Finding Shiloh: a novel

Flicker

Her ghosts are all around me. I can almost hear her laugh again, bouncing off the ceiling and the walls.

I know I won't find her in there. But I can't help hoping that I will.

The door handle feels cold, yet my fingers find the same hold on it that they always have. I slowly push it open.

My breath catches in my throat.

Everything is there.

Every little piece of Shiloh's life, all her clothes, her pictures, her bottle of ocean breeze perfume, all of it, stares me in the face.

They left all of her stuff behind. Every last thing.

I want to cry all over again, because they left her behind in the only form she had left. They left her stuff here to collect dust, to fade, to decay.

Her closet is the same mess of black and grey that I'd come to know. It hurts me to feel familiarity. Because she was just here, and it still feels like she'll come back.

I take her perfume bottle off her dresser. It's cool and heavy in my hand. It feels like part of her.

On her mirror is the same picture of us from prom, taped up at the corner just like the one in mine. And then next to it is another picture, a little bit crumpled and a little bit faded.

It's the two of us from when we were kids, maybe around nine or ten. We're standing next to a giant pile of leaves we'd raked in Shiloh's yard. We're hugging. Shiloh is wearing a black hoodie and Converse, and I'm wearing that ugly purple jacket my mom bought me, the one Shiloh used to call "the grape coat".

I peel it off the mirror slowly, like it'll rip at any second.

I stare into ten-year-old Shiloh's eyes, the same pools of ocean glass I'll always remember.

I never knew I'd have to get used to life without you.

I take the picture, her perfume bottle, and her key with me when I leave. Just in case I need to come back and see her room. Just in case someday I forget how much I needed her.

I lock her front door and head down the street back to my house. It's dark now, and breezy. On the way back, I pass the community center and the soccer fields. The light poles surrounding the parking lot are lit up, casting the entire pavement in a golden glow.

There are fifteen lights. Shiloh and I used to count them at night on our way from her house to mine, like some kids count stars.

One of the lights is flickering. On and off, golden to dark, fading in and out.

I stop, watching it. It's the only thing I can seem to focus on.

And just like that, the light goes out. A brief flicker follows, but then it goes gray and lifeless, a gap in the perfect ring of light around the field.

A life lost. A soul cast into darkness.

Shiloh was a light that had been flickering for a while. And she finally went out.

The other lights, me and Colton and her mom and Lillian, continued to burn around her, bright and alive. And Shiloh flickered, and used what little strength she had left to be that unique, vibrant person I knew her as. I didn't know that most of her light had already gone out.

And then it's all gone, dark and cold and still.

"Shiloh?" I whisper, immediately feeling stupid for doing so. Shiloh's gone. And she's going to be gone for the rest of my life. I have to be someone else now, somebody apart from Shiloh and everything she had made me.

The light looks empty and cold, standing against the darkness while the others continue to burn.

You knew how much I loved you.

You gave me all your pain and it's too much.

The thoughts come like a wave over a floodgate. The cool summer breeze stirs the trees around me, moving and twisting the air.

I will never know you, but you knew all of me.

All I ever did was love you.

I'm something without you, but I don't know what.

Please come back. Come back and show me how to be whatever I am.

I can't bring her back, but I want to. More than anything, I want to.

Everything is cold.

Is this how you felt?

No matter how many times I ask, she can't answer.

She will never answer, and I'll never know, and that will never change.

I walk home to the rest of my life.