If You're Gone (13 page)

“I will.”

Once we separated, Chris reached into his back pocket and pulled out a tired, paperbound book and placed it in my hands. The cover was so badly faded that I couldn’t make out the title.

“What is this?” I asked, flipping through the pages.

“It’s about coping with grief. I found it in a used bookstore years ago. I don't know if it will help you, but I wanted you to have it.” As he spoke he adjusted the satchel over his shoulder. “I’ve found that sometimes it helps to mourn someone, even if they haven’t died.”

“Thank you, Chris,” I said as I took the book from his hand. “Really.”

“Are you going to be okay here?”

I nodded. I couldn’t explain why, but wanted him to reach out to me again. He gave me a smile that lifted up one side of his lip as I stood there with my arms stiff by my side, wondering how and why he always seemed to come in and out of my life so quickly.
To disappear…

“Goodbye, Lillian. I’m sorry.”

I didn’t know what he was apologizing for. I nodded and forced a smile, sharing one last look with him before he rushed up the grassy knoll. He vanished from my sight as he ran up the wooded path that had led us to the clearing. I clutched his book in my hands and felt overcome with sadness. He, too, was gone.

The house was quiet when I got home. I figured my mom would be arriving shortly with Graham and Eliza in tow and my dad would follow soon after. I wanted to take advantage of what little solitude I had. After taking a long, hot shower, I spent the rest of the afternoon in my room with the contents of Brad and I’s memory box strewn across the floor as I had done a dozen times before. I was attempting to piece together a puzzle-as if our entire relationship had been a game of Clue and I was collecting the facts. But I didn’t believe that old movie ticket stubs and notes folded into origami were clues to Brad’s whereabouts.

I had seen countless cases of missing teenagers in made-for-TV movies, and in every case there were obvious hints. Sometimes anonymous letters arrived in the mail, each with a single word that revealed the missing’s location once they were all pieced together, or newspaper clippings with random sentences underlined that created a ransom note. But I hadn’t received any mysterious phone calls, no notes had arrived with magazine cut outs, and no matter how many times Brad had taken me to the double feature at the Moonlight Drive-in Theatre, I wasn’t convinced that he was trying to tell me something through a string of movie titles.

The only thing in the box that seemed to be of more significance now that he was missing was a handwritten note he had jotted on the back of a ripped piece of Chemistry homework.

Thank you for seeing me for who I am and not who I was.

He ended it with a doodled smiley face and his initials. When I originally found it in my locker it made me giggle and I had carried it with me the rest of the week. I didn’t ask him ‘who he was’ because, at the time, it wasn't important. Who he was before me was someone who wasn’t with me. That was that. Plain and simple. I didn’t want to hear about any of his previous relationships and he didn’t need to learn about the two tragic weeks I spent attempting to date Glee Club President, Logan Swanson.

I heard a door slam and knew my quiet time had ended all too soon. Footsteps moved quickly down the hall towards my room and after a brisk knock I turned to see my mother standing in my doorway, her arms crossed tightly against her chest.

“Where were you today?” she asked, her tone stern.

“What do you mean?” I said cautiously as I stood.
Don’t give up too much information yet. What does she know?

“I mean exactly what I said. Where were you today?”

“Mom, I was at school…” I pieced my lie together slowly. I would rather have her stop me sooner than later once she called my bluff.

“Lillian, do not lie to me.”
Busted.

“I… I…” I knew it was no use. I looked down at the floor and let out a sigh mixed with a deep groan.

“Principal Carver called me at the store to ask if you were all right. I find out not only have you not set foot inside the school doors today, you ran out of your class yesterday and didn’t go back. What is going on with you?” She uncrossed her arms, throwing her hands up in the air.

“Look, Mom, I’m sorry I skipped class, but it’s just… it’s just too hard to be back there,” I insisted. “I can’t go anywhere in that school without being reminded of Brad. You’ve got to put yourself in my shoes and try to understand what I’m going through.”

“Lillian, you’ve known going back to school was going to be hard. But going back is
not
an option so you need to figure out how to deal with it.”

“But, Mom…” My voice broke in a tired whine.

