets.
Because I realized that, now. It was more secrets. Too many secrets.
“I really need to see her.” I tried to make my stance clear, but Jen started closing the door, a sad look in her eyes and a pleading expression on her face.
“Cooper, please. Tomorrow. The next day. I don’t know. Just not today, okay?”
The red door slammed in my face, and I stumbled down the steps, sitting on the first one. I was dazed and confused and utterly lost, but the only viable thought permeating through the thick fog of my mind. In the midst of that mystery, there was only one clear image, and it was of the house directly in front of me.
I jumped up, ignoring the shouts I still heard slipping from the door behind me, and I walked directly to his house. My heart was pumping and my head pounding, and I hadn’t thought things through logically at all so far, so I figured, fuck it. It’s what Patrick would say, it’s what Alice would say, and if she wouldn’t talk to me, I would talk to him.
The door was loud beneath my thumping fist, and Patrick was at the door faster than I expected. He looked tousled and half-asleep, but the instant he saw me his eyes widened. “Shit,” he said. I nodded.
He opened the door wider, letting me enter. I walked straight through, barely acknowledging him, and went directly to where his room was. I could feel Patrick’s nervousness as he followed me, and I wondered if he was happy I was confiding in him or angry that I’d broken the promise (the one he knew I’d break). I sat myself on the bed, dropping my head into my hands. Patrick sat across from me, in the swivel chair near his desk, based on the squeaking I heard.
We sat in the dead quiet for a half a second. And then, with a defeated sigh, he said, “Tell it from the beginning.”
So I did. About everything, from start to finish, and all the in-betweens. Because, as we’ve established, that’s the best part.
I told him about the way it felt, that first meeting, and the way she’d winked at me. I told him about how she wouldn’t get out of my damn head, about how she’d told me stories of her childhood and her past and burdened me with her pain. I told him about how beautiful she was to me. I told him that he was right, that I was falling for her, and that I was getting messed up over her, like I’d promised I wouldn’t.
I talked until my throat was hoarse and my mind was fully functioning again, and Patrick listened. He sat there, silently with his arms crossed over his chest, an empty look on his face. He didn’t move, hardly breathed. He smirked slightly when I admitted he was right, and frowned again when I told him my promise was broken.
He ran a hand through his mussed up hair, sighing as he did so. “Shit.”
“You’re in love with her.”
“Oh my God, you are a fucking idiot.”
And Patrick stopped. He looked at me, cocking his head to the side, and smiled slightly. I could feel it, too, in that moment; our friendship rebuilding itself so naturally. We were always made to be friends. I knew that, deep down. But I was frustrated and (falling in) love, and I chose to ignore the blatantly obvious: that Patrick and I were made to be friends, and Alice and I were made to be something more.
I also realized that, somehow, the two began to coexist in my thoughts without violence and rage. And so I smiled back.
Patrick shook his head and said, “We’re both fucking idiots.”
“Yeah, well, at least you aren’t falling in love with a crazy person.”
I went home mid-afternoon (it was nine o’clock when I’d stormed over to Alice’s house, I learned later). My mom was still at work, but my father was sitting on the back porch with a beer in his hand. I joined him, sliding the glass door shut beside me, and took a seat next to him. “Isn’t it a little early?”
He shrugged. “It’s five o’clock somewhere, so they say.”
He laughed. “And what could possibly be troubling your little teenage mind?”
I ran a hand through my hair. “Promise you aren’t going to laugh.”
“We both know that’s not a very good way to start of a conversation,” he said with a wink. Alice’s face shot across my vision and I winced. Nodding, I murmured, “It’s about a girl.”
My dad nodded, too, with an expression as if he was the wisest man to speak to about such a subject. “Ah, young love. Tell me what happened. I’m assuming it’s with this Alice character your mother has been raving about for months?” I nodded. He smiled.
So I did. I started the same way I started with Patrick just a few hours before: from beginning to end. I told him everything. My dad was a good listener, and always had been; sometimes, in those moments, he seemed less of the hippy of his youth and more of a father. He nodded and smiled and frowned and sighed appropriately; his forehead creased with worry at the proper moments, and sometimes he just sat completely still, drinking in the words as he did the beer in his hand.
