So, enjoy and
Happy Reading!
**Edited as of August 7, 2008**
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PART FOUR
I gotta find a way out…
Adam was there in my dreams, in my thoughts, in every waking moment. I felt him when I ate breakfast, I heard him as I mowed the lawn, I saw him in the classroom. His spirit was with me, guiding me, leading me down a path, a path that the end I was unable to see. Every day, I was slowly disconnecting myself from him, being free, as he continued to whisper in my ear every night before I went to sleep.
I can’t really describe what it is, but I truly believe that Adam’s soul wasn’t set to rest that day in the rain. His body was, yes, but he stayed back. Stayed with me to continue to be my bodyguard, my rock until I was able to stand up on my own two feet.
I knew it was crazy, absolutely insane, but that year, I hard started to believe in ghosts.
* * * *
I was going through all the stuff he had left behind in my room over the years. His old baseball, a magazine with swimsuit models covering the glossy pages, a tee shirt that still carried his sweet cologne even after all these months. There were also various pictures, most with his shirt off and I in jean cut-off’s and a tank. I smiled at the most recent ones, with his glasses slipping down his nose as he pressed his lips into my cheek. Of us at his parents’ lake home, diving off the dock. Tears fell from my eyes, wetting the photos, but I didn’t try to stop them. I let them come, as if the tears were washing away the sorrow.
Packing all the various items into a box, I hauled them into my truck and drove off to see the Benson’s. There, I knocked on their door and presented them with the box.
“Oh, Valerie!” Mrs. Benson exclaimed when she saw the baseball and pictures. “Thank you!” she cried, shocking me when she pulled me into a tight embrace. But instead of pulling back, I leaned into her, and we sat on her front porch and cried together.
Back in my room, I sorted through the few photos I had kept, ranging from the first time I met him to the most recent. The older ones showed a boy I had grown to forget. He was lanky with a mess of disheveled hair and horn-rimmed glasses. He was a boy with freckles dotting his cheeks and a hand looped around my shoulders like the older brother I never had. The newer ones presented to me the boy I had fallen in love with. The tall, basketball star with long hair combed straight and intelligent looking glasses perched on his nose. His body was built, and slender, like the athletic boy he once was. He had such a bright future, such a promising life waiting for him. But that had all ended one night and in a blink of an eye, he was erased from the map.
Today is a winding road…
It was January, and I was returning home from a sleep over with the girls. Even Melinda had showed. It had been a moment I would never forget, watching her walk though that door, seeing her like the girl I had once known. We had embraced and talked into the night about Adam, about the boy we all knew and loved.
Oh, how things had changed…I am no longer the desolate loner that I had resorted back to after Adam’s death. Somehow, I had learned to grow, to move on with my life. I couldn’t explain what it was that made it happen.
It just had.
As the turn to my house neared, I changed my mind and took a quick U-turn towards the pier. Once there, I got out of my truck and walked up the wooden planks of the large dock, covered with a thin layer of snow. The ocean was a storm of black waves and whitecaps. But I embraced the wind, and let it flow through my hair, tangling the strands. Shoving my hands deep into the pockets of my jeans, I halted at the end of the pier. Gazing out at the setting winter sun, I thought of Adam.
He was amazing person, even after death. He had given me the means to move on, to live a life that I knew was waiting just around the bend. I was graduating from high school. I was going to college. The sky was the limit. I smiled at that saying, another one of Adam’s little quirks. Looking to the heavens, I wondered where he was, and if he was happy. A break in the clouds allowed a single thread of buttery light to hit the ocean before the sun disappeared behind the horizon. I don’t think I would ever know if Adam’s soul was set to rest because still, sometimes, I hear that tiny voice, that whisper in the wind.
And I know that Adam is still with me
Do NOT change that ending! 
