no business being here, but no matter how I try to continue forward I end up going backward and returning to this grave.
I glance down at James Cohen. Which is it, dude? Would you have gone home or would you have taken a chance and talked to the crazy girl?
“The dandelion is calling your name. Can’t you hear it?” She rests her wrists on her bent knees and flicks the yellow weed back and forth in her hand like a pendulum, then switches her tone. “Hey you, guy over there...come here.”
Her mock dandelion voice is seductive. “You know you want to.”
Because I have no idea how to say no to a talking flower, I walk over and drop to the ground next to her in the shade and I swear the temperature drops twenty degrees. “You look familiar.”
“No, I don’t.”
She has chin-length purple hair that curls in. A fake red rose barrette pulls up one side of her hair and something nags at me like a bad memory stuck in déjà vu mode. I’ve seen her before, only I can’t figure out where. “Yeah, I know you.”
“No, you don’t.” She moves her jaw, exposing her neck. “Put your chin up so I can see if you’re nice.”
“Are you saying we’ve never met?”
“I’m saying put your chin up. Do you make everything complicated or is it just with strangers in cemeteries?”
She’s a petite thing. Very feminine in a white tank and cut-off jeans, but she possesses a commanding presence, bordering on hypnotic. Why I’m doing this, I don’t know, yet I lift my jaw and jerk when she tickles my skin with the flower. She lowers it then pinches her lips.
“Well?” I ask.
“The dandelion says you’ll live a long life, your lucky number is seventeen, and the way to say cat in Chinese is mao.”
“Says all that, does it?”
“Dandelions never lie.” She wildly gestures to the area near her neck. “You should wash before you go anywhere. You’ve got yellow underneath. So, what do you think, is Lydia the understated type or did her husband run off with the money from the insurance policy?”
“What’s your name?”
“Not Lydia. Answer the question.”
Out of all those in the area we’re in, this is the simplest tombstone. Gray stone. Black lettering stating Lydia’s name, birthdate and the day she died. Nothing else. No loving mother, sister or friend. No angel wings or harps or flowers drawn in for effect.
Not-Lydia reaches over and tears out the grass encroaching on the marker. It’s not an irritated motion, but it’s done with enough care that it finally feels weird to be at the cemetery by the grave of someone I had no relationship with. This place should be for those who want to remember. Maybe now I’ll stop coming. “Who was Lydia to you?”
“Didn’t know her.”
My head whips in her direction. “What?”
“Didn’t. Know. Her.”
My insides completely bottom out. This girl had given me a reason to stay away and now it’s gone.
“Answer the question,” she prods.
James Cohen has the word beloved underneath his name and his marker is upright, standing easily two feet in the air. His picture is engraved on it and his image is nothing like the memory of him burned into my brain.
There’s a stark loneliness to Lydia’s stone that I wouldn’t have noticed before James Cohen. “It wasn’t her choice.”
“I agree,” she says in a small voice. “Lydia would have wanted more.”
We’re silent and the wind rustles through the leaves above us. School starts tomorrow. The first day of my senior year. I had plans for how this year was supposed to turn out, but the death of a complete stranger changed me and I don’t like it. I pray nightly that my life will return to exactly how it was before.
“Who did you lose?” She circles the conversation back to me.
This guy haunts me. To the point where I’m starting to believe that ghosts do exist. “Someone.” Someone I didn’t know.
She nods like I told her something deep. “Yeah. That sucks. You know, they wouldn’t want you to grieve like this. They’d want you to move on. Live and let live and all that.”
And all that. I chuckle and dip my head, yanking down the bill of my cap. I have no idea what James Cohen would have wanted. Not a clue. “Why are you here?”
She twirls the flower. “I like dandelions.”
“For real. Who’d you lose?”
“No one here.” She meets my eyes and I’m drawn in. They’re gray—a color I’ve never seen before on a girl. This is crazy. I know her somehow and it’s like an itch in my brain that I can’t scratch because I can’t peg her. How could I forget someone so strikingly gorgeous?
A car honks and a woman slips out the driver’s side of the beat-up, multitoned, two-door piece of crap. She’s a thin bleached blonde about my older sister’s age, except this lady doesn’t scream stay-at-home mom with two kids.
“Stella!” she yells. “Let’s go, girl.”
Stella. This is Stella. How could I frigging forget Stella? “I do know you. We go to school together. In third grade, you sat beside me and Cooper Higgins and...”
Her spine visibly straightens. “You were saying?”
...and Cooper Higgins called her Trash Can Girl. I mumble a curse and wonder how I can somehow rewind the conversation. I meet the one person who’s been able to block the images of blood pumping out of an artery and I almost call her trash. Slick, moron. Real slick.
Stella stands and brushes off the dirt from her butt. “See you at school tomorrow, Jonah. Or maybe I won’t since I’m so memorable.”
She knew who I was the entire time. The black sludge inhabiting my veins forms fingers and grips my soul. I had this feeling a few times before in my life—before James Cohen.
One of them was when I spotted Stella crying underneath the slide on the playground in third grade. I told myself she wasn’t crying because Cooper had made fun of her clothes and because I had laughed at his joke, but deep down I knew I was wrong. And as I was back then, I’m paralyzed as to how to atone for it.
Stella eases into the passenger side of the car and I wait, hoping she’ll look once in my direction. The car vibrates as it turns right onto the narrow road, and Stella keeps staring straight ahead.
When am I ever going to learn? Or change? Or...I hate this. I snap off my baseball cap and cram my fingers into my hair. The ground beneath me feels unstable and I’m tired of walking on sinking sand. Why did everything have to change?
Stella
Careful
