Epilogue- Arnaz
Z uri told me that my homework is to try to talk to you. We’ve been sitting with you more. She asked if I felt ready to talk. I told her I’m not sure there’s a point.
Plus, you probably won’t hear me because you’re hiding in the corner of the room.
You can come out whenever you want, you know.
Zuri says you may need some convincing.
I asked her how I’d do that, and she said to sit with you. She said that if I can’t speak to you, maybe I could write to you.
We were always too nervous to sit still long enough to read back then.
I guess that’s not my problem. All I can do is try.
I won’t bullshit you. The next twenty or so years are shit for you.
Externally, it looks like you’re winning at life, but inside, you’re as lost as you are now…angrier too.
But you survive.
Ana?s survives too.
She even figures out what’s causing her pain every month, and she gets surgery. It’s not a cure, but it helps. You can stop crying over that now.
Them? They’re still around.
I know that matters to you because no matter how shitty they were to you, you were always so terrified of them leaving.
They don’t leave. But they’re also never there. Not for the years that mattered anyway.
But they live.
And you…
My pen pauses.
I just went to flex my feet, but there’s a seventy-pound dog stretched across my legs. He loses his shit whenever he sees you.
He howls for you.
My stomach is rumbling again because in the oven there’s a dairy-free cake (oh yeah, the rashes and stomach aches—cow’s milk. Ana?s finally figures it out in a couple of years).
The cake’s there because you asked for it. Seriously, if you said right now that you wanted a chocolate cake shaped like a Transformer, the guy over there in the kitchen would make it for you.
Speaking of him…
My hand stills.
You know how right now you’re terrified everyone’s gonna leave? Well, that fear never fully goes away, though you’ll tell yourself you don’t care if they do.
’Cause, like, people are trash.
Not him, though.
He’s part of the reason I can sit here and do this.
You love him with every inch of your being. You love him so much it aches. You try really hard not to. And every time you run, you end up back with him. You’ll still feel like the floor is gonna cave in and you’ll lose him, but I can’t help you with that. I haven’t figured it out.
But you don’t run anymore.
You still retreat into the quiet corners of yourself.
He knows you need it.
But he’s there whenever you come out.
With cake.
Oh, and you figured out that your favorite dessert is any one he makes (you’ll be asked that one day).
Guess what?
He loves you back.
Hard.
Oh, and come closer for this. Guess what I have wrapped around my ring finger?
A unicorn bandage.
It’s my thing now.
The man in the kitchen says he’s gonna replace it with a gold band one day.
He didn’t argue with me when I said that if it isn’t big enough to fit over the bandage, then it has to go around my neck.
He just said, “Okay, Blue.”
And I finally learned why he calls me that. Blue.
And it’s not why I thought. It’s because I give him hope. That whenever he’s near me, he believes in tomorrow.
Can you imagine?
Us giving someone hope.
He’s…God, he’s different.
He isn’t the type of man who sees the good and beauty in everything, but he’ll observe a life-worn thing and sense its goodness and beauty. There is a difference.
That’s him now, telling me the cake will be ready soon, so I gotta go.
I’m not here to convince you to come out of the room.
But you should know that you eventually figure out there’s more to life than survival.
That in the end, we’re safe.
You’ll wake up one day and look around and finally realize you’re home.