Eleven Months Later
SOFT BLUE LIGHT FILTERS in through ancient stained-glass windows.
“I bet a lot of BJs happened in this back pew.”
“Jesus, Jules,” I say. “This is a church.” I gesture to the dimly lit space filled with candles and rough wooden benches.
“Yeah. I know. And the word of god makes people horny.”
“I think that’s just you.”
A few rows ahead of us an old lady with a bun and a cane shushes us, and Jules flashes her a smile and mouths an apology before turning to me and rolling her eyes.
“You’re such an American,” I say.
“You’re the one who decided to take a year off before NYU to ‘see the world.’ It doesn’t get much more American than that.”
The woman stands up and starts cursing at us in Italian and shaking her cane directly at us.
“Scopiamo! Scopiamo!” Jules says, putting her hands up.
The old lady’s face flames bright red and she yells even louder.
“That means Let’s fuck!” I hiss.
“Well, I only memorized that and I’m sorry. Sometimes I get them mixed up. Sue me.” Jules turns back to the old lady. “We’re leaving, we’re leaving. Oh my god, old people have literally no chill.”
We walk back outside under the bright Italian sun and Jules lets out a belabored sigh. “That bitchy old lady didn’t happen to have a Buzz Kill over her head, did she?”
“Oh my god, for the last time, they’re called Doom Scrolls.”
“Potato, potato,” Jules says, with the exact same a for both potatoes. “But really, maybe that would explain why she has such a raging stick up her ass.”
“I’m so glad I told you about the clocks,” I say. “It’s such a comfort having you know.”
Jules grins. “Totally, right? Now tell me if that hot Italian girl at the cheese place across the street is going to live. Or at least has more than two hours left.”
I roll my eyes. “She’s clear.”
“Perf. I’m going to go see if she wants to share a baguette. Unless …”—Jules pauses—“you changed your mind, and you want me to come with you?”
I shake my head. “I’m good.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.” It’s been pretty great having Jules around—well, when she’s not rage-baiting hundred-year-old grandmothers—but this is something I have to do by myself.
She nods and gives me a hug. “I’m proud of you,” she says into my ear, before heading across the cobblestone street.
I watch as she goes right up to the girl and starts tossing her hair and making some joke.
The Italian girl is immediately delighted, laughing and leaning in, touching her arm.
Jules will probably be obsessed with someone else by tomorrow—or hell, by this afternoon.
But … these days, I think there’s something beautiful about the way she’s always unafraid to start something new.
To leap, heart first. To think of every day, every person, as a potential beginning.
I mean, couldn’t be me. But good for her.
I pick up my backpack and walk for a little while, watching the people on the streets playing checkers and selling tomatoes.
The giant red-brown walls of the city jut up into the sky, holding all these different people together in this one place.
As I walk, I run my hands along a wall, dragging my fingers over the bumps.
There’s a man in a fedora eating an orange on a stoop. He leans back on the marble stairs and takes a swig of bottled water. I wonder how old those stairs are, who designed them, and how many other people have sat on them over the years, eating oranges under the sun.
In the days after the Plaza, everyone at school made cards and dropped flowers and casseroles at Peter’s parents’ house.
Sometimes, I’d park my truck across the street and just stare at all the things people left.
Teddy bears, candles, the usual shit. Shit Peter wouldn’t have cared about.
Sometimes it’d make me so angry, seeing a new stuffed animal or bunch of fake daisies appear in the pile.
But then I’d hear his voice in my head, telling me that this stuff wasn’t for him.
It was for his mom, and his dad. It was for everyone who was left behind.
A few weeks in, I bought a hardcover of a new Hank Green book and placed it carefully next to some perfume-sprayed letters from the cheer squad.
My own offering on the altar for the boy who had too many books and not enough time.
It didn’t make me feel any better. But, I don’t know, maybe his mom saw it and smiled. Maybe.
There was a service, a big one, with everyone from town and a lot of people from his last school.
I couldn’t bring myself to go in, but I sat on the steps outside, thinking about handrails and concrete versus marble.
His mom found me, afterward. I steeled myself for her to scream at me, slap me, something. But she just showed me her phone.
“Do you know anything about this?” It was an email with the subject line: For when Dad’s gone too.
Peter had spent the rest of his money on a solo cruise to Antarctica. For her. At the hotel, when he found out his parents weren’t going to make it, I thought he’d been sending them a goodbye message, but he had been forwarding his mom the ticket confirmation.
