There Will Come a Time (11 page)

You can't make out with one of your best friends. Life isn't like a movie. Friends with benefits never work. Someone always
gets hurt. Hanna and I have a good thing going. I don't want to screw it up, not that I don't imagine what it'd be like to kiss her.

Now that Grace isn't here as our buffer, every time I'm with Hanna I'm a little more on edge, hyperaware of her presence. She's always been beautiful, but it's like I've finally woken up and am seeing her from a different angle. Like how funny she is. How she's willing to try new things. How cool she was with Sebastian, as if she's known him forever. How she checks up on me without making it seem as if she is. How she makes me feel that things are going to be okay.

Besides, since losing Grace, I don't know how I'd deal with losing Hanna, too. What if she doesn't have feelings for me? It's not worth the risk.

I find myself at her front door and knock. Her mom answers.

“Hello, Mark. Come on in. They're in the back.”

“Thanks, I'll just go around.”
They're?

“Suit yourself.” She closes the door.

I open the side gate and head for the yard. I see Hanna and River as soon as I round the corner of the house. They're on the swing, heads bent together as if, well, I don't want to think about what they're doing. I turn and leave.

I'm starting to cross the street when I hear my name.

“Mark, wait.” It's Hanna. “Where you going?”

“Nowhere. A drive.”

“Why don't you stay?”

“I'm good.” I turn my back to her. Hanna stops in the middle of the street, but I keep walking.

“You can't run forever,” she calls.

She's wrong. You
can
run forever—or at least for a long time. I get in Dad's car and Charlie Mingus plays from a CD. I'm already feeling better. I can always count on Dad to have killer music.

Sometimes I go down to the coast, but since I was just there, I take the 5 and head north. I want some space. Cars scatter across four lanes of freeway. I'm practically alone. I let the jazz carry me onward. I pass Magic Mountain with its huge roller coasters and wonder why I never go. It's not that far. I keep driving, not really having a destination in mind.

I feel something sharp in my pocket. I pull out Grace's bracelet, the one that was in the package from the police department, and turn it over in my hand. I had forgotten I'd stuffed it in my pocket that day. The bracelet is delicate and shiny, like new.

Grace met River at the beginning of junior year. She hid him from us at first, but that was just like Grace. She was incredibly private, especially about the guys in her life, not that she dated a lot or had many boyfriends. She was picky. She said things like, “Dating someone isn't like trying on clothes. It's got to mean something to hold someone's hand or let a guy kiss you. At least,
it
should
mean something. I don't need fireworks when I'm with him, but I want him to be someone I admire and respect.” She was always deep like that. Of course, it'd make me feel all shallow, because I sometimes based my selection on a great pair of legs or a nice chest.

When she brought River over, I was kind of surprised by him. He was this long, angular white guy. Brown hair, totally straight edge. He wore a blue button-down shirt, tucked into his jeans, and a belt when he came for dinner.

He was nervous with me, like he was really trying to make a good impression. He didn't play any instrument. He didn't skate. He was a runner, and I guess pretty good at it. Potential-f-ride-scholarship-for-the-800 good.

Grace had warned me to be nice, so I knew she was serious about him and I cut him a break. I didn't really care who she dated as long as he treated her well, and River seemed to make her happy. I was cool with him, even though we didn't connect.

A couple of months later, Grace pulled me into her room and shut the door.

“What's up?”

“Here,” she said, and handed me a small silver bracelet.

“Thank you?” I said.

“It's a bracelet.”

I held it out in front of me. “Yep. It's a bracelet.”

“River gave it to me last night.”

“Looks like your style,” I said, and tried to hand it to her, but she backed away.

“I know, right? It's exactly something I'd pick out myself.” She paced back and forth.

“And that's a bad thing?”

“I don't know. I don't know what it means,” she said, and sat on my bed.

“It's just a bracelet.” I tossed it on the bed next to her. She looked at it and didn't pick it up.

