What They Left Behind

Content Warning: This story contains small amounts of swearing and focuses on themes of grief and loss in the aftermath of a hate crime. There are also mentions of violence, though no violent scenes occur in this story. Please prioritize your own safety and comfort and read at your own discretion.

Ever since the funerals, Tally’s had a bit more energy about him. He’ll wander around town, strutting into any building that’ll have him and doing anything he wants to.

I think people are put-off by the way he’s been acting. His brother was the only family he had left. They were best friends, and yet, he’s able to frolic around like nothing happened. 

If I didn’t know any better, I’d be jealous of him. But that’s not the case at all. If anyone in this town really knew what he was going through, they’d know that he’s just keeping himself busy so that he doesn’t have to think about it.

I haven’t spoken to him in weeks, not since before the attack. He and I weren’t friends before and we aren’t now, but we know each other. I think that’s all he cares about anymore. So when he strolls into Mom’s restaurant five minutes to close and comes right up to my table in the corner, it only takes a glance up from my book for me to realize that he’s made a decision: I would be his next distraction.

“You busy?” Tally asks.

“I’m reading,” I say.

“Yeah, but are you doing anything right now?”

“Reading.” 

He slides into the booth across from me and I flinch. The seat’s been empty for a couple weeks and the thought of another person’s body heat making it warm irritates me.

He clicks his tongue and looks around the dining room before saying, “We should hang out.” I can feel his leg bouncing restlessly beneath the table.

I huff and set my book down. “What do you want, Tally?”

“To show you something. In the woods a couple miles from here. I found it last night.”

“Why me? What is it?”

He puts his cap back on, stands up, and holds his hand out to me. “Just trust me.”

I stare at him, not moving from my seat.

He sighs. “You’re the only one who’ll understand.” He then adds, “You can bring your book with you.”

Considering my options, I look over to the counter where Mom is handing the last customer his change. The customer puts his hand on her shoulder and says something to her and she dips her head down, looking like she might cry for a moment before looking back up and saying, “Thank you.” The customer leaves and Mom walks over to join Tally and I.

Tally perks up. “Hi Ms. Pillings. I didn’t think you’d be open.”

“Well, you know. I cut the last three hours off of the day until the end of summer, but I still gotta make a living somehow,” Mom laughs, sitting down next to me. “Anything I can do for you, Tally?”

“Actually, I just came to see Aliya.”

“Aw,” she cooed, “how sweet of you. Are you off school too?”

“Yes, ma’am. Exempt from the rest of junior year.”

She nods. “Same with Aliya. It’s good that you’re only missing a couple weeks though. That must be nice.”

“Nothing about this is nice,” I snap.

Mom’s eyes widen and I panic. “I-I didn’t mean that—”

“It’s okay! I didn’t mean to say that out loud, I’m sorry.”

A deafening silence washes over the three of us and I can tell it makes Tally even more uncomfortable than it does me, because he’s the one to change the subject. He asks if I can hang out with him for the rest of the night. Mom says yes and we’re out the door in seconds.

We walk for about an hour before it seems like Tally knows where he’s going, and he’s been rambling on the whole time. I trudge behind him, reading my book but not processing any of the words. The closer we get, the less he talks. I know we’re almost there when he stops speaking entirely. I close my book and put it in the pocket of my hoodie. There’s a path leading into the woods right on the side of an old highway at the edge of town that only sees about three cars a day.

“Is this it?” I ask.

Tally nods and walks in.

The edge of the woods is quiet and eerie and I consider leaving him there. Tally begins wandering around, searching for something.

“Tally, tell me what you’re looking for. I want to go back,” I tell him.

Without warning, he sprints further into the woods, leaving me behind.

“Where are you going?!” I shout after him.

A pause. “This way!”

It then occurs to me that Tally could be leading me to an early death in a place so isolated no one would ever find me. I really want to ditch him, but it’s either wandering around the woods doing who knows what or going back home to my frantic mother and sleeping by myself in a room with two beds. We’ve come this far and anything is better than spending another night reading in the restaurant’s dining room.

“Wait for me!”

I can’t see him anymore, but as I run, it starts getting brighter. The whole forest is cast in a golden glow. There’s a clearing the size of a swimming pool and I stop in the center to catch my breath.

