“I’d like that on my stone someday,” he says, standing up and dusting his hands off. “Beautiful friend. It’s simple, but . . . damn, what a legacy.”
I smile at him, but my thoughts are with Charlie and Hannah and me earlier today, how there was a sort of beauty in the three of us huddled and crying on Hannah’s bed, holding one another together. A sort of beauty, but also a sort of ugliness because of why we were there, who I was there for. Because of the undoing I felt going on somewhere underneath my skin, like a constellation being split apart.
“Mr. Prior kicked me out of his house today,” I say.
Alex raises his eyebrows. “You went to see Hannah?”
I nod.
“How . . . how is she?”
I start walking toward the river and Alex follows. I don’t answer for a while—?it suddenly seems like such a difficult question. The water rolls over itself, beckoning us closer, the moon glinting off its surface. The scene looks like something out of an old black-and-white movie.
“She’s sad,” I finally say, stopping where the bank dips and the grasses get longer along the river’s edge. “And angry.”
Next to me Alex sighs. “And her dad kicked you out?”
“Yeah. He’s sad and angry too.”
“But you didn’t do anything. Owen’s the one who—”
My eyes connecting with his cut him off. He looks away, but even in the dark, I can see the confusion thick on his face. His hand finds mine and our fingers tangle clumsily in a desperate attempt to grab hold.
We stand there for a few minutes, silent, the dead resting behind us and the pulsing life of the river in front of us. It flows gently, as though it’s trying to make peace of all the chaos. Suddenly, everything feels too heavy. I sink into the grass, my legs folded underneath me.
“Why have we never done this before?” I ask. Alex sits down next to me, resting his elbows on his knees.
“What, frolic through a cemetery? We just did that yesterday.”
I shove his shoulder and he laughs. “I was talking about hanging out.”
“We’ve hung out.”
“Not just us.”
He shrugs. “I don’t know why. We should’ve. We are now, at least.”
I look up at the clear sky. The cemetery is far enough away from downtown Frederick that the stars look like a thousand tiny night-lights plugged into the dark.
Though we’ve known each other forever, taken classes together, performed in the same holiday concerts for years, Alex and I have never belonged to each other, never sought each other out.
And I’ve never felt so desperate to change that, for both of us.
“Tell me something,” I say.
“Like what?”
“Something I don’t know about you.”
He purses his lips, a little smile playing on the edge.
“Oh god,” I say. “Walking around the cemetery with your violin is your only hobby, isn’t it?”
A laugh bursts from his mouth, but he nods. “Found me out.”
A chilly breeze swings in between us and I scoot a little closer to him. “Seriously.”
He sighs. “Seriously? I hate performing.”
