THERE, IN THE SUNSET, WAS a statue that stood in silhouette, the sun breaking all around it like a halo of golden rays. How could I not notice it? Maybe that’s what drew Mallory to it in the first place.
My feet made their way, no longer concerned with keeping to the pathways or stepping over the graves. The closer I came to it, the more sure I was of everything. I was sure that this was the statue in Mallory’s picture. I was sure I was supposed to be here. I was sure that anything I had said or done or thought leading up to this moment was justified. I was sure I was doing the right thing. I was sure, most of all, of myself.
I circled the statue. It stood tall, on a platform. I looked at it from all angles. It wasn’t like any of the other statues around. It wasn’t a famous saint or an angel with wings. Not any deity I was familiar with. It was just a woman. An ageless woman in a draped garment with flowing, shoulder-length hair. She was larger than life-size, and she didn’t carry anything with her that would give any clue as to what or whom she was supposed to represent.
We stood in front of her and looked up at her face. She gazed down, almost as if she was looking directly at us.
“Emily,” Chris said.
“What?”
He pointed to the base of the platform. There was a small, rectangular, bronze plaque attached to the stone.
EMILY
DAUGHTER, SISTER, FRIEND
That was all it said. No last name, no dates.
“Wow,” was all I could manage to say.
Maybe the statue really was just a person, an ordinary human being who once lived and who was once loved enough for her family and friends to erect a statue in her memory.
I readied the camera and stood where I imagined Mallory must’ve also stood. Chris walked away from me and the statue, out of what would be the frame if I was really taking a picture, and leaned against a nearby oak whose trunk was so enormous that if he lay down in front of it lengthwise, I think the trunk would still be wider.
I was supposed to take a picture. But as I brought the camera to my face and looked through, the magic was gone. I lowered the camera, and looked with my own two eyes, and I felt the magic simmer around the edges of my vision once again.
I raised the camera again, peered through the viewfinder, and pressed the button, as was my plan. But I couldn’t fight this sneaking suspicion that somewhere along the way I had been missing the point.
I walked over to where Chris was standing, and glanced back at the Emily statue.
“Get what you needed?” he asked.
When I looked at him, I realized I hadn’t thought about those questions that had been buzzing around my mind these past two days. “Yeah, I think so.”
• • •
Once we made it out of the maze of the cemetery and were standing on the other side of the gates, planted back in reality, Chris was the first to speak. He had his hand placed over his stomach. “Are you hungry at all?”
“Starving,” I answered.
“Good, me too,” he said, relieved. “What do you feel like?”
“Anything without a face. I’m vegetarian,” I elaborated.
“I love vegetarian restaurants.”
“Well, I doubt we’ll find any around here.”
No sooner had I spoken the words than he was on his phone, tapping away.
“The Green House,” he said, tilting the screen toward me. “Five-minute walk.”
“Really?” I asked in disbelief.
He shrugged. “Wanna try it?”
We made it there in four. The outside of the building was painted a leafy green, and there was an outdoor seating area cordoned off with a row of live bamboo plants. We were greeted at the door by a girl with floral tattoos up and down her arms. Her smile was warm as she led us to a table that looked out onto the street.
She pulled a lighter out of her apron pocket and reached for the candle that was sitting in the center of our table.
I read my menu in the flickering light, and tried not to stare at Chris again, at the way the candlelight made him look so vibrant and alive and gorgeous.
“What looks good to you?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, fighting the voice in my head that wanted to answer: You. “I’ve never been to an actual vegetarian restaurant before.” These were foods I’d never tried, and had barely even heard of, except for on TV. Like Chili Roasted Garlic Black Bean Hummus with Pita Chips. Crispy Baked Tofu Lettuce Wraps with Peanut Sauce. Super-Loaded Veggie Ramen. Eggplant Lasagna Rollups.
Chris’s eyes widened as he leaned across the table toward me just slightly. “Are you serious?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, the vegetarian cuisine in Carson is mainly cheese fries.”
I laughed, but he didn’t.
“Oh my god, where do we even begin?” he said, studying his menu with a new intensity. “We just need a good strategy.”
“A strategy?”
“Yes.” He continued flipping through the pages of the menu. “Okay, I think the thing to do is order a bunch of dishes and split them so you can try as many things as possible.”
“Um, okay,” I agreed.
We took turns ordering something from each section of the menu. The waitress arched her pierced eyebrow when we first started rattling off the list of dishes, but then smiled like she was in on some secret joke.
In a short time, our entire table was filled with plates. We barely spoke while we ate, save for all the sound effects, the “Mms” and “Yums” murmured through full mouths.
I’d tasted some of everything and I’d arrived at a verdict. “Okay, it’s official. I want to marry these tofu lettuce wraps,” I announced. “But only if the peanut sauce can come too.”
“And leave the eggplant things in the cold? Really?”
“The heart wants what it wants,” I said, shrugging as I took another bite.
“Okay, then I’m marrying the Vegan Taco Flatbread,” he added. “Wait, or the Quinoa Stuffed Banana Peppers.”
“Mm, yeah.”
The waitress appeared again as we sat there swimming in the table of half-eaten food. “Boxes?” she asked.
On the way back to the car, we took our time, our footsteps unhurried and loose. I watched him looking up at the sky as we walked side by side. I had this sense that, for the first time ever, I was finally a part of the world and not just in it. I wanted to hold on to this feeling, whatever it was.
Because for a moment, a sliver of a moment, I wasn’t thinking about anything. I had forgotten about Mallory, and the gas station wall, and the spring break party, and Bowman’s, and my bike tires, and the cemetery gates, and the whole reason we were here to begin with. I wanted to stop in the middle of the sidewalk and grab on to Chris’s arm and make him hold still too. I wanted to put everything on pause while I memorized what it felt like to just be me.
I swung my arm as I walked, so that it bumped against his. He shifted his gaze from the stars to me. I smiled at him as I hooked one of my fingers around one of his.
He looked down at our hands, our fingers weaving together. “Is this all right?” he asked.
My heart was pounding so hard, I could barely respond, but to murmur, “Mm-hmm.”
I didn’t care that Chris was trans. He was Chris. And there was nothing in the world I would rather be doing in this moment than walking down the street holding his hand.
• • •
As we drove home in the dark, the windows all rolled down again, I kept finding myself smiling for no reason. The radio was turned down low, and it was the perfect kind of evening—cool and breezy. I was tired, but in a good way.
Something had happened today. Maybe many things had happened.
I couldn’t say what exactly it was, but I suddenly felt as if I’d known Chris for a lot longer than just a couple of weeks. I looked at him now, and it seemed like so much had changed from only a few hours earlier when he’d approached me at Bargain Mart and I’d felt so weirded out, or in the car ride to New Pines, when I couldn’t stop myself from staring at him, trying to find traces of what I’d seen through that window. But now, as I looked at him, I wasn’t seeing any of that.
“Hey, Chris?” I said. I could be honest with him. I could explain the entire situation. I was going to. It was better to get it all out in the open. But then as he turned toward me and our eyes met, I couldn’t do it.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I answered. “It’s just that today was the best day I’ve had in a long time.”
He nodded and said, “Me too.”