A Symphony of Cicadas (25 page)

“Want to hang here for a while?” I asked him.

“Absolute
ly
,” he said
.
We both sat down
at the same time
, and he offered me his chest to lean against as we both stared out at the same horizon
.
As we sat, we shared our hopes and likes
.
I was pleased to know that
, in truth,
reading was one of his passions
, though he admitted to finding Hemingway a little too simple. I forgave him
in an instant
, apologizing
in my mind
to my literary hero
.
He told me about being an on
ly
child, how his dad had high hopes of him joining the military like he did, but how Eric
’s hopes were
to become an architect and live in New York
.
I told him about my dreams of one day writing the great American novel, skipped the parts about my beautiful sister, and admitted that this was the first time I had ever
been willing to wear
a dress in my teen years.

“It’s real
ly
pretty,” he said.

We walked back hand in hand, sometimes talking and sometimes just taking in the nature that surrounded us
.
When we reached the house, I prayed that my sister had already left for one of her many friends’ houses. But there she was,
swaying back and forth on
the swing that hung from the tree outside our house
.
I groaned and held Eric’s hand tighter.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

“That’s Sara,” I said
.
“She’s my
older
sister
.”
I tried to ignore the way he looked at her, seeing something in her that I thought he had seen in me
.
I told myself it was just because
she was pretty, another version of me, and it didn’t mean anything.

Sara waved from the swing. “Hey guys!” she called out
.
She hopped off and then ran towards us
.
“I was just getting ready to go downtown with a few friends and wondered if you wanted to come along.” I fumed inside as she tried to
sway Eric’s attention from me to
her
through her bubb
ly
demeanor
.
She never
asked
me to go anywhere with her
anymore
, and I narrowed my eyes in suspicion at this
uncharacteristic invitation
.

“Sorry
,
Sara,” I smiled, glaring at her in a way on
ly
she could see
.
“We were just about to watch a movie
.
Maybe next time
.”
She smiled at me, and I couldn’t tell if she knew I was angry with her, or if
,
in her mind,
she thought she was being charitable
by asking us to join her.

“But wait
,
Rachel,
it
could be fun,” Eric said
.
I tried not to appear
annoyed
when he jumped in
to the conversation
, and I felt his hand loosening
a little
in mine
.
“I mean, I don’t know a lot of people
from our school
, and this might be a good way for
me to make some friends
.”

“Oh, you don’t want to meet Sara’s friends,” I told him
, keeping a sweet tone to my voice
.
I could feel Sara’s eyes
drilling
holes in the side of my head
.
“They’re all
into superficial stuff, like celebrity gossip and fashion
.
Total
ly
lame
.
You’ll be bored out of your mind.”

“
At least my friends can drive,”
Sara
shot back
.
“Unlike yours
,
who depend on their mommies to drive them where they need to
go
.”

I held my ground, giving her a look that said
‘leave us alone, he’s my boyfriend.’
  She sighed, reading it loud and clear, and then smiled at me.
‘Sorry,’
she mouthed to me when he looked away
.
“Whatever,
never mind
.
I don’t think there’s enough room in the car anyways
.
Forget I asked
.”
A black Mustang barreled down the road, and Sara jumped up to greet the driver
.
“It was nice meeting you
,
Eric!” she called over her shoulder
.
I felt Eric stiffen next to me, sizing up the driver of the car as they started to pull away
.
I realized that watching a movie with him
wouldn’t be
any fun
under the circumstances
, and that I’d had enough for one afternoon.

“Wait!” I called out
.
I saw Sara motion to the driver to stop before poking her head out the window.

“What’s up?” she yelled back over the sound of the roaring exhaust
.
I turned to Eric and smiled.

“Do you want to go?” I asked him, and he didn’t even try to hide his enthusiasm at this suggestion.

“Sure,” he said
.
“Do you?”

“Not real
ly
.
But you go ahead. I’m actual
ly
getting kind of tired, you know, from all that hiking
.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go and have fun,” I said
.
I blinked a few times to ensure I didn’t start crying, and I knew
my smile must have looked funny,
as wide as I was grinning
.
He didn’t even notice. 
He hugged me hard, pulling me in so that my face was mashed up against the zipper of his sweatshirt.

