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He stopped cooking, after she died. In fact, he mostly stopped doing anything at all. He laid in bed and stared at the ceiling and let the haze overtake him. He went to school and went home and slept until the next morning. Sometimes Kel would pull him out of bed, beg him to make pancakes or watch him shoot hoops. Sometimes he would do it, most of the time he would refuse. Sometimes he would go downstairs and just stare listlessly at the pots and pans and Kel would try to make the pancakes for him.
Kel would never complain, even if Hero turned over and refused to respond. He would just shoot an “Okay, next time!” and leave and pretend not to be upset. Hero knew he was upset. He knew he was destroying their relationship, knew that every refusal was another chip in the thing he had treasured.
Kel went to school, spent less time in their room. Stopped asking Hero about his day, stopped asking him to come hang out or read comics or go to the park. Hero laid in bed and stared and slept and tried to find it in himself to care, but mostly just tried his hardest not to feel anything at all.
It was better not to feel anything at all. Every time he tried to break out of the haze it felt like he was being ripped apart. He’d abruptly leave the dinner table when they were served watermelon, when he heard someone play piano, had had to leave when he’d awkwardly attempted to bond with Kel and ask how math was going, only to suddenly remember how he and Mari would play footsie under the table in middle school instead of learning about geometry.
It was never the same, but it was always the same. He’d go and sit on the bathroom floor and bite his fist and claw at the sleeves of his shirt and try to do anything, anything to lessen the grief overwhelming him.
He didn’t cry a lot, but he felt that if he were home alone more often when the waves hit he might do embarrassing things like dry sobbing or moaning in pain or shouting and punching things. Instead, he curled himself up as tight as he could and tried to be silent, twisting his fingers into his hair.
It was overwhelming. It was unbearable. It was like a chasm had opened within him, and he could feel it within his chest, ripping him apart, a black hole reducing him to nothing.
Blankness was easier. Bed was easier. He played distracted games of Tetris for hours on end. Didn’t leave his room for days at a time. Went on walks that accidentally lasted five hours, and then couldn’t bring himself to brush his teeth. The dentist told him he was going to start getting cavities. He snapped at his family. His laundry basket was overflowing. He got a C for the first time in his life.
It felt like something inside of him had died, the part that could put effort into things and hold conversations and do all his work and still have time to hang out with his brother.
He stopped talking to his friends, to anyone. He moved through his day in a haze and when he ended up in a conversation, mostly just smiled and agreed with whatever anyone was saying. Eventually they stopped talking to him. He didn’t really care. He sat at the lunch table without speaking.
The worst part was when people tried to talk to him about college, about his plans and hopes and what he was going to do to achieve them.
It wasn’t that he and Mari had planned to go to the same college, because they hadn’t. She wanted to go to music school and he’d wanted to be a doctor (slash chef, maybe). It was more that in every version of every future he’d ever pictured, she’d been there. Hugging him when they came home for Christmas. Sending letters and care packages, leaving voicemails on the phone. Meeting his college friends, him meeting hers. I’ve heard so much about you, Mari.
Even if they broke up, in those versions of a future she was still there, awkwardly smiling at him as he came to get Kel, having quiet conversations and reminiscing, seeing her at the grocery store and being able to hope she was happy. She was there, in his future. A steady beam of light, an assurance that would never go away. Her continued existence.
Without her, the maw of the future opened before him, dark and gray and lifeless. He would never again see her in her backyard, book laid out beside her.
Where do you want to go to college, Hero? I don’t know, somewhere I can do pre-med, it’s so early, can we please stop talking about it?
Mari, Mari, Mari.
He hadn’t seen her body but it flashed in front of his eyes whenever he closed them. He’d lay in bed at night and watch her apparition slowly walk to the tree and tie the rope. She swung behind him in the mirror, grotesque. He’d never seen her as horrifying until she was gone, and wasn’t it so horrible to think about her that way?
He’d replay the day she died in his head on repeat, involuntarily until he realized he was doing it, after which he would continue to do it voluntarily, searching, seeking for any way to find answers.
He hadn’t seen her that morning. She was practicing for the recital. He had seen her the night before, at SAT study classes where they bumped elbows and rubbed their temples in frustration over nonlinear expressions. She’d kissed him in the parking lot afterwards, as a goodbye. Her brow was furrowed and he’d known she was stressed out, over piano and college tests and AP United States History, in which she had a B plus. He was stressed too, but not as much. Math came easy to him, and in AP United States History he had an A minus.
They hadn’t seen each other a lot lately, but Hero hadn’t been worried. It was October, school was picking up. Mari had piano and Hero was starting to figure this whole cooking thing out, and besides, the weekend after the recital they had plans to go to the art museum and get sushi.
She’d kissed him. He said I love you, if I don’t see you tomorrow I’ll see you at the recital, I’m so excited, I know you guys will do great.
She sighed. I know. We’re going to be okay. Then, she smiled. I love you! I’ll see you soon. She kissed him again, on the cheek. He’d put his hand on her shoulder and kissed her on the forehead. They were about the same height. She was a little shorter.
