"You're going to the graveyard?" he asked.
"Yeah . . ."
"Well, don't you think there are people who are waiting for your visit more than Dawn is?"
And that's how I end up in the front doors of the Ambers household, which is right beside mine. It was single-storied, smaller and cheaper than the one beside it, but from the inside, it feels more homely than any other house I have ever been to.
All this time, whenever I passed by this house, I didn't even glance once at it, afraid I'll notice one of them through the windows. Whenever Mrs. Ambers would come to our house to share the cookies she made, I would lock myself up in the washroom, pretending to be busy until she left. I couldn't figure out why exactly I kept doing these; it all worked like a natural instinct.
In these entire nine months, I haven't so much as exchanged a conversation with the Ambers, let alone visit them. I have thought about it many times, but something always held me back. Maybe it is the knowledge that I wouldn't see Dawn coming out of his room, a wide grin on his face, as soon as Mrs. Ambers calls him saying that I'm here. Maybe it is the look of grief on their faces that I wasn't ready to handle. Maybe it's the pictures of Dawn that are still hanging from the wall of their living room, in which he would be forever stuck as a seventeen year old.
I'm such a coward.
"I can't do this," I say.
"What?" July asks.
I turn to him, and shake my head. "I . . . need more time. Please?"
He stares at me for a while, lips pursed in disappointment. It cannot exceed the amount of disappointment I feel at myself. Finally, he puts a hand on my shoulder, "It's okay, man. Take your time. Let's go home." He turns back to head to my house.
"Ca- can we go to the graveyard after all?" I ask. He looks at me again, and I put on my best pleading eyes. He sighs.
Man's a slave to habit. Pitifully enough, not the other way round.
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After we finally come back home from the graveyard, mom comes to my room to talk. It is nothing unusual; she asks about my progress in studies once in a while like this. Today though, the conversation goes a little differently.
"Did you go to the graveyard again?" she asks first thing. I only look down at my lap, and don't reply. She exhales loudly, and I start expecting another long lecture, which I surprisingly don't get.
"You can't go to your tuition classes today. We have to visit the doctor again to check your pressure."
I never imagined these words would come out of her mouth. What is wrong with today?
"Okay. I'm sorry," I say.
"Why are you apo-" Another loud exhale, and this time I look up at her face, which has a slightly hurt expression on it. Momentarily, I feel my heart sinking. "Anyways," she says, and leaves, evidently keeping several words she wanted to say, unsaid.
"July?"
"What?"
"Am I dead?"
"Oh, shut up, drama queen."
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Dinner so far has been the only normal thing today.
"What did the doctor say?" dad asks, unclear whether the question is directed at me or mom.
"It's more normal now," mom replies anyway. "124 in the top, and 82 in the down. Gave him some medicines."
"I see. Take care of your health more, dear." This one he says to me, so I nod in reply.
In many aspects of parenthood, Dad is doing a better job than mom. He doesn't talk with us in a tone of business, and he buys us gifts for Christmas. But that's pretty much it. When it comes to the Lockwood family, 'negligence' is the one word that is applicable for every behavior between the members, even if the type of negligence is different. Even if mom is controlling and not the best parent, at least she does the parenting, which dad doesn't bother to. Not really, at least. His behavior towards us is very gray, as if he is just very tired and needs a break from everything. He probably is. After all, 25 years of being married with Alison Lockwood - I think my dad is a superhuman for being able to deal with that.
Which is why, I don't really blame him for being tired. It's not his fault that he doesn't have the energy to raise us. But that also means I do not consider his opinions in my decisions either. He can never speak up against Mom, so he cannot really stand up for us. He is weak and helpless when it comes to Alison Lockwood, and both of his sons took after him in that.
Besides, he is a ship captain, so he is away for most of the year. But despite all that, I could have perhaps respected him a little, if not for the fact that he is cheating on Mom, or at least, he is slowly going that way.
"Could you study at school?" mom asks me.
"Yeah," I answer, taking a sip from my glass of water.
"Did you finish all the syllabus?"
"Yes. I'm revising now." I always try to finish early, because otherwise I get too anxious to study right before the exam.
"Well, don't forget you almost got an A minus in biology last time. Are you reading everything properly this time?"
"Yes. I'm trying."
"I will call Mr. Rogers and ask him to send you the recordings of the two classes you missed." Mr. Rogers teaches me and only five other students Biology in his private, expensive tuition classes. He is really good at it, and makes that hellish subject tolerable to a certain extent. Without him, I could have never survived Botany in high school.
