Gravestone (43 page)

108. Too Much

I get back home. I always do. Somehow I just really can’t seem to get far enough away from the cabin or the town.

It’s afternoon, and I’m ready to sleep for twenty hours. Yet something is waiting for me in the driveway. It’s not Mom’s car. Of course not.

I pull up and see the silver-and-black motorcycle that was in the shed at the Crag’s Inn.

Instantly I expect that Jared is somewhere around. He’s dropping by to rub it in my face. Or to bring me to the cops after what I did to the pastor.

For a moment I think about taking the bike and riding away. But I’m exhausted and don’t have the energy to get on it. I really just don’t care.

There’s a white envelope taped to the seat. I see my name on it.

I’m not going to like this.

I hold the card in my hands.

Just get rid of it, Chris. Even if it has your name on it. This isn’t a birthday card.

The wind rustles. I wonder if school missed me today. Or if Mom did. Or if anybody really did.

I tear open the envelope and see the folded card inside. It’s special stationary that has a picture of the Crag’s Inn on it.

Iris …

I swallow. How did it get here, and why, and who—

Add them to the collection. The collection of HUH? stories that I’m starting to own.

I open the note.

Dear Chris,

The bike belonged to your uncle and now belongs to you. Keep it and learn to ride it. Just be careful when you do.

You know more than you think you do. You understand more than you believe you do. But you are at a critical juncture and you have to make a choice.

Just remember that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Remember those words even if you do not believe them.

Yes, it is dark.

But the Lord is a lamp.

And He can turn the darkness into light.

Iris

I fold up the letter and look around.

The breeze still blows.

I wonder why. Why me. Why now. Why.

I take the steps up to the cabin.

I don’t feel anything.

I’m too tired to feel. Too bewildered to understand.

It’s all just a bit too much.

109. Sealed Shut

I hear the sound of a jet nearby. It wakes me up.

And here I am, sitting in a seat on a plane.

I know I’m dreaming, because Jocelyn is sitting next to me.

“You can’t stay here,” she says.

I look at her and feel myself blushing. I feel like a kid next to her. I
am
a kid next to her.

“Where is here? They use planes and airports in my imaginary heaven?”

“This isn’t imagined and this is not heaven. This is just a place in between. Otherwise it’s too startling.”

There’s that expression again.
But shouldn’t it be space in between?.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“About what?” she says.

“About the pastor. About my uncle. About Iris.”

“I can’t tell you those things, Chris. It doesn’t work like that.”

“Then how does it work? When is any of this going to make sense? And—and why do you look grown up?”

Jocelyn only smiles. “Does everything need to make sense in your world? Did everything make sense when you lived in Chicago?”

“A lot more than now.”

“Like with your parents splitting up? Your father abandoning a career after finding faith? And all the countless little moments you chose to ignore on a daily basis?”

“No.”

I don’t want to acknowledge what she said, because I can’t.

There’s no way she can know that. There’s no way my dreams can even know that.

“You’ve felt something all your life and yet have done nothing about it,” Jocelyn says. “And it’s only since coming here that it’s come to the surface. This empty feeling deep down. Those fears. The questions.”

“Stop,” I tell her.

“We don’t have a lot more time.”

I fumble with my seat belt and then stumble out into the walkway.

“I need to wake up.”

“Yes, you do,” Jocelyn says.

“And you—you—whatever you are—whatever thing you are. I want you to leave.”

Jocelyn watches me with eyes that haunt and hurt. She remains quiet.

“I don’t want any more maybes in my life,” I say. “Any more might-have-beens. I’m tired of them and tired of thinking. Tired of wondering what might have and should have and any of that. I’m just mostly tired, Jocelyn, and I don’t—I
can’t
—keep seeing you here, or keep showing up here, or keep doing whatever it is that I’m doing to get here.”

“Chris—”

“No. No. Please. Just let me leave. Let me be. It happened and it was magical, and then someone ripped it away from me and the world crumbled. And I don’t want to wake up every day going through piles and piles of crumbs to try and find something. I’m tired of it. I want something that I know. I want something that is real. I want something that doesn’t make me sick with sadness.”

She looks at me and nods. No anger or frustration or confusion on her beautiful face. She nods and then looks out the window next to her.

I don’t want to say anything else because there’s no use.