Then, they got in their cars and went home.
Hero had turned over that last smile in his head thousands of times. She had the nicest smile.
The next day he hadn’t talked to her at all. He went to the grocery store. He helped Kel pick out nice clothes for the recital. He left her a voicemail — Goodnight! Good luck! I love you! He went to bed.
He woke up early the next morning to police sirens. He remembered it in his head, clear as day. He’d sat up, groggily.
“Kel?” He said. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Kel had groaned, turning over. “Maybe somebody’s grandma fell down the stairs.”
But Hero knew something was wrong. A feeling of dread pooled, deep in his stomach. His heart began to pound. Something was wrong. Something was wrong. He went downstairs. For years afterwards, he would wonder if he’d have seen her body, if he’d looked out the window into the backyard. He could see her favorite tree from his window. He might have seen her, suspended, still.
He went downstairs. It was eerie, hazy in the early morning light. For some reason he’d felt tears prick at his eyes. He was panicking. Something was wrong.
He went outside. There were police cars and an ambulance parked outside of Mari’s house.
He knew, then.
He hadn’t technically known until later that day, when Mari’s mom called his own and his mom had brought him and Kel to the dining room, and sat them down, and said “I have something to tell you.” No, when his mom told him, it was a confirmation of something he’d already known, deep inside him. When he saw the police cars he’d sat down on the curb, hollow. Mari was dead, he knew.
Soon the cars pulled away, and the street was dead silent. Later he’d realize that he must have just missed them bringing out her body. There was only one light on in the neighborhood, and it was Mari’s living room. Hero got up and went back inside to sit on the couch. He was too afraid of what he’d see if he looked in the window. Afraid he wouldn’t see Mari there.
He sat on the couch for hours after that, knees to his chest. His mind was curiously blank. The sun had started creeping into the room when the phone rang, and his mom came downstairs with Kel shortly after, clearly shaken. Kel had been tired, rubbing his eye.
She’d said something. Hero didn’t remember it. Then, she said it.
A confirmation.
Hero’s world collapsed around him. Buildings leveling. Trees melting to the ground. He choked out a “What.”
Kel was silent beside him. Hero couldn’t look at his face. He couldn’t see anything. Tunnel vision. His mom was crying.
Suicide, his mom said. She hugged them. “Hero, Kel, I’m so sorry.”
There, the shocker.
“What?” Said Kel, snapped out of whatever stupor he was in. “What? She wouldn’t do that. That’s not true.”
His mom nodded, crying. Hero was choking on air. She wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t do that. What? Why hadn’t he known?
Kel was crying now. His mom was crying too, trying to console him. Hero got up, walked outside, through his yard. To the house beside him. Walked to Mari’s living room window and looked in.
Mari’s mother, sitting on the couch, back to the window. Shaking, head bowed.
And there, against the wall by the fireplace. Sunny, sitting on the ground, little twelve-year-old hands twisted into his hair, a look on his face Hero hoped to never see again. Devastation. Basil sat beside him, shaking like a leaf, face in his hands. What Hero could see of his face was twisted up, crying. But it was Sunny’s face that haunted him. That horrified look on his face, like he’d just been cut open and ripped apart. Like his — like his sister had just died in front of him.
Mari always held Sunny’s hand, when things got too much for him.
Hero went back home. Kel was sobbing into his mother’s side. She looked up at him, eyes red.
Hero’s face was wet. “Mom—” He said, and then he could say no more.
Hero didn’t remember much from the rest of the day. He’d cried in his mother’s lap like he was five again, cried when his dad hugged him, cried in bed, hugging Kel as tight as he could. Cried uncontrollably, gasping for air until it hurt. It was as if his body knew what his brain didn’t, because the next morning he woke up and for a split second wondered idly if he could convince her to go have lunch by the lake, feet in the water, just the two of them. She always twined her ankles with his.
He went to Mari’s funeral, and didn't look in the casket. Didn’t visit her grave. He was followed everywhere he went with a sick sense of horror. Just like how he knew the moment he heard the sirens that Mari was dead, he knew that it was his fault she was gone.
Who had known her better than him? He knew that she rarely cried, unless she was worried about Sunny. Hazelnut coffee was her favorite. He still remembered her on the tire swing when they were fifteen. Her feet were grazing the ground. He’d been gently running his fingers across the grass, following the moonlight.
You know, Hero, she’d said. I don’t think I have any secrets from you.
He’d looked up from where he was sitting on the ground. She was smiling at him, bright as the sun. He’d laughed. I don’t think I have any secrets from you, either.
She’d let herself fall from the tire swing onto her back, hair shining in the moonlight. He laid down beside her.
You’re my best friend, he said quietly.
You’re mine, she said.
They watched the stars until Mari’s mom called them back in. They didn’t talk, but that was okay. That was his relationship with Mari. When they were together, it wasn’t as if they were talking. It was like Hero was talking to himself, like their souls were connected.