“Thank you
,
Rachel!  I promise, we’ll watch that movie together next time,” he swore, and then jogged off to the
waiting car. Sara gave me a helpless look, but I just looked away from her
.
“Bye!” Eric called out, and they all waved as they sped away
.
I waved back until they couldn’t see me anymore, the tears already rolling down my cheeks before they were even out of view
.
Then I ran in the house, past my bewildered mother, and into my room where I flung myself on my bed.

He never did call me back, and
at school,
his blue eyes looked everywhere but
in
my direction
– much to my
relief
.
It made it eas
ier
for me
to avoid him
and never talk to him again.

However, S
a
ra was a different story
.
I spent weeks treating her
with icy contempt
despite her best attempts to sweeten me up and get me to like her again
.
She didn’t even protest when she found the dress I had borrowed at the edge of my side of the room, a huge tear in the side as if it had been shred
ded
at the seam
on purpose
.
She just placed it in the garbage
on
her side of the room as if it were nothing.

“He’s gay,” Sara told me later when I
broke the silence and
confronted her.

“That’s not funny,” I told her.

“No, it’s true!”  She described how they had gone to the party and he had met up with someone from his old school
.
They had disappeared, but
her friend,
Tyler
,
caught a glimpse of them kissing in a bathroom.
“
That’s why his dad made him switch schools, because Eric had come out among the kids and even had a boyfriend
.
His dad was trying to get him to leave all that behind, hoping
he would
straighten out
at a new school
, if you know what I mean.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked her.

“He told me
when Tyler and I confronted him
.
He swore us to secrecy, and so far you’re the first person I’ve told.”

“But he kissed you
,
too
!” I blurted out
.
The rumors about Eric’s sexual orientation may not have spread around the school, but the story of Sara and Eric making out on a couch while his hand covered her breast had made the rounds
.
Sara blushed, smiling with both embarrassment and pride.

“I guess I was just an experiment, to see if he real
ly
was gay
.
Turns out even I can’t get a guy to bat for our team
.”
That meant the kiss we shared on the top of the hill behind our house, the very first kiss I had ever received, was on
ly
a lie – part of his experimentation.

“I can’t believe you even let him kiss you,
knowing that I had a huge crush on him,
” I said
.
It
no longer
matter
ed as much
, seeing that he wasn’t interested in either one of us
.
But it still stung that Sara had betrayed me, knowing how much Eric had meant to me.

“I know,” Sara said
.
“That was pretty shitty
.
I’m real
ly
, real
ly
sorry
.”
I was never one to hold a grudge, and her sincerity helped me to fold into forgiveness
.
“T
ell you what, let’s make a pact,” she said, holding out her pinky
.
“
I promise to never, ever go after a boy you like, are dating, or even have dated in the past
.
Anyone you have kissed or you claim as off limits, is off limits
.
Can you promise the same?”  I promised her, linking my pinky in hers even though I was sure I would never be faced with a similar problem.

But the promise remained true for the rest of our lives, or rather, my life
.
Sara grew out of her flirtatious
teen years
.
I
grew out of my mousy, bookworm state of
fourteen
and began to care about my appearance and making friends
.
Soon I was discovering the ups and downs of dating, and Sara became my al
ly
as we both backed each other up when
,
without fail
,
a heart would get broken.

But I
was always a little cautious around
her, especial
ly
when bringing a new guy into the house for th
e first time to meet my fami
ly
–
to meet
Sara
.
The ultimate test always rested in their initial reaction upon meeting my sister
.
The
ones who couldn’t help but admire her even while standing next to me were
almost always
gone before the month was over
.
But the few that
took more notice of me than my sister
were the ones I allowed myself to fall for until the relationship had run its course
.
Just two men passed the test, resulting in the on
ly
long-term relationships
I ever submitted myself to
– the one with Joey’s dad, Tony, and the one with John.

****

And yet, here in the present, Sara was moving in on the love of my life, causing him to fall for her through her kindness and the smell of her hair.

Seventeen

P
icturing the way Sara sat at John’s side in the hospital, I kicked myself for not seeing it sooner
.
She was falling for him. And how could he
not
help but fall for her?

