“They remember you, Xavier. I’d venture to say anyone who has met you remembers you,” I say.
“But what about me? Does the girl who sat beside me in the third grade remember that she used to fold up her gum wrappers and make them into tiny metallic bunnies that she put on the corner of my desk? Or that she wore purple on the first and last day of that year, with blue socks and a red ribbon the first day, and a green headband the last day?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t know. Probably not.”
“I do. I remember what she ate for lunch and the grade she got on her spelling test, and that our field trip to see The Nutcracker made her cry because she wanted Clara to marry the nutcracker. But I don’t remember her name. Or her eyes. Or if she had siblings. Or anything about her beyond that classroom,” he says. “I don’t know what she remembers about me. Or if she remembers me at all. I don’t want to see her. I want her to stay eight years old, eating olive loaf and making gum wrapper bunnies. I already processed that version. I don’t want to deal with another version. It’s not worth the exhaustion.”
I’m struck by that. I pull the coat closer around me and hope for the sun to start warming the air soon.
“What do you mean exhaustion?” I ask.
“From getting through figuring it out,” he answers.
“You’re better with people than you think. I know it’s hard for you, but you cope with it really well,” I tell him.
An almost sad look washes over his face.
“When you say someone like me is coping well, it means we’re suffering. Everybody around me lives in a world that was made for them. And I don’t fit into it. People aren’t willing to adapt to me. So, when you say I’m coping. I’m handling something so well. I’m dealing with it. What you’re seeing is me working so hard to make other people comfortable. It’s exhausting.”
“I’m sorry, Xavier,” I say.
He shakes his head. “No need for you to be sorry. You didn’t make the world, and you didn’t make me. Besides, there are things that make it better. Like Dean.”
“Dean is one of your colors?” I ask.
“He’s more like my outline. He shows me where to go and stops me from coloring in the wrong places,” he says.
“But you still do sometimes?” I ask.
Xavier smiles. “Of course. All I am is God coloring outside the lines. Who am I to think I could do any better?”
He starts to walk down the path again, and I follow him. I don’t know where he’s going, but I figure we’ll get there at some point.
“Did everyone really believe that The Dragon was dead?” he suddenly asks after a few minutes of walking.
“Darren Blackwell?” I ask. I blink a few times, trying to process the unexpected question. “Yes. Everybody thought he was dead. There wasn’t really anything else to think. According to his prison records, he was the only prisoner on that transport van. Including the burned and mangled corpse they found after the wreck, everybody who had been on the van was accounted for. The driver walked away alive. That could only mean that the prisoner he was transporting was dead.”
“The driver didn’t notice it wasn’t him?” Xavier asks.
“He’s been interviewed since we informed the authorities that he is in fact not dead. According to the driver, he had no idea. His official stance is that when they left the facility, Blackwell was alive. Surveillance cameras back it up. They show him climbing into the van under his own power and the van driving away. The driver’s report goes on to say that he was knocked unconscious during the accident, and the assumption is whatever happened that resulted in a living Blackwell being replaced by a blackened corpse must have happened when he was incapacitated,” I say.
“And they believed him?” Xavier asks.
“Apparently. No charges have been brought up. The whole matter is still kind of in a legal gray area. Technically, no one has proven that Darren Blackwell is alive. They didn’t capture him after he had talked to you and he hasn’t been seen since. All they have to go on is my testimony.”
“Who was the body?” Xavier asks. “How does no one know someone went missing?”
“That’s the part that’s been bothering me the most,” I say. “A person disappeared. He was taken and murdered and used as a prop. And nobody noticed. Now there’s no way we’re ever going to know who that was. The body was cremated and scattered.”
“We’ll figure out who it was,” Xavier says.
“We will?” I ask.
“Of course,” he shrugs. “It’s what we do. That’s our coloring book.”
I nod. I like the idea of a big divinely endowed coloring book. It’s a good way to look at life. And anything that helps make things make sense to Xavier makes me feel better. I glance over at him and watch as he presses his back to a tree and walks heel-to-toe to another tree, pivots around, and repeats the movement to a third tree.
“Xavier?” I ask when he starts the fourth side of the square.
“Hmm?” He looks briefly confused and goes back over the line backwards before starting up again.
“Am I one of your colors?”
Xavier stops and looks at me. His head tilts to the side, then he takes a few steps closer.
“You don’t know?” he asks.
“Everybody thought you were so close to Lakyn and that you were devastated by her murder,” I say. “But you just said she was just a
