Node: 010
Days pass. Matthew doesn’t send Sierra with me but I want him to. When I can and others aren’t watching, I show her the book and its pictures. I speak the names of the things I touch. I wait. I wait for Sierra to truly wake, but sometimes the waiting seems endless.
Every day, I go out and look. I am not alone. Jetta, Linc, Austin or another is with me, but they are not Luke. They are not Sierra. They can never fill the empty place.
To believe I am not the reason Luke left, to believe Luke will return, it’s why I breathe. It’s why I hope.
Each morning as I climb the stone stairs, I ask myself the questions. “Is it here? Does it hurt? Do you feel?”
Today, for the first time, I speak my answers aloud, as if doing so will bring Luke back. “Yes, it’s here,” I say, touching my breast and feeling my beating heart beneath my fingers. “Yes, it hurts. It hurts so much. It hurts so much I wonder if anything will ever fill the vacant place within me.”
I want to believe my words. I do. As I unbar the steel doors and let in the sunlight, I don’t wait or listen. Instead, I run out and shout as loud and long as I can. “Luke, where are you?”
Birds start and fly from the trees, but otherwise there is only silence. I turn to the stone ghosts and follow their ruins to their broken heights.
The secret burns within me. The secret of us. I no longer care who I tell it to. I have to tell someone—anyone. I want to tell it to the fading echoes of my words, whisper it to the wind in the trees. Speaking it aloud will free me and I want to be free. Free of it. Free to do what I must do.
“Luke, where are you?” I repeat, though this time my words are a whisper that scarcely escapes my throat.
As if in response, Austin comes out into the sunlight. He’s with me today. We’re to go out and look.
Stepping toward him, I start to speak but there’s no voice to my words. It’s as if my body believes that I will betray Luke even though my mind knows that I won’t or at least I don’t think I will. I tell myself that it’s one thing to think something and another thing entirely to act on that something, even as my body continues to disobey me.
I’m falling now and there’s nothing I can do about it. My legs won’t move. My arms won’t reach. My voice won’t come.
Austin sees that I’m stumbling and his big hands steady me. His touch is soft and there’s a warmth in his eyes that I’ve never seen before. As I look up at him and he holds me, it’s as if for that moment, he sees me as Sierra does, as Luke did.
“Thank you,” I whisper as he helps me up, my voice starting to return. “Are you ready to go out and look?”
Austin doesn’t reply and it’s not like I really expected him to, but a part of me is disappointed, especially when I look into his eyes and find the spark is gone. Still, the fleeting light gives me hope. Hope that perhaps another of us can be truly born.
The present is. The past was. I am nothing. I am sand blown in the wind.