110. The End Is the Beginning

“We’re leaving.”

Just like that, another story is over.

Just like that, another chapter ends.

“What?”

“This is how it works,” Poe tells me. “I’ve seen it with others. I mean—it just happens. People suddenly leave. Someone loses a job, and then their family moves. Or they get a bigger or better job somewhere else.”

“It’s over,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s over.”

It’s been three days since it all happened. I haven’t been back at school. I’ve done nothing the last few days. That includes sleeping. That also includes keeping my sanity.

I left it by those falls when the pastor fell over to his death.

It’s graduation day, and I’m meeting Poe outside by the track field.

“What’s over?”

“The pastor. He’s dead.”

Poe laughs.

“I’m not kidding.”

“Shut up, Chris.”

“No. The day after I saw you—it happened. I saw it because—because I did it. I killed him.”

So I tell her in a hurried whisper. I tell her while she looks at me and shakes her head and keeps shaking it.

“That’s impossible,” Poe says. “Why are you making this up?”

“I’m not.”

“It’s not going to change anything.”

“What isn’t?”

“This—your story.”

“I’m not making this up, Poe.”

“I might never see you again after today, and you’re doing this.”

“I’m not doing anything.” I don’t understand why she doesn’t believe me. “Listen—it really happened. Just like I said. Remember when you wouldn’t believe me about Jocelyn.”

“So go inside.”

“What?”

“Go inside the gym. Then come back and look me in the face and tell me you’re not lying.”

“Poe—”

“I saw him this morning.”

“You saw who?”

“The pastor.”

Now it’s me who thinks she’s lying.

But I’m already running to the gym where the ceremony is going on, where the graduates have already marched, where somebody is probably giving them a nice pep talk before they head out into the big dark world.

Even before I enter the open doors, I hear his voice.

I stop and listen and know this cannot be happening.

It can’t be.

It’s not real.

I move through the opened double doors and see the crowd and the platform and then I see him.

Pastor Jeremiah Marsh.

Talking and saying something that sounds really seriously wonderful.

And as if he knows, as if he can just feel that I’m in the room, he grins.