"Okay. Thanks." She gives me a slightly troubled glance. I wonder if it is seriously the first time she is noticing how professional our relationship is.
"God, this is depressing," July comments. He is standing behind my chair. I can feel his cold arm against my neck. It is weirdly comforting to have him here.
Me being over, she moves on to Dale, who is behaving like usual so far.
"When's the train tomorrow?" Mom asks him.
"Seven."
"When will you leave?"
"Six."
"How many students went to the finals again?"
"Sixty."
"Huh? That many?"
"It's nationals."
"This is even more depressing." July comments, and honestly I agree. When Dale talks, he doesn't take one more breath than necessary, let alone expand the answer a little to give details.
"But what ab-"
At this moment, another unusual thing happens. Dale's phone rings, playing one of those lame ringtones that remains given in the phone and which Dawn would highly disapprove of. I don't think Dale ever brings his phone to the dinner table, and even if he does, it has never rung until today. I expect him to cut the call and continue talking with mom, but he picks it up, earning an annoyed frown from her.
"Yeah . . . I'm having dinner now. Can I call you later?. . . No, it's fine. . . .Okay."
The gentle tone surprises me first, then the small glint in his eyes, which he is trying to suppress as much as he can with his hair. It is probably the first time his face has shown actual emotion, even though it is barely noticeable. He puts the phone back in his pocket, catches me looking, and clears his throat before glancing away.
"I told you he is in love," July says, nudging the back of my head. Maybe he is right.
"Who was it?" mom asks, not looking happy.
"Friend," Dale replies.
"Friend? You never said you have friends now."
"As if you ever asked," Dale and I say in unison, and immediately glance at each other. I don't know why I blurted it out; probably because I felt annoyed at how she is pretending to care. It's not like I knew Dale would talk back too. Both of us clear our throats, and focus back on the food. For some reason, my ears are burning.
"Well, no bringing phones to my dinner table from today," Mom says, her tone edgy.
The rest of the dinner goes on quietly.
--------------------
"What are you looking at?"
I get on the bed and crawl to his side in front of the window, where he's been sitting for the last two hours (during which I finished my homeworks and completed a small assignment) staring somewhere outside. His head has been craned up this whole time, so I assume he is looking at the sky.
"The moon," he replies. I follow his gaze to it, a dimly glowing crescent of light against the indigo night sky, almost getting hidden behind the bypassing clouds, accompanied by a little number of dotted stars.
"The sky isn't cloudy tonight," I say, "so you can see the moon properly."
"Hmm. The night sky is beautiful, don't you think?"
I think. I have never thought much about the night sky, actually. I don't think I have ever taken a proper look at it either. All I know is that the polluted air of the city does not do the stars much justice.
"I do. I would prefer more stars, though. Lots of them." I have always wanted to see a night sky which will be extravagantly filled with a thousand stars; small and big; appearing and disappearing. It is no fun looking at four or five stars in such a vast sky - everything feels empty. This kind of emptiness unsettles me for some reason, so I guess I have always somewhat preferred the morning sky better.
It is just one of the reasons. The sky has never been my object of wonder until recently. You start avoiding looking at things you can't ever achieve, and the sky has always been so far away, untangible to my fingers, hence unimportant in my practical life. However, as white clouds are often associated with heaven, I prefer the morning sky filled with thick clouds so as to feel a small sense of reassurance that he might be up there, watching me. Happy and safe from all his pain. I suppose when you are grieving, whether you are religious or not, whether you are a realist or a hopeless romantic-none of that matters; the grief will always win in occupying your mind with irrational thoughts.
Though they are no longer irrational for me.
I glance at July, whose eyes are on me, holding a look of sadness.
"You read my mind, didn't you?" I ask.
"I'm sorry, I didn't . . ." He shakes his head and looks back at the moon, "But I guess I get where you're coming from. Grief can always mess with your sense and conscience. Grief can turn you into a fool. I just . . . sometimes I wish someone would love me the way you love Dawn."
I lean my temple against the window frame and observe him carefully. His eyes seem to be eagerly searching for some unknowable answer in the light gray skin of this particular celestial body. I feel the same unsettling feeling of not being able to understand what the other person is thinking as I used to feel quite often with Dawn. Dawn, in spite of being so close to my heart, is the biggest mystery of my life.
"You said there is someone for everyone," I tell him.
He softly chuckles. "Right. That's right, Cedar."
