Effortless

When they first meet, she tells him she is a vampire. But he never really knows because the next day she's a fae and last week and yesterday she was just a normal human girl. Bu today she's wearing her Chuck Taylors and a short formal dress and little martian doodleboppers on her head.

"I think you're a little lost," he says as he sits next to her, unsure of whether he's talking to the alien antennae or the girl wearing them.

"I think I am," she says, and he's unsure if it's the doodleboppers or the girl who says it.


#


Looking back on that day, he realizes there are so many more things he should have said. If he could have done it all again, he would go back and ask her what she meant by that ubiquitous, "I think I am."

This morning, it took him half an hour just to leave his driveway. Even now, he can feel every fiber of his being screaming at him to turn around.

It just isn't right. It just isn't right.

And he just can't stop thinking. He has no right to be going there now.


#


Looking back on that day, he realizes there are so many more things he should have said. If he could have done it all again, he would go back and ask her what she meant by that ubiquitous, "I think I am."

This morning, it took him half an hour just to leave his driveway. Even now, he can feel every fiber of his being screaming at him to turn around.

It just isn't right. It just isn't right.

And he just can't stop thinking. He has no right to be going there now.


#


That had been the day before Thanksgiving of last year, and when he visits his grandparents again for Christmas she's right where he left her, sitting by the statue in the park next to the old swing set.

"You changed your hair," is all he can think to say as he's confronted with the shock of pink adorning her head that overshadows the pink of her chilled cheeks.

"It's not mine," she says with a smile, but doesn't get up.

He stands there awkwardly with his hands in his pockets, smiling as he watches their breath puff out in little clouds by their mouths.

She sits there, smiling and waiting for him to ask the inevitable.

"Okay, fine," he relents. "How is it not yours?"

She laughs, the explosive little bells twisting and twirling out of her mouth and he can't stop himself from smiling even wider.

"You really want to know?" she teases and leans forward to him.

"Yes, I really want to know," and he finds that what had been light teasing has turned into a genuine desire to know her story.

She sits up and preens, glad for his attention. "Okay then. Are you ready?"

"Yes, I'm ready."

He takes a step towards her.

"Alright then."

She reaches up, and carefully removes her hat. He watches as she folds it carefully and lays it neatly beside her. And then she reaches up--and takes her hair off.

"It's a wig!" she finally exclaims and her glee is contagious as she jumps up.

"Oh..." He grabs her as she flings herself at him and gives her a little twirl, enciting another twinkling giggle from her lips. "Oh. Oh my god. What--what happened?"

She grows solemn for a moment, and he's worried he's overstepped some unspoken boundary between them. But then the bright smile returns and she wags a finger in his face, "Now I don't have to worry about going bald! And," she added, as she detangled herself from him, "I can have whatever color hair I want."

She reaches for her wig and carefully adjusts it upon her head and settles her hat on her head.

"Now come on," she says, turning to him and reaching out a hand, "Let's go play on the jungle gym like we're kids again."

He wants to argue, wants to tell her that in many ways, they still are kids. But his mouth disobeys him and suddenly he's reaching for her hand and she's taking off, running like an exotic pink bird in the bleak snow.


#


"Clementine, tangerine, carrot, orange..."

They were lying together on the living room rug in his grand parents' house. His grand mother and grand father were out for the day, running errands and had encouraged him to invite a friend over. He was nothing if not obedient.

"Clementine?" she asked, turning to him.

"Didn't you ever see that movie?"

"I don't see many movies anymore," she answers airly, twirling her wand in her thin fingers.

She had shown up on his doorstep with short orange hair (another wig) and fairie wings pinned to her coat. Her wand was topped with an iridescent star with ribbions trailing down. She had tapped him on the head and given him a kiss and granted him three wishes.

His first was to have peanut butter chocolate milkshakes, and so they had trekked off in the snow to the nearest grocery store fifteen minutes away for ingredients and had returned back to the house.

He had yet to redeem his other two wishes, but he really couldn't think of anything else he wanted with her so close to him, clouding his brain with pixy dust and talk about wishes and not seeing movies.

"I think," he said, "I could lie here forever."

"But time doesn't stop," she said sadly.

Yeah, I know, he thinks. But for now he's just content to lie there with his head touching hers and their fingertips barely brushing.


#


"I still owe you a wish," she whispers, as he wraps his arms around her.

She's so thin, he's afraid she'll just disappear into nothingness, leaving him alone.

"What are you thinking?" she asks, her gaunt arms pulling him closer.

"I'm not thinking about anything."

"Liar. We should talk about this."

He turns to her. "What's there to talk about."

"Um. You know… This. Us. What just happened." The look on her face is surprisingly serious and open.

His mouth feels dry and he's tired and he doesn't really want to talk. "Do we have to?"

"I just-"

"I wish that every year on the day we first met, it would snow wherever we are."

She's quiet for a bit, and he's almost afraid to look at her.

"Okay," she says quietly, and tightens her hold on his torso.

They're just kids, he thinks hopelessly. How is she supposed to keep that promise to him?


#


They spend New Years' holed up in his room, listening to the sounds of the party downstairs and of the neighbors set off fireworks. Her wig tonight was just a plain brown, but she's still as radiant as she was those times when she had pink, blue, orange, red hair.

He had thought she was beautiful when she had first twirled herself into his arms wearing a simple white dress, but now she is doubly so, wrapped up in his old blanket and sitting on the same bed he slept in last night and playing with his old teddy bear.

"I am Mister Bear," she says in a deep, growly voice and smiles at him.

