A Bird on a Windowsill (11 page)

“
Pocahontas
,” I finally say.

“Yeah.” I can hear the smile in her voice.

“You forgot your lines,” I say.

“And you said them for me.”

Her head is still on my shoulder, but I know she’s looking up at me.

“ ‘It would’ve been better if we had never met,’ ” I recite the line. “ ‘None of this would’ve happened.’ ”

The irony isn’t lost on me, and she seems to notice, too.

She nestles her cheek more into my shoulder. “Those were the words.”

I don’t say anything.

“You were manning the curtains off stage, weren’t you?” she asks.

I feel a small smile start to cultivate on my face as I think back. “I was.”

“And no one ever questioned the voice from above,” she says, dramatically raising her hand.

“No one was the wiser,” I agree.

“I was,” she says, turning her face up toward mine.

I catch her stare. And as if it’s pure instinct, I put my arm around her.

She stiffens a little.

“I know. I know,” I say. “The boyfriend.”

I feel her body relax.

“We’re friends, though, right?”

She breathes out a smile. “Right.”

It’s quiet then, until a memory rushes into my head like a freight train, drowning everything else out.

“The day after that play, I got my first shiner,” I say.

“Oh, that’s right. The hockey puck.”

“Yeah.”

“I got you ice from the cafeteria.”

“No,” I say, chuckling under my breath. “The ice melted before you got to me. You brought me your cold hands, instead, and held them to my eye until the nurse came.”

There’s a surprised look on her face, until something new washes over her. “That’s right. I couldn’t find a bag to put the ice in.”

I shrug. “It was fine. Your hands were nice.”

She looks at me and smiles before reaching for my hand. And I must look a little shocked because her next words come out in a scolding tone.

“Friends can hold hands.”

I don’t argue. Meanwhile, the tree frogs surrounding us begin their nightly chirps. And I watch as several stars start to pop out of the black background. And the whole time, there’s this comfortable hush between us. I think we’re both just gnawing on pieces of our past—long gone.

“Vannah,” I say, after a little while.

“Hmm?”

“You’re a bird on a windowsill.”

I hear her grin.

“I’m a what?”

“A bird,” I say. “You’re there one second, and the next, you’re gone. But every time I see you there, I can’t help but stop and look at you.”

She’s quiet, but that water just keeps pushing a path beneath us, making a soft, whooshing sound.

“Eben?”

“Mm hmm?”

“Are you trying to tell me I’m pretty?”

I shake my head. “No. I’m trying to tell you that you’re the most intriguing...and the most captivating...and the most beautiful bird I’ve ever seen.”

She looks up at me and rests her gaze in my eyes. She almost looks as if she’s searching me, looking for something she hasn’t found in the last twelve years we’ve known each other.

“You mean that.”

“Of course I do,” I say, even though what she said wasn’t a question.

She lays her head back on my shoulder and squeezes my hand.

“Do you have to go back?”

I don’t know why I ask it. I already know she does.

Even so, she moves her head back and forth. “Not now.”

“Ever?”

She doesn’t say anything.

“I mean, I
can
come this time. I can finish high school there, and I don’t have to do the lumberyard business. I mean, my dad can run it for a long time, still.”

“Eben,” she says, stopping me, “it might as well be a world away. And anyway, you belong here.”

I don’t say anything, but I feel as if I belong wherever she is.

“You can’t pull a stick two ways and expect it not to break,” she says.

I follow her eyes to the silver creek water.

“I can’t take you with me,” she says. “I might break you.”

I chuckle at that, even though I know it comes out sounding a little sad.

“But what about you? What if you belong here, too?”

She tilts her head back and looks up into the dark sky. “Well, I’m a bird, right? I’ll just fly back someday.”

Her eyes find mine, and I squeeze her closer to me.

“My beautiful bird,” I say, resting my head on hers. “My beautiful bird.”

Chapter Sixteen

Salem 

(Seventeen Years Old)

Day 4,577

I
know one of these days I’ll wake up, and I’ll think about seeing Vannah, and she’ll be gone. It’s happened once already. And I know little pieces of her, like the colors in her eyes or how her head feels on my chest, will slowly start to fade over time. But at least I have her voice.

“Eben.”

My thoughts disappear, and I turn toward her. We’re at the only park in town. I walked over to the paper from the lumberyard an hour ago to see if she wanted to eat lunch with me. Thankfully, she did.

“There’s a quote here,” she says.

“What?”

We’re sitting on the confession bench—the bench that holds all the town’s secrets. In fact, you could probably learn a lot about this place just from this bench alone—if you took the time to decipher it all. Every inch of its surface is covered in light-colored carvings—carvings that say things like:
Sorry, A; Your turn. –C; It was 4 you; and RIP JCP, I miss your words.

I look to the place on the bench her finger is pointing and listen as she reads.

“ ‘There are three deaths,’ ” she says. “ ‘The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.’ And there’s a name. David Eagleman.”

She takes out something from her cloth bag that looks like a camera, but then again, not quite.

“What’s that?”

“What?” she asks.

“That,” I say, pointing to it. “Is that a camera?”