“Aliya, over here.”

I turn around to see Tally tracing the bark of a tree with his fingers. I walk over. A carving in the bark reads “J+R.”

J+R.

I sigh. “Tally, that could be anyone. Besides, you can tell that’s been carved in there for a while.”

“It’s them. They put this here.”

I lean against the tree. “You don’t know that.”

His eyes flick around. “There’s something else.”

I look back at the letters and trace them with my finger as well. There could be millions of people whose names start with J and R. But the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Jay and Rowan spent more time together than with anyone else and half the time, they would wander off on adventures no one else knew about. Sometimes Rowan would come home and tell me that he and Jay spent the whole night out in the woods, discovering new things that no one else would ever find. I think about how small our town is and how few people actually wander around the woods like this. How many people whose names start with J and R would end up carving their initials into a tree in a forest no one ever steps foot in?

I make eye contact with Tally. “You said there’s something else?”

He grabs my arm. “Over here.”

He tugs me over to a tree on the opposite side of the clearing with bushes of lavender growing around its base.

“Lavender doesn’t grow naturally around here. Someone planted these there,” I say to him.

“That’s not all,” he says. “Look up.”

I get closer to the tree and see a light wooden platform carefully crafted to fit along the surrounding branches. When Rowan began spending less and less time at home, he said he was working on a project in the woodshop at school and would have to stay after school to work on it.

“This is what he was building,” I whisper to myself, then shift my attention back to Tally. “How do we get up there?”

He circles the tree and points to a make-shift ladder on the other side of the tree. “I only went up once. Last night. I didn’t look at anything since it was too dark. The sun’s setting soon, so if you want to see, we should go up now.”

I waste no time climbing the boards, each one creaking under my weight but remaining perfectly still, nailed into the tree’s bark. I wonder how many times they’ve been climbed before.

I pull Tally up onto the platform from the top board before turning around. Tally walks over to one of the branches supporting the platform and shouts, “I knew it! It’s Jay and Rowan! They made this place!”

“What?!” I rush over, the boards groaning with every step. There’s a sign nailed to the branch with the words “Jay and Rowan’s Place” carved into the wood with caring detail.

I sink to the base of the branch, staring at the rest of the platform. It’s just smaller than our room back home, big enough to move around on, but small enough to be hidden from anyone passing below who doesn’t look closely. An old blue rug covers the center of the platform and golden holiday lights wrap the arms of the tree. Two pillows, flat with the dents of young heads, sat in the corner next to some folded up throw blankets. There was a ukulele case resting on a branch, gardening supplies next to a broom and crumpled up tarp, and stacks of books sprinkled about—some I remember trading with Rowan and some I’ve never seen before. I take my own book out of my pocket and set it on the stack closest to me. It’s the last book Rowan ever gave to me. It looks like it belongs here.

I hear chirping and turn to see a bird feeder hanging from a branch. There’s a blue jay perched at its base.

Tally looks around quietly. After a few minutes, he sinks down next to me and places his head between his knees. When he starts crying, I just put my arm around him.

I don’t know how to talk to crying people. It’s why I’ve been avoiding Mom. It’s why I didn’t talk to anyone at Jay or Rowan’s funerals. But I want to comfort Tally, so I sit with him, watching the sunset, wishing that people didn’t cry and brothers didn’t die.

Tally lifts his head, his eyes puffy. “Did you see them?”

“Huh?”

“Rowan and Jay, did you see them after they were attacked?” he mumbled.

I have to think about it. I heard that they’d been beaten up by a couple of guys while walking through town at night and left unconscious in some parking lot, but Mom wouldn’t let me into the hospital room. I screamed at her that whole night to let me see Rowan, but no matter what, she refused to let me into his room. The caskets were closed at both funerals. Mom told me it was because open casket funerals are more depressing, but I knew there was another reason.

“No, I didn’t see either of them. Mom wouldn’t let me.”

“Oh,” he sniffles, wiping his nose. “That’s good.”

I turn to him. “You did see them. Didn’t you?”

He gives a strained chuckle. “I was the only other person allowed in the room. I don’t have any parents to stop me.”

