Chapter Twenty-One #2
The cemetery was a splash of bright green dotted with gleaming marble.
While it was a sizable plot of land, it was small relative to cemeteries she’d seen in bigger cities.
That was good because it meant she wouldn’t have to spend a long time looking for Will or risk getting lost in the process.
After thanking Jared for the ride, she stepped out and looked around.
A graveside service was taking place nearby, but she didn’t see anyone else until she had walked down the central pathway for a while.
Then he was there, a single figure sitting on the grass, hunched over bent knees.
She couldn’t tell if he was staring at the gravestone in front of him, or if his mind had wandered off to the point where he no longer noticed or cared what he was looking at.
The image broke her heart because he appeared…
small. Wordlessly, she went up and sat beside him.
The name on the marble stone in front of him read Trudy Elaine Novak.
Some quick mental math had a jolt of pain spearing into Emmy’s chest. She’d been sixteen when she died.
Aching inside, she mirrored Will’s position, resting her arms on her bent knees, and waited.
“Leukemia,” Will said quietly, a minute or two later.
“It came out of nowhere. I had to watch my aunt suffer as her daughter went through chemo, as she wasted away, as she died. I had to watch my mom suffer with her sister, try to comfort her—and me—try to hold it together when she probably wanted to break down. Sometimes I went to the hospital with them. I remember getting restless, wandering the halls. It was too hard to stay in the room with them. My cousin…” He broke off, swallowed hard.
“How old were you?”
“Twelve when she was diagnosed. Thirteen by the time she let go.”
“I’m so sorry.” There was nothing else she could say.
“She was the reason I became a nurse. Or part of it. Even at that age, I knew I wanted to do something with healthcare. Maybe be an X-ray tech. I thought bones were cool, but… nurse felt right.” He turned to her then, his eyes red-rimmed and lost…
so lost. “I meant what I said last night, how you’re not responsible for my emotional wellbeing.
But the things Bright said… I couldn’t stop thinking about them.
I think that’s how I convinced myself to leave you this morning without telling you where I was going.
Didn’t want you to think I was a hypocrite, telling you it’s not your job to care for me, then falling apart on you. ”
“It’s okay to lean on me when you’re hurting, Will. That’s what friends are for. I won’t think you’re a hypocrite.”
He stared at her for a moment, his throat working with the effort of keeping tears at bay.
“I keep thinking of questions that split off into more questions. Was my cousin real? Was my aunt’s grief real?
Am I really a nurse? Did my cousin—” He broke off, choking on words and emotion.
“Did my cousin die so I could be a well-rounded character? Is that what it all comes down to? A tragic backstory?” He gave in then, rested his forehead on her shoulder as he broke into sobs.
Tears streamed down Emmy’s face as she cradled him against her.
She could never take back what she had done to him.
No matter what he said, this was her fault.
She hadn’t appeared in his world on purpose, but it was her appearance that had caused his pain nonetheless.
A part of her felt like a fraud, offering him comfort when she was the source of his discomfort in the first place.
Worse, she feared that he would never truly recover from this.
Even if she somehow found a way to bring him back with her to the real world, his mind might not be able to handle it.
For now, all she could do was hold him, grieve with him, and make sure he knew he wasn’t alone.
Even when he stopped crying, she held him, waited until he was ready to sit back.
It took a while, and she didn’t mind. There was a gentle breeze blowing and birds chirping.
Comforting feelings, sights, sounds. Exactly what a cemetery was supposed to provide for the grieving.
He sat back eventually, rubbed his hands down his face.
“Tell me about her,” Emmy requested softly.
“What’s to tell?” he asked. “She wasn’t real.”
“She was real to you.”
He didn’t respond right away, and stayed silent long enough that she didn’t think he’d speak again. But then he sighed, plucked a piece of grass to toy with absently, and spoke.
“She was older than me by a couple years, but she was one of my best friends. She laughed with her whole body, you know… threw her head back, held her stomach. It should have looked fake, but it was real with her. She always ate her French fries plain—no ketchup or dip of any kind. One time, when my aunt wouldn’t let her get her nose pierced, she ‘ran away’ to our house.
I think she was thirteen or fourteen then.
My mom called my aunt—without telling us, so we could feel like we were doing something sneaky—and let Trudy stay the night.
“We used to challenge each other to competitions all the time. Just random shit that popped into our heads. Who can eat the most Lucky Charms without milk; who can climb this tree faster; who can watch this YouTube video of a kitten falling into a bowl of water without laughing.”
Emmy smiled a little despite herself. “I think I would have liked her.”
“Absolutely. She would have liked your sense of humor. If she were still alive, I think she would be the only person I would have risked telling about all this. Maybe it’s best that she isn’t, because I wouldn’t have been able to leave her behind if I found a way out of the book.”
He fell silent again, and Emmy’s heart clenched.
His pain was a sharp, aching wound in her chest. She cursed herself for ever picking up the book, for going to see a sex psychic just to make her sister feel better, for doing her best to convince him that he was a fictional character instead of leaving him alone.
“Can I ask you a favor?”
“Anything,” Emmy told him.
“I need a little more time. Can you drive my car back to the house? I’ll have Jared or somebody give me a ride back when I’m ready. I can’t leave just yet.”
“That’s fine. Do you want me to call anyone for you? Or do anything else?”
He shook his head. “Just get yourself home safe.”
She accepted his keys. It was difficult to get up and leave him alone in front of a young girl’s grave, but she respected his wishes. She left. Tears dripped silently down her cheeks as she drove to the little house she was using as a temporary home.