“Okay,” I say, steeling myself before flipping my screen back for everyone to see. I turn the volume up and click play, then hold my breath for two minutes and forty-seven seconds.
The room is silent for the first part, which is mostly a slideshow of Addy in their lives. When it gets to her and Eleanor playing together, learning cheer routines and high-fiving at Badger games, I can literally feel the air move and lightness fill the room. Mr. Trombley chuckles as the video shows his youngest daughter attempting a cartwheel, but his hand grips at his heart when the next scene is his middle daughter physically holding his youngest through an entire flip just to prove to her that she can do it.
There are slow dances together, Addy standing on top of Eleanor’s feet, and then there’s a scene where both Morgan and Eleanor hide in a box to surprise their parents because Addy told them to. Her voice can be heard between the lyrics of Eleanor’s favorite song, and it’s as if Addy is singing along with it, her cadence made for song. It’s her essence, simply the way her words come out. She breathes life and music, and from a quick survey of the people around me, she makes it impossible not to smile.
God, I wish I’d known her better.
The video fades to a single photo at the end, from this year. It’s Addy sitting on Eleanor’s knee while she poses with both arms up, ready to cheer, and she’s wearing her sister’s away uniform while Eleanor is in her home blues. It’s about three sizes too big on Addy, and if she stood, it would probably slip right off. But this is the moment Eleanor was telling me about. It’s the last sliver of hope to keep her from making rash decisions in her time of grief that will only fill her with regret later.
“She loved to watch you cheer,” Eleanor’s mom says, sniffling with emotion behind me.
I close my computer and turn to face them all, my eyes catching Morgan’s first. She nods through teary eyes and gives me a thumbs-up that she keeps close to her chest. I hope she’s right and this did the job it was meant to do. Their parents thank me for putting something so special together, and I hand over the laptop when Mr. Trombley asks if he can play it again so he can pause on a few of the pictures.
It’s Eleanor I’m the most interested in, though. Her chin rests on her knee, bouncing as she gnaws at her thumb, eyes transfixed on the empty space between me and her. I wave my hand, slicing through the air, and she doesn’t react. My shoulders deflate, but I try again, waving longer this time. Her eyes shift to mine eventually, and they are full of fear.
“I don’t know if I can do any of this without her,” she says, her voice bleeding with ache and sorrow, barely audible but enough that it stops everyone in the room.
Her parents pause the video and set my computer down so they can tend to their daughter, and Morgan slides an arm around Eleanor in an attempt to move her rigid body into an embrace. Eleanor shakes her head, slow at first but her movements grow more fitful and unnerved with every beat of her heart.
“I can’t do any of it without her,” she repeats.
“You won’t be,” I say. That’s really the message of all of this. None of them have to go on without her. They carry her inside.
Tears rush to fill her eyes, spilling over to her cheeks until they drip from her jaw.
“Honey,” her mom says, wiping them away with her palm.
“She’s not here,” Eleanor says, her eyes still locked on mine, lips quivering.
I know what she means, but I also know that in some ways, she’s wrong. Swallowing hard, I dig deep for the right thing to say, something that will give her faith. She needs something to believe in, a way to talk to Addy. That will give her strength.
“Addy is. She always will be.”
In six words, I manage to break down the last of the dam as tears pour out of Eleanor, along with all the pain she has been too afraid to walk through on her own. I get to my knees and wrap my arms around her, bringing her to the floor where she falls into my body and sobs in my lap. Morgan moves next to her and rubs her back while her parents look on. Every single one of us is crying. We mourn the young spirit who’s missing but left behind so much good.
But after an hour of tears and sharing stories and laughter, and even long minutes with no words at all as those thoughts and feelings sink in, I believe Addy gets her way.
She is. And she always will be.
Twenty-Three
“For the record, I don’t think any of this is a good idea.”
I’m not wrong. Jake knew that at some point today Eleanor would need a spark. I kinda thought maybe a poster with her name on it, or T-shirts we all could wear. Jake had other ideas.
I’ve already lost the bet, so what he has planned is one hundred percent straight from the heart, if you can call a six-foot-three bare-assed naked guy sprinting across a cheer mat heartfelt.
Jake swears you can.
“Dude, these sweatpants are really riding up my crotch.” He squats as he stands along the balcony railing next to me and I move over a few feet because .
