Unlit Star (36 page)

He reaches over and plays with a lock of my hair. "Mine too. Strange."

I have found, that you can't tiptoe through life, scared of what will or won't happen because of how you choose to live. You have to run at it as fast as you can, without fear, without even pausing to think about what you're doing. If you pause, you fall. This is my advice: Keep running.

"I can see our life, what it would be like, if we got the chance to grow old together. I already know our story, beginning to end," he says quietly.

I turn my head to find his eyes on me. He puts his hand on mine and interlocks our fingers. "What would it be?" I ask him.

Facing forward, he says, "We would finish college—"

"What are we going for?"

"Well, we'd finish the basic stuff and then go on to what we really want to do. I'd fly planes and you'd decorate the insides of homes. In fact, you'd become fairly well-known with your unusual design sense. I'd be your trophy husband."

"Ooooh, I like that. I'd get to dress you up like a doll and parade you around. You could be my visual piece of meat."

"I think you're enjoying the thought of that a little too much. Can I continue?"

I smile, closing my eyes. "Continue."

He plays with a lock of my hair, warmth spreading through my limbs as my body sinks farther into the cool ground. "We'd get married. You'd pick the colors—"

"Pink and black," I supply.

"Pink and black. We'd have one boy and one girl. The boy would have your golden eyes and carefree manner, the girl would be into all things pink and frilly."

"Neil and...Willow." For my brother, and the tree that cries for him—and for all of us that must leave before we are ready to.

His hand pauses. "I like those names."

"Me too," I whisper, turning my face into his hand and kissing the palm.

"We'd have family movie night, family game night, take them camping and to ballgames and—"

"Don't forget coloring and drawing...crafts." 

"How could I forget those?" he gently mocks.

"We'd grow old and decrepit together and sit out on our porch at night."

"I'd yell at kids to get off the lawn."

I softly laugh, sitting up. I gaze down at him, the shadows formed on his face from a nearby streetlamp heightening the curve of his full mouth, the sharpness of his cheekbones, and evening out the squareness of his jaw. My heart beats with tenderness and it trickles through my veins to fill me with peace. "We'd live with so much joy in our lives that when our time came to go, we would smile instead of cry." Like I will.

Rivers scoots behind me and wraps his arms around me. "I like that version. That's our life. Agree?"

"Agree." And maybe in some alternate world, it would be. I inhale deeply, wishing I could bottle up this moment right now and wrap it around us so that it never went away. And then I realize, it never does. It won't. This is us, our time, and what we have will never die, not as long as one of us remembers.

He begins slowly, "I think, someway, somehow, we will meet again. I don't know how—I don't know when. But I feel it, here, in my heart." He touches a hand to the spot above my beating heart and the tempo of it picks up. "This is not our end. There is no end for us."

This might be our story, but this is more his story than mine. It will continue on as his as well—I am merely a character that has a substantial, but small role in the book. The rest is his. All of this, everything I have done this summer, has been for him. In a way, I exchanged my life for his.

I chose him.

We watch the stars as they flicker on with an invisible switch, neither speaking for a long moment. Then he nuzzles the side of my neck with his nose, whispering into my ear, “I still choose you.”

I smile, a star blinking out from the sky as I watch.
That one just went home.
My smile deepens.

“I will always choose you,” I say back.

THE BEST WAY TO DESCRIBE
Delilah, and what she meant to me, is to think of two people slowly walking toward one another. There are miles and years between them—an endless tunnel of gray surrounding the encounter—but when they finally connect, a pulsating light forms inside each of them, growing, until it consumes them. They thrive in the burn of it, but it soon fades out, like all brilliant things do, and they are left bereft in the absence of the other half of their soul.
That
was what we had.
That
is what I lost. I am not bitter about it, but I continue to grieve that part of my life—the part that belongs to Delilah Bana.

A part of me always will.

I smile. I laugh. And I look at the stars and think of her. I know she would have wanted that, so that's what I do.

I miss her smile. It was like a piece of sunshine aimed directly at my heart. I miss her fearlessness and generosity, the sound of her laughter. I miss her eclectic fashion sense and her diversified music addiction. I miss the random things she would say to distract me or to get a reaction out of me. I miss how big and infinite her heart was. It doesn't seem possible that someone who had so much life in them could be reduced to a memory.

Because of her, I healed. Because of her, I loved like I had never loved before. It was a special kind of love; one that cannot be imitated nor replaced. Because of her, I was able to be myself and realized I was fine just the way I was, any way I was.

There are so many 'because of hers'.

