‘You dying in your twenties is not romantic,’ he told me, his eyes dense black, half in shadow. He shook his head. ‘It would be a waste.’
I remember that we were in my living room at the time, and that I didn’t say anything back, but I thought about it for a long time after, the word waste swirling like an oil slick. I knew he was right. It would be a waste. But when I’d said I would die in my twenties, it was never about the romance of it, the old story of the young artist perishing before her time. It was more of a knowing. A knowing that it was my time.
I die on the eve of the day I was born, twenty-nine, almost thirty. I’ve always liked the numbers twenty-nine, two and nine, much more than I’ve ever liked thirty, three and zero: two is red, and nine dark pink; three is uneasy green and zero is empty white. But contrary to what you might be thinking, I don’t do it on purpose. Not really.
Then again, maybe I do. We’re made up of myriad choices, aren’t we?
I shrug. Shiver. It’s cold here, on the wet stern deck, on the edge of this decade and the next. Beneath me, it is dark, icebergs suspended in the grey. It is all spreading. And I look across at Brooke and she winks and I smile and it hurts my face.
I hold my breath. Do we choose to breathe?
I don’t know. I still don’t know. I wish you’d told me the answer. I wish you’d told me a lot of things.
Like that when I finally see the green flash, it will be equally amazing and dull.
Or that life is a series of words and the punctuation is in all the wrong places and when you want to take a breath someone has removed the comma so you, have to take one there and if you didn’t too bad it’s already, gone.
Maggie, I wish you’d told me. At sea, no one can hear you scream.