He laid his head on her in the living room, and she absentmindedly braided his hair. She was talking quietly about a book she’d read the other week, trying not to wake Sunny and Kel, who were asleep on the other side of the room.
When they kissed for the first time, it was a surprise. They’d been fifteen and baking together, working on a recipe for strawberry pie, and she’d gotten flour on her nose. Hero was wiping it off with his thumb, when she leaned over and kissed him.
He’d thought it was an accident and stood, dumbfounded. She was looking at him, eyes hard and determined. Hero managed a “What?”
They stared at each other. Eventually, she leaned over and kissed him again. Then, it sank in. Their third kiss was his. She pulled away.
“I thought you were going to leave!” She said, laughing.
Hero stammered. “I thought you were doing it as a friend?”
She laughed harder, and he started to laugh too, and soon enough they were clutching each other in hysterics, barely able to move. The evening sun was shining through the windows, and their hands were covered in flour.
For a few weeks after, when people would ask if they were dating, she’d grab him by the hand and say “I’ve been trying to get through to him, but he thinks I’m only doing it as a friend.”
He’d kissed her when he was fifteen, but he’d loved her his whole life. The older siblings, always looking out for Kel and Sunny, who both needed a lot of supervision for very different reasons. She was his best friend, aside from Kel. He loved her. He fell in love with her probably around age twelve, when he started to notice the way she smiled when she played the piano.
She’d taught him some piano over the years. He was okay at it. He wasn’t nearly as good as her.
Hero had realized he was in love with her when he was fourteen, sitting with her beside the basketball court, watching Kel try to shoot three-pointers. He looked down at his arm and then startled so hard he ended up seven feet away from where he started, panicked.
Mari was laughing at him. She’d put the fake spider on him again. She had dimples, but only on the right side. Like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, Hero realized he was in love with her. Because he had no spine, he decided never to tell her, ever.
That plan did not work out. By the time they were sixteen, he kissed her at her doorstep and had started a secret playlist full of songs he thought would be good first dance songs at their wedding. Under his bed was a half-finished binder of recipes he and Mari had been working on together. They wanted it to one day be a full cookbook.
Mari loved him too. In the wake of everything, there was so little Hero knew for sure. If Mari loved him was one of the things that had suddenly become a question. After months of deliberation (staring at the ceiling attempting to relive their entire lives, and ignoring all personal responsibilities) he decided that she had loved him.
He knew her hopes, her fears. (or so he’d thought.) She definitely knew everything about him. And even if she hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him what she was going through, Hero was sure he hadn’t imagined it, the magic that hung between them whenever they were in a room together. The way they could talk about anything for hours. The way she hugged, solid and comforting and almost too tight. He missed it more than anything. Whenever she touched him, it would be like his fears melted away.
In the month after Sunny left, Hero sat opposite Kel on the swings. Kel was almost taller than him, and with a pang, Hero wondered if he’d be there to notice when Kel finally surpassed him — 5’8 and a half. It was nearing twilight, the sunlight peeking over the trees.
“Do you think,” said Kel, swinging slowly back and forth, looking at him out of the corner of his eye. “Will you ever date anyone else?”
The sunlight was golden, and Hero wondered for a moment, thought about a future with a steady career and an early morning, sunlight barely reaching his bed, someone with dark hair buried in the covers next to him, an arm slung over his chest.
Sometimes, Hero made himself think about all her faults. She had them. In the wake of her death, he sometimes forgot them — how she’d snap at people when she was stressed, how she’d grow stony and silent if someone hurt her feelings, how she’d sometimes boss them all around, and refuse to admit when she’d done something wrong. She’d been sixteen, and headstrong, and so determinedly kind, and so hard on herself, and never left the house without her hair brushed smooth.
Sometimes he sat down and thought of everything she’d ever done to make him mad, and then he would dig his fingernails into his arm and miss her like a hole in his heart.
His future? It was her lying in the covers next to him, and Hero, in a way he rarely let himself, imagined her turning her head, her eyelashes in the sunlight, face bleary with sleep. All her faults, all her quirks, all of the things she’d done that had frustrated him. And he loved her, so much that it overwhelmed him. He wanted her. He wanted to be with her, to see her slowly get wrinkles and spots and gray hairs, to age alongside him in a way she never would, eternally sixteen. 5’6 and just through puberty. Cold in the ground.
“I don’t know,” said Hero, quietly. “I still love her.”
He hadn’t said that out loud, ever.
Kel looked at him, and Hero was suddenly struck by his brother, his happy-go-lucky attitude, his cheerful positivity, the way he was unflinchingly, unfailingly kind to everyone he spoke to. His eyes, sharper and kinder and sadder than anyone thought to look for, the way he would listen to people when they spoke to him, and never interrupt if it was important.
“I know,” said Kel, kicking the ground.
When Sunny had come out of his house, something brighter had come back into Kel’s face, something Hero was ashamed he hadn’t noticed was missing.
