BODIES: Chapter 9

Ana passed me her dance bag as we climbed out of the car, and Nathaniel’s jiu jitsu bag found its way into my arms immediately after.

“Excuse you!” I chided the two of them. “Am I your servant?”

“Yes!” they both answered me as they skipped their way towards the house. 

Spring break was only a few days passed, and all was right in the world as I stood there with my baby brother and baby sister’s bags in my arms, watching them shove each other towards the front door of our house with the sun setting behind them. Something about that moment gave me pause to smile in gratitude. Even with the constant turbulence in life, as long as they were my constant, life didn’t feel so turbulent.

My eyes inadvertently looked to the neighboring house and upwards at the dark room directly across from mine. I wanted to ask Pastor Mike and Camila where their son chose to spend his spring break, but figured that was far too forward. My eyes swung to look at the side of the house where the trash and recycling bins rested suddenly. After a week of dodging Alex, I wanted to know how he was faring. Did he view my avoidance as rejection? Did I reject him? Was he confused? Was I? Did I hurt him? Did I hurt myself? I shook my head free of the niggling questions. Maybe it was more important for me to figure out how I was faring.

After I entered the house and dropped off Nathaniel and Ana’s bags near the front door, I found them in the kitchen, snacking with Grandpa.

“Hi, Grandpa,” I hugged the side of him. 

“What’s going on?” Grandpa asked me, thrown by the surprise hug.

“This is our norm,” I answered.

Nathaniel and Ana turned to look at us.

“It’s been two hours since I last saw you,” said Grandpa. “This one is different. Like you’re contemplating something and yearning for comfort.”

I stopped to stare at Grandpa as Nathaniel and Ana chimed in.

“Yes, Grandpa,” said an intrigued Ana. 

“I believe you’re on to something,” followed Nathaniel, Ana nodding in agreement. “She’s probably lonely.” Ana continued nodding beside him. 

My eyes evened at Nathaniel and Ana.

“Yeah, after rejecting two guys, I’d be also,” Ana added to the insanity. 

Thankfully, Ana made her remark in English so Grandpa couldn’t string together all the pieces. 

“Do not say his name,” I warned Nathaniel and Ana through a smile and gritted teeth, the two of them giggling to the side of me and Grandpa. Grandpa was the last person I wanted to know about Alex. The glee and lecturing would never cease.

“Should I tell him about the underage drinking then?” asked Ana. 

Nathaniel choked on the wafer in his mouth while my eyes pleaded with Ana to stay quiet.

“What did you say, Baby?” Grandpa asked Ana. 

Ever the baby, Ana smiled sweetly and answered, “I’m just bothering her,” she beamed. “For fun, Grandpa.”

Grandpa just smiled and nodded in approval.

“You two better hurry up and get ready for bed and finish your homework,” I ordered them, hoping to redirect the conversation.

“Okay, MOM,” Nathaniel responded, laughing as he finished his snack.

When real Mom returned home after her small group, I embraced her for an entire minute as she made her rounds in the house. 

“What is going on with you today?” she laughed. “Good Lord.”

“To whom I am incredibly grateful for my weird little family,” I said to her, finally unwrapping my arms from around her shoulders.

“As you should be,” said Mom, reaching out to stroke the hair flowing off my shoulder. “Now go to bed,” she commanded, lightly pushing the side of my arm. “You have an early start tomorrow.”

“This is my spring break, Mom,” I argued. “I shouldn’t be chauffeuring Nathaniel and Ana around.”

“This is my spring break,” countered Mom. “I get four a year from now on. Your Thanksgiving break, which I didn’t get this year, your winter break, your spring break, and your summer break.”

I laughed at my mom’s reality, and retired to my room for the night. Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t flush the late nights of studying from my system, so I seated myself at my desk to turn on the lion series I had started for break. Rolling myself back and forth on my chair, nearly crashing into my desk once, my eyes caught a light from outside. I stopped to look out my window and pulled myself up to it, parking to watch the flickering lights from the room across from mine in the house next door.

One Two Three. One. Two. Three. One Two Three.

S.O.S.