And the words came. They stumbled out on wobbly, unbalanced legs, throwing themselves at my father, gripping to his suit tie. They clung to the clouds and the air, and when I finished, they seemed to still in the silence. As I released a weary breath, the words evaporated, leaving nothing but my father and I sitting beneath a bruising sky.
“Son,” he murmured, “I think we may have a problem.”
I looked at him, my brow raised. “And?”
“I think you may be in love with this girl.”
He laughed, rubbing the back of his neck, and released a tired breath. “In all seriousness, though,” he said, his voice demanding attention, “I say give her time. Let her come to you. And if you’re too impatient, still give her time. Just wait a day or two, like Jen asked you to. Then go to her.”
I nodded, pinching the bridge of my noses.
“When did girls get so complicated?” I moaned.
My dad chuckled. “They’ve never been complicated, Cooper, and never will be. Men are just too daft to understand the simplicities that they believe them to be complex.”
She hated the machines. They whirred around her like the robots she’d seen in those science fiction films, and she was certain that at some point they would drop on her. She’d be crushed beneath her, her ribs and lungs broken completely, and they would all watch from that damn glass room as she slowly lost her breath.
That had yet to happen, of course, but Alice feared it nonetheless. The machine buzzed as it circled around her legs, and then going up the rest of her body, taking pictures as it went. Alice didn’t believe in God – she had ceased that silly child’s game long ago – but for that moment, she prayed. Sixteen was far too young, so young. She had so much left to do, to see, to be.
She thought of that boy, the one with the blonde hair and the blue eyes and the self-deprecating smile. She closed her eyes and let herself smile as his face came into view; the way he looked, laying in the grass beside her underneath a star-cloaked sky, the way he laughed in the car with her, the way he squeezed her hand tightly when she was terrified. She loved the way he looked at her, the way he trusted her, the way she trusted him.
She didn’t trust him with this, though. After everything she’d been through, dealt with, and seen, she couldn’t even bring herself to tell him about this one thing. Because how would he understand? How could he ever forgive her?
So it was for his sake that she prayed to that nonexistent God and every other deity she could remember. Let him stay ignorant. Let him stay happy. Let him be happy, please. I want him to be so, so happy.
“Alright, Alice, you’re done,” the voice on the microphone alerted her. She sat up, clutching her arms to her stomach as she maneuvered in the thin hospital gown that was drooping off her skinny shoulders. She got dressed and waited for the results, her mother by her side.
Alice couldn’t get his goddamn face out of her head. She felt this burning in her gut when she thought of him, and a smile found its way to her lips every time he was near her, and she didn’t understand what that meant. She didn’t know why he looked at her like she were the most magnificent thing he’d ever seen, or why she let herself be herself around him.
She didn’t quite get him, and she was a bit afraid, too. Because he was new and brilliant and scary, but he was perfect. But, fuck, she couldn’t tell him. Not this. Please, God, not this.
The waiting room was different from the first one she’d been in. At the time, she’d though her first waiting room to be so well-decorated, but she realized now how dated it was. This one was more modern, with pristine white coffee tables and posh magazines and stiff, leather chairs. The carpet was always clean and the woman behind the counter had the face of a horse and the personality of a skeleton. She couldn’t stand her. She couldn’t stand any of it.
She stood. (She was strong. She was brave. She was beautiful. She saw Cooper in the back of her brain.)
Evening bled into night, and the sky was more alive than usual. It was a full moon, the sphere of light casting a glow across the entire cul-de-sac, and I didn’t stop watching Alice’s house. I was aware that it was strange, and creepy, and I remembered one of our earliest conversations.
Any particular reason you were staring at my house like a lunatic?
Well, I fancy myself to be wildly in love with you.
She had smiled at me that day. She had smiled at me a lot of times, certainly, but it was that one that I remembered the most, the clearest; her arms on her window sill as she leaned on them, looking down at me, her hair tucked behind one hair and her teeth digging into her lip. And then she smiled, teeth still implanted into her already-dented lip (“It’s a bad habit,” she had said once, in passing). She was so beautiful. So broken and damaged and bruised, but beautiful nevertheless.