“What about you?” said Hero.
Kel looked at him, with a startled smile, then scrunched his nose.
“I don’t know,” he said. “If I’ll ever even see him again.”
“I think you will,” said Hero, because if Sunny had been devoted to one thing in the world it was his sister, and even Hero, who never visited her grave (except for twice, the week before Sunny left) had found it hard to be at college knowing Mari was in the earth a hundred miles away, that he couldn’t be near her.
Kel sighed, stretched, his arms golden in the last rays of sunlight. “I hope so.” He whipped his head over to Hero, grinned. “I’ll race you back!”
He ran, and Hero shot up and shouted after him, made it a block and a half running before he had to stop and catch his breath.
That night he would look over at Kel, snoring in the darkness, and thank every god that may have existed that throughout all of this, nobody had taken his brother.
The day after Hero’s One Year Post Mari’s Death Breakdown, he got up in the early morning. Sat for thirty minutes on the side of his bed, head bowed, trying to convince himself to go to the bathroom and take a shower.
He hadn’t tried so hard at anything in months. And he was failing — everything was falling apart around him, everything was lost, he would never be able to change, this was all his fault, he couldn’t even shower, he was a terrible son, a failure, a terrible brother —
Kel. Asleep, still, in Hero’s bed. Thirteen years old, now. A seventh grader. For three months he had faithfully waited outside Sunny’s house to see if he would come out and walk to school with him, even though he never did. The night before, he’d grabbed at Hero’s hands, tore them away from where they were tearing at his hair, had cried and begged him to stop as Hero had raved and screamed and sobbed at him.
Minutes before Hero had done that, he’d crawled into Hero’s bed, laid his head on his shoulder like he was seven again. Told him he loved him. That he just wanted him to be okay.
When Hero had been screaming at his brother, his parents hadn’t asked Kel if he was okay, had instead been trying to make Hero calm down.
He’d spent the last year in his bed. Rotting.
A terrible son. A failure. A killer. Those things he knew. He accepted.
A terrible brother?
Hero stood up, walked to the shower, ran the water as hot as he could stand and then sat down in it. He attempted to wash his hair, and he cried, sat there until the water started to go cold, but he had taken a shower.
And then, painfully, slowly, he got dressed, and sat on his bed some more, trying to make himself get up and go brush his teeth.
He failed that one, but by then Kel was stirring, and Hero looked at him, and asked.
“Do you want to make pancakes with me this morning?”
And Kel’s face lit up, and he zipped out of bed, and it was hard for Hero to make them, and Kel had to do most of the work, but the blueberry smile on his plate was worth it.
That night, Hero emailed his teachers. The next month would be full of anger at himself and meetings with teachers and studying and trying to relearn what he’d spent the entire year forgetting. It would take seven months for him to get a 4.0 again, complete with volunteering and mathletes and debate team, and burying himself so far into school that he lived and breathed textbooks.
Nearly a year later, as he started college, he would spiral again, cry in front of a professor five weeks in because whatever manic, determined thing had been possessing him was gone, and he had made no friends, was struggling to make it to 1 pm classes.
But that night, he emailed his teachers. That month, he slowly and steadily snuck back into the world of the living.
He scolded himself when he woke up too late, tried not to let it ruin him when an essay was only half-finished two days after the due date. He sat at his desk, worked in fits of anger, but when he tried so hard to do a simple task that he was left with fumes, he tried to be gentle. To accept it. To treat himself like a wounded animal — with kindness. Then, he would remind himself of Kel, and start to write again, no matter how badly it hurt.
(It did not work very well, the gentleness, and more often than not Hero operated in a blind panic, a need to succeed that eclipsed every other desire. He cried as he studied Spanish verbs, as he tried to learn calculus. But he worked, and he worked, and one day Hero realized that he could take Kel to the movies, and he did. That was the victory, really. The rest would come later.)
Hero went to church with Aubrey, sometimes. Frequently. Sometimes Kel came, but most of the time he was off practicing basketball with his friends on the JV team. (He had those now, a lot of them, and it was so weird for Hero to see how much they had all been held back, curled into themselves, repressed, until Sunny came back. Kel was growing up. Something new was stirring.)
So sometimes, Hero got up early, put on a shirt and some shorts and crept through the door, sat next to Aubrey in the back row, sitting and listening unseen, smiling politely at the people who shot her weird looks. Usually she would go off with her friends afterwards. Sometimes they would go watch Kel at the park, him shouting encouragement and her jeering at him, both of which made him flush in embarrassment and pointedly ignore them.
Sometimes, she would leave a flower at Mari’s grave, and Hero would watch from the church door. Learning the truth had made everything hard again, in very weird ways, and he didn’t know if he was ready yet, to go see her, to put his hand on the grass where she laid.
One Sunday, Kel was off at a tournament and Kim was sick, so Hero and Aubrey walked in a comfortable silence all the way to the secret pond, sat on the dock, feet in the water. She laid her head on his shoulder.
