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With shortness of breath, I’ll explain the infinite
How rare and beautiful it truly is that we exist.
Richie thought the first petal was a dream.
He awoke in a panic in his blackened bedroom, crying out for a deep breath through broken sobs and shuddered inhales.
Every time his throat clenched, he felt something flutter deep within his chest, shifting ever so slightly with every move he made. “ Like how one single booger can block your nose when it’s facing just the right way ,” he would later say to himself, thankful his friends weren’t around to “beep-beep” him.
Still in somewhat of a daze from his lone pot-filled adventures on his roof last night, he fumbled for his light and the nearest tissue box, knocking crap onto his bed as his eyes struggled against the night. Cough after cough wracked through his body. He’d never give Eddie the satisfaction, but the little hypochondriac must be right; the smoking must be getting to his lungs.
He tried to choke up whatever shit was in his throat without being loud enough to wake his dad, who, by 2:30 in the morning, might be home from his romp with his secretary and away from his drunken wife.
He clutched his comforter tightly around himself to completely engulf himself, and gave one final hack into the tissue before it was out.
One sunrise-hued petal, no longer than the space between his finger’s two knuckles, sat within his tissue in all it’s veiny, saliva-glistening glory.
Richie let himself gawk for a moment before bundling up the tissue and hurling it across the room.
I’m high , he reasoned with himself. I smoked too much last night.
He just smoked too much last night. He really should stop doing this when he has school the next day.
And this is the same logic he used when a sudden grip of nausea forced him to the bathroom, barely stumbling there in time to retch into the toilet.
And he convinced himself that the second petal, and the third, and the twenty-fourth petal lying in the toilet bowl, were just bad dreams induced by bad weed. He silently vowed to lose it on his dealer the next time they met up.
There was never a chance he would notice the wadded up tissue in the corner of his pigsty room when he awoke the following morning, having passed out on top of his sheets.
The twenty-fifth petal, however.
The twenty-fifth petal was different.
By the time sixth period ended and the losers rolled into the cafeteria for lunch, Richie’s tongue had lost the tinge of earth and bile that clung to it throughout the night. Yet somehow, the school-made grilled cheese was even blander than usual.
“Y-you’ve be-been awfully quiet, E-Eddie,” ever-observant Bill noticed. Richie startled from his fixation of counting Eddie’s freckles upon hearing the name of the boy he was staring at.
Eddie sat between Bev and Stan across from Richie, who watched as his best friend’s cheeks flushed gently as he sucked part of his bottom lip between his teeth. Bev put her hand on Eddie’s shoulder, a gesture that always sparked an unpleasant and illogical flame in Richie’s chest every time he saw it, despite the fact that he and everyone else knew that although Eddie was the nurturer of the group, Bev instinctively filled in the role whenever needed.
Eddie let go of his bottom lip and Richie nearly choked on his sandwich at the sight of it being slightly swollen. “I...I got asked out,” he mumbled mostly to his PB&J in front of him.
Richie didn’t see every other loser prickle and exchange glances with each other. He only heard their supportive words.
Ben nodded and threw on a grin, glancing sidelong at Richie as he did so. “That’s great, Eddie. What did you say?”
But Richie was too far gone to hear the reply. The feeling of his body trying to climb out of its skin and the sound of hacking drowned out the “no, actually” that followed. It drowned out the hug Bill gave Eddie as Richie left the table. It drowned out the lecture Eddie got from Stan about how nobody can stand how a certain two of their friends won’t just “hurry up and get on with it already”.
And when Richie’s chin hit the toilet and the twenty-fifth petal caught on his tongue, he knew it was real.
Hanahaki disease.
The flower disease. The sickness where flowers grow in your lungs and weave their roots through every crevice until you suffocate and die from your unrequited love. And the only cures were to have your love returned, or to surgically remove the vegetation and the love along with it.
Richie thought it was far too poetic for someone like him to have. He was made of ashtrays and bicycle rust and plagiarized essays.
Eddie, on the other hand. Eddie was made of cinnamon candles and sunlight leaking through curtains and the sensation in your chest after a sip of hot cocoa (or more appropriately in Richie’s case, after you’ve downed three shots of whiskey). And his soul was spun from the colors of fall leaves.
Yeah. Yeah, maybe the flowers made sense.
“Ben?” Richie whispered at their desk in the library, very un-richie like.
Ben poked his book out of his nose, brows furrowed at the fact that Richie had actually controlled his voice “Yeah?” he mumbled back.
Richie swallowed the lump in his throat. Or the petals. Whatever. “What would it take for you to stop loving Bev?” he stumbled out, trying to ignore the tickle in his esophagus and focus on looking at Ben as trashmouth-like as possible.
Ben lost all expression in his face and this time closed the book and gave his full attention to Richie. “Rich, why would you say that?” he challenged in return, but Richie just shook his head. His question was pointless, anyway. Both boys knew Ben would die for Bev. It was evident in the way he held her when they were together, and the way he always looked at her as though he was seeing her for the first time.
And Richie knew nothing would make him stop, either.
