The In Between

Chapter 28

Chapter 28

Tara

This is the very first time I’ve thought about being like him—my father. He could pick up and leave everything behind. Start over. Maybe I could do the same Maybe if I left this world I would find Justin, waiting for me.

But that isn’t right. Mom and Meg would never recover. And I would have done something that I could never take back. So I guess I’m not the same.

Anyway, there’s no guarantee I’d end up where Justin was, especially since I’d be taking an express route to the afterlife that he hadn’t chosen for himself. Maybe that’s what stopped me. Maybe that’s why he stopped me.

I press my cheek against the stone. It is soaked with my tears.

He was here. I know he was here.

Justin was here.

It’s not possible.

It can’t be. 

And yet …

It says it right there: Forever. It’s his handwriting. I know it from homework and from the pieces of songs he used to leave for me. Whether he wrote it before he died or not, he wrote it. Forever.

Forever, Justin is telling me.

Now I believe, more than I’ve ever believed anything before, that Justin was in my room this morning in my dream, and that Justin is here now, trying to reach out. To save me.

My skin tingles and my breath is shallow as I trace the heart with my fingertips— our heart. My hand shakes as I go over the letters once more. Forever. I turn my head, bend down, and kiss the word Justin has carved, my lips lingering on each curve and scroll.

Excitement, thrilling and jittery, burns like a storm inside me. I stand up and stare out at the quarry. I want to cry out to the landscape of stones, I want to sing to the very air, charged. I am changed—forever.

Justin was here.

I jump up and down, unable to contain my exhilaration. I am bubbling with it, shaking with it, dizzy with it, glad, glad, glad of it. Justin, Justin, Justin. We are not separated; not totally, not now. We never could be. 

If only there was someone to show it to, someone to say, “Yes, yes, I see it, too.”  I dig my cell phone out of my backpack and take a picture of the carved heart, the frail white lines of the etching faint but visible.

The day’s light is beginning to fade, taking on a gray overcast pallor, a premonition of the coming winter. I pull my sweater tighter against the chill, putting off the moment when I have to get on my bike and ride back. I would stay here all night if I could. I would never leave.

At last, I gather my things, glancing back only once, letting my eyes linger on the etching. I climb on my bike and ride back to town, my phone stashed in my back pocket like a secret talisman. I reach in and touch it as I pedal, feeling relief and disbelief, awe and acceptance.  Of course he was here, of course, nothing could keep us apart.

I ride down Garrity Street, noticing for the first time that all the leaves are gone. I’ve been living walled off by grief, unable to see, and now suddenly everything is in sharp relief, shimmering even in the dusk. The tall oak trees are barren, their branches poised like pieces of sculpture against the sky. The lights are on at Gabby’s house and I turn into her driveway, leaning my bike against the closed garage. I have to tell her, I have to tell someone. I am exploding with it.

Mrs. Michaels answers the door, smiling with surprise when she sees me. “Tara.”  She kisses me hello. “How are you?” She has intense dark brown eyes that absorb every detail. Nothing gets by her. Mrs. Michaels is a woman of great enthusiasms and passions.  Unfortunately for Gabby, an only child, much of that fierce energy is focused laser-like on her. My mom may be anxious about safety (alright, that’s an understatement) and things like that, but she’s either too busy or too tired to care about precisely what is on our homework assignments or how well we have executed them. As long as it’s done, she’s good. Mrs. Michaels, on the other hand, has been known to argue with Gabby’s teachers if she doesn’t agree with their comments about her daughter’s use of metaphors. It would drive me nuts, but Gabby only occasionally complains. Then again, she is a perfectionist. Whether this is an inherited characteristic or some kind of defense mechanism she has developed, I couldn’t tell you. The whole nature/nurture thing has always made my head spin. Bottom line: Gabby’s parents notice everything. And so does she.