Everything Left Unsaid (23 page)

• • •

People keep coming up to ask me how I’m feeling. I don’t know what to tell them. I overhear Hendrix telling someone, ‘I feel like my brother is dead, that’s how.’ River is scared by all of the fussing, and comes to cling to my hand while Grandma Eve hovers around Mia.

River points to the coffin at the front of the room. ‘Juliet, is Tai really in there?’

I nod.

‘He’s not ever coming back, is he?’

I bite my lip, trying not to lose it already. ‘No, River. He’s not ever coming back.’

‘Juliet, I forgot to tell Tai thank you for letting me sleep in his room the other night when I had a nightmare. Do you think I can tell him now?’

We walk hand in hand up to Tai’s coffin. River taps on the side of it then leans in and whispers something to his big brother. Then he looks at me. ‘Juliet, do you want to tell him anything?’

I shake my head, not trusting myself to speak.

A hand tugs at me – it’s Sam. He opens his arms and we hug tightly. I leave damp patches on his shirt, while his tears drip onto my shoulder. ‘I’m really sorry, Juliet,’ he manages to say, and all I can do is nod. He goes to pull away after a minute, and I can’t let him go, holding on tighter.
You smell like him
, I don’t say.
You’re wearing the same deodorant that he used to and if I close my eyes and pretend for long enough I might just be able to wake up from all of this
.

Eventually, Mum comes up. ‘Juliet? It’s time to sit down.’

During the service, people get up and speak about Tai. Mia says how he was born early, how the doctors thought he wouldn’t survive. How he fought. How he fought the tumour with grace and dignity. She fingers the macaroni necklace around her neck, telling us how he used to make them for her at preschool. Mia talks about the man, the good and gracious man that he was becoming.

Hendrix talks about fishing trips, about pillow fights and sleeping in Tai’s room. He tells us about football games and backyard cricket until tears trickle down his cheeks and he sits down again, looking embarrassed and small.

I tell everyone about the time Tai cut off Mr Bunny’s head, and he cried more than me when I found out. About the time we held hands and jumped off the roof, holding umbrellas like Mary Poppins. How he landed face first and needed stitches, and I broke my arm. I talk about our beach walks, about jumping in the waves at schoolies, and there are a thousand other memories leaping out at me, but there’s a lump in my throat and I need to stop.

Grandma Eve talks about making Christmas pudding with him, and his footy team-mates talk about That Game, while I soak it all in, try to memorise their words. This is the Tai that I want to remember. They show photos of him and play music while I look upwards.
Good song, Tai
.

Then they take the coffin away. Stanley is one of the pallbearers, and River stands beside him, clutching the leg of Stanley’s pants. Sam is one of the pallbearers, too, along with a couple of Tai’s uncles. They’re all crying. They put the coffin into the hearse and it drives away.

Mum squeezes my hand as we walk out of the building.

‘Are you holding up okay, Juliet?’

The lump in my throat is huge. I nod, even though I’m really not okay.
I miss you, Tai, so much that it aches, and I want you back
.

• • •

At the cemetery we each hold a balloon. Mine is purple. I promised Tai I wouldn’t cry, but I’m weeping.
One day
, I promise.
One day I’ll think about you and smile instead of cry. Just not today, okay?
They lower the coffin into the ground and we release our balloons, sending a rainbow of colours into the sky. I watch mine until I can’t see it anymore. The sky is blue and cloudless, one of those perfect summer days – it just seems wrong. In another life we’d be at the beach, but instead I’m standing in the dirt at the cemetery and he’s gone.
Goodbye, Tai
.

• • •

Not that night but the next, Gen comes over. She tells me she’s going to stay the night.

‘I’m not very good company,’ I say. ‘I just cry and think about Tai.’

She shrugs. ‘I can handle that.’ While she pours Sneaky Vodka into cans of Diet Coke I light some candles because it’s easier to cry when it’s darker. When we’re sitting on the floor side by side I look at her and say, ‘I really loved him.’

She slings an arm around me. ‘I know. He really loved you back.’

‘He told me right before he died about how I was going to go to uni and move out and do all this stuff, and find another guy – and I don’t want to do that, Gen. I don’t want any of that. I just want him back.’ I sniff. ‘And he died alone. I wasn’t even there. He died after I left for the night – after he’d said he wished I could stay, and I said I couldn’t. Why didn’t I stay? Why didn’t I say
Oh, fuck the rules
that night and just stay like he wanted me to?’ The confession brings on a fresh flood of tears. ‘Sorry. Told you I wouldn’t exactly be fun to be around.’

She shrugs.
So what?
‘You know my best memory of Tai? Seeing the look on his face as he watched you get your tongue pierced. He looked totally horrified to be watching that huge needle go through his girlfriend.’

‘Yeah, he couldn’t believe I got it done,’ I say. A small giggle bursts out of me, and it feels foreign and strange. Like a betrayal, almost.

‘Or what about that time in class when he said, “Sorry I haven’t handed in my homework – the tumour ate it,” and you laughed and got a detention?’

We spend the night like that, sitting on the floor trading stories. When the sun comes up I crawl into bed, and Gen says kindly, ‘You’ll be okay, Juliet. You just miss him, that’s all.’

When I wake, Gen’s asleep, and there’s a text on my phone. For a second I think it’ll be from Tai, but then I remember – there won’t be a text from Tai ever again. It’s from Sam.

How are you holding up?

Feel like I’ve lost my best friend. You?

Feel like I’ve lost my best friend, too.

• • •

A week after the funeral, I visit the cemetery. The earth is still mounded over his grave, still raw. The flowers everyone left are starting to wilt, and now they’ve withered down a little one of River’s plastic army men peeks through the petals, saluting me. There’s a marble there too, one of Hendrix’s.

I sit beside the grave for a long time, trying to feel Tai’s presence, but there’s nothing. He really is gone, even though I don’t want to believe it, even though it aches to admit it. He was born, he lived and then he died. Even so, I find myself talking to him in my mind.

I miss, you, Tai. It still hurts just as much as it did the second I found out. It’s like there’s a silence, a space that you left, and nothing else can fill it. I hope I made you happy. I think I did. Hope you know how much I loved you. I was so crazy about you. Remember when you convinced me to jump off your roof, said that if I held an umbrella I could fly? And I thought I’d break something but you believed it, so I did too. And right now I’ve just got to hang on to the fact that you said I’d be okay, because at the moment I don’t feel like I will be. Because all I know right now is that I miss you, and that I loved you so much.

All I know is that you were the first boy who ever loved me. You understood me like no-one else could. You were my best friend, and the best boyfriend. I miss everything about you. Your smile. The smell of your deodorant. The way your arms felt around me. It’s lonely without you, Tai. It’s so lonely. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you died. I wish I’d stayed. I wish you could’ve stayed.

After a long time I get up, brush the dirt from my jeans and walk out of the cemetery. This time, when I say goodbye, I really mean it.