And then he goes quiet. The more I discover about this boy, the more confused I feel. The questions in my mind are constantly increasing, but he refuses to reply. The thin line between us seems to become harder to remove every passing second. Even if I want to reach out to him, something holds me back, something like the knowledge of his temporary stay in my life. The moment I reach my hand out to comfort him, I will cross the line, and I will leave behind the reality I am familiar with.
And once I am on the other side, I won't be able to let him go.
"Say . . . were you in love with Dawn?" he suddenly asks.
The question throws me off for a second. "Excuse me?"
He rests his chin on his arm, which is on the window sill. "I was just wondering. You don't have to answer if you don't want to."
It's not like I don't want to answer. But there is no easy answer to this question.
I think about it for a while. Then I ask, "You see that streetlamp over there, July?" I point to the one at the far end of the lane.
"That flickering one?"
"Yes. That one."
"What about it?"
"Dawn used to be afraid of it."
"Really? But why?"
"I don't know. Maybe in his imagination, it meant something."
I gather my thoughts, then say, "Which is why when he slept here, he would never turn to the side facing the window, but to the side facing me. One night, he told me that the reason his insomniac self can fall asleep beside me is because that's the place where he feels the safest. That the flickering streetlamp, or several other objects of fear in his mind could never harm him as long as I am there."
I felt so terribly happy that night. I even cried a little after he fell asleep. Dawn was the only one who could make me feel so strong, so confident, so invulnerable. He was the only one who made me feel like I was needed; that my existence had a meaning : to stay with him and protect him from everything.
But it's all gone now.
I sigh, and continue, "On that night, he made clear my position in his life, which is why I started to wonder about his position in mine. A term like 'best friend' felt . . . insufficient."
It really did. He unconditionally loved me, when my own family didn't bother. He gave me what I needed the most, because he figured out what I feared the most : loneliness. The dark, cramped, suffocating cage of loneliness. With his company, the world was beautiful.
"He was my mother, father, brother, best friend, other half - all at once. He filled every gap in my life all by himself. He didn't need to have a position in my life because he was my life. It sounds exaggerated, but it is true. When there is no one else, one person becomes everything. Because I put every amount of love I had in me to him. I don't know whether my love held attraction, or whether it held romance, or whether it held lust. All I know is that I loved him intensely, and I will never love someone the same again."
Dawn defined my existence. So when he left, it's like I left with him, and just like him, I'm not coming back. A part of me is gone, forever. My existence has dissolved into smoke along with his smile. I feel as if I'm not truly existing anymore, as if I'm a ghost, haunting the shattered remains of our days together, so filled with joy.
Voicing out the words of my heart to someone I met just yesterday is embarrassing. But I know I won't be judged. I have a feeling that July will understand me better than anyone else right now. I can feel his eyes on me, but this time, he doesn't have to read anything. I have told him everything, and he is the first person ever to earn that privilege, aside from Dawn.
"Oh, Cedar," he softly whispers, putting his cold hand on mine. There is some warmth even in that coldness; the reassuring weight of it somehow reducing the heaviness in my heart. Even if I close my eyes, the weight tells me that I have someone right here, so there is nothing to be afraid of.
After all, loneliness is terrifying.
"Though there is someone for everyone, not everyone in this world is capable of such profound love, Cedar."
"You think so?"
"Hmm." He smiles, and quotes, "When there is no one else, one person becomes everything." He nods to himself. "It's very true." Thinking something for a moment, he then says, "You know, Cedar, while I'm here, I will make sure you get your wish."
"What wish?"
"Of seeing a sky filled with thousands of stars."
"Oh really? How would you do that? Make me hallucinate it?"
"Nopes. I will show you the real thing. I don't know how yet, but I will."
"Okay. Good luck." I show him a thumbs-up and smile. It is easy to smile when I am with him. Maybe my face can get used to smiling again. Perhaps my face will even laugh again. And I am sure he will be the reason behind it.
Exhaling, I also look at the moon, trying to figure out what he was searching there. In spite of the lack of stars, the night sky really is beautiful.
"What a day it was, July," I say.
"What a world it is, Cedar," he says.
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Hello lovely readers! Hope you're having a good day :D
This chapter is by far my most favourite. If you haven't noticed it yet, I never gave a direct answer to whether Cedar's feelings for Dawn are platonic/romantic/something else. I have decided to leave it completely to the reader's perspective :) though personally, I would like you all to see it in a more wider prospect, instead of thinking in labels.
Thanks a lot for reading! See you soon 💞
- love, Poma