Chapter 35 We Are the Pages, the Words, the Poem
We Are the Pages, the Words, the Poem
Aria
The warm golden lights of the decorated fir trees blur before my eyes. The longer I look at them, the more I feel them tingling on my skin.
Christmas is a week away. I’ve never felt lonelier. Not even in Rhode Island.
“Hey, Aria.”
I start. Gwendolyn appears next to me, her hands wrapped around a steaming cup. Her black corkscrew curls are spilling over her large, blue down jacket. She looks at me with a somewhat insecure, careful smile.
“What do you want?”
“I can’t hold your reaction against you.”
“Of course you can’t. You slept with my boyfriend. Well, ex-boyfriend.”
I ignore her by focusing on Paisley and Knox instead. They are standing next to one of Will’s giant reindeer, drinking mulled wine and talking with Levi and Aaron. Paisley is laughing. I wish I could laugh with her.
“Yeah. I did. And I think it’s time we talked about it.”
“Sorry, but that video was enough for me. Hearing all the gory details straight from you isn’t at the top of my list.” I make a move to go and join Harper on Silver Lake when all of a sudden Gwendolyn’s fingers close around my wrist. Her touch burns like fire. Not a good one. A painful one.
“Wait, Aria. Just listen to me. Please. We have to talk. We used to be such good friends, before…”
“Before you fucked my boyfriend. Yeah. Unexpected plot twist.”
“I wasn’t myself.”
“You don’t say. You going to tell me you were drunk now, Gwendolyn?
Sorry, that doesn’t count. Drunk or not, you check to see what’s going on when suddenly your good friend’s boyfriend’s dick is in your face.
Sirens go off, Gwendolyn, and they’re pretty hard to ignore.
So don’t tell me it was a little mistake or whatever because you were smashed because… ”
“I wasn’t drunk.”
Now I’m confused. “That doesn’t make things more positive. I mean, are you trying to tell me you decided to sleep with my boyfriend when you were sober?”
“Yeah. No. Aria, honestly, I don’t know. If I knew what was wrong with me, I could tell you. All I know is that, at that moment, something happened with me that I don’t understand myself. It…” She turns away. Her breath is shaky, and I can see her trying to swallow.
Whether I want to or not, I can’t help but see her desperation is real.
She seems completely exhausted. This isn’t an act.
She bites her lower lip and looks at the lake.
“Something happened to me, Aria. Something that terrifies me. You’re the first person I’m talking about this to, and you’re probably going to think I’m bizarre or something, but I think I was possessed. ”
I can’t stop staring at her. “Possessed? Like, by demons or whatever?”
Gwendolyn shrugs. She looks pained. “No idea. Not really. I mean, that’s not possible.
But my memory of that evening and the days beforehand…
I wasn’t in control of myself. It was like I was being controlled by someone else.
No one knows that because they wouldn’t take me seriously.
Everyone would just think I’m bonkers. But the fear it could happen again paralyzes me every day.
” Only now does she look at me. Her caramel-colored eyes meet my perplexed gaze.
I don’t know what to say. What to think. Never in my life would I have expected to hear something like that, and the worst thing is…I believe her. The way she’s standing here telling me, the fear in her eyes, the panic in her face… You just don’t make this kind of thing up.
“You don’t have to believe me,” she says, her soft voice fading into the Christmas song filling the air.
“I probably wouldn’t if I were in your shoes.
But telling you was important to me. I owed you an explanation, and you needed to know that I would never have done that thing with Wyatt if… if I’d been myself.”
I blink. Quickly. I know I should say something, but instead, all I do is stare, which probably makes her feel that I think she’s bonkers.
Gwendolyn smiles sadly before she shrugs one more time and turns away.
It’s only when she’s moving off in the direction of the woods that I come to my senses.
“Gwen!” I run after her, and this time it’s me grabbing her wrist.
She turns and looks at me. And I can’t believe I actually say the following, but I do.
“I believe you.”
Her lips part in surprise. “You… What?”
“I believe you,” I say, this time more forcefully. “And I’m sorry that you have to go through feeling so afraid. And I’m sorry you did something I’m judging you for even though you didn’t want to. But all the same…”
“All the same, you can’t forgive me.”
“No, it’s not that. I mean, I want to. But it’s hard.
Wyatt was…is everything for me. And these images are always in my head.