“I used to miss it all the time,” she said quietly, hesitantly. “I was so angry, at everything, but I really missed everyone so much.”
Hero watched the cattails on the side of the pond sway in the wind. Squeezed her arm, gently. An invitation to keep going.
“It’s just — before, I was trying to forgive her. Trying to find a way I could live that would make her proud. But everything still felt so pointless with her gone and I was mad — all the time.”
Aubrey glanced up at him. “Now, there’s actually something to be mad about. But I just feel sad. And guilty, for how mad I was before.”
“Nobody blames you,” Hero said quietly, because it was true. “Nobody’s upset at you, at all.” Because Aubrey had been left high and dry and completely alone, because she’d made up for everything a hundred times over. Because when Basil and Sunny were in the hospital, in the warped, bizarre days after they learned the truth, Aubrey had been the first to forgive. The first to say she was sorry, the first to make amends. When Sunny had driven away, she’d held Basil’s hand.
Because she was unfailingly loyal to her crew. Because even when she’d been abrasive and violent and angry, she was still Aubrey, Aubrey who loved, wholeheartedly. And on Sunday mornings, Hero would glance at her out of the corner of his eye, and she would catch his gaze and grin.
She was frowning now, glaring at her feet in the water. “Do you ever feel like — there’s something wrong with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like there’s something cruel and evil and wrong inside you. And no matter what you do, it’ll eventually come out, and you’ll hurt everyone around you and make them leave.”
She was staring at her knees. Hero took her hand, gripped it. “All the time,” he said, his voice catching.
She looked at him, eyes welling up. Hero could barely speak. It felt like her gaze was burning him, and he glanced away.
“Every day.”
It was the balmy end of summer, a little over a year since Sunny had moved, after Hero finished his third year of college, that Basil came home from treatment.
He’d returned before, for two months in the cold of winter before things got bad again, and he was sent back to inpatient care.
Hero hadn’t seen Basil since he’d left the ICU, his parents flying home for the joint son-in-hospital-grandmother-funeral event, where he’d been whisked off to some expensive residential center almost as soon as he could walk.
It had been a tearful goodbye, for Basil at least, who was openly crying while the rest, still shocked and numb from the events of the last two weeks, attempted to comfort him.
At the very least, it had been sudden, if not unexpected. Basil’s family was in town for the first time… ever, it seemed like, and two days later, Basil was gone.
Kel, Hero, and Aubrey were left to pick up the pieces.
Or, they tried to. They spent a lot of time sitting together in silence, once they were left to themselves. Sometimes they would play cards. Aubrey would tell them about the latest shenanigans the Hooligans were getting into (the Maverick’s siblings had tried to bond with him by becoming punk, and he had retaliated by getting a job with his parents at the bread shop and going to church every Sunday). They would play three-pointer with Kel. One day, they all went to the grocery store together, and left after Hero started tearing up at the sight of a watermelon.
They talked about it, and they didn’t. At the end of the summer, Hero packed up his clothes and hugged Aubrey outside his house and hugged Kel outside the taxi to the airport and cried as the plane was landing because he didn’t stop by her grave, he should have said goodbye to Mari, he should have said goodbye to her.
She’d still be there when he came back. It was a cold comfort, thinking of that. Her forever stuck in the same place, buried six feet under. She’d always wanted to travel, Hero thought, looking at the clouds from the window on the plane.
It’s important, the priest had said to the family sitting beside them in the waiting room on Basil’s floor. To know that even if they’re gone, their memory will always be with you. That you can carry them with you wherever you go.
He’d tried to feel that before. Honestly had. In quiet moments at college, looking at the sunrise on a dew-wet morning. Had brushed his hand over the blades of grass, thought Mari, thought Are you with me, thought Can I feel you? Are you looking over your shoulder at me, from the other side? Do you still know my name? Do you want me to be happy?
He hadn’t felt her presence, or anything like it.
“To be honest,” He had said to Aubrey one Sunday afternoon, “I think everyone who can feel them with you is faking it. I don’t think she’s watching over me. I think she’s just gone.”
Aubrey had frowned. “I don’t know,” she said. “I feel like that sometimes too. But I can still feel something, sometimes. You know? Like a leftover. Like the love she left, hanging in the air. Not like she’s still here. But like a promise. She was here once.”
She was here once. Hero was silent when Aubrey said it, but it stuck like glue in his mind. He thought it when he was at the park, in the church, waking up in a cold sweat in the night, feeling the empty space beside him in his bed. She was here once.
But she’d never been on a plane. When they broke the cloud layer, the sun bursting bright into his eyes, the sky impossibly blue, a bed of clouds beneath him like heaven, Hero cried.
It’s so beautiful, he wanted to tell her. It’s so beautiful.
So he went back to college. Had a new roommate, tried to talk to him. Went to a few bizarre parties. Talked to his advisor. Took easier classes. Woke up early in the mornings. Tried to earn a sense of closure from the pale morning light.
