Open My Eyes

Bonus Scene 3: Irony

a/n: these bonus scenes aren't a part of the novel itself, but i thought it would be fun to write some extra stuff with the characters!

this third (and probably final) bonus scene, i originally was not going to write. i hadn't even planned it. But after writing the first bonus scene with Vanessa, i ended up falling in love with Jake's character (if you have no idea who i'm talking about, check out the first bonus scene: Vanessa). i wanted to explore his character a little more, and decided to write this next bonus scene!

and, uh, this bonus scene is sad. Just an FYI.

irony

Adults liked to say that teenagers didn't know what love truly was. But as her casket lowered farther and farther into the ground, Jake had to disagree. Nothing else could describe what he was feeling except love.

He could hear her mother bawling beside him, could hear the kids of Hope and Miracles asking questions with no answers and sobbing. Her mother gripped his hand in a vice, and he wondered if he was the only thing keeping her upright.

It was funny. Here he was, watching handfuls of dirt cover the casket of his first love. And instead of lamenting the earth-shattering loss, he was thinking about the first time they went down to the river.

It wasn't a particularly outstanding memory. It was just the two of them, feet in the flowing, dirty water. It had been a cold day—the breeze was a bitch. Jake shivered but played it off, while Nessie talked endlessly. In part to ward off the numbing of her lips, and in another part because that was Nessie. Everything about her was endless.

"I don't think there's such a thing as a cure to everything," she had said matter-of-factly. "The science won't ever catch up. Because our bodies will evolve and our cells will fight back and with every cure, there'll be another disease, another cancer, another fruitless battle."

"How optimistic of you."

And she laughed. Her hair bounced whenever she laughed.

That was what attracted him to her in the first place. He had a thing for redheads, and her hair was fire. He realized shortly after meeting her that she was fire too.

Someone shoveled piles of dirt over the birch casket. A part of him had wished they'd cremated her: sent her off in fire, the same way she had lived her life.

Her mother's nails dug through her gloves into his hand. He winced. But he figured that small, sharp pain was nothing compared to the pain her mother was experiencing as her only daughter disappeared under the topsoil.

A part of him wondered why he wasn't crying. He should have been crying, right? He was surrounded by weeping friends, the heavy tears of lamenting family members—the broken lives of everyone Vanessa Height had touched. Maybe even fixed.

Jake liked to think that maybe she had fixed his life.

The crowds dissipated, trudging back to their cars with their heads lowered and eyes puffy. One girl with blonde hair and ocean-green eyes (was her name Angelina? Angela? Angel?) tossed the bouquet of dandelions she had collected throughout the ceremony onto the dirt piled atop the casket. It had been odd, watching this little girl pluck dandelions out of a cemetery while everyone else sobbed and sniffled and hiccupped.

Jake and Nessie's mom stood at the grave for a long time. He wasn't sure how long. The mourners had long left, the cars cleared from the streets—even those that tended the cemetery hadn't wandered into his line of sight for quite some time.