He let go of his handful, and the powder sifted through the air. Then Grace took the remainder of the container and stood over the spot I’d chosen.
“Earth to earth,” she said. “Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.”
And while Paul kept his camera trained on us, she let the rest of them go. A breeze found its way inside, whistling through the cave. Some of the ashes swirled a bit in the air, but eventually, each grain, each tiny piece of Jonah settled on the ground between us. And then all I could do was walk out of the cave and slowly find my way back to the path.
Everyone else followed, tentatively at first. The trail wassteeper here and I removed my shoes to get a better grip. Paul stayed by the cave, pointing his camera over the edge of the trail to catch the rest of us shrinking into the gorge.
When I finally got down to the bottom, I walked, without speaking, alongside the river, which eventually dwindled into a rocky stream, and then finally to a bright, calm turquoise pool. I stood by it a moment, my face aimed toward the water.
Me:The rocks in the pool, blurring in and out of focus. Small weeds billowing.
I realized I was holding my breath. My heart was hammering in my chest, and I felt light-headed. But this time I was not alone, the way I had been on the dock in Minneapolis. I looked at Grace and Daniel.
Me:The sunlight on the surface of the pool. The cool rocks on my bare feet.
I waded in and felt the frigid water instantly numbing my feet and calves. The rocks on the bottom were smooth, and a little slippery from algae, but the water was perfectly clear. I could see my own feet walking as if I were seeing them through glass. I walked until the water deepened.
And inside my head, finally, there was no monologue to Jonah. Just the passing of my own thoughts. Including one that said: “Do you really want to do this?” And another that said: “Yes. It’s okay.”
So I stretched out my arms and plunged into the blue-green pool, yelling out from the cold, a muffled howl that barely made a noise underwater. I pushed myself forward with long strokes. And when I came to the surface, taking huge lungfuls of air, I felt the sun warm on my chilled skin.
Then Grace was floating next to me. She must have gotten in while I was under. Her dress gathered on the surface of the water, and on her face was something like contentment. Daniel jumped in last, and when he came up wet strands of hair stuck to his forehead, and he was shouting like a maniac. There might have been tears in his eyes. It was too wet to tell.
I swam over to him and held his hand under the cold water. Then we just floated. I don’t know how long. My body was numb after a while, but that was okay. I didn’t need it for the moment. The water held me up and drowned out all sound. I could have bobbed there the rest of the afternoon. But I knew it was risky to stay too long.
So instead, I tried to fully experience the moment and tell it to myself like a story. I had walked down a valley of jagged cliffs with black windows into ancient graves. I had rested on the surface of a pristine sky-blue pool. And for a minute or two, I found a place to be still. The light glittered on the water and it looked like the sun was beneath us, not above. Somehow I had found a little bit of life in a place of the dead.
39
By evening I was on a plane again.
The contrast was jarring. One moment I was outside my body, the next I was in a cramped cabin full of tourists. They were coming home from Italian vacations where they’d taken pictures in front of old things, eaten at overpriced restaurants, and spent most of the time on their phones. I could have been one of them.
Nobody knew I had just staged a funeral in a sea cave. Nobody knew that I was a high school dropout, my emergency credit card maxed. Nobody knew that I had absolutely zero clues about what I was going to do when I made it back stateside. And, most importantly, nobody knew that I had to say good-bye to the sleeping boy next to me when this plane touched down.
Daniel was in a Dramamine coma again. Or at least he appeared to be. His head was slumped down, chin on chest, and a single spot of drool dotting his thick lower lip. Onthe ride to the airport, we’d both sat shivering under a ratty blanket we found in the back of the van, too dazed to say much to each other.
We would be together on our first flight, but then we had to part ways. Daniel’s parents hadn’t been too thrilled to learn that their son was suddenly in another country. They were threatening to cut off their share of next year’s tuition if he didn’t come home right away.
All this came as a surprise to me. Somehow, I had assumed that Daniel would be coming back with me to stay at my dad’s again when our voyage was over. But even as I articulated this thought to myself, I could see it was ridiculous. My father had threatened his life. It was probably safe to say that his couch privileges had been revoked. So we had the length of an international flight to say good-bye.
Only we didn’t seem to be doing that.
Instead we were watching bad movies. One after the next, pressing play at the same time on the touchscreens attached to the seats in front of us, and staring forward like lobotomy patients. We were swilling ginger ales and eating bags of “lightly salted” peanuts. We didn’t laugh. We didn’t cry. We stared.
Then the movies were over and I was left watchingDaniel drool. Grace was somewhere at the back of the plane. When we’d found out there were seats together this time, she’d wordlessly given them to Daniel and me. Maybe if she’d been closer, she could have cut the tension.
“I’ve been thinking...” he said suddenly. “...about when I go back to school.”
I had been zoning out. When my vision refocused, I saw he had one eye open.
“Jesus. Don’t do that,” I said.
“Do what?”
“Just start talking out of a deep sleep. It’s freaky.”
He opened his other eye.
