Lux

I close my eyes again, and the heavyheavyweight presses on my lungs again, and I can’t breathe, and I don’t want to.

I trudge down the hall to my brother’s room and I stand in front of the door.

I stare at the wood, at the grain, at the indention, at the handle. I don’t want to open it because I know what I’ll find.

But I have to. I have to see it.

Reaching down, I turn the knob.

The door creaks open, revealing what my heart knew I’d find.

An empty room.

The bed is still there, neatly made. Fi

But he’s not coming back.

I grab his shoes, his smelly boy shoes and I clutch them to my chest and I sink into his smelly boy bed and I’m numb. I stare at the wall without seeing it, at the posters without registering the faces. I’m wood, I’m stone, I’m brick. I don’t feel. I don’t feel. Nothing can hurt me.

I’m like this for a while, until

Little

By

Little,

Sounds begin to filter into my consciousness, and there’s water. Ru

Wait.

My head yanks up as Fi

“Calla! What are you doing in here? And why do you have my shoes?”

I faint.

Or I think I faint.

When I open my eyes again, Fi

“Are you ok?” he asks, and his blue eyes are worried.

“Yeah,” I manage to say, once I’m over the shock of being seated next to my dead but now alive brother. “I think so.”

Mybrotherisalive

Mybrotherisalive

He’s alive.

He’s holding my hand.

I shake my head and try to drive the nonsense out, and suddenly, everything is clear for the first time in a long long time. I can think without murk, without voices.

What the hell?

Sabine’s words come back to me You have to choose, You have to choose.

Last night before bed, I’d chosen Fi

Did I do this?

It’s not possible.

Did I do this?

Fi

“For?” I arch an eyebrow.

He’s quiet and still, I remember the accident, and a heavy sense of foreboding slams into me right before he answers.

“For mom’s funeral.”

Oh.

God.

My mother is dead and my memory has holes.

I somehow trip down to my room and put on a black dress, and I somehow trip down the stairs with my brother and sit in the family section of the chapel, and my dad holds my hand.

The casket is white and there are star-gazers on it, and the lid is closed.

Someone reads a poem, then another.

Someone else speaks about angels and Heaven.

My dad cries silently.

Fi

I’m numb.

Because I thought mom was in the hospital and Fi

Only Fi

You

Have

To

Choose.

Reality isn’t real.

Like always.

The music plays as they roll the casket out, down the long aisle, as if my mother is on parade, her last parade.

We stand and the funeral-goers file past us, one by one by one.

I’m sorry for your loss.

Heaven has gained another angel.

If you need anything, just call.

All trite words from people who don’t know what else to say.

And then someone new stands in front of me. His eyes are dark, his hair is dark, his body is lean. He’s wearing a black suit just like all of them, but he’s wearing a silver ring, and it gleams in the sunlight, and something something something ripples through me, but I don’t know what it is.

“I’m so sorry,” he tells me, and he’s got a British accent.

I feel the strangest feeling in the pit of my stomach as he shakes my hand, as he touches me and there’s electricity, but I brush it away because I don’t know him and he doesn’t matter. Only Fi

The stranger passes through the line and I turn to the next visitor, and the next and the next and the next.

The day is exhausting.

The day is never-ending.

I lean my head on the family car window as we drive home from the cemetery. We’re surrounded by all things green and alive, by pine trees and bracken and lush forest greenery. The vibrant green stretches across the vast lawns, through the flowered gardens, and lasts right up until you get to the cliffs, where it finally and abruptly turns reddish and clay.

I guess that’s pretty good symbolism, actually. Green means alive and red means dangerous. Red is jagged cliffs, warning lights, splattered blood. But green… green is trees and apples and clover.

“How do you say green in Latin?” I ask Fi

“Viridem,” he answers.

And then something else occurs to me, something out of the blue.

“What does Quid Pro Quo mean?”

Fi

“No reason,” I answer, but my heart is pound, pound, pounding. Over and over. Because something for something. Did I give something to get something?

ThumpThump,ThumpThump.

I trudge up to my room and drop into bed without even showering.

I feel a thousand pounds of guilt on my chest because I only have one thought, one thought that makes my chest tighten and constrict and pound.

I love my mom,

I love my mom

I love my mom.

But thank God it wasn’t Fi

Quid pro quo.

Chapter Eighteen

I wait at the hospital for Fi

It’s nothing I can explain,

It’s nothing I can understand.

Ever since I thought he died, ever since we buried my mom, Fi

I don’t know why.

I’m just thankful that he’s alive.

So while I wait for him, because I’d drive him here every day for the rest of my life in gratitude that he’s alive, I read my book, I listen to my music, I close my eyes.