Chasing After Infinity (8 page)

“What are you doing here?” I say, shocked that he’s here. He was absent in school today and I had wondered for a second where he went.

“That’s for you to guess,” he answers, raising an eyebrow.

I shake my head, ambling back to the water’s edge. “So here’s the place you go to as well, huh?”

“What are you talking about?” He sits down on the sand, lighting a cigarette.

Hesitantly, I sit beside him, meeting his unbarring gaze.

I realize that this is the first time we’ve been together without mocking or insulting the other. We sit in quietness for a moment, both of us having nothing to say to each other for once. I remember all those times we’ve fought, the bitter and angry feelings I had after a conversation. We were always caught up in a storm. Right now, it seemed like all of that had been erased.

He stares straight ahead, inhaling the smoke. “What are you trying to escape from?”

I don’t answer him for a moment, thinking. Then I say, “The usual.
Traffic and loud environments.
School.
You?”

Adrian nods, his eyes half-lidded.
“Probably the same.”

I find that I don’t have anything to say to that.

And as we sit there and look at the same sky, I feel myself crumbling.

chapter
six

AVENA

The funeral is scheduled the next day. The car ride to the funeral home with Dad driving was quiet.
Unearthly quiet.
His hands gripping the steering wheel tight are white and ever so slightly shaking. I put on headphones I’d borrowed from Hayden and try to block out everything else, cranking the music up until the louder, faster, and angrier beat takes control.

A memory of Adrian talking to me that day on the beach floats back to me despite myself. I was ladling sand with my fingers, letting the grains fall through. We were sitting not far apart but not close either, as if there was invisible barrier that separated us.

He finally spoke. “Do you ever feel like you want to just get away from it all?” He suddenly said
,
his eyes softening as he looked at me.

Somehow, I felt like he wasn’t talking to me, not really, but to himself. There was something in his tone that made the frost around my heart dissolve a bit. But my walls were still in place. “Yeah,” I replied stiffly. “Doesn’t everyone?”

Adrian lay back on the sand, his eyes flickering back to the sky. “I guess we all have something in our lives that we want to erase.”

That flashback fades before my eyes and I settle back into the music playing in my iPod. We get there after an hour of tense silence and I feel thankful to get out of that car. The funeral home is a gray building, surrounded by a few wilting gardens. We make our way through the winding halls until we push through wooden double doors. The side room is filled with Mom’s colleagues in suits and close acquaintances. The wallpaper is a dark mournful blue and the polished wooden pews give me a sense of melancholy. One of her past co-workers rushes up to us and coos phrases of comfort to me, her eyes filled with thinly concealed pity. I push her words away with a sharp smile, looking over to the firmly shut casket in the centre of the room. It’s a night black colour as if all the ravens in the world clustered together to merge as one.

Dad talks to a few families around him and I retreat to a corner to where a couple of cushioned chairs are, watching the room surroundings. I try not to look at anyone because they’re all looking at me and whispering words of pity.

It seems like a century before the funeral director begins and all air is sucked out of the room. He’s a tall and wiry old man, skin pale and there are hollows under his cheeks. His voice is crackly like thin paper. “Mrs. Margaret Rivers lived an incredible life, one that affected all of the people gathered here. She was serene, and giving with her time and love. Today is a sombre day for all of us because such a warm-spirited and strong person had passed away.” He bows his head and everyone else does too.

Dad puts an arm around me and I look at him, blinking away pain. Surrounding people give us sympathetic looks and anger stirs in me. I force my attention back to the speech but the words all blur together. When it ends, we all close our eyes and say the prayer with me barely mumbling. Everyone takes turns paying their respects to Mom lying in her cold, dark coffin. When it’s my turn, I stare blankly at it. I can just imagine the way she looked like in those last seconds.
Her closed eyes,
lips almost in a smile, numbingly cold hands clasped neatly together.
I cover my mouth; make an unintelligible sound and Dad pulls me into him. My vision distorts.

When Dad goes up the dais to talk, I can tell that he’s barely breathing. “Margaret was possibly the best person in this world. She had a warm stance on life and believed that anything was possible. Determined to never give up, she spent years on trying to publish her own novel and her dream has been finally accomplished. She was also such a caring and loving mother and wife, besides being an amazing woman with great strength and a forward look on the future. She didn’t believe in the past, only the now.” And by that time, his deep voice has broken and he’s up there wiping tears off his face with a tissue.

I’m trying hard not to cry.
So hard.
I’m steady and calm on the surface but inside I’m breaking. The unfeelingness dissipates until the hurting rushes back to me. I look down to see my fists clenched so tightly at my sides that when I uncurl them, red fingernail prints are imprinted on the tender skin.

The ride home is as uncomfortable as the first. I turn the radio on but all I’m greeted with are bubbly pop songs, not the ones that I need. It’s raining heavily, the sky a winter gray above us. I listen to the rhythmic sound of the wipers moving across the watery windshield in front of me. This whole day has been like a hallucination.

Thunder rolls across the sky and it starts raining harder. When I turn to look out the window, I can’t decipher between what is tears and what is rain.

When we’re back at home, the clanking and hitting of pans together in the kitchen make up for the empty silence.
I’ve skipped lunch so I’m starving. Dad is chopping lettuce fast and I help him with grating the cheddar. Dad swears suddenly, letting the knife clatter to the sink.

He nicked his thumb while cutting and blood oozes out of the cut. He clutches his hand with his shirt, still cursing under his breath. Surprised and nervous, I rummage in the drawers for bandages.

