Closer To The Sun (standard:romance, 8046 words)
Author: 525	Added: Sep 22 2000	Views/Reads: 4312/2554	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A young man experiances and learns about love and death.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

(actually I think it was from fireplace ashes or a burnt briquette he 
found in a barbecue or something) all around his eyes. He had a 
chocolate ice cream cone in his hand and all over his mouth, and he was 
screaming as loud as I had ever heard anyone scream. Something about 
how he needed more dirt and there was not enough dirt in his back yard 
or something. He stopped right in front of my face and was silent for a 
second, like he was trying to work out the fact that he had never seen 
me before, then outta nowhere he screamed 
"DIIIIIRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!" and I almost fell on my ass. Then, as 
fast as he ran in, he ran off in the other direction. At that point a 
girl ran around the corner and ran off in the same direction he had. 
She didn't stop or do any screaming, but she did look at me for a few 
seconds. Now, I had had a couple of girl friends but it was mostly 
schoolyard hair pulling stuff. I didn't really buy the version of love 
that the movies seem to push, and I definitely didn't believe in love 
at first sight, but the first time my eyes met Katy’s, something 
happened. I'm not saying that I fell in love, but I think at that point 
I changed; I understood how someone could fall in love at first sight. 
I ran after them to see what was going on. When I caught up to them, 
she had apparently caught him and wrestled him to the ground.  He was 
still struggling.  The ice cream cone had disappeared at some point, 
but the dirt on the ground was mixing nicely with the mess he already 
had on his face. Once she had him pretty well subdued, she told me, 
"It's just time to take his medication - which he hates doing". She 
said he was "slow," but I assumed she meant that he was retarded 
because physically he looked fast as hell - like a top that had been 
spun as fast as possible and let loose in a small box. Then she gave me 
a smile that was innocent and cunning at the same time and took off. 

4 

I asked Grandma about them, and she told me their names and told me that
they lived down the street a bit. She said that Jessie was my age and 
that Katy was a few years older. According to some kind of neighborhood 
old-lady-gossip communication system, Jessie's "slowness" was 
apparently due to a childhood accident Grandma blamed on his father. 
She also said Katy was a "little trouble maker," and she recommended I 
stay away from the whole family. Of course my reaction was an immediate 
desire to go and get to know them - especially Katy. 

The next chance I got, I took a walk down the street. I didn't know
exactly where they lived but I was just walking and thinking about how 
happy I was to be out of the house of death and away from my mom and 
grandmother. I was brought back to reality by the sound of digging. I 
peeked over a fence and saw Jessie in his back yard trying to get a 
shovel to move dirt from one place to another and not having much 
success. He didn't quite have the coordination, but somehow he had 
achieved pretty much total destruction of the yard. There were holes 
everywhere and piles of dirt all over. Sometimes he would try and get 
on top of a pile but it would be too loose and he would just knock a 
bunch of dirt back into one of the holes. I didn't realize I had been 
leaning on the gate and when I put a bit too much weight on it I fell 
through. He looked over and once he realized what was going on he 
started running straight at me. I scrambled to get up, afraid of 
another screaming incident or God knows what else, but he showed more 
of his exceptional speed and was on me before I could get up. I 
cringed, preparing myself for the worst, but he just grabbed my arm and 
pulled me over to his latest attempt at a dirt pile. He kept saying, 
"Hi" and, "I'm Jessie," and he held his fingers that way that retarded 
people have of holding them. I think there was some drool on those 
fingers too so I was just hoping I wasn't getting very much of it on 
me. He handed me the shovel and asked me to help him dig. I didn't 
really see the point, and it was pretty hot so I tried to change the 
subject. 

I asked him, "Where's Katy?" 

