Bird Song (43 page)

“You’re easy to read…for an angel.”

She laughed at that, but it was an empty sound.
 
It doesn’t matter anyhow.
 
Graham will graduate; he’ll leave Heath and everything in it behind forever.
 
There is no future for us.
 
My past has already deemed it so.

The finality in those last words jolted me.
 
I began to ask her what she meant by that, but she was already fading away into a light gray mist.

“He is your future,” I said softly as the last wisp climbed up over my window sill and out into the night sky.
 
“Don’t let your past dictate what you can and cannot have now, Lark.”

When Robert returned to my room the next evening, the information that he had gathered by watching Erica told us very little.
 
He had had to leave her for a short period of time in order to answer his call, and he admitted to being afraid that it was during that time that she’d had her memory once again erased.

He offered to watch her again, but Lark’s words echoed in my head about breaking the rules and having to face the consequences—consequences that I knew nothing about—and I simply couldn’t let him go through with it.

“Lark is being paranoid, Grace.
 
I didn’t violate any rules,” Robert assured me.

“Well, I’d rather not take any more chances.
 
You’re more important to me than whatever is going on in Erica’s head.
 
There are only a few more months left of school anyway, and then I’m out of here.”

I opened up one of my drawers to pull out a pair of sweats—it was very cold, despite it being on the cusp of spring—and proceeded to gather other articles of clothing in preparation to shower.
 
I looked up and caught Robert’s reflection in my mirror, his face filled with hurt.

“What’s wrong?” I asked when I had turned around, immediately concerned.
 

“The way you spoke of leaving—you only mentioned yourself,” he said stiffly.

“Well, yeah.
 
I’m the one heading off to college in the fall.
 
Or, at least, I’m planning on it.
 
I don’t expect Erica to follow me all the way to wherever it is I’m heading.”

Robert glanced at the clothes in my hands and began to sit up from his position on the bed.
 
“I’d better leave.”

I threw my little bundle on the bed and reached for his hand.
 
“Wait, why?
 
What did I say?”

Robert pointed to the clothes that had fallen loosely apart.
 
“Nothing, Grace.
 
Nothing at all.”

I tightened my grip on his hand and then felt my fingers curl into my palm as Robert disappeared into a plume of black mist.
 
“You know, you and your sister are getting on my nerves with this-this
poofing
into smoke thing,” I said, annoyed.
 
“This is why humans date other humans.
 
They don’t just poof into nothing and run away!”
 
I said that last part as the smoke disappeared out of my window.

I heard a knock on my door and felt relieved for the distraction.
 
“Come in,” I called out and then grabbed my clothes from the bed, tucking them under my arm.

Graham poked his head in.
 
“Hey, Grace.
 
Look, I wanted to know if you had any extra folder paper.”

“Yeah.
 
Sure.”
 
I grabbed my backpack and handed it to him.
 
“There’s some in my binder.”

Graham thanked me as I walked past him towards the bathroom.
 
I turned the shower on and allowed the bathroom to fill up with steam.
 
I climbed into the hot spray and allowed it to beat into me a pattern of relaxation and calm.

I ignored the knock on the door while I washed my hair and soaped myself.
 
The knock grew louder as I rinsed off, and by the time I was dry and fully dressed, the knock had grown so insistent I thought it would fall off its hinges.

“What?!” I demanded as soon as I opened the door.
 
Graham stood in front of me with a blank sheet of paper and a pencil in his hand, a look of utter despair on his face.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he said sadly.

I looked at the paper and the pencil and eyed him out.
 
“You don’t know how to do what?
 
Write your name?”
 
I pushed past him and walked into my room, noting that he had at least put my backpack in the right spot.

“No.
 
I don’t know how to write a letter to Lark.”

I pulled the towel out of my hair and began to rub it dry as I processed his words.
 
“You want to write a letter to Lark?”

He nodded his head dumbly.

“And you don’t know how?”

Again, his head shook up and down.
 
I sighed.
 
“What’s keeping you from doing it?”

“I don’t know how to put my thoughts down to paper.
 
It’s like with everything else, I’m alright, but when it comes to her…Grace, I tried this three times and the furthest I got was the D in Dear.”

I grabbed the sheet of paper from him and sure enough, there were several indentations in the shape of a letter D marring its otherwise perfect surface.
 
“What made you decide to write a letter to her in the first place?”

“I just have this feeling that if I’m ever going to tell Lark how I feel about her, it’s got to be now.
 
Spring break is coming up and mom wants me to fly down to Florida and spend it with her-”

“But you’re going to miss the wedding!”

“I have no choice, Grace.
 
I can’t be sleeping on your couch while you and Janice do all that wedding stuff.
 
You’ve got plans you have to take care of, and she’s going to have a baby soon.
 
It’s time I started to think about the future—my future.”
 
Graham shook the piece of paper in his hand and tapped it with the pencil.
 
“That’s why I need you to help me with this.
 
I don’t want to leave Heath without letting her know how I feel about her, without giving it a shot.

“Thing is…I don’t know how to do it.
 
I need our help, Grace.”

