Page 247 of Haunt Me

“What are you sayi—?”

“I let you down completely. I should have been here for you to cry in my arms. I should have picked up your pieces. I should have known something was wrong.”

She doesn’t say anything for a second, her throat working.

“I should have saved you,” I suddenly scream. “Sorry,” I murmur, mortified.

All my frustration and pain should really learn to warn me before they come out of me like that. Like a tidal wave.

She shrugs, as if she’s saying ‘scream if you want’. So I do.

“I should have known! I should—I should have been the one to save you, Eden.”

“You did,” Eden replies calmly. “You kept me alive, Isaiah, you kept me sane.” I take a breath. “You kept my mind in one piece, and you stitched my heart together.”

“If I did that, then you must know that you keptmebreathing. Kept me above water. You saved me so much more than I ever saved you,” I tell her quietly.

I reach out my hand, empty, to her. My fingers are trembling slightly.

She looks at it and hesitates. I wait her out.

Finally, she puts her hand in mine, and my fingers close around hers, dwarfing them. I breathe out a sigh. Even this small thing makes me feel as if a wound is closing. As if I’m somehow closer to being complete.

“Tell me a story,” she tells me.

Oh, I know a good one. “This story is about a girl and a boy sitting under a tree,” I say.

“And?” She is smiling, as if it’s silly. It is. But also it’s not.

“And nothing happens,” I reply. “He loves music, but he doesn’t write any songs. He definitely doesn’t get broken enough, so that he ends up having enough material inside him for albums and albums of them. And more songs coming and coming, and not stopping.”

She’s laughing now. Laughing is good. I mean, I still can’t breathe, but as long as she is laughing, I’m good.

“Stop it,” she says.

But I can’t, I’m on a roll now. I close my eyes, drop my head back.

“And she,” I continue, “she is as she always was. Perfect. No need to change her story into a fairytale. She is the fairytale. She is paradise.”

I think I am writing a song.

Eden stops laughing. “This is such a horrible story,” she says. “Not to mention a lie. She… she would need so much to change in her story for it to be a fairytale.”

I can’t speak; I just squeeze her hand so hard I hear her knuckles pop.

“Sorry,” I say.

“I think I have a better ending for your story,” Eden says. “The boy, he… He’s been through a tremendous amount of pain—they both have. But their heads are both above the water now.”

I turn to look at her. I want to apologize for that music video. I would never in a million years have released it live if I had known she was there, watching. How traumatic must it have been for her. How horrible.

“I didn’t know that’s how you thought of me, Isaiah,” she says, reading my mind, as usual. “As someone who is sinking and sinking, alone. I am not that person. And I wasn’t, not even back then.”

“Why?” I croak.

“You know why: I had you. So, since you suck at telling stories, let me tell it correctly. They save each other; they get out of the water. They end up warm and safe on firm land. The land is called faith.”

I inhale sharply through my nose.

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