He said, "Kathryn is my sister, I don't know where Kathryn is."  Then he
asked if I wanted to dig, just to make sure I hadn't changed my mind in 
the last five seconds before he went back to it. I sat there and 
watched for a while. Like I said before, he wasn't proficient.  He 
couldn't quite handle the shovel and there wasn't really enough 
organization to accomplish anything. He was very determined though, and 
every now and then he would realize I was there and check with me again 
about whether I wanted to help or not. I would say, “No,” and he would 
go back to focusing on the job at hand. Apparently he was trying to 
make a huge pile of dirt but he had several piles and several holes, 
and even though he was very focused on the job, he couldn't stay 
focused on any particular pile, and most of the time most of the dirt 
he was throwing around just ended up sliding back into one of the many 
holes. I guess it didn't matter.  To me it just looked like a mindless 
time killer anyway. 

I heard a car pull up out front and looked over my shoulder to see what
was going on. Katy got out of the passenger side and, since she wasn't 
chasing her brother down and couldn't see me watching her, I got my 
first really good look at her. I started to understand every cliche, 
sappy, boy-meets-girl description that I had ever heard, read, or seen 
in the movies. I was moved. I could actually feel that my knees were 
physically weak, and I couldn't believe it.  Even at the time the 
thought made me laugh a little. I'm not sure if she was a classic 
beauty or even if one other person would find her beautiful but, of 
course, that didn't matter. She was so beautiful to me. Watching her 
was like going from one extreme to another. Like if you hear some loud 
music, it's cool but not nearly as impressive as when a song gets you 
sucked in, gets kind of quiet, then suddenly hammers you with the 
increase in volume. I had been sucked in by the boring world, it got 
kind of ugly, then suddenly I had been hammered by beauty. 

This classic, time-stands-still moment was broken when she slammed the
car door, leaned over and started screaming at its driver in the most 
violent manner I had ever seen. I think fire actually came out of her 
mouth. My lovely vision had been transformed into something like a 
diner waitress doing some final straw vocal violence at the fry cook, 
at the end of a never-ending shift on her worst day of serving the 
dregs of society. The driver showed her his middle finger; then the car 
screeched off.   She stood up, composed herself, and walked toward the 
house. This scene had definitely pulled me out of my lovey- dovey dream 
state, but, surprisingly enough, I think it made me like her even more, 
which I hadn’t thought was possible. Then Jessie's mom (I guessed) came 
out on the back porch and started calling him. She was big and had one 
of those faces that not only doesn't look feminine anymore but barely 
looks human. I don't know how Katy sprung from this apparent lack of 
fertility. She was wearing an apron that had many nice stains on it, 
but I think blood made up most of the artistry on this canvas. If she 
would have had an oversized cleaver in her hand (and I'm sure that 
cleaver was hanging on a nail in her kitchen somewhere) she could have 
just stepped out of some over dramatic, Italian opera about a butcher. 
Jessie ran to her side where she hugged him to her bosom. On his way he 
kept saying, "Hi mama, hi Mama."  She stroked his hair and said, "Who's 
that?" I imagined that cleaver being jabbed in my direction to indicate 
she was asking about me, and I got a bit scared that I might have 
gotten myself in trouble. I can be oblivious to things sometimes, and I 
suddenly realized that I was basically trespassing here (at least as 
far as she knew). 

Jessie said, "That's my friend, he doesn't like to dig, but I still like
him". I was a bit taken aback, I didn't really know Jessie, but I felt 
that he my have saved me from the wrath of Kong by saying that we were 
friends. I liked him too. She scowled at me and grunted (the cleaver 
returned to a resting position at her side) and said, "Well run along 
then, Jessie has to come in for supper". I contemplated responding but 
nothing came to mind. So I just stood there for another second with my 
hands as deep in my pockets as they would go and my shoulders as close 
to my ears as they would go, then ran off toward the gate. When I got 
to the street I heard something, so I stopped running to listen. It was 
screaming, it was coming from Jessie’s house, and it wasn't Katy. I 
listened a bit closer and I thought I also heard crying. I buried my 
hands in my pockets again and headed to Grandma's. 