She looks down at the black and white contraption.

“Yeah, it’s a Polaroid. I found it in Uncle Lester’s attic.”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of those in person. I watch as she puts it to her eye, points it at the inscription and then presses a button.

At once, a piece of paper slides out of the camera. She takes it, waves it in the air a few seconds and then holds it out in front of her.

“Hmm.”

“What?” I ask.

She slumps her shoulders a little and frowns.

“I don’t know. It’s sad, I guess. Don’t you think it’s sad?”

I look at the inscription carved in the wood of the old park bench.

I shrug. “I’m just impressed that whoever took the time to carve that all in there also took the time to put the guy’s name there, too.”

She gives me a sarcastic look. But I know she’s trying not to smile. “But it’s sad to think that someday no one will ever say my name again.”

“I guess,” I say.

She sighs and pushes her lips to one side. At the same time, I put my arm around her and pull her close.

“Someday, there will be no Savannah Elise Catesby,” she says. “And someday, no one will ever even remember I was here.”

I squeeze her shoulder and smile.

“Vannah, the good news is we won’t even be here to know when that time comes.”

Her narrow shoulders slump even more.

“I know, but it’s still sad.”

I kiss her forehead. I think she’s so wrapped up in the quote that she doesn’t even notice how out of character the kiss is. It just felt right, though, I guess.

“I’ll remember you,” I say. “I know I won’t always be able to say your name, but for the rest of this life and even into the next one, I’ll remember you.”

She tilts her head back and rests her eyes in mine.

“You promise?”

“I promise,” I say.

Her eyes return to the wood and the carved words.

“Maybe you could just come back as a ghost and whisper my name in crowded rooms.”

I nod once. “That’s exactly what I’ll do. I’ll be your name-whispering ghost.”

“Promise?” she asks.

“I promise.”

Chapter Seventeen

Salem 

(Seventeen Years Old)

Day 4,584

“W
hy are we here?” she asks, taking out her camera.

That Polaroid has come with us everywhere we’ve been since that first day she found it.

“You’ll see,” I say.

I stop at the top of the levee and look down at the fields below. We’re in the bottoms—the floodplain along the river where the soil is the most fertile and all the crops are grown. There are no houses. No trees. No people. Just soybeans and blue sky.

I hear a click and then the machine-sounding slide of the camera spitting out the photo. And I watch as Vannah takes the picture and waves it back and forth.

“Why are you always taking pictures?”

“They’re memories, Eben. I’m taking memories.”

She smiles and takes one of me.

“I wasn’t even looking.”

The sound of her sweet laughter fills my ears. “It doesn’t matter.”

She retrieves the photo and flaps it in the air.

“You still looked good. See.”

She holds it out, an arm’s length, in front of us. And I chuckle a little. It’s just a picture of the side of my face. But if she likes it, I like it, too, I guess.

“Now, why are we here?” she asks, stuffing the photos and the camera back into her bag.

“Okay,” I say. “You ready?”

I can tell she tries not to laugh. “I guess. I sure don’t know what I’m ready for, but I’m ready.”

“Good.” I take a deep breath, and I shout her name at the top of my lungs. “Savannah Elise Catesby.”

Vannah jumps a little at my voice, but stays quiet. In fact, everything is quiet for at least a heartbeat or two, until we hear it—her name bouncing off the dirt walls of this place and echoing back at us.

“There,” I say, proudly. “Now, your name will always be spoken. For the rest of time, it’ll just keep bouncing back and forth in this place forever.”

She looks at me. There’s a certain kind of usual wonder in her stare, but this time, there’s also a kind of awe. And I watch as the whites around her eyes start to turn red.

And then, just like that, she throws her arms around my neck and squeezes me tight.

“Thank you,” she whispers into my chest, her voice muffled.

She holds me like that for a long time, and I hold her back. And in that time, it feels as if heaven itself just opens up on me and sends down everything good from it. And right there, I know that I’d go to the ends of this earth for this girl. I love her that much. And I don’t know if it’s just years in the making—one day on top of another of just being with her, through her laughter and her pain—or if it’s just because we get along so damn well. I can’t even tell you why I love her so much. Hell, I can’t even tell you what I’m supposed to do with it. Am I just supposed to let her go, let her live her own life? Am I supposed to make her stay? Am I supposed to go with her? Do I ever get to make love to this girl or is holding her hand the best I can ever hope for? I don’t know. I don’t know the answers to any of this. And I’m not so sure she knows, either. All I do know is that I love her...and that, no matter which scenario is the one that ends up playing out, I’ll always love her.

She pulls away from me, halting my thoughts. And then she reaches for my hand. And we stand there, her head resting against my arm, looking at those fields of soybeans as if they’re the most beautiful sight in the world.

And then, all of a sudden, she breathes in deeply and then cups both of her hands to her mouth.

“Salem Auguste Ebenezer.”

I smile, and together, we wait for my name to come back to us. And sure enough, in the space of two heartbeats, it does.

Salem Auguste Ebenezer.

“We’ll always be here, at least,” she says, smiling at those green fields. “We’ll always be here...together.”