Hero wondered how it would be to see Basil now. When he had gotten off the plane for winter break, he’d been punched in the gut with the realization that Kel was an inch and a half taller than him. He didn’t recognize the kids playing at the park anymore. His neighbors had moved away. It was a strange kind of pain, coming home to a place he didn’t recognize.
One day, he realized everyone in town that he knew would be gone. Dead or left. People he’d never know, in all the places he’d used to be.
“I think I want to be cremated,” He’d said to Kel, as they sat, shivering, outside the grocery store. Once upon a time a conversation like that would have hushed them both, led to searching glances. Now, though, Kel just laughed.
“I’ll spread you in the dump,” he said, and Hero socked him.
But even in the dump, he’d like that better. Not rooted to one place. Free to wander, to become one with the world. In a hundred years, Mari’s bones would be walked on by people who had never heard her name. It was kind of sad.
He flew back at the beginning of January — too early to see Basil, who returned on the twentieth and left again before spring. According to Kel and Aubrey, time spent with him was nice — quiet board games, reminiscing, a few rare laughs, courtesy of Kel.
That was Kel and Aubrey — bright, friendly, loving and easy to forgive (all despite Aubrey’s best attempts) and if they were overly energetic or abrasive, Hero knew it would be overshadowed by how hard they were trying.
“He seems like he’s trying to get better,” Kel said to him over the phone. “But to be honest, I don’t know if it’s working.”
“It takes a long time,” Hero said, a month into his first psychology class. “He might never be completely better. But it’s good that he’s trying.”
Basil went back to inpatient in mid-March. Kel cried on the phone. Hero listened, stony, silent. As if the words had been stolen from inside his mouth.
“He didn’t do anything,” Kel sobbed. “But he said he wanted to. He told me. I want to so bad. I want to die so bad.”
“I love you,” said Hero through the phone. There was nothing else he could say. No way to hug him. I love you. He’s safe now. Like a broken record.
He went to class. Went to parties. Drank some. Got better grades— it seemed like it was coming back, his will to study. He didn’t know how to feel about it.
He called Kel, who was seeing a therapist now, who was working hard on the varsity team. Called his mom to hear about Sally. Called Aubrey and asked her about Kim, let her stutter, bashful on the phone. They didn’t hear from Basil.
Hero’s third school year came to a quiet end. He went to a party after finals, kissed a boy, spent the next day sitting silently by the river. The water was rushing too fast — he couldn’t see his reflection, couldn’t see what he looked like.
If Mari saw him now, he wondered if she would recognize him, if she would know his face, the way he had to shave regularly now. If he’d become someone she wouldn’t recognize.
He went home. Spent a quiet summer working at the grocery store. Kel was off practicing, hanging with “the boys” from the basketball team. Aubrey was working too, delivering pizza on her bike. They saw each other once or twice a week, in snatches — a picnic at the pond, seeing Aubrey at church. He took them to the city in his car a few times — Kel had decidedly failed his drivers test and Aubrey didn’t have a car — and it was nice.
He said no when they asked him to buy them alcohol, then quietly provided them with seltzers a week later. It was so strange, seeing them like this. Little adults now. Not his babies anymore.
There were a few realizations. It wasn’t as much of a shock to realize things anymore, but it was a spike of pain — all of them now, even Sunny, were older than Mari.
There was also the realization that he’d never get to watch Sally grow up, not like he had with Kel. A different kind of pain. He spent more time with her, grinning as he remembered what Kel was like at her age — hyperactive and quick to cry. She was taking after him.
It was a quiet summer.
Basil came back in early August.
It wasn’t really an event. They got together to see him, the day he arrived, hugged him in turn. He was almost Hero’s height — wasn’t that a blow. But he looked good. There was color in his face, he’d gained weight, and when he saw Hero his face crumpled into a smile.
The four of them spent as much time together as they could, in the humid few weeks before Hero left. There were good days and bad. Sometimes Basil was quiet and didn’t want to talk at all. Sometimes Hero found Aubrey on the dock, sitting in silence. Sometimes Kel crawled into Hero’s bed — they still shared a room, even now, and they laid back to back like kids again. And every day, Hero would wake up, limbs heavy — sometimes too heavy to get up, to leave his bed — and remember Mari was still in the ground.
It never stopped hurting. It never would.
But sometimes, Basil told them stories from treatment that left them in tears from laughing. Hero told them all the shocking anecdotes he had from college — there were more of them than he’d realized. And they talked a lot. trading stories, memories. Talking about the past didn’t seem to burn Basil as much anymore. After testing the waters, Hero realized it didn’t really burn him anymore, either.
“You were so little,” he’d say, ruffling Basil’s hair around. “All three of you. It was such a hassle to keep you all together. Mari and I had our hands full.”
Once, just the name would have made Basil go pale — and there was still a pause, a careful, pained breath. But then he smiled. “I was the best behaved, I think,” He said, and Hero laughed, and so did Kel and Aubrey, and things felt like they were knitting together inside of him.
