Chapter 18 #3
“Are we meant to understand it?” Ellis asked, her voice tentative as she looked toward Liv.
“Like, understand why we’re here? I mean, I think about it.
All the time. Am I supposed to do something big now?
Because someone died… you died, and I got to be here.
Am I meant to do more? I—I never even planned for more. ”
The small fire popped loudly beside us, and Ellis flinched, her eyes darting down to the dirt like it might hold the answer to the question that had been rattling around in her brain since Liv’s heart had been put in her chest.
“Well,” I began, “I don’t think we’re owed greatness just because we survive. I think we’re owed honesty, more than anything. Showing up. Just doing the best we can with what we’ve got and the hand we were dealt. I think that has to be enough.”
“Is it?” Ellis asked weakly after a beat of silence.
“Yes, it is,” I told her firmly. “Even the small things matter, you guys. You, ” I glanced at Ellis, “you post a video and someone out there feels less alone. They feel seen. The experiences you post may mean nothing to you, but they mean something to someone. Or people wouldn’t follow you.”
Ellis bit her lip.
“You don’t have to run around curing diseases or—” I gestured vaguely “—or, you know, sail into international waters to take aid to countries under genocide. And don’t get me wrong, that shit is amazing.
But for every person out there doing big things, the people doing the small stuff help too. Just as much.”
Liv clicked her tongue after another long pause.
“I did run a petition for the school not to cancel prom… after something I did, but it came through. They kept it on, and then Stacey Mathers and Ben Morley kissed in the middle of the dance floor after a year of dancing around each other. And she’s pregnant now. Or was. She was pregnant when I died.”
I latched onto it with a laugh. “See? Small things! Imagine if prom had gotten canceled? Stacey Mathers might never have been kissed by Ben Morley, and they might never have had their baby, who, for all we know, could grow up to cure cancer or… or fight for world peace. Ripples.”
Liv snorted, and Ellis choked on a laugh.
I shook my head and sighed. “Look, Margaret always used to say that life wasn’t meant to be understood. You’d go crazy trying to figure it out. It’s just meant to be lived. Tasted. Sometimes it’s sweet, and sometimes it’s like licking a battery.”
“I would have liked Margaret,” Liv said, laughter in her voice as she rolled onto her stomach in the air and looked down at us. “She seemed cool.”
“She was,” I murmured, a wave of homesickness for her washing over me. “I’ve never met anyone quite like her. She was just this force of nature. Unapologetic. Said whatever she thought and rarely backtracked. And she was pure magic. She wasn’t a fraud… she—she could really do it all.”
“Too bad I couldn’t meet her in limbo here,” Liv murmured. “But she probably had it all sorted out before she died.”
I shrugged and toed some dirt with my foot. “She was sick at the end, so she knew it was coming. I’d say she definitely didn’t die with unfinished business.”
Margaret would never.
“I think maybe it is all the small things that are the point,” Liv murmured softly. “I mean, those are the things I think about most. Miss the most. You know, like camping with Bri and hanging out with my friends. Even the mundane stuff.”
Ellis sighed and rubbed her face. “Sometimes I feel like I wasn’t even made for this place. I just don’t get the point of being here, in the least suicidal-sounding way possible. I just don’t get how to do it. Or maybe I missed the instruction manual on how to behave like an ordinary person.”
I laughed at her and nudged the fire with my stick. “Maybe there are no instructions, and we’re just supposed to stumble our way through it all, collecting moments.”
“Like a thieving raven,” Liv breathed, kicking her legs in the air.
“Exactly,” I snorted, imagining a Liv-sized raven stealing memories.
“Collect things. Shiny things. Laughter. Heartaches. First kisses and midnight drives. Sunsets over the ocean, or the crackling of a fire on an impromptu road trip with a stranger and a ghost. Whatever it is that warms the blood in your veins.”
Ellis smiled softly over at me before frowning. “And if we mess it all up? Forget to collect moments? Forget to—forget to live in the moment?”
“Try again tomorrow,” I muttered with a shrug, another one of Margaret’s favorite things to say to me rolling off my tongue. “I don’t think the world asks for perfection. Just presence.”
“Presence is hard when you’re dead,” Liv muttered darkly.
“You’re definitely present,” I told her, glancing up. “You’ve shaken up poor Ellis enough to make her present, that’s for sure.”
Liv grinned, and Ellis crinkled her nose.
“Presence is hard when… when you’re scared,” she murmured, not looking at either of us.
I pressed into the back of my chair. “Well, maybe that’s another reason. Another point of it all. Show up when you’re scared. Show up when you’re hurt. Especially when it hurts.”
“So pain is the point?” Liv asked with a frown.
“No,” I said quickly. “Feeling. Feeling has to be the point. It’s the only thing that ever lets you know you’re still alive.
And when you don’t want to feel anymore?
When you can’t feel anymore? That’s existing, and it’s different.
Living is choosing to be in it all. Among the chaos and the beautiful moments. Even when it’s terrifying.”
Ellis ran a hand through her hair. “I guess I spent so long being afraid, you know? Afraid of dying, and then afraid of living. Afraid of disappointing people or—or letting people love me when they could lose me. I just kind of stopped.”
“Yet here you are,” Liv said, her voice surprisingly soft. “I mean, sure, at the beginning I forced you, but you’re having fun, right? Don’t tell me you haven’t started enjoying yourself, because I know that’s a lie.”
Ellis let out a soft laugh and shook her head at Liv.
