Until I realized that my existence never had to be empty.
Love was still out there, as were hopes and dreams and everything else I pretended I no longer wanted. Esteban opened my eyes, and he did so by showing me death, the devastating permanence of it. He dealt with death every day in his job, and here I was pretending I knew something about it. Pretending that death was a choice I wanted. It shouldn’t have been anyone’s choice. Not the choice of the man who tried to kill me, not Esteban’s. Not mine.
In the few days I’d known Esteban, he’d schooled me on what life was, and more importantly, what life could be.
Light.
Colors.
Paradise.
I slowly got out of my chair, not wanting to say good-bye. I knew I’d never see him again. He had my painting of golden seas to remind him of me.
I had nothing.
“Lani,” he said gently, his eyes swimming with compassion. He pulled me into him and wrapped his arms around me tightly. We held each other for as long as we could. Shallow, silly parts of me wanted to beg to go with him back to Mexico, to be a part of his life. But we knew our lives weren’t meant to intertwine that way. They were meant to meld for a sweet moment, nothing more.
He pulled away and kissed me softly on the forehead. “You’re valuable,” he said as he placed a cold green jade stone in my hands. “Keep painting.”
Then he turned and walked away. With my heart prickling, I heard him get on his motorcycle. The familiar roar filled my ears and then he was gone, the sound fading into the bird calls of midmorning.
I sighed, my chest feeling like an anvil had been placed on it. I squeezed the jade in my hand, knowing I’d never let it go. Slowly I turned and went to the back steps and sat down, staring at the paradise in front of me. The chickens pecked at the grass, not caring about my presence. They just . . . carried on.
And that was when I realized that Esteban hadn’t left me with nothing. I gave him a painting, but he gave me everything.
I fished my phone out of my pocket and dialed Doug.
I dialed home.
Doug picked up on the second ring.
“Honey?” I said into the phone, my voice soft. Tears were threatening my eyes, my lungs were starting to feel choked, aching for release.
There was a long pause. Finally Doug said, “Lani? What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t help it. I hadn’t heard concern in his voice for as long as I could remember. It was enough to open the floodgates. I cried, tears streaming down my face, and just bawled, everything flowing out of me, my tears taking me to another place.
“Doug, baby,” I finally managed to say, gulping hard for air, my lungs screaming. “Doug, I want to come home. I want to live.”
There was more silence, maybe just to let me sob, maybe to gather his thoughts and figure out what to say. Then Doug said something I didn’t think he would.
“I want you to live, too. I love you.”
The tears continued to come.
So much grief, so much sadness, so much betrayal, so much guilt. So much in my life had gone terribly wrong.
And yet there was so much hope.
And value in my hands.
THE END
Defying the Dust—A Camden & Ellie Story
I never thought much about hope.
The word never meant that much to me.
Until I met Ellie Watt.
Suddenly I knew what hope was. It was something that could save me from my classmates, save me from my parents, save me from myself.
It was a crazy hot day in August when I first met Ellie. In Palm Valley, California, most days were crazy hot and I often made it worse, dressing the way that I did. It was because of my “questionable” attire that my parents decided it was about time to haul me off to the town’s quack, Dr. Edison. I knew it was a matter of time and I really didn’t care anymore. When the whole town thought you were a freak, what was a trip to a psychiatrist’s office?
“Now remember to be honest with the doctor,” my stepmother, Raquel, had said from the front seat, not bothering to turn around and look at me. She rarely looked at me. She only had eyes for her daughters, Kelli and Colleen, two little ten-year-old brats from hell. Even though she’d married my dad four years earlier, she still treated me like I was a nuisance, a waste of space. It would have been nice if she didn’t perpetuate the evil stepmother stereotype, but no such luck there. Not that Raquel was evil. She just didn’t give a shit about me. But I suppose when you’re dealing with a teenager, that can be seen as the same thing.
I grunted in response and looked down at my nails. She’d confiscated the black nail polish I bought from the drugstore, so I had to fill in my nails with black Sharpie. I know she still hated it, the fact that it looked like I’d painted my nails when I was a thirteen-year-old boy. But I liked it. It made me feel dark, dangerous—different.
“We don’t want you starting the ninth grade looking like a faggot,” my father sneered from behind the wheel. I looked up at the rearview mirror and saw his eyes blazing in it, full of disapproving fury. Normally, I was scared when I saw those eyes with that kind of fire behind them, but I knew he wouldn’t dare hit me here in the car, not in front of Raquel and not before I was about to see a shrink. Raquel damn well knew he knocked me around when she wasn’t
