Keeping Up With the Wind: A 'Burban Tale by Suleyma Moon

31.

            I'm still not ready to talk about Li'l Jay's funeral, even after all this time.

I will say this, though. When we were all putting flowers on the kid's coffin, I looked up just in time to catch a glimpse of someone very familiar disappearing around a tree and leaving the cemetery. He was dressed in all black. I wondered if the guy, assuming that he really was who I thought he was, knew that after he left everything fell apart.

I also wondered if he knew that shortly after the funeral, I collapsed and had to be hospitalized and treated for a nervous breakdown. Ironically, I was put in the same psychiatric ward that they had taken Whisper to so many years before.

            Sometimes I even wonder if I actually saw anyone at all.

I could have just wanted to have someone, anyone, there with me at Li'l Jay's funeral so badly that I had created a mystery guest in my own mind.

Unfortunately, I'm not too sure about a whole lot these days. I feel old. Way too old to be as young as I am.

But I do know this. If the guy that I saw was real, then I actually did catch a glimpse of his eyes, and they were beautiful. There was only one other kid that I had ever seen with eyes that icy blue, and he had been murdered a short time before.

            Li'l Jay's parents eventually moved away, too, and after a while I realized that my father was never coming back. I won't bore you with the tiny details of the next few years of my life.

Let's just say that one day I walked out of my front door and never looked back.

And that's how I ended up way out here...in the middle of nowhere. I'm surprised you found me.  

Anyway, after my little breakdown, I eventually got over myself, pulled the needles out of my hands and walked right out of that hospital in broad daylight. No joke. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. Who knew it would be so easy to sneak out of a hospital...and get on with my life? 

            That's really when I decided to leave Alameda for good. It's kinda nice out here, though. The desert is exactly like Faith told us it would be. I don't even have nightmares like I used to. Well, not as many anyway. 

Still, as much as I miss my friends, I try not to be around people too much since moving out here to the desert. I don't want them asking a whole lot of questions about who I am, where I came from or how I got here.

It does get kind of lonely, though, sitting around, bored out of my mind, trying not to think about what brought me here in the first place...

You know something? Remember when I said earlier that people are always better off without friends? I think maybe I was wrong. It hurts being all alone, it really does. It seems to me that people weren't made to be alone all the time.

I'd give anything to have just one of my friends back. Anything. And I'd give double just to see Li'l Jay's crooked, reckless smile one more time.

            I can empathize much more with Faith these days, too, and regret every moment that I didn't spend with her in that lonely, lonely hospital room.

But let's not get back on that again.

            When I think about them, the family that I lost, it breaks my heart into a thousand pieces to know that I never once told any of them that I loved them when I had the chance.

But it's too late to think about that now.

They're all gone.

            That's why I kind of envy you. You still have the chance. Don't blow it like I did...especially since there's no guarantee that they'll still be around to hear what you want to say to them tomorrow.

The only thing that is guaranteed, really, is that sooner or later, all you're going to have left of that person...or of any of anyone, really... is a fading memory.

Believe me, I know. 

            But I don't want to lead you too deep into this ditch with me. Ace taught me better than that. So let me tell you one more thing before you go.

You never got to hear that story.

You know, the one that Faith never got to finish? The one that always made my little blue jay's eyes light up?

            Now, I won't be able to tell it anywhere near as well as Faith used to, and I definitely can't tell it like Paw Paw, but I'm pretty sure that it always started something like this...