“Existing is just breathing,” I said to Ellis now. “But living is risk, and I think it’s what we’re all meant to do here. To risk feeling everything.”
Ellis made a face. “Well, I’m not sure I’m brave enough to feel it all, that’s for sure.”
“You already are,” I told her with a grin. “You’ve made it this far, and you’ve had some pretty big feelings along the way.”
She flushed.
“So maybe the point isn’t to find meaning,” Liv said softly, looping her ankles together. “Maybe it’s just to make it.”
“So the meaning of life is whatever the hell we decide it is,” I said to them both, grinning almost wildly.
“Maybe it’s just this,” Ellis murmured, gesturing to the fire pit and us, a small smile of contentment on her face.
“What?” Liv asked with wide eyes. “Ghosts, fire pits, and unresolved queer tension?”
I barked a laugh and met Ellis’s eyes. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
The world had finally stilled, so many hours later, as Ellis and I lay in the tent, the thin walls fluttering in the gentle breeze.
No more crunching footsteps as people trudged to the communal bathroom, no lingering sounds of active campfires.
All I could hear was the hush of evening and the soft hum of Liv’s voice drifting from the roof of the Mustang, where she’d decided to sleep tonight, the stars her ceiling.
It was slightly colder than I’d expected, and the cheap sleeping bags crinkled with every small shift. I’d added an extra layer of clothes, and so had Ellis, but I could still feel her warmth beside me—pressed side by side, shoulder to shoulder—as we stared into the pitch-black silence.
“What do you think happens when we die?” Ellis asked softly beside me, breaking the stillness like popping a balloon with a pin.
Her words sat heavily between us, and I let out a low breath.
“I think it’s different for everyone,” I murmured. “Everyone has their own idea of life after death—heaven, hell, nothing, reincarnation. All of it’s kind of cute, honestly. It helps explain things. Makes life easier to get through, I guess. But I like the soul contract theory.”
Ellis shifted, and I felt her roll to face me. “The what?”
“Soul contracts,” I said, my voice soft.
“The idea is, before we’re born—or before we’re attached to a body—our souls agree to certain things.
People we’ll meet. Pains we’ll face. The love we’ll lose and find.
We pick our story based on how we want to grow.
Lessons our souls want to learn. So when we die, we can take those lessons back with us. To evolve.”
“Hm,” Ellis hummed, thoughtful.
“I don’t think we disappear when we die,” I continued. “I think we go back to wherever we came from. We review our lives, see how we did. Reunite with other souls we met along the way. And we wait. Wait until we’re ready to come back again. Until we have something else to learn.”
Ellis sniffed—barely perceptible—and I couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or something else.
“Do you think we come back as the same people?” she asked, her voice barely audible.
I rolled to face her too, feeling the gentle warmth of her breath on my face.
“No,” I said honestly, shaking my head. “I think we come back different. But we find the same souls we met before. People whose soul contracts lock with ours. Whether it’s for a long time or a short time. Different bodies. Different names. But the same souls, deep down.”
She was quiet for the longest moment. Beneath the blanket, her hand—just a breath away from mine—twitched.
“Do you think we knew each other… before?” she asked, a nervous tremor in her voice.
My throat tightened. “I think I’ve known you in maybe a thousand different ways. And you’re still as new and familiar to me every time we meet.”
In the darkness, I could barely make out her face—the soft bridge of her nose, the blinking of her eyes.
My words had clearly stunned her into silence, and maybe that was a good thing.
The dark gave me the courage to be braver than I’d ever been.
And honestly, I was tired of saying so much and doing so little.
My hand slid from under the blanket, and I caught a tendril of her soft, coppery hair between my fingers, twirling it gently.
I noted the soft intake of her breath as I tucked it behind her ear.
My fingers ghosted over her earlobe before tracing down her cheek, brushing along her jaw, and gliding over her lower lip.
Then, tentatively, I took her chin in my hand and leaned in.
The moment our lips met, it wasn’t fireworks I felt.
It was gravity.
That slow, aching pull that had been tugging between us finally aligned, as if the universe had been holding its breath for this.
Her lips were soft against mine—cautious, hesitant.
As if she wasn’t sure this was allowed. As if she’d spent so long denying herself the softness she craved that even this small kiss felt like an act of rebellion she wasn’t quite ready for.
But then something shifted.
Her mouth moved with mine. Still gentle. Still searching. But less afraid.
I pressed in closer, letting my hand trail along her jaw.
Her skin was warm beneath my fingertips, and her body didn’t shy from mine.
She leaned into the space between us. The kiss wasn’t hungry or frantic.
It was slow. Measured. Full of longing. Full of questions, and the lessons we still had to learn about each other, and all the answers we’d never be able to put into words.
When her hand brushed my forearm, my mind blanked. The touch was careful, a mirror of my own restraint, as if we both understood how easily this moment could shatter if we moved too fast. As if whatever had been blooming between us needed this softness to survive.
I kissed her again, deeper this time, letting my tongue meet hers, coaxing a soft gasp that caught in the back of her throat. She exhaled against my lips, and I tasted it all. The vulnerability, the fear, and that quiet hope I’d seen building in her these last few days.
My chest felt painfully full.
Slowly, we pulled apart, but barely. Just enough to breathe. Just enough to almost see each other again in the darkness of the tent.
Her breaths were uneven and delicate against my face, and she let out a soft laugh, sounding almost embarrassed.
“Was that in the contract too?” she teased lightly, squeezing my hand.
I smiled and squeezed back. “Definitely in the fine print.”