I start walking away, not sure where I’m going or what I’m doing.

You know more than you think you do.

But it doesn’t matter.

You understand more than you believe you do.

It does not matter.

You have to make a choice.

I want it back. The part of me that doesn’t care. The part of me that doesn’t fear tomorrow.

I just want to move on with it.

“Got it?”

I keep walking and hear the sound of the door to the airplane seal shut behind me.

110. The End Is the Beginning

“We’re leaving.”

Just like that, another story is over.

Just like that, another chapter ends.

“What?”

“This is how it works,” Poe tells me. “I’ve seen it with others. I mean—it just happens. People suddenly leave. Someone loses a job, and then their family moves. Or they get a bigger or better job somewhere else.”

“It’s over,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s over.”

It’s been three days since it all happened. I haven’t been back at school. I’ve done nothing the last few days. That includes sleeping. That also includes keeping my sanity.

I left it by those falls when the pastor fell over to his death.

It’s graduation day, and I’m meeting Poe outside by the track field.

“What’s over?”

“The pastor. He’s dead.”

Poe laughs.

“I’m not kidding.”

“Shut up, Chris.”

“No. The day after I saw you—it happened. I saw it because—because I
did
it. I killed him.”

So I tell her in a hurried whisper. I tell her while she looks at me and shakes her head and keeps shaking it.

“That’s impossible,” Poe says. “Why are you making this up?”

“I’m not.”

“It’s not going to change anything.”

“What isn’t?”

“This—your story.”

“I’m not making this up, Poe.”

“I might never see you again after today, and you’re doing this.”

“I’m not doing anything.” I don’t understand why she doesn’t believe me. “Listen—it really happened. Just like I said. Remember when you wouldn’t believe me about Jocelyn.”

“So go inside.”

“What?”

“Go inside the gym. Then come back and look me in the face and tell me you’re not lying.”

“Poe—”

“I saw him this morning.”

“You saw who?”

“The pastor.”

Now it’s me who thinks she’s lying.

But I’m already running to the gym where the ceremony is going on, where the graduates have already marched, where somebody is probably giving them a nice pep talk before they head out into the big dark world.

Even before I enter the open doors, I hear his voice.

I stop and listen and know this cannot be happening.

It can’t be.

It’s not real.

I move through the opened double doors and see the crowd and the platform and then I see him.

Pastor Jeremiah Marsh.

Talking and saying something that sounds really seriously wonderful.

And as if he knows, as if he can just feel that I’m in the room, he grins.

111. A Fine Ending

If this were a fairy tale or a story about a good person, then this would be his moment. The moment where he would seek the water for baptism. Where he would give himself up and finally give up. When he would embrace this thing that his father so fully accepted, this thing that Jocelyn so freely gave herself over to. He would stand in this flowing stream and kneel and ask for forgiveness and just let go.

That would be a good story and a fine ending.

But this forest doesn’t belong in a fairy tale, and standing in this stream is no good person.

I hold an old backpack containing the items I have to offer.

A Bible that once belonged to my father. One he claimed had answers for me. A Bible I gave to someone else to use, only to receive it back with claims that echoed my father’s statement.

They were both wrong.

Also inside is a leather band once given to me by someone I had just begun to know. Something that meant the world to her. It was like the Bible, a present a parent gave a child, a present with deep meaning.

Then there’s the picture of Jocelyn and me, a faded color printout of another time and another life.

Faith is believing in someone or something. And this is my moment of finding faith.

You want me to make a choice, Iris? So be it.

I know what I believe now.

I believe in anything and everything that I can do.

I believe that the world is messed up and that there’s evil and that there’s madness and that there’s mystery.

But there isn’t a God up above. He can’t be watching, not with all this madness around me. Not with everything happening. It’s okay if He wants to abandon me, but there are too many others for Him to
not
abandon. Too many. If He is up there, He abandoned us a long time ago.

I lift the bag and then chuck it over the falls.

If the dead can be raised, then so can other things.

I stand and look out to the surrounding stranglehold of woods.

I believe that I can and will be free.

No more sadness and no more sorrow. No more secrets and no more spying.

I’m tired of trying to be a hero in a story I don’t belong in.

So here I am. Here I am.

I’m a new person, a new soul. And this soul is open and free and ready to start living.

And if God is up there, then it’s up to Him to hunt me down.