“You only get one shot at your senior year. If you screw up your graduation by slacking off and skipping class you will regret it for the rest of your life.”

“I get it. I just…”

“Every college you apply to is going to be looking at your GPA and attendance record. I cannot stress to you how important it is that you…”

“I don’t want to talk about college right now, Mom.” I walked across the floor and plopped down onto my bed in hopes she would let it go. But she followed me into the room and continued to speak as she stood above me.

“Well, it needs to be talked about, Lillian. You need to start focusing on applications and essays. You’ve let the entire summer go by without so much as a college tour. And if you had any hopes of being awarded a vocal scholarship…”

“I know all this, Mom. But I don’t want to talk about it now and I don’t want to talk about it later. I’m not going to college next year.” I leaned back onto my headboard and picked at a pulled thread in my comforter. My mother’s face went blank.

“What are you talking about?” she asked. “Why would you not go to school next year?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m just not going. I made up my mind.”

I wasn't sure
when
I had made up my mind. Maybe I had decided right at that moment or maybe my mind had been made up since the day Brad disappeared, but I knew I couldn’t do it. Not yet.

“You made up your mind?” she repeated with a scoff as she sat down next to me on my bed.

I nodded in response, noticing the visible anger in her eyes.

“You haven’t worked as hard as you did so you could blow off your education for a boy,” she told me, shaking her head as she folded her hands on her lap. “I know this has something to do with Brad, Lillian.”

“Of course it has something to do with Brad, Mom.
Everything
has to do with Brad, why can’t you get that!” I snapped. I could feel tears building up in my eyes and tried to blink them away.

“Lillian, Brad has been gone for months now and you are the only one who can’t seem to move on with your life. I don’t understand why you would change your mind about going to school because of him. You can’t throw your future away…”

The lump in my throat made it hard to speak, but I forced out the words. “But what if he is found and comes back… and I’m gone? Like he doesn’t matter to me at all?”

I had never said it out loud before. My mom sat there beside me on the bed silently for a moment. Her shoulders rose and fell as she took a deep breath.

“And what if he doesn’t come back?”

I turned to her with a look of shock but her eyes had grown cold and unfeeling. I was losing the battle. And as much as I hated to admit it, I knew it was a fair question.

“You’re grounded for the rest of the week.” Her empty eyes locked onto mine. “I will drive you to school and you
will
go to class, every single one, and come straight home afterward. You need to think long and hard about what your future looks like, with or without Brad in it.”

Mom stood up and left the room, pulling the door closed behind her before I could retort. I wasn’t mad, and I wasn’t surprised at how she had reacted. I was numb. Chris’ words echoed again in my mind.
We don’t deserve to be hurt by the ones we love.
He wasn’t talking about just he and I. He was talking about everyone around us. I was hurting my parents. I was hurting Anna. And I was hurting myself. None of us deserved this.

I knew my mom was right. I rubbed Brad’s class ring between my thumb and forefinger.
Why am I putting my life on hold and waiting for Brad to be found after he lied to me about his past? Am I being a complete fool for thinking that I could have any kind of future with him even when he is found?
I couldn’t think about it. And I couldn’t make any decisions until I had answers.

I fell back onto my bed and wriggled my way under the covers, pulling them up to my chin and letting my tears wet the edge of the comforter. I pinched my eyes shut.
What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do if I can’t let go and I can’t move on? How am I supposed to go on living like this? If there is a chance I will spend the rest of my life not knowing what happened to him, will I ever be normal again? Please don’t let that happen. Don’t keep him away from me any longer. Please, Lord, bring him home. Please just help me cope.

Then I remembered the book from Chris. I picked it up off of my nightstand and thumbed through the worn pages. Inside the front cover was his name and address, written lightly in pencil.

“Chris Colvin,” I whispered to myself. It was a nice name; it rolled easily off my tongue.
Someone as nice as Chris should have a nice name
.