“I used to worry so much about you,” said Aubrey, and Basil grinned.
“You were my favorite,” he said, before pausing. “Second favorite. I liked Sunny more.”
She socked him in the arm, and he knocked his head against her shoulder, and Kel leaned over and slumped between the two of them.
“It’s gotten easier, but it’s still really hard, sometimes.” Basil said, golden hour stretching over the blanket they were sitting on. “But it helps, to remember that you guys forgave me. It makes me feel like I can forgive myself. On the hard days.”
“I wonder how Sunny is doing,” said Kel. His gaze was fixed on the treetops. “I hope he can feel the same way.”
“Me too,” said Aubrey, quietly. “I hope he’s happy.”
They hadn’t heard from him. Hero didn’t know if they ever would. But watching the three of them stretched out in the golden light, these kids whose tears he’d soothed and scrapes he’d kissed, who he’d failed, who’d forgiven him, who he was watching grow older in front of him, abrasive and annoying and kind, he hoped so too. With everything in him.
He wondered if Sunny was taller now. If he’d taken up the violin again. If he’d made friends. Gotten help. If he could do what had taken Hero five years to do — what he still couldn’t do, most of the time, and let Mari’s memory touch his hand without clawing at it, trying to get it to stay, to stop being a memory, to start being real.
Hero was twenty one now.
She was still sixteen.
He let the hurt of that settle in his chest, closed his eyes with the pain of it, let himself curl around it for a moment.
And then, he smiled.
“She really was amazing,” he said. “But man, she could be so bossy sometimes.”
It startled a laugh out of Aubrey. “She could! She’d always scold me for riding my bike without a helmet.”
“She was never bossy with me,” Kel said, crossing his arms, shooting Hero a glare. “Unlike you.”
Hero gasped in outrage, but Basil cut him off, grinning and shy. “You were so bossy, Hero, don’t even deny it.”
They were teaming up on him, now. “I was not!”
“You were!” Basil said. “Sunny and I couldn’t run half a block ahead without you threatening not to buy us ice cream.”
“It was my money!”
“Even Mari made you back down sometimes,” Aubrey said, mirth glinting in her eyes.
“Excuse me for trying to keep you guys safe!” Hero protested, but he was laughing, and then he was trying not to cry, leaning over and wrapping his arms around them, all three of them. They hugged him back, and they sat like that, for a little while.
When they finally leaned back, teary eyed, it was getting dark, the world hazy in the twilight.
“Let’s go back to our house,” Kel said, shooting Hero a grin. “We can watch movies and make cookies, like old times.”
So they did. And the cookies weren’t as good as Mari’s — never were, not really, but Hero could get them pretty close. “It’s about the love in the batter,” he said, winking, and Aubrey groaned, tipping her head back so she wouldn’t have to look at him.
They watched a movie, fell asleep on the couch. In the morning, Basil and Aubrey woke up and yawned and slowly left, and Kel ate cereal as fast as he could before leaving in a rush, late to meet with his friends.
Hero spent the time before his shift with his mom and sister. He was going back to college in a few days — the next time he’d see her, she’d be months older.
When he left, Hero's mom hugged him, gently. Whispered to him, “We’re so proud of you.” Hero blinked back tears and felt nothing but gratitude.
That evening, he bought flowers on his way out, and stood outside in the parking lot. The sky over the trees was pink and purple, wisps of clouds floating in the dying light.
Purple was her favorite color.
Hero took a deep breath. Felt the air expand in his lungs, run through his bloodstream, keeping him alive. He exhaled. What a small sensation, he thought. How lucky he was to feel it. The breeze tousling his hair. The cool smoothness of the stems in his hands.
White Egret Orchids. My thoughts will follow you into your dreams.
The splashing of the pond in the summer. The way she’d sobbed, tipping forward and gathering Sunny into her arms after pulling him out. Hero had slept in Kel’s bed that night, tracing his eyes over the softness of his brother’s preteen face, swearing he’d never let anything happen to him.
Mari had kissed him in this parking lot. After buying flour and sugar and vanilla for baking, after eating greasy slices of pizza and complaining about how overpriced it was. Afterwards, she’d stood a little on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his lips, pecked his nose, his forehead, his cheeks. Ruffled his hair when he blushed, her own cheeks pink. Gripped his hand to drag him home, where they would stay up all night in her backyard, talking about love and life and aliens and God and their deepest fears and their quiet, trembling hopes. And, their favorite ways to eat corn. Elote, they both decided, determined to make it the next day for lunch. They’d press their hands together and Hero would run his finger up her arm to her neck, make her squirm and laugh, always ticklish. They’d look at the stars, making up constellations, and —
He’d loved her. Hero felt it in his chest, in his bones. He’d loved her so much. And suddenly, he understood what Aubrey meant.
She’d loved him, too. In this parking lot. It was like she was just there — he could smell the shampoo she always used lingering in the air. She’d been here before. She was here, once.
The sky was purple, and Hero felt something settle, something that had been wailing and clawing at the walls deep within him since that awful morning five years ago.