I wanted to tell her that. I needed to tell her that.
I was afraid she didn’t know any of those things that I believed. That she was beautiful and incredible and strong and determined and badass and a giver of zero fucks. That I was slowly (or was it?) falling in love with her.
I wondered if she was it for me. If she was the one I was going to be with, or if this would be a fleeting summer fling that would dissolve as school began, or the instant she moved again, or because she got bored of me. I was far too ordinary for her, certainly; she was ceaselessly interesting and clever and funny, and I was a hollow shell in comparison. Yet, she spent time around me, wanted to spend time around me.
I listened to the birds wake up, and the cars start. I watched the sun stretch its arms across the horizon, hugging the trees as it rose slowly, purposefully. I saw the parents leave for work, the children’s babysitters park in the driveways. I heard my own parents leave surreptitiously, trying to be quiet because they thought I was still asleep. I stared at Alice’s window, willing her to open the blinds, to look at me.
So, with a weary groan, I pulled myself out of bed and went to make breakfast. I sat at the table with a bowl of cereal, staring at the swirling flakes, knots tying my stomach over and over. The television was on some news channel with a balding man in a suit and tie with a solemn voice, talking about some healthcare reform or a murder two cities over or something else. It switched to a woman talking about weather with a smile too big for her face and a skirt too small for her legs. She was pointing to the storm clouds on the radar, indicating there was a ninety-percent chance of rain in the afternoon.
I moved like a dead man, my limbs dragging and my heart beating slowly. I got dressed. I took a look outside, noted the darkness of the clouds that were moving in to suffocate the sunlight. The face I saw in the mirror wasn’t me, couldn’t be me; not those dark bruises beneath the eyes, not that sallow skin. I shook my head, looking away, and made my way downstairs.
I inhaled deeply. With a fire in my gut and determination in my step, I walked across the road to the house with the red door, and knocked firmly.
Jen answered. She looked absolutely exhausted, her hair knotted and in a messy bun, her eyes even more tired than mine looked. Her smile was weak and unconvincing, and she ushered me in without a word. “Alice is upstairs,” she murmured, retreating to the kitchen. She wrapped her sweater tighter around her shoulders, and despite the heat outside she was shivering.
I walked carefully up the steps, the stairs creaking beneath my weight. Only one door was closed, and I figured it would be her room, so I knocked gently. Waiting less than a minute, I walked in. She was sitting on the bed in a sweatshirt I had given her one night in the theatre when she was freezing. I hadn’t realized she’d kept it. Her hair was messy but tucked behind both ears, revealing her tired eyes. She looked miserable, as if she was about to break to pieces beneath the weight of whatever burden she was carrying.
Seeing her broke my heart and rekindled my rage all at once.
“Alice, I want to know what the hell is going on.”
I was surprised by how firm I made my voice, even as my hands trembled by my sides. She looked so tiny as she sat on her bed, her hair unkempt around her face and an unknown fear lodged in the corner of her silver eyes. “Cooper, I don’t -”
“There’s something you aren’t telling me,” I interrupted. “Tell me.”
She sighed heavily, biting down on her lower lip. “Fine. Fine.” She sighed again and ran a hand through her hair. I sat down in a chair across from her. She seemed to struggle with how to start, her mouth opening and closing several times before she let out a frustrated whine and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she cleared her throat, and began.
“When I was twelve, I was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer. It’s called Ewing’s Sarcoma.” Alice looked at me, forcing my eyes to stare directly at hers. I could feel the air already constricting in my lungs. “They told me it was treatable, it was fixable. And so I did months of chemo and radiation on my leg, where the tumor was, and I started to go into remission.”
Alice’s eyes never left mine. The dread started crawling up my spine, making my hands shake and my body shiver. I hated how eerily calm she sounded. It was just cancer. It was just chemo.
“I went back for my monthly checkup three weeks ago. They got the results back a few days ago. The cancer is back, and it metastasized to my brain. They… they use this machine, where you drink this dye and wherever the dye can be seen is where the cancer is. My brain… it looked like a giant hotspot.”