A smile crept onto my face as I read the morse code in lights. Not long after, the shadow show started. Bunnies first, a flock of birds, and a meteor shower to finish. A strange all-consuming warmth flooded my entire body as memories of Alex’s shadow shows throughout our lifetime together replayed themselves in my mind, one after the other, becoming more complex and beautiful year after year.

I heard a ding from my phone then, and turned to make for my bed, picking up my phone to read the message on my screen.

Alex: S.O.S.

I clicked on the text message, which led me to a string of messages before it. The text above the S.O.S. dated two years back when Alex texted me in a panic, pleading for me to write his senior English paper for him. A sudden mix of emotions overcame me–sorrow at the distance between us over the years and awe at the comfort that remained despite the space.

When I reached Alex on the sidewalk outside, the both of us meeting halfway between his house and mine, the street lamps and porch lights of our houses illuminating the darkness, I greeted him with a smile, which he returned with a grin.

“You’re a little rusty,” I said to him. “Bunny ears? Birds?”

“Butterflies, actually,” he corrected me. “Who do you think I am?” 

All I could respond with was a smile because the butterflies in my stomach couldn’t stop swirling. 

“Where,” I started when Alex kept the silence, “have you been?” 

“The beach,” he answered.

His response surprised me, considering the beach was right around the corner from campus.

“Couldn’t resist those spring break girls?”

He laughed.

“Just one.”

Completely thrown by his response, confusion washing my expression, I watched as Alex’s face turned from cheer to melancholy, and I found myself aching for him.

“You want to know why?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I didn’t skip a beat, longing to know what pushed him to the brink of death one year ago.

“Madeline.” 

The foreign name on Alex’s lips struck in me what I could only identify as envy. I didn’t know how to process the emotion when it didn’t make any sense. I didn’t know this girl, and yet, I wanted what Alex felt for her when he said her name.

“Your replacement.”

Huh? 

I stared at Alex, my eyes uncertain what to do with themselves as I tried to process my disoriented state at the three confusing words Alex just shared with me to reason his overdose. Madeline. Your replacement. 

Was I envious of myself then? 

“I had this irrational fear that there was more beyond you,” Alex began to explain. “Year after year, you grew to be this amazing human with a voice of your own and a surprising heart of gold, bringing to life all the female characters I admired in the literature we read and shattering the stereotypes the world tried to bind them to, and I was awed, but what did I know?” he posed the question. “We were only teenagers,” he answered. “Today we’re only kids in the grand scheme of life,” he continued. “What if there was beauty and goodness beyond you? What if I wanted,” he paused, “whatever that was?” 

My mind found itself racing to grasp onto all of the fragments of Alex’s years of pent up thoughts and emotions.

“I was looking for somebody,” he went on, “anybody to challenge you, like a game, and of everybody I met, nobody compared.”

I gushed at his words, my heart wrenching inexplicably inside my chest, it hurt.

“And then I met Madeline.”

Wrenching once more, my emotions lost, as Alex melted at the mention of Madeline, I resisted the urge to grab for my heart, aching still, just confused.

“She was a different beauty. A different goodness. Sweet, pure, lovely.”

I swallowed at the description of sweet, pure, lovely Madeline.

“And then she met me,” Alex’s tone darkened. I swallowed again. “Who knew how easy it was to corrupt the innocent?” My stomach somersaulted with dread in anticipation for what would come next. “We were at a party. We were drunk. She was drunk. She slipped, hit her head, slid into the pool, and in the crowd and commotion, we didn’t get to her until seconds too late.” I held my breath as Alex gathered his words. “Madeline,” he swallowed, “lives at a home by the beach.”

I exhaled and looked to the ground, never thinking this could be Alex’s story, and yet, finally understanding why he made the choices he did. Alex’s understanding of humanity was too deep—his love too raw—that often, the depths of it was overwhelming to him, resulting in some seriously detrimental decisions. When he was seven, he once punched a kid in the face for making fun of Grandpa’s accent.

“I kept wondering if it would’ve been better if she’d died.”

“Alex—”

“I hated myself so much,” he confessed. “I hated visiting her, just to wipe the drool from her face.” His breath caught just as mine did. “I made her that.” 

“Alex—” 

Tears made a sudden appearance at the edge of my eyes. 

“So I started to wonder if it would be better if I died.”