Okay,” he said quietly to the sunset. “Okay. I think I’m ready now.”
He walked to her grave. Watched the trees along the way, the way the grass swayed in the breeze. She always pointed out things like that.
He walked through the church. Her family had never been religious, but he thought she’d like a place like this — quiet, calm. He understood why Aubrey had been so drawn to it here.
He walked through the graveyard. Stood in front of her grave. Sat down, opened his mouth — and no words came.
Where was he supposed to start? He had five years of memories to tell her, each one more important than the last.
He laid the flowers down. They were white, like clouds, and —
“I went on a plane, Mari,” he said, and the words began to spill out of him like water.
He told her about college. How weird it was, living in a dorm, having to shower in one of those gross little cubicles. He told her about his job at the grocery store, about how he was growing a weird rapport with the Baker twins. About the cookies he’d made last night, about how they weren’t as good as hers, but he’d wanted them to be. He told her about Kel and Aubrey and Basil, about Sally, about the family that had moved in down the street, about how he had to shave now, about the way the sky looked in the early morning, muted with fog.
The sky began to darken, but Hero couldn’t stop talking. He talked about how lonely it was without her. About how tall Kel was now. About how they hadn’t heard from Sunny since he’d left — but that they all missed him, and hoped he was okay. He told her about the boy he’d kissed at the party — Jeremiah, who he’d had o-chem with, who had dark skin and soft hands and who always smiled at him when he saw him and who he’d been texting, sort of, over the summer.
“I think you’d like him,” Hero said, and saying it out loud made something shift inside him. Of course she’d like him. Of course she wouldn’t be mad. She’d want him to meet people, to be happy.
He was starting his last year of college, he told her, and it felt weird even to him. Sunny and Kel and Aubrey and Basil are seniors now, he told her, and that was even weirder.
“I wish you’d gotten to graduate,” Hero said, and it didn’t paralyze him with pain like it would have years ago. Rather, it sat in his heart, a sense of sorrow he knew how to carry.
“I wish you’d gotten to go to college. You would have loved it, I think. Everyone would have loved you.” He laughed, quietly. They would have. Everyone had always loved her. “I wish you’d gotten to see the kids grow up. I wish I could have spent more birthdays with you, I wish I’d visited before, I’m so sorry I didn’t, I wish —”
He was crying now, and he put his hand on the ground where she lay, trying to imagine her. He couldn’t picture her, under the ground. He felt as if she was sitting there, right beside him.
“I wish you’d gotten to see the sky tonight,” He said, and fell silent.
If she’d been there, he thought. If she’d been there, she would have put her hand on his. Listened to him quietly, in that way of hers, the way where she’d make you feel like the most important person in the world. They would have gone home and slow danced in his kitchen and kissed each other on the cheek and he would have secretly been planning marriage vows, probably.
He closed his eyes and let himself imagine it, for a blissful moment. A life with her. A little black cat on the windowsill of their apartment, the room shining with morning light. Running his fingers through her hair as she slept, thinking maybe when I’m done with residency, I’ll ask what she thinks about kids. A fridge stocked with vegetables and curry paste. A postcard from Kel on the counter — he’d be visiting soon. The life he’d always dreamed, the life he had wanted. Wanted so badly that even when she was alive he could hardly bear thinking about it.
He let himself imagine it. Took a deep breath. Ran his hand over where her fingers would have been, if she was alive,
And then opened his eyes.
It was night. He was alone. The crickets were chirping, and the air was humming with cicadas. There were shadows stretching over him, but he wasn’t afraid. There was nothing there to be afraid of.
He buried his face in his hands and wept.
Some time later, he got up. Wiped his face. Placed a kiss on her gravestone, and walked home.
In a week, he’d be back at college. He was renting a room in an apartment this year, with a window that would let in the morning sun. He wondered if Jeremiah would say yes, if he asked him to come stay, sometime. He’d tell him about Mari. He hoped he’d understand.
That winter, he’d come home again. Take the kids ice skating. Sing Christmas carols with them, probably cry a little. Sally would be rapidly growing, the smartest three-year-old in the world. He’d be helping cook Christmas dinner. Thinking about med school applications.
Then, he’d go back to college for the last time. Spend some months there, graduate. Come home for the summer — maybe the last full summer he’d ever spend in Faraway Town.
Kel would be getting ready to go off to college — he’d be playing basketball, at a school that was decidedly not known for sports. Aubrey would be too — “I got a scholarship,” she would gasp to him on the phone. Basil would be working at the garden shop, calloused hands raising every flower with care.
Hero would be so proud of all of them — so proud he could hardly bear it.
That summer, Hero would get off the plane, hang out with his family, and walk the long way to Mari’s grave. Sit down, talk to her for a while. Get up, go home.
The next day, there’d be a knock at the door.
Hero would be the one to answer it. Would open it, pause for a moment, surprised. Smile.
“Sunny,” he’d say, opening the door all the way. “Come on in.”