In life I’d had
golden brown
hair
,
cut just below my shoulders
,
and a dozen paths of laugh lines around my eyes, enhanced by years of being in the sun
.
My nose and cheeks held a hint of freckles that were invisible to me as I looked past them in the mirror, but
they
were the first thing
most people
saw when they looked in my direction
.
Sara was my exac
t opposite. Her unblemished
skin
was
kept fair
by
hiding away from the sun
starting when she was still young
, and
she kept her blonde hair cut short, framing her face with just
a
hint of curl
.
While
I took the darker features of my father
,
right down to my
amber
eyes
, she had the same blue eyes as our
mother’s side of the fami
ly
, a hint of aquamarine in the cerulean of her irises.
She was always the fairer of the two of us, the one who was noticed first.

But while most were drawn to Sara’s beauty, she had never even
fazed
John. From the first day,
John seemed on
ly
to
see me
.
His devoted
attention took some getting used to at first,
but
that on
ly
deepened my love for him as time went on
.
He never even flinched when he first met Sara,
unaffected
by her beauty as he stood next to me holding my hand.

J
ust that glimpse of stirring within him
at the hospital
felt like a betrayal
.
He knew the years of torment I’d faced being Sara’s
younger
,
unnoticed sister
.
He knew that even in my adult years, I struggled against the jealousy of not being Sara
.
While I hid from him just how much I was haunted by our childhood, the few times I
had
revealed my insecurity he was right there to assure me that I was beautiful and deserving of love.

But now w
ith me out of the way, Sara was ab
le to move in and make a kill
.
She could claim
for her own
the man who was supposed to be my husband, even when the body of her own marriage wasn’t
yet
cold.

“You’re going to kill yourself if you think this hard,” a man said next to me, startling me out of my head with his sudden presence
, and bringing me back to Mauna Kea
.
His eyes twinkled at his joke, and I chuckled polite
ly
, final
ly
getting it.

“It sure feels like I could die all over again,” I told him in all seriousness. “I’m Rachel,” I
added
.

“The name’s Frank,” he said. He wasn’t a very tall man, and
lacked any hints of youth.
His skin was the color of coffee, weathered by the sun with a few age spots that exi
sted on his bald head
.
Despite our winter
y
surroundings, h
e wore a button-up shirt over a pair of khaki shorts, with sandals on his feet.

“Did you once live here?” I asked him
.
“I mean, not here
.
But on the island?”

“A long time ago,” he said
.
“
Around
twenty
years ago
.
My wife and I lived in a town about
thirty
minutes from here. We used to visit this spot often when we were younger, bringing the kids with us to see the whole entire island so they knew how lucky we were to live here
.”
He smiled at the memory, pausing
for a moment
as he lived in it
.
His focus returned to me.
“Mona still comes here sometimes
, and i
n fact, she’s coming here today
.
I’m just waiting for her.”

“That’s nice,” I said, still wallowing
too much
in my own misery to be able to engage
in the life of someone else.

“So what is it that’s killing you?” he asked, and I sighed.

“Love,” I told him
.
He nodded
with appreciation
.

“Ah, the greatest weapon of all time, the one power that can leave you feeling so good and so bad, just depending on which way the wind leans you that
day,” he mused
.
“
I’ve been killed many times over with love
.
What a sweet death it was, too
.”

He leaned back and looked out at the horizon, the sky turning a delicious shade of pink as nightfall passed us by and the sun glimmered just below the morning fog
.
He looked to his right, and I
heard
his breath catch
.

“There she is, my Mona
.”

I turned
in the direction he was facing
to see a caravan of cars parking in the lot near the observatory. An elder
ly
woman was helped out of the car by the guide, followed by a
n older
man
.
The man accompanying Mona
linked his arm over hers once they
were both safe on
the ground
.
I could tell
how much
he cared for her in the way he held onto her, ensuring she had no way to slip on the icy ground
.
With
careful steps, t
hey made their way to a place where they could see out
over
the
entire
island once the fog burned off.

“Who is that?” I asked Frank.

“That’s her
second
husband, Oscar,” he told me, smiling
with kindness
in the direction of the man who now held
fast to his
wife.

“You’re not jealous,” I stated with surprise
.
“Doesn’t it hurt to see someone else looking at your wife that way?”

