Scared

Anna’s breath floated in front of her face, mingling with the fog in the evening air.  The blanket under her already damp from the chilled ground, covered as far as she could see in leaves, rotting and dead, their musk in the air mingling with the wilting roses beside her. A tear trailed down her cheek, following the easy path of many before.  It was Jon’s birthday. And hers. They weren’t twins, although everyone always thought they were. They had the same green eyes, auburn hair, and freckled skin. They were both born on the 16 of October, and in the same class. This year would have been his golden birthday. She was younger than him, by a year. They shared the same birthday by chance, and related to the fact that their parent’s anniversary was approximately nine months before.   

When he was in Kindergarten, he almost died.  He had meningitis, and was out of school for so much of the year they had him repeat it, which is how he ended up with me.  Maybe he was always living on borrowed time.  Maybe he should have gone then.  She wondered if maybe that would have made it easier, to lose him then and not now. To have less places that remind her of him, less places that made tears prick at her eyes, face hot and flushed, feeling like she was drowning, again.  Her back stretched against the hard granite behind her, etched with his name. A tear fell; landing in the dirt of the cemetery, ground rich with the salt of countless tears before.

Asher walked toward Stanton Street, where the small towns only graveyard was.  He had walked through it taking the shortcut to the baseball diamonds countless times before, but hadn’t set foot in it since Jon’s service, always taking the long way around. The fall leaves crunched under his feet, like breaking glass, reminding him of the night before.  The fight before.  He pushed it out of his mind, his hands reaching into his pocket.  His fingers slipped over the cool plastic of the card Jon had given him every birthday since they were 7.  It was tradition, trading the card back and forth for each of their birthdays.  This would be the last time.

He stopped at the edge of the cemetery, remembering all the times they had leapfrogged over the stones on the way to practice, yelling “You know, people are DYING to get in here!”. The two of them hooting with laughter as they ran, not knowing yet the pain they were treading on, to young yet to grasp the gravity of what would be.  Now Asher knew, and it was too late for sprinting and laughing.  He dragged his feet along, heading to Jon.  Where the date he was born etched in the hard cold stone matched today’s date.

He had wondered if Anna would be there. As he got closer, he could see her waiting.  He didn’t think she would come. She didn’t think he would either. A week ago, she had sent him a text, saying she would be at the Stanton Street cemetery the night of his birthday. It was a statement, not an invitation. He couldn’t imagine her going alone. She couldn’t imagine him showing up to join her. He was Jon’s friend, not hers. They only came together when his axis pulled them into each other’s. 

Anna concentrated on her breath as she waited to see if Asher would show up. She hated that she had to be here. She wanted to be home. It was her birthday too, and the crushing memories of 15 years of birthdays together slammed into her with every inhale.

Her parents had gone out of town for business and to lie to themselves They wanted to forget, not realizing she held the tragedy as much as they did.  They couldn’t hold her grief while they held theirs.  She understood more than a 15 year old should, and gave them measured grace, a quiet memory planting itself deep in her heart as she vowed never to be that selfish.  She generously gifted them the peace of a lie that she was staying at her friends for the night not to add worries to their heavy hearts. A mired martyr.  

Anna saw Asher walking in the gate.  She wondered if he had told his parents the truth of where he was tonight.  They weren’t the best parents, she knew.  Asher had almost lived at their house the past 10 years, and she hadn’t realized how much she missed his presence until she saw his shaggy hair rounding the corner, laying flat and golden, catching the fading light of the day.  Another casualty of Jons death.  

Asher lowered himself beside her, his breath rising next to hers. “Are you staying all night?”

“Yup.”

“Aren’t you scared?”

“Not of anything here.  Ghosts aren’t real Ash.” She sighed. “ There are far scarier things in the world than being here all night. Why-are you scared Jon?” She asked exasperated at his question, with no expectation of an answer.

Anna had always been too straightforward; too sharp, too deep.  She saw too much.  The things you didn’t say, she noticed.  Not that she ever said anything, but she would look, and you knew that she knew.  She wouldn’t say anything, but she knew. He knew she had seen his bruises.  Heard his excuses.  Jon didn’t think twice.  “Bummer man! Be more careful next time!” But Anna would find his eyes and meet them silently, the truth always lying unspoken between them. 