“What—,” I want to ask something, but I don’t know what. Do I really want to know what they looked like? How they were attacked? That stuff isn’t important.

“I wish I hadn’t gone in.”

I stare at Tally, wanting an explanation but refusing to ask for one.

His watery eyes meet mine and his voice cracks. “When Jay left to go out that night, he was all giddy. He’d just bought this new blazer and was so excited to wear it and I felt like something else was up, but I didn’t ask.” He paused. “I got the call from the hospital a few hours later. At one, I think. And I was the first person to go in the room after the staff and… they both just looked so horrible and I can’t get the image out of my head. I couldn’t stare at their faces so I just stared at their clothes. They’d been dressed so nice. And that damn blazer was all ripped up.”

Tally starts crying again and I think about my mother and how it must have felt to see her son and his best friend in those beds, her daughter half-asleep in the lobby, waiting to go in next.

I wish I hadn’t gone in.

I lean against Tally and put my head on his shoulder. “I should probably thank her for keeping me out of that room.”

Tally sniffles again and rests his head on top of mine. We sit there in silence as it starts getting dark. Another twenty minutes or so pass when Tally tentatively pulls some things out of his pocket.

“I found it before the hospital or the police did. I know I should have left it, but I wanted to know what happened.” He hands them both to me. “They were in the inside pocket of Jay’s blazer.”

I examine the objects closely. The first one was a worn index card filled with smeared notes written in cursive, completely unreadable. The second item was a small, navy blue box with a dark stain on the side.

“Jay was always really good at planning things. Not like me. Even on that last night,” Tally said in a half-whisper.

I opened the box to find a silver ring with a sapphire gem. An engagement ring.

“Wait? This was Jay’s?” I ask, confused.

Tally nods. “He was saving up for a while. I didn’t know what for until I found this.”

“But he was only nineteen, he hadn’t even graduated yet. I didn’t even know he had a girlfriend. Who was he going to propose to?”

Tally’s breath hitched and he glanced back at the sign we saw when we first came up. I read it again and everything clicked.

Jay and Rowan’s Place.

Jay was going to propose to Rowan.

“I didn’t even know they were dating.”

“No one did,” Tally replied, “though I had a feeling.”

An extra layer of dread washed over me. “Tally, people in this town don’t get beat up. Not like that,” I said.

“They must have been seen together.” Tally glares at nothing in particular.

I closed the box. “You need to bring this to the police.”

He turns to me. “I tried. They said it didn’t matter. It made no difference.”

“No difference?” I clutch the box in my hand. “This wasn't just some guys beating up some random teenagers. It was a hate crime. This proves that.”

“I know,” he croaks. “But no one cares.”

I opened the box and stared at the ring again. Jay must have gotten it because he knew Rowan’s favorite color was blue.

I remember the first time I realized I had a crush on someone. I was only eleven at the time, but I cried in Rowan’s arms that night because she was a girl. He promised not to tell anyone and kept that promise. I never understood why.

The last time I saw him, he stormed into our room, looking for something to wear after his shower, saying he had to “be somewhere” in less than 15 minutes. I helped him pick out a blue sweater I knew he loved.

It would have looked perfect with this ring.

“I care,” I whisper.

And for the first time since finding out my brother died, I start crying. It’s not quiet, like Tally’s was. It comes out in bursts of loud wails and sputtering lips. Now, it’s Tally’s turn to wrap his arms around me.

“It’s not fair!” I sob over and over again.

All Tally can say is, “I know,” until he’s crying again too. We stay like that until our eyes run dry.

When I finally get up, it’s to turn on the holiday lights, illuminating the platform in the darkness of the forest.

“God,” Tally groans, “I spent all week trying to make myself forget about it and I just ended up finding this place and breaking down anyway.”

I give a broken laugh and lay down on the rug. “At least you’ve been trying, I’ve just been sitting at the table Rowan and I used to eat supper at and reading the same damn book on repeat for a week straight as if he’s right across from me.”

He scoffs. “Denial’s a bitch.”

“Preach.”

Tally shuffles over and lays in the opposite direction so that our heads are next to each other and we lay there, staring at the same stars our brothers did, promising to make it through each day, and taking care of what they left behind.