We had five months, two weeks, and three days more after the last day of summer, every one of them spent together. On the day she died, the woods was covered in a glittery blanket of snow. Even as Delilah died, she did so with light, smiling as her eyes closed for the final time. A tumor had taken hold of her at some point in her eighteen years, but it was an aneurysm that finally claimed her.

And the tears—I never thought I would stop crying when she left me. I was injured in a way I hadn't thought possible, incomparable to any other pain I'd ever endured, physical or otherwise.

That spring, I planted a Willow tree where she fell. My mom and Janet were with me. My tears helped water the soil around the tree—my tears became part of that tree. I don't go back to the cabin that much anymore, but I know that the tree is still there, growing, mourning, and putting life back into the place where death once was.

Illegal or not, she made me pinky swear to spread her ashes on the Mississippi River—as a way to get me to overcome my fear of the torrential waters and as a way to give them what they sought to find in me and were not allowed. I also think it was her way of giving them the finger. As I did as she requested, I pictured her shaking her fist as she shouted at the river:
You wanted Rivers? Well, you got me instead.
The thought made me cry at first, but now it makes me smile.

Months went by where I barely ate, wanting to be with her, wanting to die so I could see her again. I dropped out of college, slept all day, ignored my mom, Thomas, my friends, and even Janet. It was bad. And then one day I looked up at a dark sky and saw a single star, and felt her. She was telling me to get my ass in gear and live again. That was enough for me to realize I had to get my act together. Not just for me and those around me, but for her.

My mom and Thomas never got back together, but it's strange—we all get along better now than we did as a family.
Now
we are a family; years and misunderstandings later. My mom remarried a guy named Ken. He's a mechanic and covered in grease on a regular basis. He has an easy smile and a laidback manner. As far as materialistic items go, she has so much less than she used to, but you should see the way she shines. She's happy. Life is simple for her and she's happy.

Thomas has remained single, but there is peace to him I never witnessed before. It is like, finally,
finally
, the ghost he was always competing against has been put to rest. I'm not even sure who or what that apparition was, but he knows, and he's overcome it. We see each other a few times a year, each visit spent fishing or hunting without much talking between us. I'm okay with that. Good or bad—he was my father growing up. That can't be forgotten.

Janet listened to her daughter. She called Neil's father. They are now married—for the second time—and I imagine they look how Delilah and I used to look; full of laughter, overflowing with love, and the only thing the other ones sees. Everything good, basically.

We find Delilah in each of us, and that is how we remember her. A flower, a song, ice cream, an ugly scarf—the most random things bring her to mind and we find ourselves smiling at one another, knowing without exchanging words that she is on each other's mind.

I didn't even have a chance to be sad in the months leading up to her death. She never allowed me to. How can one being have so much fire, so much positivity, that everyone around her is reflected in her light?

I made a promise to her and I kept it—maybe a little later than she would have liked, but I did. She made me promise
to be happy
,
to live
, and
never regret
. So I did. I went back to college—two years later than originally planned, but I went. I did my required four years and then I went on to flight school. I became a pilot, and each time I fly, I feel her. It's the closest I can get to her. At times it seems as though Delilah is still with me, guiding me with her luminosity, telling me to think of all I have instead of all I don't.

I have so much, I know that now.

The actual time I had with her wasn't enough, would have never been enough, but each moment was endless in its depth and I wrap my arms around those and I hold them close. I recall her first day of work, I think of the first time she yelled at me, I remember how she pushed me to never give up. She saved me. She saved me just by giving me a piece of her. The injured parts of my life were healed with the parts of her she freely gave, intertwining us in shatterproof ways.

I think of her every day. I think of her and I
live
. I live for me, but I also live for her. I live enough for both of us, just as she once had to.

She was like the sun, the brightest beacon of light in the whole sky, one of the biggest stars out of all the many stars. The thing about the sun is that it can't be contained, it can't be held on this earth, and it is bigger than everything and everyone. She shone for an impermanent length of time, but she burns still in my heart and in my memories. The sun is too beautiful for this world, too
great
for us mere humans, and it must be free. And she is now.

Delilah is free. And
I
am free
because of her
.

My PB and R

BY DELILAH BANA

(Please note: I will never do this again, so you better frame this sucker.)

Peanut butter is good, but Rivers is better.

I smear one on toast, I stare at the latter.

Both go well with bacon, but only one can get a spankin'.

Oh, how I love my glorious PB and R.

I could eat it all day, as I drive in his car.

By the spoonful, by the jar—

Take it away and I will rawr.

This poem is silly, and Rivers is smelly.

If I were British, maybe I could watch him on the telly?

I love my peanut butter, I love my Rivers.

If you take either away, I will be forced to resort to dithers.

I wrote this for you, just so you know—

I guess I can forsake PB, but if it was you,

The answer is no.