It is not like being gone—like my real parents or the nuns or people in the cities we had to leave—because gone implies that you can come back if you really want to. Contrary to what I may have been taught, there’s no coming back from death. Not really. Someday, I’ll die for good. And then I’ll be like Audrey.
Not gone.
Dead.
I shudder at the thought, and Matt squeezes my hand tighter.
I look back to earth and the gravesite. Only then do I realize that Matt and I are alone. I look at him.
His eyes are on me.
“Hi,” he says, as if he’s seeing me for the first time. He looks down at our clasped hands and smiles, and then moves his gaze back to my eyes.
“Hi,” I say back to the boy I never want to leave.
“I’m really sorry,” Matt says.
“Me, too.”
Eventually, we leave the cemetery. We drive in heavy silence to Matt’s house. Cars are parked everywhere: in the driveway and out front, across the street and around the corner. Matt eases into a small space down the street and as we approach on foot, I try not to look at Audrey’s happy car.
Inside, there are piles of food on every available surface, and every room is crowded with people wearing black and navy blue, talking in hushed, respectful tones as if they’re afraid they’re going to wake the dead. I feel like I have cotton in my ears: When people talk to me, I have to ask them to repeat themselves.
“What?” I ask Mason after he mumbles something to me.
“I asked if you’d like some food,” he says, looking at me with concern.
“Oh.”
My thoughts snag on something I don’t remember five seconds after I think it, and when I look back at Mason, he’s not there. I’m not sure whether or not I answered his question. Maybe he’s gone to get food; maybe he’s just gone.
I stand in one spot until I start to feel paralyzed, then I move to make sure I still can. That’s when I realize that Matt and I are never more than a few steps away from each other. After we arrived, we split up, but we never really split apart. Bound by an invisible chain, I move into the kitchen, thirsty, and he’s already there, his nose in the refrigerator. He sits on the sofa and I check out the photos on the living room walls. I lean against the piano, desperate for this day to be done, and he lightly brushes my shoulder as he passes. I realize that we’re giving each other strength using all we’ve got left: our presence.
Matt is sitting on the hearth across the room when Mason walks up and tells me that it’s time to go. I’m beyond exhausted, and it could be eight or midnight: Either would make sense in my new, strange world.
Fifteen feet between us, Matt and I stare at each other, neither of us moving but both of us knowing it’s going to get more difficult before it gets better.
“Okay,” I say, still watching Matt. I’ll see him at school when he comes back. But it will be different. Leaving now feels like saying goodbye to our old selves, to anything light and carefree.
Goodbye, halcyon.
My eyes well up with tears, and they stay locked on Matt’s until I reach the doorway of the room and am forced to turn a corner. Even when I look away, I can feel his stare. I’m not sure how my feet are capable of walking away, but they do, and when I reach the back of the SUV, I collapse on the seat and fall asleep in an instant. Mason zombie-walks me into the house when we arrive, and I sleep in my funeral clothes, even my shoes.
thirty-two
Four days later, I shoot upright in bed at four in the morning. Heart thundering in my chest, I listen for signs of what startled me awake. There is movement downstairs: I hear two pairs of footsteps rushing around the house.
I jump out of bed and run down to the lab to see what’s going on.
“Go back to bed,” Mason says when he sees me. “Everything’s okay.”
“What are you doing?” I ask. My heart sinks when I see him standing beside the black case.
“God wants us to try something,” he says. He looks incredibly uneasy. Cassie shakes her head as she leafs through a file.
“Where are those forms?” she asks.