5 

The next morning I woke up very early. I was disoriented. I looked
around the room and the predawn light didn't show me anything unusual.  
The room was undisturbed; my sister was sleeping calmly on her bed in 
the room we shared. Then my ears found the reason: I heard my 
grandmother coughing. Not just coughing, but this raspy, deep, 
chronic-sounding coughing, it didn't sound like it was ever going to 
stop. As I heard her struggling to intake air just to fuel the cough, I 
realized she was dying. I've said I can be oblivious but I guess I'm a 
bit self absorbed too. I was worried about leaving my friends for a 
summer and pissed about having to deal with the boredom of hanging out 
in Lakeside, but she was dying. This house would be empty.   She had 
walked these rooms and halls forever but that would suddenly stop. My 
life would go on and in six months she would be unknown, but now she 
was dying. She would no longer exist. I had to stop thinking about it 
before it got to a point where I couldn't stop; shortly thereafter I 
was sure I would go insane. I couldn't imagine my life ending. Then 
nothing. She was dying. I put my pillow over my head and tried to think 
about something else, Katy had occupied my brain most of the time 
lately, but for some reason I thought of Jessie. I wondered if he knew 
about death and if so what his thoughts might be. After a while I took 
the pillow off of my head and the coughing had stopped but I could hear 
the delicate whimpering that I knew was my sister Anne's crying. 

6 

Later that morning at the breakfast table, I asked mom about Grandma
(normally she was here with us). She told me not to worry; then we were 
silent. After a while I told her that I had gone to Jessie’s and about 
the backyard demolition/attempted construction. She didn't say much 
(she rarely did) but she did seem to think it would be a nice thing to 
befriend Jessie. Maybe she was sacrificing her only son to charity, or 
maybe she knew about the death house and she was sacrificing herself to 
save me. I don't know. She did say, "Be careful. You heard what Grandma 
said about them," but I doubted that she put any more weight behind the 
Grandma gossip network than I did. So I finished breakfast and headed 
over to Jessie's. 

7 

I wasn't quite sure what I would do when I got to Jessie's, but I
guessed I would figure it out. This time I was distracted by being able 
to see Jessie. I walked up to the gate and looked over. Jessie was 
standing on one of his soft dirt hills (it was maybe five feet high, 
maybe only four) and he was buried to about mid shin, which is where he 
had apparently stopped sinking. He was wearing nothing but a pair of 
boxer shorts and his arms were stretched out with his palms up. His 
head was leaned back and his eyes were closed. His mouth was open and 
his tongue kind of lolled out of the right corner of his mouth. The sun 
beat down on him. I was amazed - amazed to see him so still but also to 
see him standing there with his vulnerable mortal shell exposed to the 
harshness of the universe. What was he doing? What was he thinking? 

I didn't want to wake him from his self-induced coma but I didn't know
what to do. I finally decided to go up to the door. Maybe his mom would 
announce me and that would bring him back. It was worth facing Kong, 
there was no way I was going to yell or touch Jessie to wake him up. 
For some reason I was afraid he was dead. I know it was impossible to 
die and stay in that position, but my fear was real. I could imagine 
walking up to him slowly and reaching my hand out to touch him and 
giving him a little shake. I could imagine feeling his skin was cold 
the second before his body crumbled to the ground in a lifeless ball, 
like some crumpled up scrap of paper that missed the trash can and was 
just sitting there on the floor, inanimate. I thought that this 
morning’s pre-dawn philosophizing about death had fucked me up. I had 
stopped it before going insane, but obviously it had done some damage. 
I realized I needed to stop it again so I started walking to the front 
door. 

I opened the screen and was about to knock when the door slammed open
(if such a thing is possible) and Katy grabbed me by the wrist and 
whispered, "How deep is your voice?" 

I wrinkled my eyes and said, "Huh?" "That's good enough" she said and
smiled. Next thing I knew I was being dragged down a hall and up some 
stairs and into a room. She picked up a phone receiver and held her 
hand over the mouthpiece then put the whole package, hands, phone and 
all between her knees. She was hunched over and looking up at me and 
said (in that same conspiratorial whisper), "All you have to do is say, 
‘Hello.’" 