“Have you ever given someone a bracelet? One with hearts on it?”

“Well, actually they're more like dewdrops than hearts.”

“Mark, seriously.”

“Okay, okay. No.”

“What's it supposed to mean?”

“He's into you. That's all. Don't overanalyze it.”

“But
how
into me? And what, I'm supposed to start wearing it now? Like every day? What if I don't want to wear it? What if I want to change it up, and River sees and gets hurt because I'm not wearing his bracelet?”

“Grace, come on. Stop freaking out.”

She fell back on the bed and I lay beside her. From an aerial shot we're obviously not identical, separated by more than a Y
chromosome. Her hair is long and layered with bangs. Mine is short, but the same jet-black color and just as straight. I'm also a good head taller than her, but we have the same shape in the eyes and mouth.

“He told me he loved me,” Grace says.

It was obvious the guy was totally whipped. He texted her all the time, took her out, came over for Friday movie nights. Now he'd said the three words and given her a present. No wonder Grace was freaking out. “What'd you say?”

“Thank you.”

I laughed; I couldn't help it. “Ouch.”

“It's not funny, Mark.”

“I know, but oh man. What'd he do?”

“He smiled and put his arm around me. What was I supposed to say?”

“I love you too?” I shrugged. I didn't know. I had never told a girl I loved her before. I couldn't believe River had the balls. It kind of made me respect the guy. “Do you love him?”

She was quiet.

“It's okay if you do and it's okay if you don't,” I said.

“Maybe I do,” she whispered. “Is that weird?”

“Kind of.” I patted her on the arm. “But you've always been weird.”

“Don't say anything to Dad and Jenny,” she said.

“I won't. You going to tell him how you feel?”

“Eventually.”

“Make him sweat?”

“Exactly.” She sat up, grabbed the bracelet, and put it in her purse. “But not tonight.”

A week later we were in the accident.

•  •  •  •

At the funeral, I played the good son and brother. I was polite, gracious in the onslaught of grief. All of Dad's family came and most of Mom's, along with friends of Grace from school I didn't know. Mom kept trying to touch me, to hold me. I remained impassive.

Everyone said such nice things about Grace. Our pastor shared funny stories. Dad and Jenny spoke. I wanted to speak, but I was afraid I wouldn't be able to keep it together. What they all said about Grace was true, but it was also false. They were only focusing on her good qualities, as if she were this perfect person. Grace was amazing, but she was also human, which meant she was messy and complicated. How could you sum up a person's life in five minutes anyway? It made me feel angry and more detached from her. The person they were all describing wasn't even real.

River came dressed in a black suit and tie. It made him look taller for some reason. He shook my dad's hand and tried
to shake Jenny's, but she hugged him. He held on to her for a while. I saw he was crying. When he got to me, his eyes were swollen. We shook hands and he pulled me in for a manly side hug and pat on the back as if he were my uncle, but River wasn't family. He was some guy who'd dated Grace for a couple of months.

At the gravesite, I stayed underneath a tree. I leaned against it as if I were holding it up, but the truth was, it was holding me up. I needed something to keep me together because I was afraid I'd split into pieces. Staring at the casket, I logically knew Grace's body was inside, but my actual Grace wasn't. She was gone. But I felt like she was still with me, I just couldn't see her. How can someone be a living being with dreams and plans, and then suddenly not exist anymore? She didn't even say good-bye.

And I was the one who was supposed to say good-bye. That's what funerals are: a bunch of people coming together to say good-bye to the dead and to face their own mortality. We're all supposed to have a good ugly cry, get the pain out, remember the good times, and then move on. We tell ourselves the dead would want us to do that. We tell ourselves that death is a part of life. We tell ourselves anything to try to make sense of it. One moment Grace was here. The next moment she wasn't. I could find no sense in that.