My heart ached unbearably at that point that I just started shaking my head.

“And then you told me I can’t die ever.” My eyes shifted upwards to meet Alex’s gleam. “Or at least not until I married three times and had a billion kids.”

The familiar words rang in my ears as Alex stared me on. Can’t die ever. Married three times. A billion kids. Rushing back to me was the year old memory of me lying next to him, talking to his sleeping face. No. NOOOOOOOOOOO!

“There might’ve been something about cramps and how pain is temporary too,” Alex added. 

“No!” I squealed at him. “You were awake that entire time?”

I grabbed my flaming cheeks, a record of all the stupid things I said to him while he was asleep replaying in my ears. 

“Honestly, my favorite was when you accidentally walked in on Principal Larson in the bathroom and she found a way to give you detention,” laughed Alex. Mortified at the discovery of Alex’s consciousness during all of the night shifts I spent watching him pretend-sleep, I made a concerted effort to regulate my increased breathing. “Or when you almost convinced yourself that I was justified in cheating on Avery Fine because you finally discovered she was an actually awful human being,” he mused. “Those were two miserable weeks for you.”

“Alex, I cannot stand you!” I screeched as quietly as I could in the darkness.

He only laughed.

“I missed you for days and weeks and months after,” he confessed. 

Truly, Alex was an infuriating creature. He had the magnificent ability to make my heart race and steady it the same. 

“You,” I started, “idiot,” I finished. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” 

“That lying next to you was my favorite place to be?” Again, my heart started racing. “That I was a fool for resisting you for as long as I did? That I’ve loved you for as long as I’ve known how?”

It was too much, the roller coaster of emotions Alex had me on, his prowess with words on full display. I just wanted answers. Or, confirmations? 

“When you first saw me on campus—”

“You ran into my chest,” he interrupted me, “and didn’t feel my heart thundering inside it?”

I huffed at his response.

“Cup of Jade—”
“I followed you there”

“Poetry slams—”
“Thought about a poetry confession.”

“Tutoring center—”
“I’m a genius, you know this.”

“The Hardy Special—”
“Only for the special.”

“Did you really love me?”
“Do I really love you?” 

Of all the annoying things Alex and I could possibly do to each other, this ranked number one: Answering each other’s stupid questions with questions of our own. 

Did you really love me asked in the past tense and answered in the present tense meant: I really love you now, dummy. 

With my breath evening and the night stilled with only the faintest bite of cold in the air and two lone bodies standing on the sidewalk of a dimly lit street, the time had come at last for my confession.

“Alex,” I started, his full attention on me, “one year ago,” I continued, “when I cradled your body in my arms at the end of your bed, wondering which breath would be your last, I hoped you could feel it.” It was Alex’s turn to wait in pause. “I hoped you could feel the lifetime of love I had for the little boy who reached for my hand whenever I fell, the child who defended my family when no one wanted to understand us, the teenager whose fascination with words spurred a passion in me, the man whose memory and potential captured my thoughts, my being, my heart.” Alex swallowed at my admission, for once, understanding my truly tumultuous journey with him. “And as long as you could feel it,” I continued, “that was enough. I could even let you go.” 

A long silence passed between us as Alex stood across from me, clearly reliving memories and emotions of the past, both near and distant, before he took some staggered steps towards me, reaching for my hands to pull me gently into him.

“What are you doing?” I sputtered against his chest.

“Not letting go,” he answered, wrapping both arms around me. 

I stood awkwardly in his embrace, the warmth of his body against mine, before relaxing in his arms finally.

“Yours,” he said, “was much better than mine.”

I laughed at his concession to my confession.

“I never beat you.”

“A distant memory.”

I smiled against his chest, our voices fading, so all I could hear was the steady beating of his heart.

I always thought that when Alex and I found ourselves in such close, intimate proximity again, it would feel weird and uncomfortable, but it wasn’t. Was it weird and uncomfortable that it felt normal? Even right? 

“Are you scared?” I asked him.

“You aren’t?” he answered.

He answered more questions that night—ones I had asked from years ago.

Were they as soft as they looked? They were okay.
Did the stubble tickle? Not really.
Would a spark catch between his lips and mine? Yes.

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