"Oh, you are, are you?" He brushes a kiss against her temple. He hasn't been able to get enough of her. Her very being is intoxicating and he loves her. Loves the feeling of her skin, loves her wigs, loves her mercurial moods.

Loves the way she is looking at him right now, at this very moment.

"Yes I am," she continues in that same voice. "And I have something very important I need to tell you."

And she looks at him, and the room suddenly spins around him.

"Whatever it is," he says, rushing forward to kiss her. "It doesn't matter, right?" He sprinkles kisses on her face like rain, over her collarbone like a fine necklace, down her arms like the glitter she wears in summer. "We've got each other," he kisses into her skin.

She falters, and it's the first time he's ever seen doubt in her clear eyes.

But it's gone faster than the beating of his pounding heart and she's kissing him back and wrapping her gaunt arms around his neck and whispering, "Yes, yes, yes," and it's okay again.


#


They promise to write to each other as winter break ends and they go their separate ways, back to towns that don't know what lies between them.

He kisses her and promises to see her in June. She smiles at him and kisses him back.

It's only after he's in the car on the way to the airport, listening to his grandparents talk about how he should visit during Spring Break and he's growing up too fast that he realizes she hadn't promised him the same.


#


At first her letters arrive regularly, at least once a week, but then they start arriving farther and farther apart.

At night he lies in bed and stares up at his ceiling and wonders if she's met someone else or if she's just lost interest.

He still checks the mailbox every day when he gets back from school, and one day he's rewarded with an envelope with no return address, but filled with glitter and a small note scrawled on the back of a napkin.

"Sorry I haven't written. I miss you."

For the rest of the week, he can't stop smiling at the thought that she still remembers him.


#


June arrives too slowly. For the last several weeks of school he's a zombie, just going through the motions. When he finally arrives back at his grandparent's house, he's barely had time to give them a proper greeting before he's off running towards the park.

He runs the statue where she has sat waiting for him every year that they've known each other, anticipating her smiling face and whatever strange story she may have to tell him.

I love you, he thinks, the words bubbling up from his stomach to exit his mouth in a loud laugh.

I love you, he thinks, and it makes all the months of waiting okay.

I love you, he thinks as gates of the park loom in front of him.

I love you, he thinks as he catches sight of the statue of the boy that never grew up.

I love you, he thinks, as he looks desperately for her.

I love you, he thinks as he realizes she's not there.

I love you, he cries several hours later in his bedroom. I waited for you, he thinks. Where were you?


#


The summer passes. He spends his time doing housework for his grandparents, cleaning out their garage, then their basement, and finally their attic.

On Tuesdays he goes with his grandmother to her bingo game.

On Thursdays he goes with his grandfather to war memorial, where they make rubbings of dead friends and strangers. "Good men," his grandfather says, and he feels more dead inside than the cold marble of the imposing monument in front of him.

On Sundays they go to the old theater and watch the matinee and then get ice cream.

He doesn't miss her.


#


It's a two months short of being a year to the day he last saw her and he hasn't thought about her at all.

He didn't look for her in the park that last day before leaving to go back to school.

He didn't check the mail box each day after getting home from school. And if he did, it was only to help his parents out, who were probably expecting very important correspondence from…somebody.

He didn't go back to the park during Thanksgiving when he and his parents are visiting his grandparents again. He didn't look for at all.

He's forgotten all about her and the way she smelled and the way her small body felt in his arms and the way her skin tasted and how her laugh sounded like bells.

He doesn't remember her eyes or her mouth. That's why it doesn't make any sense that the woman standing at his door looks so familiar. Because he certainly doesn't remember those eyes and that mouth from when they were on her.

Cancer. The word tastes foul in his mouth.

"She always talked about you," her mother says, handing him two envelopes. "We hope to see you there."

Her eyes are sad in a way her daughter's never were.


#


He opens the first letter after an entire month of staring at it sitting on his dresser.

He opens it, and then can't even bring himself to read it. He's numb and cold and he carries it around in his back pocket. His parents tip toe around him and the rest of the world starts to curl up and turn grey. But then he remembers what time of year it is, and realizes the world is just going about its business. It hasn't even realized that she's gone.

Maybe it doesn't care.

A week later he opens it and reads it.

Things make too much sense.

"Now I don't have to worry about going bald!" she had exclaimed, and it had all been a big joke to him.

He remembers the bear voice talking to him in his room. "I have something very important I need to tell you," it had said, and he had thought she wanted to break up with him.

She had been dying, and he wouldn't even listen to her. He loved her, but he never really knew her at all.

The second envelope contains an invitation to a funeral. Her funeral.

After reading it, he feels tired. Drained. He gets in bed and goes to sleep. He's vaguely aware of his mother coming in to check on him, of her bringing him meals he doesn't touch.

He finally gets out of bed a week later. The first thing he sees is that invitation.

"Are you going to go?" His mother's voice is soft and floats from the door. She stand away from him, as if she could break him by getting too near.

He's afraid if he opens his mouth to answer her that he'll vomit.

"You still have a week to decide," she urges him, but she's gone before he has a chance to answer.


#


Afterwards, he's walking back to his car. He can feel the gazes on his back. None of them know who he is, and he can feel their curiosity threatening to overwhelm whatever they should be thinking. It's perfectly understandable. He had never met her mother before that day on his doorstep. He didn't know who here were her friends and who was family.

He doesn't bother to talk to any of them. They wouldn't know what was between them. He keeps on walking to his car, his breath puffing out in front of him like the clouds that hang heavily over head.

As he reaches his car door, he pauses. His cheek is wet, but he doesn't remember crying. He looks up.

It's snowing.