Her voice started to quiver, and there was sheer terror in her eyes as she watched my reaction.
“So what does that mean?” I asked, my voice quiet.
“It means that I’m dying, Cooper.”
A pregnant pause. The shattering sound of realization. And then pain.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
I stared at her; she had lied to me. Or at least, omitted the truth. She had let me get close and attached and she was dying. Almost dead. She hadn’t wanted to tell me, and I had pushed and pushed only to get an answer I didn’t want, a skeleton I hadn’t wanted to dig up. And then I realized.
I was falling in love with a girl who was halfway to her grave.
“I just…” I stammered, gracelessly getting to my feet. There were tears in her eyes, and I had never seen her cry; never wanted to see her cry. She was so much stronger than tears. And I was the reason they were coming now. What did that say about me? About her?
“I just need a little bit… a little bit of time.”
And without another word, without a second glance, I left her on her bed, the tear tracks running down her face like twin rivers.
I couldn’t get her face out of my mind – how broken she looked, sitting on the bed, alone with her grief surrounding her like a barricade. A barricade between the two of us.
I had let her down. I knew that. But I was sixteen, and I was an immature boy, and I was an asshole, so I had left her to drown in her own misery while I sorted out my priorities. And I fucking hated myself. You have to believe that I did.
The first place I went was Patrick’s house. He saw me coming, he saw my face, and he grabbed me and pulled me into his house without a word. He sat me down on the couch, gripping my shoulders while my still-shaking hands clutched at my face. The tears were coming, now, and they weren’t stopping. My chest was heaving, wracked with sobs that I tried to choke down.
Finally, Patrick murmured, “Stop.”
And I knew what he was saying. So I let my hands drop from my face, let the sobs overtake me, let myself wallow in the grief and the anger and betrayal and the complete pain that had overridden every other emotion or thought. Cancer was the word they spoke in hushed tones; it was whispered behind hands and followed by a sigh of pity or a sympathetic pat of the hand. It was a horror story lived out by thousands of other people, but not me. Not here. Not in this small-ass town where nothing happens.
But anything could happen here. And that was the point, wasn’t it? Cancer was not picky about its victims; it did not discriminate against race or gender or age. It was evil and parasitic, it ate away at the victim. It made them pump their bodies full of chemicals that made them feel like shit and lose their hair, only to have it reappear in some other part of the body.
That’s what had happened to Alice. She had been dealt the black card. She was sixteen years old and could count down the days she had left with accuracy. She was sixteen years old and had barely seen the world, barely experienced anything. She was so much more than everyone else, anyone else, I’d ever met, and yet she was the one chosen to be taken prematurely.
It reminded me of the image I’d always had of God, the one of him standing above a great big stage with his puppeteer strings dancing around, moving us to the whims of his will. And how the hell could this be merciful or just? How could those people in their big white church with their placid faces justify this to me?
“She’s going to die,” I stammered, after a long while, the phantoms of my anguish crisscrossing my face. My voice was hoarse and quiet, the word hardly above a whisper. But Patrick heard it. Of course he did. And he fell backwards, onto the seat behind him. He stared at me, his mouth agape and his hands sitting uselessly by his sides.
“She’s going to die,” I repeated, looking at him in the eyes, finally. He met mine, and I could see the echoes of remorse and pity tucked into the corners of his eyes. “What the fuck am I going to do when she dies?” I asked. I felt heavy, exhausted, physically less already by the idea of being without her.
The world seemed to slow completely until it was nothing but the two of us, sitting in that room, the truth scattered around our hearts and brains. I could almost see the tattered remains of my heart sitting on the floor in front of me, burnt and
She had heard the phone ring an hour ago, and her mother had nearly sprinted to retrieve it before Alice could even get her hands close to it. Frustrated and impatient, Alice sat against the wall outside the kitchen, listening to her mother’s conversation with the doctor. After years of practice, though, it was so easy for her to control her voice; she could be sobbing in the other room, and Alice would still hear the polite, “Okay, thank you for calling,” as she hung up.
And so she sat, her ears perked to listen, but she heard nothing but silence. It was almost more terrifying than words, that stillness; it was a ringing in her ears, as if even silence couldn’t stand the lack of nothingness in the room. “Thank you,” she heard, but her mother sounded weak.
