Sarah Ockler

Have some carrots. They're good for your eyes.""Then you have some fries. They're good for your... I don't know. They're just good.

Right after Matt died, I was afraid to do basically everything. I couldn__ even bite my nails or sniff my shirt to see if I needed deodorant without feeling like he was watching me. I willed and prayed and begged him to give me a sign that he was watching, that he was with me, so I would know. But he never did. Time moved on. And I stopped being afraid. Until right now, vulnerable and insecure and a little bit drunk. Lying in the sand and falling in crazy love with someone I just met. Matt is watching me. Observing. Possibly judging. And the worst part of it is, I don__ want to wake up under his landslide of sad rocks anymore. I don__ want to taste the marzipan frosting and the clove cigarettes. I don__ want to think about the blue glass necklace or the books he read to me on his bed or the piles of college stuff or some random boy in the grocery store wearing his donated clothes. I don__ want to be the dead boy__ best-friend-turned-something-else. Or the really supportive neighbor friend. Or the lifelong keeper of broken-hearted secrets.

I'm sorry. For all of us. Sorry for all the little ways the people who were supposed to love us most could hurt us so deeply, despite their shared heritage and blood, as thought their knowledge of our pasts gave them unlimited access to all the most tender places, the old wounds that could be so easily reopened with no more than a glance, a comment, a passing reminder of all the ways in which we failed to live up to their expectations.

And in this moment of pale dawn in the hours before we leave California, I finally realize what has been the hardest thing for me about Matt__ death. It isn__ that I lost a brother, like Frankie, or a son, like Aunt Jayne and Uncle Red. The hardest thing is that I__l never know exactly what I lost, how much it should hurt, how long I should keep thinking about him. He took that mystery with him when he died, and a hundred thousand one-sided letters in my journal wouldn__ have brought me any closer to the truth than I was the night I pressed my fingers to the sea glass he wore around his neck and kissed him back. For over a year, the letters were my only connection to him; the only evidence that I didn__ imagine our brief time as other. When I first saw my journal helplessly floating on the waves, I felt a loss so immediate and overwhelming it was like being back in the hospital lobby when the doctor told us they couldn__ fix him. One minute, the journal was in my hands, soft and familiar and real; the next minute, it was gone. Just like Matt. And just like Matt, I need to let it go.

The late-night backyard encounter and kiss induced insomnia.

Happy birthday,_ he whispered, his breath landing warm and suddenly close to my lips, making my insides flip. And just as quickly as he__ surprised me with the cake, he kissed me, one frosting-covered hand moving from my hair to the back of my neck, the other solid and warm in the small of my back, pressing us together, my chest against his ribs, my hip bones just below his, the tops of our bare summer legs hot and touching. I stopped breathing. My eyes were closed and his mouth tasted like marzipan flowers and clove cigarettes, and in ten seconds the whole of my life was wrapped up in that one kiss, that one wish, that one secret that would forever divide my life into two parts. Up, down. Happy, sad. Shock, awe. Before, after. In that single moment, Matt, formerly known as friend, became something else entirely. I kissed him back. I forgot time. I forgot my feet. I forgot the people outside, waiting for us to rejoin the party. I forgot what happens when friends cross into this space. And if my lungs didn__ fill and my heart didn__ beat and my blood didn__ pump without my intervention, I would have forgotten about them, too. I could have stayed like that all night, standing in front of the sink, Matt__ black apple hair brushing my cheeks, heart thumping, lucky and forgetful_

I follow the path we__e taken so many times this summer _ across the front, down the street, cut back through a neighbor__ yard, down the stairs to the beach, past the pier, through the campfire labyrinth, up to the deck of the Shack, and straight into Sam__ arms. Without speaking, he kisses me hard on the mouth and I kiss him back, sobbing and crumpling into his chest like a broken puppet.

It seemed everything that had ever lived and died in this world had passed through here, had left its indelible imprint.

There was no going back to the way things were, because all you ever got was the way things are.

So just over a year ago, there was this guy. I really liked him. I mean really _ since I was a kid._ __id Frankie know him?_ __he three of us were best friends. We basically grew up together._ __omplicated._ __ery. So anyway, last year on my birthday, he finally kissed me._ Sam stays quiet, focused on his feet taking off and landing against the sand. It feels strange to tell him about this for so many reasons, but the words are coming too fast for me to stop, even if I want to. __e started hanging out all the time _ even more than before. Every night. Only we didn__ know how to tell Frankie, because we didn__ want her to freak or feel left out or whatever._ __akes sense,_ Sam says. __e thought it would be better if he told her himself, so I promised him that I wouldn__ say anything. But before he could talk to her about it, he__ I almost choke on the word, holding my hand against Sam__ arm to stop our forward motion along the shore. __hat did he do?_ Sam asks. __e just _ he _ I__ sorry. Wait._ The words of this story have passed a thousand times from my hand to the pages of my journal, but never from my lips to the ears of another living soul. I take a few deep breaths before I__ able to meet Sam__ eyes and say it. __e died, Sam.

Every morning, I wake up and forget just for a second that it happened. But once my eyes open, it buries me like a landslide of sharp, sad rocks. Once my eyes open, I'm heavy, like there's to much gravity on my heart.

Beneath the vast diamond sky, I felt both all important and utterly significant, the goddess and the damned in equal measure.

Anna," he said, dragging his frosted fingers through my hair."Don't you know what it means when a boy pulls your hair at your birthday party?" "No." Just, then, i didn't know what anything meant.

This boy wore the ocean in his eyes, green-gray-blue, ever shifting, and I recognized him immediately. Knew before he said another word that he was as dangerous as he was beautiful.

Through pictures, we cut reality in pieces. We selected only the choicest moments, discarding the rest as if they'd never happened.

Sorry._ I__ surprised and glad she doesn__ recognize it. I run my thumb back and forth over a crusty bit on the shoulder strap as a five-second version of the cake fight flashes behind my eyes like a movie stuck on quick search. Don__ cry over spilt frosting, Anna. __ just _ I like this one._ __hat for?_ she asks. Just tell her. __t__ from the _ it__ just the__ I bite my lower lip. Tell her. __nna? What__ wrong?_ Oh, it__ nothing, really. Just that it__ from the first time your brother kissed me and made me promise not to tell you. And I was in love with him forever, and he was supposed to tell you about it in California, and we were all going to live happily ever after. I still write him letters in the journal he gave me, which he doesn__ answer, since he__ dead and all. But other than that? Honestly, it__ nothing. __nna?_ She watches me with her sideways face again. __uh? Oh, sorry. Nothing. I__ fine. I _ I__l get rid of it later.

They tear each other apart. Sometimes there aren't any happy endings or logical explanations and we just have to accept that and move on. Sometimes it really is that simple.