When they lowered the coffin, I stopped breathing. Just as I had after the accident when I was waiting for her to breathe again. My breath had always kept time with hers. At the gravesite, my chest hurt. My lungs started to burn. I inhaled a huge gulp of oxygen. I would have to learn to breathe on my own.

Then she was in the ground. Gone. Forever. People began peeling away in twos and threes, but I stayed. My back pressed against the tree, as if it'd been nailed to it.

River came up to me.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“I'm sorry,” he said, and stood next to me.

That's what everyone kept saying.
I'm sorry
.
I'm sorry
. Over and over again. No one knew what to say. So instead of just being quiet, they said empty words. Apologies. What were they apologizing for? They weren't the one driving our car. They weren't the one who survived.

Right after we were hit,
I'm sorry
were the first words I heard. I was trying to get out of our car, when the driver who hit us said, “I'm sorry! You okay in there? Oh man. I'm so sorry!”

Grace never got to hear his apology.

He kept saying it over and over, as I crawled out, as I tried to get to Grace, even after the ambulance arrived.

River said it again. “I'm sorry,” and all I could hear was that
man's voice. A man who'd looked down for a couple of seconds, some teacher, a father of two. He wrote my parents a four-page letter. They actually wrote him back. My dad said without forgiveness a heart would freeze. But I didn't care. I refused to read the letter. Let my heart become Antarctica.

“I loved her, you know. I really did.” River's body shook a little.

His confession made me so angry. He didn't love her. He barely knew her.
I
loved her. I felt so possessive, as if no one had the right to miss her like I did. No one could share in that pain.

River put his hand on my shoulder. “If you ever need anything, Mark, I'm here for you.”

I shrugged his hand off and pushed him away. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he told me again how sorry he was. I hit him in the face and then in his chest, stomach, wherever I could get in a punch. I'd never hit anyone before. My hands stung with every contact. I heard my dad say my name, but I kept hitting River. He just stood there. He didn't fight back or even hold up his hands to defend himself. Blood trickled from his nose, and he started crying, really crying.

My dad pulled me off of River, holding me from behind. Everyone was there: Jenny, Hanna, my mom, my grandparents, the aunties. Everyone was crying.

“Don't do that!” I yelled at River. “Don't cry for her. She didn't—she didn't even love you!”

“Mark,” Dad said. “It's okay. It's okay.”

“It's not okay!” I screamed. “It'll never be okay!”

I twisted free of my dad and ran away.

•  •  •  •

My plan had been to never speak to River again, even though Hanna suggested I make it right. But I couldn't admit my shame at how I had treated River. He hadn't fought back, as if he welcomed the suffering. The pity in his eyes made me hate him. I also hated that he held a piece of Grace I couldn't carry.

The only way the thing between River and me could be made right is if Grace weren't dead. If I could somehow go back in time and not take the bridge or if I could tell the guy not to drive that night.

But you can never go back. You can never undo what you wish you hadn't done. You can't do the things you wish you did.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the bracelet. I keep driving, the thin chain cold and heavy in my hand.

S
ebastian is better at composing than I am, but he wants me to create the music for Pete's show. He says it's because I'm already hearing a melody. Pete's bugging me about it, even though the show's not until December. I have plenty of time, but I tell him that I'm working on the music during my free period, when I've signed out one of the practice rooms. I've been in here for a good half hour and am starting to lay out parts over Sebastian's track, when there's a knock on the door.

“Come in,” I say, irritated that I have to stop.

A Chinese girl with a blue streak through her short black hair stands in the doorway. “Um, Mark?”

“Yeah?”

“Pete told me to come find you.”

I look at her like,
Yeah, so what do you want
?

“I'm choreographing for the show. He said you're on music. Is that it?” She's referring to the beats I still have going. I turn off the track.

“Partly. I'll be adding cello and bass.”

“Cool. Kind of classical, hip-hop fusion.”

“Kind of.” I don't recognize her. “What's your name?”