“Why Antarctica?” she’d asked, her eyes full of tears. And I couldn’t say, Because Antarctica is for second chances, and because Gordon didn’t get to go. So I told her a different truth: “Because he wanted you to be happy.”
And who knows, maybe she will be. One day.
She must’ve found out the results of his Huntington’s test, but she didn’t offer to tell me (I mean, why would she?), and I didn’t ask. Knowing now wouldn’t change anything. Not for Peter, anyway. And if he didn’t get to know, then neither do I.
A few days after the funeral, Charles went to court.
He pled guilty right away. Apparently, he was the one who’d called 911 right after it happened.
He told them everything. The police found him at the Queensboro Bridge, his expensive shoes teetering on the edge, and they pulled him back.
He’s in jail now, but honestly, I think the real punishment is that he has to keep living with all the pain he won’t let go of.
For a while, the grief group at Noah’s house met twice a week, and there were months when it seemed like Emma and Sophia would never stop wearing black. But one day, right before summer, Emma showed up in a purple crop top and turquoise leggings, and that was that.
It was awful, going to school. Sitting next to his empty desk.
There were some days I couldn’t make myself get out of bed to go at all.
And there were other days that were … dark.
So dark I forgot light even existed. But then Jules would come home and put Kristen Stewart on my head, and tell me all about which seniors were asking her to the prom or whatever, and I would think about what Peter would say if he were there.
How maybe (definitely) he and Jules would’ve become friends.
How he would’ve teased her without really teasing her, and how she would’ve whispered too loudly to me, Okay, I can totally see why you’re so down bad for this nerd.
In those last hours, I thought I’d never hear his voice again, but that’s not actually true.
I hear it all the time. Peter said we don’t get an epilogue in real life, but I think we do.
The people who are left behind have to keep going—they have to keep turning the page.
And if you’re really lucky, those people write you into everything they do. Or at least they try.
I try.
I hitch my backpack up a little higher and breathe in the warm, fresh air.
A little girl with messy braids trips on her own shoelaces and the giant gelato she was holding falls, predictably, to the ground.
She doesn’t cry, though. She just glares at the melting clump of cream and sugar like she’s pissed the fuck off. And I can’t help but smile.
While her parents scramble to wipe up the mess on her shirt, I slip inside the gelateria, a cold blast of AC blowing my hair back. I get a small scoop of stracciatella and bring it back outside.
“Here you go,” I say, as I hand it to her.
“For me?” she asks, her brown eyes lighting up.
“For you,” I say.
Her parents rush to say thank you but I wave them off. “It’s nothing.”
It is nothing. And it’s also something. It’s everything.
I don’t know how long the whole gelato thing takes.
The girl doesn’t have a clock over her head.
No one in this little square does. Everyone is living.
But everyone is also dying. We all are. All the time, every second.
It’s not just the last three days that matter.
It’s all of it. At least, I think that’s what Peter would tell me.
I keep walking, the cobblestones uneven under my feet.
And then I make it to the water. I’ve been here for a couple weeks, but the color still takes my breath away every time I see it.
It’s so clear and blue and green and alive.
Some kind of white bird flies over the water, its wing skimming the surface.
There’s a breeze blowing through my hair, and if I close my eyes, I can almost pretend that he’s still with me. Almost.
I slide my backpack off and unzip it. I reach in and pull out the rough brown paper bag. I can feel the book in there, can see almost every line in my mind, even without looking at it.
I slip the small red book from the same bag I’ve been keeping it in since Peter bought it all those months ago.
I run my hands over the fabric cover. There’s no author and no publisher listed. Just a red hardcover with a gold title: The Way This Is.
It’s a collection of poems. It must’ve been self-published or something because no matter how many times I’ve searched on the internet, nothing has ever come up. Maybe this copy is the only one in the world.
I flip through the pages until I find what I’m looking for. One small collection of words, by whoever wrote it.
The way this is
Is the way it’s supposed to be
Because if it wasn’t
Oh honey, there wouldn’t be a you and me
There’s a circle around it, and in ballpoint pen Peter wrote: Us.
I whisper the words out loud and press the book to my chest, standing still, letting the sun warm my face.
The wind picks up again and I tear a blank page out of the back of the book. I take my time folding it, smoothing the edges. And then I pull out a pen, and I write his name on the wing. I hold the bird in the palm of my hand, until the breeze takes it.
Peter Beckett. He lived a lifetime. With me.