He settled into their silence, not answering her question as expected. He pulled out a bag of chips, popped it open, the noise echoing off the silence of the night.  Offering them to her, shrugging when she silently refused, instead diving her chopsticks into her carton of Chinese food as he crunched beside her. He missed her. He hadn’t realized until then.  He wasn’t quiet like this with anyone else.  With her it felt like breathing.  You don’t need to overthink it, it just happens.  She leaned into his shoulder.  “I miss him” unspoken, like everything else between them. 

The night passed, stretching out before them like a blank canvas of time.  They splashed it with silence, layering tears and tales, tinged with shadows.  Asher asking the questions that made them smile fleetingly and remember, and Anna asking the ones they would never answer.  “Remember the time when…” “What summer was that when he…?” and “Why…”.

The night darkened, settling over them.  They lay, looking up at the stars, like they had every summer as kids. Jon always in the middle, the connecting fiber between them even now.  Without him in the middle, they were too different.  There was too much unsaid. Neither of them ready to be truthful. 

The night was quiet, the silence heavy but comfortable, like Annas grandmas old flour sack quilt. It was cool, crisp, and their winter jackets crunched when they sat up. The shadows of the stones stretched out in the moons glow, reaching and stretching slowly over the hours with celestial movements.  It could have seemed scary, Asher thought.  Aren’t spooky stories always set in graveyards among the dead? He thought of what Anna had said.  I guess when you have real things in life that scare you, graveyards seem childish and cliché.  What could be scarier for Anna than facing a future as an only child, feeling like it was her job to hold her family together. The remaining child in a house that her words echoed in, her voice boomeranging back and forth through the air empty of Jon’s laughter and relentless teasing.    

What was he scared of? He knew. Was he ready to admit to himself that what was happening at home wasn’t ok? That parenting your parent and dealing with her irrational tantrums wasn’t ok? He could leave and move in with his brother and dad at any point, he knew.  But then what would happen to his Mom…There was too much silence and space in a graveyard he thought.  It’s too easy to think.  I don’t want to think.  

“Beer?” he asked Anna

She was lost in her own thoughts.  Wondering if home would ever feel like home again.  Scared to be happy.  Scared to be normal.  Scared to always feel this lost and hurt. Blinking her sore eyes too tired to cry again. Distracted by a bat swooping between the fir trees overhead.  She wondered what it would feel like to just fly away on silky black wings stretched tight over bone.  Sharp and cutting the air, lifting up and up, catching on the frigid air and taking her to a new branch.  

She turned her head and looked at Ash, her eyes answering for her.  He met her stare, sighed, and poured out the can on the dirt beside him.  “Cheers bud” he said.

The sun had started to rise. The night was over, in the cemetery at least. A rabbit hopped across the far side of the field, pausing on a raised bed of dirt.  Anna stretched her hands above her head, and started packing up her bag.  Scared of going home, to an empty house on her birthday, filled with silence that suffocated and far more fear than she had felt that night in the cemetery under the peaceful silence of the stars.  

Asher blinked, hearing Anna stir.  He stood silently, reaching into his pocket, and placing the worn card on top of the thick slab, bending down and choosing a smooth rock from the base of a tree to hold it down this last goodbye. They had been passing it back and forth so long, he hadn’t actually read it in years.  It was a birthday card with 100 candles on a cake. They promised to give it back and forth until their cakes were the same.  Little boys, invincible and they would surely live to 100. When the certainties of their plans were tinged with rose and not the reality of an inevitable future resting in graves like those that surrounded him now. Nothing is scarier than this reality.

When Jon was 6, he was afraid of the dark.  When he slept at his house, he made them sleep with the light on.  Asher always said people were scarier than the dark, but Jon didn’t think so.  

Anna’s voice cut the quiet of the early morning.

“Someone once told me that none of us are actually afraid of the dark; we’re scared of what it conceals from us. We’re afraid of having something with the potential to hurt us standing right before our eyes and not registering it as a threat. People can be like that too.”

Asher let out a quiet burst of laughing, shocking his sluggish system. “Geeze, What fortune cookie did you find that on Anna?” 

The pink corners of Anna’s mouth lifted and her eyes met his. “The one from last night.  Seems fitting for a night in the cemetery thought doesn’t it?”

As the sun rose, the two walked down the path together, toward the light of the morning, separating at the gate without a word, walking toward their own people; to and through the people with varying potentials to hurt or heal. Their own souls lined with equal parts fear and courage to break a pattern or to stay the course. Humankind has far more capacity for ghosts and monsters than exists in a graveyard at night, after all.