Edited 6/30/08
For Cal's romance contest.
Smiling's A Good Start
040: Lake
Amber stares straight out at the lake in front of her. The water is still, a faded green foam layering the top of it. It looks dead to her.
She doesn't move when she hears Jason come up behind her, his sneakers squeaking in the dew coated grass. She continues to stare into the lake, searching for some form of life in there, ignoring him as he sits down beside her.
The sun is slowly rising, and it casts shadows on everything. The trees, the lake houses, Amber and Jason. Everything seems to race up the hill together, each dark shape pushing further and further up. All running from the dead lake.
Jason doesn't expect her to say anything. He stares at her, and she stares at the lake, and the sun stares at both of them.
"I don't want to do this anymore. It's just… it's too hard. He's always on my mind, but I don't want him there – I want him here, with me. " She doesn't sound sad – it's just a statement. Just like the sun's low and the shadows race and the lake's dead.
"I know."
030: Familiar
Amber lays back on her bed, her hands clasped together on her stomach, her thumbs playing their own game of thumb war. Inside the pocket of her jeans, her phone vibrates. She flips it open and sees a text message from Jason.
Hey, wanna go to a ball game today? I'll buy you one of those god-awful Slushies you always rave about. Should be fun.
She presses 'end,' not bothering to respond. She stares up at the star covered ceiling that Mikey helped her paint when she was little. Her cell phone is open in her hands, and her fingers itch to dial his number, but she makes herself wait.
One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi…
If she gets to ten, she won't feel the need anymore. That's how her mom lost all that weight – count to ten and the craving's gone.
Four Mississippi. Five Mississippi…
The itching in her fingers isn't going away. Not calling her brother is different than not eating a last piece of cake. So she dials Mikey's number. The sequence is familiar; she's dialed it hundreds of times in her life.
She drums her fingers against her leg as she waits for the familiar voice message to begin, but then three beeps blast into her ear.
"The number you have reached…"
She brings the phone down from her ear, presses 'end,' then goes to dial again. She assumes she dialed the wrong number – after all, she has always gotten his voice mail, even after the accident.
Another text message pops up on the screen.
Am, you there? The game starts in an hour. Let me know if you need a ride, 'kay?
She almost replies. She almost tells him to come over, to hold her, to tell her that it doesn't matter that Mikey's phone's shut off – that she can still talk to him somehow. Jason's always believed in stuff like that.
But she still wants it to be her mistake. She still wants it to have just been a simple slip of the finger, a five instead of a four – something. So she dials again.
"The number you have reached is not in service at this time. No further information is available. The number you have reached is not in service at this time. No further information…"
048: Need
"You need to move on, Am," Jason says over the phone.
"I'm not going to forget my own brother." Amber's voice is hard, unwavering. She sits on her bed, her cell in one hand, a picture of her brother in a uniform – that filthy baseball that never left his side in his hand - in the other. The picture is flipped over, so all she can see is the date scrawled across the back.
"You don't have to forget him. Visit his grave, think about him every once in a while. Just don't stop having fun to mourn his death."
"How can I have fun when he's dead?"
"'Cause it's what he would have wanted." Amber's quiet for a minute. She flips the photo, looks at her brother's face. He's smiling, the sun shining down on him, his teammates surrounding him. There would be another picture just like the one she held in her hands taken after the game if they won, and another at the next game, and another at the next, and the only thing different would be the new kid that would stand where her brother used to stand. Mikey's teammates all moved on – they were all out having fun, because they knew what Jason knew.
"I know that."
"Then why wouldn't you go to the ball game with me?"
"Because it's just some stupid game. I have better things to do than waste my time sitting on filthy bleachers watching guys in tights throw a ball around a diamond."
"You used to like it."
"And Mikey used to be one of those guys in tights throwing around a ball. Things change."
001: Accident
"We have to do something – go out somewhere. I'm so sick of hanging around doing nothing."
Amber shakes her head. "I don't want to do anything." Her arms are crossed across her chest, her face set. She stares straight ahead, right at the chair he's sitting in, but her eyes go through him.
She sees past the wall and into Mikey's room.