I opened to the first chapter.
What your loss means to you.
I attempted to read the first few sentences but my mind wandered.
What does my loss mean to me? Who is the one who is really lost?
Lately, I had started to feel like I was even farther gone than Brad. I was the one in the Lions Port wormhole screaming for help but no one could hear me.
It’s as if Brad took me with him. And wherever we are, I can’t find my way home.

I didn’t want to keep hurting people just as much as I didn’t want to keep hurting. Flipping through more pages, I searched for highlighted passages, dog-eared corners, or any sort of messages from Chris, but there were none. I closed the book with a sigh and laid it back on my nightstand.
I’m not ready to mourn Brad. My loss means everything to me.

****

I spent the next two weeks walking the halls of school like a ghost. I was there, I studied, my grades were decent and my attendance was flawless, but I wasn’t really
there
. It was as if I had shut myself off. The short rides to and from school were mostly silent, apart from Graham and Eliza bickering in the back seat. My parents hadn’t brought up the C word again, but I was waiting for the day. I decided I wasn't going to fight them, and whether it meant enrolling in the local community college or moving halfway across the world, I would just do it. I was so tired of being a disappointment to my friends and family.

Anna and I still hadn’t spoken since the argument on my front porch. I figured she was waiting for me to apologize but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, not yet. I had caught her looking at me several times when we passed each other in the school halls but she always turned away when her eyes caught mine. After my brief grounding ended, Mom suggested I call Anna and ask her to pick me up for school the following Monday, but I made up a story about her class schedule and requested my mom continue to drive me for the remainder of the semester. I could have walked but I didn’t have the energy, and I knew it wasn’t the right time to have the ‘when do I get my own car’ conversation.

The heat hadn’t let up much even as the days rolled into mid-September, yet Brad’s case remained as frigid as an icebox. Detective Padron claimed he had interviewed Lizard again and was following up on the new lead, but I saw no changes in the case and heard no breaking newscasts or announcements of suspects in Brad’s disappearance. If ‘following up’ meant scribbling the information in Brad’s case file and shoving it back up on the shelf, then I supposed maybe he was telling the truth. But it didn’t seem fair.
Nothing seems fair anymore
.

I kept my eyes peeled for Chris every time I went into town, but there was no sign of him. I found myself constantly thinking back to our exchange at the lake and wondered if he was choosing to stay away from me. He had his own problems, after all, and probably didn’t need the stress of a needy, emotionally unavailable friend. I didn’t feel like I had known him long enough to miss him, but I wanted to see him again. I wanted to look into his blue eyes.
I want to see him because he reminds me of Brad. I want to see Brad
.

****

Four months and three days after Brad’s graduation, there was finally a break in the case, but it was one none of us were prepared for. I was sitting attentively at a second-row desk in my fourth period AP English class when there was a sudden frantic pounding on the door. Mrs. Cranson stopped her lecture mid-sentence and rushed towards the sound as my classmates glanced around the room at each other. The door swung open, revealing Anna. Her eyes were wild and her right hand was clenched in a fist as if she were still knocking.

“I need to talk to Lillian White,” she said. “It’s an emergency.”

Mrs. Cranson looked confused and unsure of what to do, but she nodded and looked back at me as she motioned to Anna.
When everyone knows that your boyfriend has been missing for four months, hall passes don’t really apply.
I closed the book on my desk and grabbed for my small cloth bag from the rack under my seat, assuming it was a mere tampon emergency.
She’ll have to apologize now. I’m her last resort.

“I’ll be right back,” I whispered to Mrs. Cranson as I followed Anna into the hall. She was wringing her hands and chewing on the edge of her bottom lip as her eyes searched mine.

“What’s up?” I asked nonchalantly once the classroom door closed behind us. We were alone in the long, dim hallway.

“They found a body,” she spurted out.

My heart stopped. I suddenly felt as if a sack of bricks had been whacked across my chest.

“Wait, what?” I thought I must be the victim of a cruel joke. My friendship with Anna was beyond repair if she thought she could make me the butt of a game of truth or dare.

“They found…” Anna fought back tears. “A body. Of an adult male.”

I studied her face. Her eyes were moist. I found myself wanting to believe that my best friend of ten years
would
be so hateful as to make up a gruesome story because that was the easier answer.