Dad’s standing there in the middle of the kitchen, looking down at the tiles. A vein in his forehead pulses. Then he sweeps aside the chopping board, the bowls, and plates on the countertop. I’m too shocked to catch the dinner pieces as they smash to the ground and splinter to ceramic pieces.

A haze goes over his eyes and he slumps to the ground, hiding his face in his hands. His shoulders tremble and sobs come out of him. I don’t know what to do. It’s one thing to cry yourself and another to see your dad cry. I kneel beside him, reaching to pat his shoulder.

“It’s been over a year,” I say in a soft voice. I’m coming close to crossing the invisible line. “We’ve got to let her go and move on with our lives.”

I try to pull him up but he just keeps on kneeling on the ground, weeping. Knowing that I can’t fix this, I leave him there on the kitchen floor and run to my bedroom upstairs, grab the picture of Mom under my bed, hurling myself onto the bed.

Her affectionate smile and sparkling eyes looks back at me. I run my fingers over the wooden frame, wishing that I could just throw this all to the tide. Wishing she is here.

Can’t look at her familiar face anymore, I bury my face into the pillow, starting to get hysterical. I feel like I can’t breathe, all my
sobs
are choked in my throat. I can’t feel anything, like my body is numb. Memories of her are eating greedily at me. Like the time I hit my head hard in the mirror when I was six when I thought that it was a time portal to another world. A jagged cut ran along my forehead and bits of glass were embedded in the skin.

Mom looked terrified when she found me crying loudly on the floor. “Oh,
Avena
, what did you do?” Mom said, wrapping bandages all over my head,
tsking
.
“Silly child!”

Tears ran out of my eyes as I wailed. “It hurts!”

“It’ll all be better soon.” She brushed my hair out of my eyes and kissed me tenderly on the forehead. “I swear it, okay?”

“What about the next time I get hurt again?” I asked petulantly.

“I’ll make the pain go away.”

The flashback fades and I scream hoarsely, pressing my hands to my ears. “The pain is not going away!” I yell feverishly, weeping uncontrollably. “You said you’ll be here for me when it hurts!”

Silent sobs send quivers through my body. I gasp for air, needing some kind of escape. I grab the end of the picture frame and fling it hard to the opposite wall. The glass breaks and shatters into little pieces on the floor like my heart.

 
Ψ
Ψ
Ψ
 

Going back to school on Monday is almost impossible. I feel like an undead zombie as I trudge through the busy hallway. Even though there are so many bodies passing around me, I feel as lonely and lost as ever. My stomach feels sour and twisted. Whispers skitter in the room as I enter into calculus and settle myself into my seat in the far back, trying hard not to just break down in front of the entire rapt audience.

“So what’s up with the shitty mopey face?”

I look up to see Adrian and the memory of him sitting beside me on the beach the other day intrudes my mind. We’d sat there almost for the entire afternoon, feeding the seagulls and watching the sun move down the horizon. All that earlier kind of vulnerability has vanished and in its place is the usual cockiness. If he’s going to act like that day never happened, two can play at that game.

I dump my textbooks onto the desk, jarring him with the loud thud. “That’s none of your business.”

He shrugs. “Jesus.
Just wondering.
You’re pretty unexpected, you know. Going from being this let’s-all-hate-on-Adrian chick into this incapacitated lobotomy patient in less than two weeks.”

I sneer but he ignores me. I realize that this is what I need, diversion. I want him to argue with me. I need something other than this pit of grief in my stomach and overwhelming bitterness. Gripping the side of the table, I turn to look at him. “So does this mean you’ve acknowledged the fact that you almost jammed your disgusting tongue down my throat that day?”

“Hey.” Adrian shrugs. “You were there; I was there, my frustration overflowed. It just happened. And it wasn’t like you didn’t respond.”

The familiar feeling of annoyance flares in me and this time, I embrace it. “Shut up, dumbass,” I growl.

“Make me.”

I lean forward fast and my hand is brought forward when I stop myself with an inward scream. What am I doing? As quickly, I pull back and swat at his face. “Fly.”

I try to focus on Mrs.
Henridge’s
lecture in order to wipe my mind clean but there’s a crawling sick feeling in me threatening to go up. I look at the ticking clock and each minute hand seems to drag on. As I
gaze at it, the black number letters seem to smudge together and I have to blink again.

My head pounds slowly as the hour wears on, the space between my eyes throbbing. I have the intense urge to close my eyes. Little black dots dance dizzily along the edges of my vision, making everything foggy. I rest my head on the desk to stop the dizziness but it only makes it worse.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Bile rises in my throat and I reflexively hunch over, clapping a hand to my mouth.

Adrian glances over to me, eyes questioning. “Are you tripping or something?” He asks, eyebrows contracting. “You look kind of pale. Not that you usually don’t but--”

I don’t answer, feeling hot and nauseous all over like I’m going to be sick. I abruptly stand up, banging the chair against the desk behind me. Immediately, I run out of the classroom with the teacher in mid-sentence.

I dash to the nearest washroom, the fluorescent lighting overhead swirling above me. I lean over the sink, looking into my reflection. My skin is sweaty white and eyes so wide that the pupils are pinpricks. Dark circles hang under my eyes. I try to breathe evenly, in short quick gasps. Squeezing my eyes shut and then opening them, all I can see in the mirror is a broken girl.

Splashing cold water over my face doesn’t help. I’m still burning up, an inch from vomiting.