She sees the room where her brother lived his entire life. She sees the bed he used to lay on, listening to music. She sees the desk he would do his homework at. She sees the computer he would surf.
"Am, come on – we have to do something."
She sees the phone he had used to plan the car ride that would lead to his death.
"I don't want to."
"Why not? You used to love going out – didn't you always say how stuffy and boring your house was?"
"It doesn't seem that boring anymore," she says. Not when there's so much to explore in his room, she adds to herself. So much I never knew before, so much to explain who he really was when he wasn't being a big brother to me.
Jason looks down, but still continues, his voice low. "I just want you to be happy again. I miss seeing you smile – you look so sad all the time."
"What do you expect? My brother just got in a freakin' car crash."
"Yeah. Two months ago."
"So? That's not that long."
"Well, shouldn't you be thinking of other things by now, trying to get back out in the world? At least a little bit?"
She bites her lip and turns away from him and the wall, her arms crossed. "Would you be?"
028: Face
"Hurry up – I've only got an hour before I have to get to work," Jason says, pausing on the sidewalk to allow Amber to catch up.
"It's too early to hurry."
"It's seven."
"Exactly."
Jason rolls his eyes, but there's a smile on his face. "Come on."
"We'll get there when we get there," she says. But she does speed up until she is right beside him and their steps are even.
"So, what did you want to show me?" she asks once she has caught up. He doesn't answer, just wraps his hand around hers, his fingers calloused against her smooth skin. She looks up at him, searching for an answer to this action and her question, but he just stares ahead, his face passive.
"You'll see when we get there."
She swallows, trying to moisten her dry throat, get her voice back. It wavers slightly, but the words are normal. "It better be worth getting up at seven."
"It is."
They walk in silence the rest of the way, and Amber wonders if Jason was as unsure about what they were doing as she was. Going somewhere at seven was nothing – he often dragged her out of bed at the crack of dawn. But holding hands? They had never done that before. Her fingers were in an uncomfortable position, her palm was slightly sweaty from the hot morning, and she didn't know whether to let her hand swing normally or hold it still between them. It felt awkward.
But it also felt right. Like her hand was supposed to be there, that she just had to adjust a bit. Like it was just a new glove that would fit her hand perfectly with a little wear.
"Here we are," he says, squeezing her hand slightly.
The sound of laughter and low voices reach her ears before she looks. It's a park, the one her brother always drove by and said he would fix up so kids could play baseball in it. The one her brother never had the chance to fix himself. He said he hated seeing the graffiti, the trash, the broken equipment, but he never got to clean it up.
A team's throwing a ball around in a diamond. Children pump their legs in the swings. Parents sit on benches, talking about preschools or colleges or baby-sitters or whatever else parents talk about. Scattered throughout the whole area, small trees are growing; tall, strong ones encircle the park, offering shade.
And in the middle of it all is a large sign, proudly saying 'Renovations in Memory of Mikey Thompson.'
"See?" he whispers in her ear. "The rest of the world can move on – it can flourish, yet still remember Mikey. Why can't you?"
She turns away from the park, burying her head in his chest, wrapping her arms around his neck. Tears flowed down her checks, landing on his shirt, but he doesn't seem to notice. He just pulls her closer, wrapping his arms around her waist.
"I miss him so much," she says into his chest.
"I know you do," he whispers back, leaning down and placing a kiss on her head, his lips lingering a bit longer than needed. "But you need to move on – he would have wanted you to."
"I know," she says, pulling away from him slightly and looking into his eyes, her arms still around his neck. "I just don't know how."
"Smiling's a good start," he replies. She blushes and looks down, a smile beginning to show on her face.
He takes one arm from around her and places it under her chin, making her look back up at him. "I've missed your smile." Then he leans down and kisses her mouth.
His lips taste like honey, and they're are soft against hers. She lets herself lean against his body, and is surprised when she realizes that it doesn't feel awkward. It feels nice, and she doesn't want to stop.
When they do pull apart, look at each other, and smile again, Mikey's still on her mind, fresh as ever. But that doesn't stop her from leaning closer and kissing Jason again.