So to answer Ben’s question, Richie gave his friend a shit-eating grin and shouted out, “Just wondering so when your mom comes crawling back to me-”
He didn’t even know where he was going with his rambling, but was thankfully cut short by a deep elbow to his side from Ben and a scolding from the librarian, so it didn’t matter.
When he reached below the desk to grab a book from his backpack, he felt the cough finally force its way up his throat, and covered his mouth with his hand to catch the culprit before anyone could see.
He placed the book on the table and glanced at the offending object briefly before thrusting it into his bag returning to pretending to read.
A fully formed cosmos nestled between two folders.
The eighty-seventh petal was mistaken for a wildflower while the losers sunbathed at the quarry.
Because hey, you might as well do the things you love before you die.
Richie opened his eyes to stare at the sun above him, wondering if the feel of sunshine on his bare skin is what comes after this life. But damn, considering his luck, he doubted it.
Eddie, from his place nestled beside Richie, shook him from his thoughts. “If you keep staring directly into the sun, your eyes will shrivel up and go blind in their sockets.”
Richie snorted despite the discomfort in his chest it caused, and tried not to think of how hot the single square inch of his arm touching Eddie felt. “Well at least then I wouldn’t have to look at your mom when I’m doing her.”
“Fuck, Richie, that’s disgusting,” Eddie grumbled and nudged him, the backs of their hands brushing inadvertently from the motion. And all Richie could think was “Eddie, Eds, my Eddie, my Eds,” and it took everything in himself to ignore the twitch in his wrist from the urge to take his hand.
But because he was himself, all that came out instead was, “Unless you want to take her place, of course.” But it was selfish joke. He knew his Eds wasn’t wired that way.
Eddie sputtered and Richie closed his eyes to avoid seeing the look of distaste his best friend was sure to be sprouting, but the other losers snickered as they watched both boys turn red. “In your dreams, trashmouth,” Eddie eventually spit out, and Richie placed a hand over his heart.
“You’re killin’ me, Eds.”
He felt another hacking attack creeping its way up his throat, and he tried to nonchalantly flip over to his stomach and cough into his arm, concealing the petals falling from his lips.
As if on cue, Stan pointed ecstatically at some stupid bird off in the distance, and Richie used the opportunity to sweep the small bundle of completely in-tact flowers away from his head, some petals falling apart and scattering.
As dusk approached and the group headed home, Bill spotted one of the orange blossoms, forcing Richie’s heart into his throat.
“Hey, guys, lo-ok at thi-is,” he gestured towards the mess of petals. Eddie picked one up, and Richie almost choked out a laugh at how freaked he would be if he knew it was covered in remnants of dried saliva.
Mike approached Eddie and took the tiny bit of attached stem between gentle fingers. “It’s a cosmos,” he observed. “That’s weird; they don’t bloom in the spring. They usually come around late summer.”
Richie laughed nervously, his volume rising as his panic did as well, jumping into his English accent on instinct. “Mother nature has blessed us with a finals week miracle!”
Nothing but eye rolls.
The eighty-seventh petal blew away in the night at the same time the one-hundred-and-thirty-fifth fell to Richie’s rooftop between puffs of a blunt.
Richie wondered if pollen could clog the gaps in your brain.
When the two-hundred-and-sixty-seventh petal fell into the collection mounting on his bedspread, Richie got on his bike, pajama pants and all, and went to school.
He had decided on day two that he would stay home. That no one would need to see him when it happened. And Richie could feel, he knew with every aching breath and faintness of heart that it would happen soon.
He hadn’t set an alarm for the morning, so by the time he reached the front doors and dropped his bike unceremoniously before the concrete steps, third period had already finished. Every stair hurt to climb. Every breath hurt to breathe. And Richie knew he was being selfish, that he should lie down and just stop existing but he couldn’t stop himself.
He stumbled into Derry High with freckled cheeks snow white, thick locks of curls stuck to his forehead. In the haze within his mind, Richie noted how every student seemed to stop and gape at the sight of him, making room for him to trudge down the hallway. If he had the strength, he would have laughed about how true it is that nobody seems to notice you until you’re about gone.
Richie was thankful Eddie’s locker was on the main floor, because he didn’t think he would make it up another flight of stairs.
He was Moses and the flowers spilling from his mouth were his staff, the swarm of students in the halls parting ways as the sea. To give way to Eddie. His Eddie. Not his Eddie.
The two boys just stared for a heavy moment, and Richie felt something bloom in his chest as he marveled at how Eddie could look so perplexed and confused but so damn adorable at the same time. He thought the bloom was adoration. Love. Or another flower. Maybe all.
“Eds, I-” Richie choked out, but the rest of his words died on his tongue as he collapsed and convulsed on the speckled tiles below. He couldn’t hear Eddie’s screams for help or feel his head cradled. And he didn’t feel Eddie’s body shudder with sobs that turned into coughs. And he didn’t feel the red rose petal fall to his cheek.
He didn’t feel anything at all.
You taught me the courage of stars before you left.
How light carries on endlessly, even after death.