Along the Way

Epilogue

I lie awake beside Alex, who was happily asleep my this point. It was about 3 am and I couldn’t sleep. No particular reason, I just simply wasn’t tired. I get up out of bed and walked outside. My long hair blew in the wind as I took a seat in the grass.

Alex and I lived together now, in a nice house far away from civilization. We loved venturing out whenever we needed something. After our journey 10 years ago, Alex and I couldn’t stay away from adventure. We always went out to explore the woods on our free time, even though we weren’t allowed to after both of our parents restricted us from going anywhere but to school.

I had gotten better at climbing out my window and Alex wasn’t afraid to climb out of hers. All the memories of the journey stayed fresh in my mind, and sometimes, I wonder what would happen if I did things differently.

What if I didn’t bring my uke? What if I never got involved in the
Undergrounds? What if Alex and I didn’t climb out of that hospital window?

What if we never went on the journey?

Sometimes I wonder what ever happened to Lenny as well. He had a great impact on me, my life, and that journey all together. I hope he’s doing well. Maybe he’s still a trainer, he was a great one. Maybe he moved on, settled down with someone, started a family, who knows. To this day, I still have the business card and the card he gave me with his information on it before he exited my life.

I lay my head down in the grass beneath me, gazing at the stars. I didn’t want to wake up ALex at this time of night, but I knew she’d love this. I also knew she loved sleep, so I didn’t want to awake her so unexpectedly. One of these days, we will lay under the stars again and remember why we’re here, how we ended up this way.

The stars twinkle around the moon, contrasting the dark sky. It reminded me of all the times Alex and I gazed at the stars along the way. Every shooting star we saw, came right from the very sky I was staring upon in this moment. Every phase of the moon that passed, was the same moon I gazed apon now. Every detail, every constellation, was all in the same sky from 10 years ago. The same sky that gave me hope with every shooting star, every wish.

Everything I did these days I compared to that one specific trip. It was a huge part of my life now, and I remember every detail. The sights, the smells, the feel of the ground, the rain, the benches we sat upon. The feel of Alex’s head against my shoulder when we sat down for a rest, every adrenaline that pumped through my chest. The first kiss we shared.

After awhile, I decided to go back inside. I walked into the spare room of our house where we kept my guitars and Alex’s art things. I closed the door behind me quietly and studied the walls. On the walls hung many things. My bass guitar that I played in the Remover concert that they gave to me, my old acoustic guitar that I played as a teenager, and my ukulele. Covering the rest of the wall space were many paintings and sketches from Alex.

She decided to take up art, wanting to draw out everything we saw on our trip, and draw things from adventures to come. There were things from sketches of animals we saw to paintings of the landscape in the different states. Some of them were incredibly basic, but still great, and some were extremely thought out and completely covered the canvas. Some had no color other than a pencil and others had paint covering the entire work. There were a few paintings of me up there too, some that I didn’t realize were in there before.

I walk up closer to one in particular. It was a stunning painting, capturing all of my features. It was of me playing my ukulele in the back lot of the theater, right before the band showed up. I could see the bits of sadness that scurried across my face, but there was much concentration as well. You could see how I got lost in the music I was playing. I don’t know how she did it, but she captured everything I was feeling in that one painting. It was truly amazing.

I sat down at the small desk in the corner of the room. We had a typewriter sitting on the desk, but neither Alex or I ever had a reason to use it. I grabbed a stack of paper from a box underneath the desk, it was the paper Alex normally used for sketching if she didn’t have her notebook, but I’ll buy her more another time. I set a piece in the typewriter and sat for a long moment.

I wanted to write for some reason, it just felt right. I didn’t know what to write though. There were so many things I could write, but I didn’t know how to even begin. I had the power to write anything I wanted, anything. It was overwhelming, yes, but it was also amazing.

I pondered for a great deal of time before typing out the first paragraph.

Have you ever wondered what it's like to be at a park after hours? Well, let me tell you. The swings creak in the soft wind that blows in the night, the merry-go-round slightly turns with the wind. The slides are as quiet as can be and the left over, murky water in the pool slushes around with every breeze that passes by.