Writer Games | Death Wish & 51

Task Seven: Epilogue /F - Kara Travis

"Is white bread okay?"

"Always better than wholemeal kind."

Lincoln digs into the  bag and pulls out a slice, slathering it with butter and jam. When done,  he folds it across the middle and hands it to me.

"Thank you," I say with a  beam. "Want any?" Lincoln leans over to take a bite, but not before I  pull it away and dig my teeth into the bread.

Looking a little sad, he  turns away while shaking his head. "When I asked you to be my  girlfriend, I should've known this would happen."

"Cheer up," I say, throwing a bag of half-eaten junk food at him. "You can have my chips."

To say the least, it's a  beautiful day. The sky above is obscured only by the occasional cloud  rolling by, the sea behind us a glistening blue. Sparrows with puffy  chests splash about a bird bath, some preferring instead to peck at the  fresh water. A few of the more daring ones fly over, hopping around to  catch our crumbs. What we consider a cemetery is a playground to them.

As the birds eat their  fills one by one, they fly off towards the neighbouring trees. I watch  them leave, then turn my attention back to Kerry's gravestone. Laid upon  it are a few stalks of flowers, their petals browning at the edges. It  must've been a few days since her family came to commemorate her death  anniversary. Beside those are a couple of fresh ones—the pink carnation  from Lincoln and the red rose from me.

"Pringles or Lay's?"

"Pringles."

As I hand Lincoln a new  can, I think about the last time we came. That was eight months ago,  about three months after the burial. It was the same as it is now, the  two of us munching on tidbits as we talked and reminisced. That day, we  made an agreement to come here on the weekend after her death  anniversary every year. It's partially an excuse to pig out on junk food  in a partially-creepy setting.

Just a few days ago,  channels all over the world were airing Area 51 specials and newspaper  fronts were covered in our names. I got back from school and turned on  the television to find our latest interview streaming on Discovery. For  the first couple of months after we left the Area, life was a flurry of  activity. The five of us were swamped with appointments, and interviews  were conducted nearly everyday for weeks. Once a girl of about ten years  old walked up to me and asked for my autograph, which honestly stunned  me for a few moments. I replied to that with, "I don't think that's  something you'd want, to be honest," and turned on my heel with my head  reeling. The activity had pretty much died down afterwards until the  commemorative anniversary crept closer.

Last Friday, I met  Lincoln at our nearby Starbucks for morning coffee before we set off  together for the recording studio a few miles away. By the time we  stepped through the double doors, Lincoln was all jittery and bumbling  with nerves, which rendered a few prods in the ribs from me in a cruel  attempt to chase his fear away. It hadn't subsided by the time we were  to head in. Pulling him up, I wrapped my arms around him and placed my  head on his chest till I heard his heart rate slow to a steady lub dub  before pulling away allowing the escort to rush us in after the others.

During our first  interview, I distinctly remember that Maya Cress asked us if Linc and I  were dating. Back then, it was a tough question for us because we  ourselves didn't have an answer. This time, the question was altered to  "What is it like for the two of you as a couple?"

Hearing that, Lincoln's  face went red—a sign of Awkwardness Mode being activated. He took about a  minute trying to avoid the question and stammering out answers before  finally saying, "It's...actually really nice dating Kara." I remember  the way he rubbed his neck nervously and wrung his hands, trying to find  the right words. "She's the most irritable person I know, but also the  most supportive. She's...she's the reason I know how to be myself, in  fact. She has her moods, but she also has her moments."

I laughed, my own face  slowly heating up. "It's really nice dating Lincoln, too," I say. "I get  to annoy him a lot and watch him stress over my grades the way I  imagine a mother would. A girl's dream, basically."

The interview continued  with questions about Astrophysics, Linc's engineering job, my schooling,  Amari's therapy process and even Tegan. Meeting Amari for the first  time in months left my eyes ringed with red. When I last saw her, she  was still in tatters. Her nails were constantly dug into her palms and  she wasn't at ease for even a second. Of course, it'll be a while before  she's finally free of her past self, but at least I know that she's  better now. The warm glow has returned to her eyes, and so has the  fondness in her tone as she talks about Tegan. Apart from the occasional  nervous tic, the only thing that stays is the nail marks across her  skin. Scars might never fade, but strength doesn't either.

Pictures. Those on the  other hand, may fade. I once spent time reflecting on the cliche use of  pictures as metaphors of our lives and discovered the amount of truth  backing that idea. We're the photographers of our lives. The cameras are  in our hands. We take as many pictures as we want, we print those we  fancy. We slot them into albums for remembrance, but sometimes, we  forget. Sometimes we chuck our albums into storerooms and allow dust to  settle upon them till we forget that we ever used that camera. After  time, we start to look back. We brush the dust from the covers and try  to remember. Some pictures fade with age. By the time we want to look  back at them, they're gone.

I treasure my pictures  while they last. Every time I can, I pull my albums from the storeroom  and flip through their pages. I live my life over and over because I  there's nothing I'm willing to forget.

Looking back at Kerry's  gravestone, I think about the times we spent in the Area. How many  pictures did Kerry take? What memories did she make? I haven't seen her  in a year, and I'll never see her again. Slowly, my pictures of her will  fade.

30th January 1988–18th June 2016

Wherever there is bad news, there's good news. Even though the best pictures may fade over time, the best memories never will.

There's one thing I've  started to believe and it's that life isn't fair. However, the universe  is. We operate under the universal rule that the more we do, the more we  get. The more we fail, the more we learn. The more we live, the more  memories we make. I've had my fair share of failures, failures that I  used to let bring me down. They still hinder me, of course. After all,  I'm still learning to bounce back up after I fall. I'm not all good at  it but I'm working towards being better.

I didn't have an  advantageous start. I was thrown from foster home to foster home because  I could never adapt. I failed exams because I didn't care. But I've  learned that my past is not equivalent to my future and in order for  things to change, I myself must change first. Living by these rules is  what pushed me to fulfill my promise to Lincoln. It's the reason I work  hard now.

On every gravestone,  there's a line. It sits between the day you were born and the day you  die. What does it represent? It represents your life. How you want your  line to be, what you want it to mean, is up to you. We choose the number  of good memories we want, and I choose to have many.