“It used to,” he admitted
.
“When they
were first getting to know each other
, I thought I would die a new death every time I saw them together
.
But I
’ve
learned to be
okay
with it over time
.
I mean, look how happy she is.”

He nodded in her direction, and I watched the couple
.
Sure enough, Mona smiled when Oscar whispered something in her ear, moving closer to him so that they were supporting each other’s weight in the brisk cold of the morning
.
Their breath came out in puffs of white, but they
didn’t
seem cold as they stayed near eac
h other. “He loves her so much
.
I
t makes me happy to see her taken care of by a good man
,
since I no longer can,” Frank said with a smile
.
I expected his face to hold a note of sadness, for his smile to harbor secrets of regret that he wasn’t the one holding on to her and whispering in her ear
.
But he wasn’t sad
.
I was amazed at
his happiness
as he watched his wife in the arms of another man, finding joy in her joy and laughing when she laughed.

“I don’t know if I could ever be happy if John moves on,” I said, looking away from Mona and Oscar and down at my snow
-
covered shoes.

“Is John your husband?” Frank asked.

“Almost
-
husband
.
We were to be married in just a few weeks when I died.”

“Oh, that’s unfortunate,” he said
.
“So you didn’t get that much time with him, did you?”  I shook my head no, feeling
even sorrier
for myself in the moment
.
“But you do know he’ll move on,” Frank said with certainty
.
I nodded
.
I knew it to be true
.
I just didn’t want it to be true.

We sat there without speaking for quite some time
.
The sun rose above the fog, burning it off until
we could see the
beautiful island
ly
ing
below us, surrounded by the green and blue water that
appeared still as glass
from this high up
.
The air was
now
warm and clean, and more people came by car to see the view and take a few pictures
.
I could see Mona and Oscar beginning to make their descent back to the car they came from, a guide staying near them to ensure they didn’t lose their footing
.
Frank
got up, too, preparing to leave
as well,
since his reason for being here was about to be driven away
.
But he turned to me before disappearing.

“When you love someone, what you love most about them is how they make you feel,” he told me
.
“You’re not on
ly
in love with them, but you’re in love with the person you are when you are around them. This is a one-sided existence we live in, where we don’t receive the kind of love we used to get when we were in the world of the living
.
You would do best to adapt the way you love John to fit in with your afterlife, because you’re
confining
yourself to a world of hurt and disappointment if you keep going on expecting him to give you what you need
.
He can’t do it
.
But you can
love him selfless
ly
. If you can find happiness in his happiness, even if it’s from someone else’s love, you’ll find peace with him moving on
.
After all, a selfless love on
ly
wants the bes
t for the object of adoration
.
A
nd in our state, the best just isn’t us
.”
With these words, he
gave me a solemn bow
in a ceremonial gesture, and I nodded my head from my seated position
.
He took my hand in his and kissed it, his kind and smiling eyes the last thing I saw of him before he disappeared
altogether
.

I knew he was right
.
If I loved John like I thought I did, I needed to start thinking about his happiness and leave my own happiness to the side
.
Well, no, that’s not what Frank was saying
.
I needed to find my happiness in John’s happiness, receiving love and joy back with each blessing that came John’s way
.
If this joy happened to come from Sara, so be it
.
I needed to let go of the childish jealousy I felt towards her, letting go of the past because that’s all it was – the past.

I didn’t realize I was crying until the tears from my cheeks dropped down and splattered on my bare knee below the hem of my dress
.
My heart was breaking all over again, but this time it was cleansing
.
I
let go and
immerse
d myself
in my sorrow, grieving for the romance John and I shared
. I knew the next step was to
let it go and make room for a different kind of love
.
Such a human emotion, this crying is
, I thought to myself, even as the tears and sobs
continued
at a steady pace
.
I wondered why, when we had to give up all other attributes of human life, we were allowed to keep our emotions –
and
even stronger
emotions
than we had in life
.
It
seemed both a blessing and a curse, allowing human life to be held onto by a thread while keeping
the fullness of
it just out of arm’s reach
.
I wanted the freedom to feel nothing for my human life
.
But in a contradicting desire, I wanted
to
seize
life
so it would stop slipping from my grasp.