I admired him for his tenacity.
 
He had never looked more determined before.
 
Even when he was on the football field he still appeared slightly aloof, as though that wasn’t where he truly wanted to be.

“Well, okay then.
 
Let’s get started on this letter.”

He grinned at me like a kid who’d just been given a new toy, and I tried to smile in return with equal exuberance, but in the back of my mind I kept hearing Lark’s words…

There is no future for us…

Graham was determined that there would be a future for him and Lark, and I was equally determined to help him prove Lark wrong.

***

Spring break was almost here when Graham knocked on my bedroom door, a thin stack of papers in his hand.
 
“Are those college applications?” I asked as I pointed to the disorganized piles that lay out before me on my bed.
 
“I’ve got mine almost completely done; I’ve just got a couple of essays left.”

“No.
 
I only applied to one college,” he replied.
 
He handed me the sheets of filler paper, each one completely full of his semi-neat handwriting.
 
“This is it.”

“What is it?”

“The letter.”

I looked at the first page closely and saw that indeed, this letter was meant for Lark.
 
The time he had taken to embellish her name told me that whatever it was that he had written had also been done so with equal care and attention.

“That’s nice,” I said as I traced the L with my finger.
 
I could feel the deep indentation and smiled as I realized what he had done.
 
“You did this on purpose so she could feel it and read it.”

He blushed at the truth.
 
“You’re too smart for your own good, Grace.”

“Nah.
 
I’m just a sucker for romance.”
 
I handed the stack back to him, but he pushed it away.

“I want you to read it,” he said.
 
“Read it out loud and tell me if this would be enough to tell you that whoever wrote it was in love with you.”

“I don’t think I should,” I objected, trying to have him take his letter back but he stood up and walked away, putting as much space as possible between himself and the words that he had written.

“Please, Grace.
 
I need you to read it.
 
I need to hear it.”

Sighing, I stared at the words on the page.
 
Knowing that if I didn’t, I’d sorely disappoint him, I began to read the composition that had taken him two weeks to complete.

“
Lark,

“I’m not very good at expressing how I feel, especially when what I feel is something that I’ve never felt before.
 
I don’t really remember much about the first time I saw you.
 
I was living in a fog and I couldn’t have appreciated you for all of your beauty and your charm.

“I do remember the second time I saw you, though.
 
You were surrounded by some of the most beautiful girls in school, but none of them shined like you did to me.
 
It wasn’t a day that should have held any brightness, any kind of hope, and yet you stood there like the only star in the sky
—
meant to be wished upon.
 
And I wished on you.
 
I wished that one day, you’d remember my name.

“I know that sounds pretty stupid.
 
Everyone remembers my name.
 
I’m one of the biggest jerks in school.
 
But I wanted you to remember my name for another reason.
 
I wanted you to be able to say my name and be able to say ‘Graham
Hasselbeck
is a good guy.’

“When I saw you again at the cemetery, I thought it had to have been fate that brought you there to my Grandmother’s grave.
 
Why else would you have been there?
 
And then you said my name; you said it and I knew that my wish had come true.

“Every single day since then, I’ve thought of you.
 
That sounds kind of
stalkerish
.
 
I’m sorry
.
 
L
et me try that again.
 

“Every single day since then, I have thought of how wonderful it’s been just being around you and that light you seem to bring with you.
 
I cannot think of a day yet where seeing your face hasn’t made me happy.

“But happy doesn’t begin to describe how good it feels.
 
It sucks sometimes, not being able to see you, not being able to hear your voice.
 
And I wonder if you might feel the same way.
 
I had a chance with you, a chance to tell you how I felt, but my heart fumbled that ball and instead my head won out.

“I won’t say that I regret my decision, because I don’t.
 
It helped me to learn more about myself and what I was capable of, both the good and the bad.
 
It gave me a friend I didn’t have before then, and it gave me an appreciation for knowing what I want and what I’m not willing to settle for.

“And what I want is to tell you that I don’t see my life going anywhere unless you’re in it because I love you.
 
It’s not the kind of love I have for Grace
,
because I love her, too
.
 
But this is something different, something that feels like a big rock is sitting on my chest and the only way to remove it is to see your face and hear your voice.

“And I hear your voice in my head, and I see your face in my dreams, and I know that if I closed my eyes for the last time, or if I never heard another thing for as long as I lived, those would be enough for me.
 
The stupid poets who wrote those sonnets of love and devotion didn’t know what they were talking about because they’d never met you.
 
They’ve never known what it feels like to carry my heart in their chest whenever you walk by.

“They’ve never known what it feels like to have my legs whenever I smell your perfume.
 
They’ve never known what it feels like to hear you say their name and see you smile when you say it.

“I’m not good at expressing my feelings, Lark.
 
I’ve been so confused about so many things that after a while, they all start to blend into each other and I cannot pick out the differences anymore.
 
But what I feel for you stands out like a wide receiver open in the last twenty yards from the goal.
 
It stands out like a single flower on a gravestone covered in snow.
 
It stands out like a quarterback writing a love letter to someone whose love he doesn’t deserve.