When I left Aaron's place at eleven I decided I wasn't gonna get any sleep tonight, so I spend my time digging up my box of old things. The best thing about being at home is that mom can't stay up past eleven and Colt, like me, is also the kind of person who needs his alone time at the end of the day, so I have my room all to myself. This can either be a good thing or a bad one, depending on how you look at it.
At first I don't know where to start because I wanna plunge into all my things all at once. I pull out the drawer on my study desk and inside it, the thing that first gets my attention is my old Sony. I'd left it in here a few weeks before going off to college after dad bought me a new one. I plug it into a power socket and turn it on. I find two audio recordings.
What are these? I don't remember recording anything. I play the first one.
It starts with some sort of inaudible sound, but after five seconds I realize it's the sound of people talking. It's my classroom. All sorts of thuds, the muffled sound from the phone's blocked speakers, and then a hysterical laugh — which sounds like Grass, the former captain of the Wood River Basketball Team. And then a conversation, which is louder and probably means someone approached me and my phone. But still, I can't make out a word the person says in the recording. In the end, I say, 'What?' and that ends the audio file.
I play the second and upon hearing the first word spoken by myself, immediately I remember what this is. I can see it loud and clear in my head. It was a Sunday afternoon. Emma and I were sitting under the shade of a tree at the basketball court near her house in Bellevue, where Aaron and his team were practicing for an upcoming game.
The two of us just sat there with my copy of Romeo and Juliet in hand, playing it out as if we were on a stage, the cold air and gentle breeze our sole audience.
I started:
'O, speak again, bright angel, for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o'er my head
As is a wingèd messenger of heaven
Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes
Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him
When he bestrides the lazy puffing clouds
And sails upon the bosom of the air.'
She had memorized the next line by heart, and proved to be a perfect companion for me to practice with for the play I had to perform at school in three weeks. I recorded it with the intention of playing it again to see what I could do to fix certain parts of my performance, but it turned out to be worth so much more than that.
'O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name.
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.'
I am so absorbed inside my own memories that I don't even realize how long the recording has stopped. Even so, I pick out that small trace of recollection and speak to the walls of my bedroom: "And trust me, love, in my eye so do you."
The walls stay silent as a reply, and I laugh at myself for thinking they'd act differently. The walls are loyal to their cause, perhaps to a fault.
I look for videos and find a bunch of them, most of them of me and Emma. We liked singing together and took videos of ourselves for future viewing. How were we to know what the future really held for us?
My thumb is hovering over the play button, but I can't bring it down. I can't do it. I turn off the phone and leave it inside the drawer.
And then everything is dead quiet and I feel like the loneliest lonely loser on the goddamn planet. The world has a funny way of making you feel small and insignificant. It's a cold, cold world, Emma. Are you glad you left it? Things might've looked up for you had you stayed. I still think that's possible, despite everything. And yet I don't think it possible for me, which is weird. Maybe some people get broken in such a way that the only way for them to be alright again is by someone else's hand. Who's gonna help me now though? Who was there to help you? Was there no one you could reach out to? Not even me? Who was I to you, sometimes I wonder. I would've loved to be the one you trusted enough to let enter your inside world. Maybe I could've helped.
I walk over to my bookshelf and pick out my high school yearbook. I'd been nominated Most Likely To Die A Bachelor. I can't remember why they'd voted for me to win such a godawful nomination.
I didn't go to prom my senior year, which is why all the photos of prom night look foreign to me. It was after Emma died, and there was really nothing and no one who could make me get out of my room for three weeks or so unless I wanted to, and those rare occurrences happened only cause I had to eat and take a piss. I lost fifteen pounds during that time. I was so skinny Gap and Aaron barely recognized me when they saw me outside my house one day.
I put down the yearbook after some time and take a look at all the books on my shelf. There are so many of them, some Emma's that I never finished cause I pretty much stopped reading when she died. But those that I'd finished, I remember in minute detail like I'd just read them yesterday. I lift my finger and point at the left end of the shelf, naming the books to make sure I still remember them.
"The Little Prince, Franny and Zooey, The Stranger, Kafka On The Shore, The Bell Jar..."
I had never been a book person before Emma came into my life and ruined everything. We'd known each other for only two weeks when one day she handed me a copy of The Little Prince.
E: Do me a favor and read this, will you?
R: What kind of favor involves reading a book?
E: Sorry, let me rephrase that. Do yourself a favor and read the book. And you'd better have it done before Monday cause then I'll come see you and we're gonna have a serious discussion about whether the little prince was real or just a figment of a deserted pilot's imagination.
I was left completely dumbfounded, and slightly annoyed. I mean, here was a girl who I barely knew just coming up to my face and telling me to read one-hundred-and-forty pages' worth of words when I don't even enjoy reading to begin with. And she had the nerve to give me a deadline?! It was — in the term of a sixteen-year-old me — a shitload of nonsense.
I finished that book in one sitting. In fact, I texted her the next day and told her I'd finished the book, three days ahead of my assigned deadline. She was absolutely psyched.
The following week she gave me a new material to read: Franny and Zooey. After finishing Franny and Zooey, I was greatly disappointed. I was on the verge of getting mad because the book was nothing like The Little Prince, and here I was so close on being someone who actually likes reading, and Salinger ruined the chance of that ever happening. The book was a flop, I decided. She begged to differ. She chastised me for being a terrible reader. She told me I was too focused on what I wanted the book to be that I completely disregarded what Salinger was trying to get through. She repeated again how I was a terrible reader.
She didn't speak to me for the next two weeks. I didn't understand how a stupid book would make a girl so mad at a guy to the point where she'd stop talking to him for weeks. At that time I thought she was cranky and prone to episodes of tantrum like most girls, but I didn't know any better. It wasn't the book that triggered the radio silence. It was something else entirely.
Growing tired of reminiscing, I lie down on my bed. But I should've known there is no escaping her. Because on the ceiling above my bed is a painting of a green field we'd made together. We both added two stickmen — which were us — sitting under a tree and wrote next to it, 'On a bright sunny day, a girl and a boy go out for a walk together,' in blue paint.
And then it finally came to me at two a.m. after a long session of staring at the painting, that even if I went to the other end of the world, I would never be able to escape her. No amount of distance will cut it. She is in every face that I see, every song I hear, every drop of rain, every sleepless night. She's the voice inside my head.