She knew at that precise moment what her mother was going to tell her.
Jen came into the dining room, where Alice’s back was pressed against the beige-colored wall. She peered up at her mother and noted the tear tracks down her face, her quivering lip, her trembling hands. Her face was utterly still, besides that, her body not moving as she stared down at her only child, the only person she could possibly care about any longer.
Alice stood up slowly in front of her mother, and then, slightly nervous, embraced her in a hug. Her mother didn’t respond for a fraction of a second. But with shaky, tight arms, she grabbed Alice to her as if she were her sole lifeline to the earth (Jen thought she just might be). Her nails dug into the fabric of Alice’s t-shirt, her left hand stroking her dark hair while she sobbed into her shoulder.
Alice couldn’t let herself cry. Not yet, not now.
She broke away from her mother, and started to walk to the other room. She needed to be alone; she needed solace, time. She wanted to come to peace with her inevitable fate.
“Alice, do you want to talk - ”
“Mom, this is really not the time -”
“I don’t want your help! I’m dying, Mom! I…” Alice was yelling and panting, the anxiety suddenly choking her. She collapsed on the couch behind her, burying her face in her hands.
Just then, a knock on the door cut through the tension. Alice’s head shot up briefly while Jen answered the door. She could hear his voice, his beautiful fucking voice, and she wanted him, in that moment. But he didn’t know – couldn’t know, not know. And she felt worse, at that thought. She wanted to tell him so desperately, if only so he could hold her and let her cry.
But that would be so selfish of her, too selfish. She wanted him to remember the fun and intelligent and witty girl he thought her to be. She wanted him to see her as the girl whose hand he held beneath a star-studded sky in the dead of night. She didn’t want him to think of hospitals and tubes and sickness when he looked at her, or thought of her.
Jen closed the door, leaning against it. “You should tell him,” she murmured.
“I can’t, Mom. I can’t.” She stormed upstairs and slammed the door before crumpling on her bed in her tears.
Those six words had barely stumbled out of my mouth before I knew the answer to them. Not to the essential end of that question, of course, but to the beginning of it. I needed to focus on the present. On what I could do right now.
So I stood up and wiped my eyes, and I threw the door open. It was nearing late-afternoon, the world as dark as night. It was raining. It was the only thought registering in my thundering head as I approached her door, soaked to the bone. I banged on the door; the late hour didn’t even register in my mind.
She opened the door, her dark hair pulled into a ponytail, a tired expression on her face. I couldn’t see it, in her eyes; the sickness wasn’t there. I tried and failed to grasp it, the idea that in a few weeks, she would be gone. And I’d be alone. Again.
She stared and I noticed her hand start to tremble.
“I’m here. For you. With you. You and me; we’re in this together, okay?”
And for the second time in one day, I saw Alice Baker cry. But this time, instead of walking away, I clutched her to my chest and absorbed her pain; took her tears and her anguish and put them inside myself instead.
Because that’s what you do when you love someone. You take it for them. Their suffering is your suffering – except it’s ten times worse.
She brought me into her house, and I sat on the couch with her. I held her hand while she cried. I didn’t do anything else. I sat there, unmoving, with her trembling frame tucked next to mine, her face buried in my shoulder and her tiny fingers gripping my own as though I were her her last grip to reality. She looked up at me, finally, raising her head in slow motion. Her lips quivered; there were half-dried lines running down her face.
I wondered how she could do that; how, even in the wreckage of her grief, she could manage to look so beautiful with her eyelashes fluttering between the teardrops and her ruined lips parted slightly. It’s the best way I can describe her, today; her dignity and pride destroyed in a pile at her feet, but a brave spark still lodged in those silver eyes of hers.
And I almost leaned in – I almost touched my lips to hers, sealed my unspoken promise forever. I almost tucked that unruly strand of hair behind her ear. I almost moved so close that I could feel her breath against my face.
But instead, I reached up and wiped the tear stains from her cheeks. I squeezed her hand. And then, with a sigh, I pulled her into my lap and let her fall asleep.
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