I wiped a stray tear that escaped my eye. “I’m fine. It’s just nice to hear how you talk about your brother. It must be so hard for you.”
He wrapped an arm around me and returned his gaze to the grave. “It is. But, I learned pretty quick that even though he was gone, I wasn’t.”
I looked up at him, and his entire face was soft, with a look of subtle sadness crossing over him. “How did you learn that?” I wanted to know because over a year later I hadn’t even learned that.
“One of the days I was sitting here, just staring at the grave, I sat here for like an hour, just looking at his name etched into stone. And the year markers. February 12, 2001 to April 6, 2012. And I just kept staring at those dates, and I became fixated on the dash.”
He had lost me. “The dash?”
“Yeah, the dash. You have the date you were born and the date you die, and then in between is the dash. The dash is your life. Bobby’s dash was filled with long summer days playing baseball. And nights he stayed up past his bedtime playing video games with me. And Thanksgivings where he would always try to eat an entire drumstick all by himself. And Christmas mornings, and Mom’s homemade mac and cheese, and winter colds, and water balloon fights, and dodgeball, and jumping in piles of newly raked leaves. The dash is our lives. Some of us just have a bigger dash than others.” He faced me, staring deep into my eyes. “I don’t want to waste my dash.”
It took everything I had not to break down right then. I bit my tongue to the point of almost making it bleed, so I could hold back the waterworks.
“I guess that might only be profound if you’ve lost somebody close to you though.” He handed the stargazer lilies to me. “Have you ever lost someone like that?”
“Yes,” I squeaked out. He had given me the perfect opening, but something wasn’t right. It wasn’t the right place. Not here in the cemetery. I had no strength standing there. I wouldn’t survive the words — they’d eat me alive. I had to get him back to my house so I could show him the pamphlet. Then I could do it, but not here. Not standing at Bobby’s grave.
“Can we go to my house now?” I was barely able to whisper.
“Yeah, we can.” He looked to the grave marker one last time. “I’ll see ya, kiddo.” With an arm still wrapped around me, we walked back to his car. I felt my feet heavy with each step. And I hoped that everything would soon feel lighter.
****
Anxiety and anticipation started to swell inside me the closer we got to my house. I knew it would be hard to tell Brandon about my mom, but the time had come. He had bared so much of himself to me: who he was, who his family was. Now I needed to do the same for him. I couldn’t live my entire life in the shadow of my mother’s death. It was time to step into the light. Even though I was scared, I felt ready. Mostly scared, but a little bit ready.
We walked hand in hand up my walkway. At the front door, I stopped and kissed him. He moved a stray hair from my face to behind my ear. My stomach flip-flopped as I kissed him again. Inside the house, we walked into the living room. Marc was sitting in the recliner, eating a bowl of cereal while watching sports on TV.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey, is Gram here?” I almost forgot about her return from the hospital.
Marc slurped up some milk from his bowl. “Yeah, she’s in her room taking a nap.” He wiped some milk from his chin. “You guys wanna watch a movie or something?”
“Do we?” Brandon asked me.
I had to get the big reveal off my chest. It felt like an elephant crushing my lungs. “Maybe later,” I said to Marc. To Brandon I said, “Could you, like, wait one minute while I go grab something?”
“Sure.” He kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll force myself to sit on this comfy couch here and watch sports highlights.”
“My man.” Marc said as the two high-fived.
Boys are weird. I raced up the stairs and flung the door open to my room. Piles of papers had infiltrated my desk, and I rummaged through them searching for the pamphlet about the breast cancer run. Notes from algebra class and articles from a beauty magazine were all I could find. Where was it? I scanned my room. It was a mess in here. Then I spotted something bright pink on my night table. I grabbed the pamphlet and held it to my chest. “You can do this.” I tried to pump myself up. After closing my bedroom door behind me, I walked quietly down the hall to Gram’s room. The door was ajar, and I poked my head inside. She was sound asleep. Her coloring was good, and she was wearing her favorite burgundy pajamas. Trying to be quiet, I tiptoed inside and kissed her on her forehead. She was warm, and she smelled like orchids. A wave of normalcy washed over me. All at once I felt like everything was going to be all right.
I was almost at the bottom of the stairs when I heard them talking from the other side of the wall.
I heard Brandon say. “Wow, she’s so beautiful.” Aw, he meant me, didn’t he?
“Yeah, she was the best mom ever, too.” Marc’s voice sounded heavy.
What was going on? I walked in what felt like slow motion into the room. They