I so want everything to be okay again, Gwen.
So much. But you’re always there, beneath him, and all this time I have blamed you both for everything.
Believing you is one thing, you know? But forgetting everything is… ”
“Next to impossible.” Gwen’s eyes dart to a fir tree, its branches dripping with snow. She sighs, then turns back to look at me. “I get it, Aria. And no doubt things will never be the same between us ever again, but I give you a lot of credit for listening to me.”
Only now do I let go of her wrist and knit my brows. “I’m going to try to forgive you. I promise to do my best. I can’t tell you when that’ll be. I can’t tell you if it will ever be. But I’m going to try, Gwen, because I think I need it as much as you do.”
Gwen nods. “Maybe someday.”
I smile. “Maybe someday.”
For a moment, all we do is look at each other. Eventually, Gwen lowers her eyes and walks past me, back to the square. I watch her go back to Paisley and the others and how they immediately turn toward her. Levi says something, and Gwen laughs reservedly.
“Just like you always were.”
And I wince yet another time this evening.
Suddenly Mom’s standing next to me. She hands me a cup of mulled wine with a soft smile on her face.
For a brief moment, my mother closes her eyes, and I can see her taking in all the sweet smells. Toasted almonds and doughnuts, buttered waffles and gingerbread, powdered sugar, chocolate—everything heavenly, everything sumptuous.
“Whenever you were sad or had to be stronger than you could be at the moment, you’d withdraw. Looking deep inside yourself, delicately, wistfully.”
I look at her for a spell before taking a sip of my mulled wine and looking out over the square in its Christmas best. Sinatra’s “Jingle Bells” is playing in the background while Aspen’s residents are laughing and happily making their way past all the makeshift tables.
I take another sip and watch the people, their hearts, and the joy in their eyes.
“It hurts.”
“Yes, it does.” She glances over to William, who’s in conversation with Spirit Susan again.
She’s waving her arms wildly while, behind her, in a careless half-circle, stand twelve nervous kids in swan outfits.
“And that’s okay, Aria. Be sad, but don’t forget that you’re also more than that.
More than your memories. There is so much about you that’s worth loving, and you should. With or without Wyatt.”
“I know.” And I really mean that. It’s strange, completely unreal, because I would have thought that after our last meeting, the last stone would finally break away, that I would finally lose my grip and fall into the depths.
But while my feet were still dragging me through the night—through our messy little town, my home—I realized that nothing of the sort was happening.
There was no abyss. Everything was solid, every step, every movement, but it still hurt.
A fire was burning inside me that could not be extinguished, even in the hidden places of my soul.
Sure, I mean, of course. I love Wyatt, the boy with the gap in his teeth and the dimples.
I love that star hockey player whose eyes would shine with moonlight in the deepest nights when our lips touched, when we wordlessly spoke of love. I will always love him.
But pain wasn’t the only thing that came with saying goodbye.
There was something else. Something that I only discovered now, even though it had been blooming for a long time.
It was as if the dense fog inside me had finally lifted, as if I had grown, even though I thought I’d lost it.
I realized how strong I am. How strong the pain had made me.
“It hurts; it’s tearing me apart, and anything else would be inhuman.
I mean, he was a part of me. Naturally, I’m an individual.
Naturally, life will go on without him because I’m valuable, with or without Wyatt.
I know that, but nevertheless I can’t give up.
The hope that we still could manage to be something someday is there.
Someday, he and I could be he and I again. Like before.”
Mom nods. A satisfied smile appears on her lips as she takes hold of my arm. Together we walk across the square. Passing by William, Mom shoots him an oh-come-on-already-Will glance that causes him to sigh.
“Fine,” he says. “You win. Do your darn show, Sue.”
Susan’s squeaks are followed by the heartwarming laughter of children. We stroll on to Silver Lake. Harper’s out on the ice, ready to practice one of her programs for Skate America.
“That’s all I wanted,” Mom says.
The Christmas music is replaced by Duncan Laurence’s “Arcade.” Harper’s music. She begins to skate. I take another sip of wine and follow her elegant movements with my eyes. “What do you think?”
My mother puts an arm around my shoulder, pulls me to her, and places a kiss on my cap. “I want you to finally see how valuable you are—just you, on your own, no matter what’s going on around you, or who you’re with or not.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
She lets go. “But there’s just one problem.”
“What’s that?”