I quickly looked to my left to see the balloon bobbing happily at the end of the string. Within half a second, I began running for the exit. Even though it wasn’t far, maybe twenty feet, I felt like it was miles away. It was like in those horrible nightmares you sometimes have where a monster is chasing you. In your dream, the monster is running at jet speed, but for all your efforts, you are simply trotting along at a snail’s pace trying to get to freedom. The exit was my freedom, and the monster was this cemetery. “It’s called Sacred Path Cemetery, not Scary Path Cemetery,” my grandmother would try to joke with me in her (failed) attempts to get me to visit my mom’s grave.
All the blood felt like it was draining from my body. I felt my skeleton collapse inside me. My limbs felt like they were made from spaghetti, and I ran with every last drop of energy I had to get to that exit. After what seemed like forever, I was out on the sidewalk on my hands and knees. To anyone passing by, I must have looked like a freak, on all fours, frantically panting for air, while I held onto a balloon. The balloon. As I jerked my head to look behind me, I felt a pinch in my neck, and then I saw it. The once full metallic heart was now slowly deflating on the ground behind me. Inside my head, I was screaming, Nooo!
The white string was limp in my hand as I pulled it closer to me, and I felt heat forming behind my eyes. I was kneeling on the sidewalk with the deflated balloon sticking to my thighs. Tears flowed down my face. Slowly, I turned the balloon over and saw the envelope staring back at me. “To Bobby” was written across it in blue crayon. The little boy. He had written a note and attached it to this balloon to let it go at the grave, and he thought he was sending this heart to Heaven. Much in the same way I had done for my mom.
I walked back into the cemetery toward the big oak tree and the grave the family had been standing at before. I read the tombstone.
Robert Lee Carter
February 12, 2001-April 6, 2012
Son, brother, and incredible kid
I walked the rest of the way home. As I clutched the letter in my hand, I sobbed gently. The deflated balloon dragged behind me for the next mile until I reached my house. With its weight amounting to mere ounces, it felt like I was pulling a cement block.
****
“Maybe you could buy another balloon and bring it back to the cemetery and let it go.” Zoe was sitting on the end of my bed handing me yet another tissue.
Zoe and I became best friends in the third grade. She sat down near me during lunch and took a thermos out of her lunch bag. My eyes widened as I watched her eat some excessively long noodles.
“Ew, worms!” Justin Crumble yelled from a few seats over. Suddenly, the entire lunch table where we sat began to giggle and point at her. I’ll never forget how she shot me this maniacal smile before she said, “What? You don’t eat worms? Man, you don’t know what you’re missing!” Then she shoved a way too large portion of the crazy noodles into her mouth. She let them dangle from her lips as she spun her head from side to side so they looked like they were alive and wiggling. The laughter quieted, and most of the kids went back to their previous chitchat.
“I’m Marissa,” I said to her.
“I’m Zoe. Oh, and just so you know, these aren’t worms. It’s lo mein noodles. You wanna try?” She held out a fork full for me. I cautiously took a bite, and was in love — with the noodles and with Zoe.
“Oh Zoe,” I paused to blow my nose. “I can’t just get another balloon. It’s not that… simple.” I blew again, and this time my nose sounded like a trumpet.
I could tell by Zoe’s facial expression that she was frantically trying to come up with a plan to make it better. Zoe was always trying to make it better. She hates when curveballs are thrown at her — or at me.
“What if I got the new balloon and I went with you? That way you wouldn’t have to, you know, step into the cemetery.”
My hands started to shake a little when she said that last word. “I already did.”
“You WHAT?”
Her voice was so loud I threw my hand over her mouth to quiet her.
“Shhh, I don’t want Gram to come up here.”
She removed my hand and gave me an apologetic nod. Keeping her voice even, she asked again. “You what?” She leaned her body into me. “Rissa, you haven’t like stepped in there since… forever.”
I felt the heat behind my eyes again as Zoe’s face started to blur from my tears. “I had to see the grave. I wanted to know who the balloon was for. Who the note was for. That way maybe I could… I could—”
“Marissa, you could what?”
I had to look away from her. “I could return it.”
In