I wrinkled my eyes again but there was a phone mouthpiece in my face
before I could say anything. She was looking at me and smiling and 
nodding so I said, "Uh.......... Hello?" 

She put her hand over her mouth to hide the laughter and the phone to
her ear to hear the response. She was still nodding at me. Shortly 
thereafter she moved the phone a bit farther from her ear and laughed 
harder. I could see why she didn't need it that close to her ear; I 
could hear the man on the other end from about five feet away. It 
wasn't clear but I'm pretty sure I heard, "I WILL KILL HIM!"  Then I 
heard the click of the phone being hung up. Then she started laughing 
loud and hard. She kind of slumped down to the floor holding her 
stomach, lay on her side and brought her knees up to the fetal 
position. I could not help smiling. 

Eventually she was released from the clutches of hilarity and seemed to
realize for the first time that I was standing there and would have to 
be dealt with even after she was really through with me. She said "Hi" 
and lit a cigarette. 

I think I managed a "Wha......" and she said, "Oh yeah, that was my
boyfriend. I was just fucking with him". She leaned out the window to 
try and keep the smoke from coming in the room but it wasn’t really 
working. I looked out the window and saw Jessie, still in his Jesus 
Christ pose. I took that opportunity to try and kill two birds with one 
stone, say something intelligible and get an answer about Jessie. 

"What is he doing out there?" 

"Oh I don't know, he's just stupid" she said, then she screamed at him
"JESSSSIEEEEE!!!!!!!! KNOCK IT OFF!!!!!!!!" I cringed, waiting to see 
his body fall lifelessly to the ground. But he just kind of woke up and 
put his arms to his sides and sulked off. "So you're a friend of 
Jessie's, huh?" she asked. 

That concept had helped me the other day and sounded nice this morning,
but I didn't want to say it to Katy for some reason. "Not really.  We 
just met the other day, ya know." 

"Oh yeah, now I remember you." 

I started to say something, but she cut me off and said, "I should call
my boyfriend and calm him down, he's stewed long enough". I stood there 
for a second then realized she was shooing me out of there with her 
facial expression. So I thought I would go and try to find Jessie. 

I went through the kitchen looking for the back door. I didn't see the
cleaver hanging anywhere.  Perhaps I was wrong (It must have been in a 
drawer somewhere). I walked out the back door and didn't see him right 
away, but as I started to look around the mounds of dirt and look in 
the holes, I saw him curled up in a corner of the yard that wasn't 
mounds or dirt (it was a very small corner). He looked very much like 
the lifeless ball I had imagined earlier but I forced myself to go over 
to him. When I got there he looked up and said, "Hi, I'm Jessie." 

I was thankful that he spoke first and that I didn't have to try to wake
him up. I sat down next to him and didn't really know what to say. 
Suddenly as if beyond my control, I said, "Why did you tell your mom 
that I was your friend yesterday?" 

"Because you are my friend, right?" 

"Yeah... sure.... I guess Jessie, but we hardly know each other. How can
we be friends?" 

"Uhhhh you were here and I was here and it was a long time, I liked it
and you helped me dig, you are a good friend," he said. 

"I didn't help you dig." I reminded him. 

"Uuuu huh huh huh huh huh, oh yeah," he laughed, "but you will.  That's
what friends are for, and we are friends." 

I shook my head. "Well, I'll be your friend, but I doubt I will ever
help you dig". He laughed again and I smiled at him, or with him I 
don't know, and he didn't care. Then just as suddenly as the first 
question came to me I said, "Why do you dig Jessie? Are you looking for 
something?" 

He stopped laughing and smiling, and got very serious. I don't think I
had ever seen him serious, it made him look very normal to me and when 
he spoke he sounded very normal. 

"I want to make a big dirt hill and stand on it. I'll be closer to the
sun"................... "I need to be closer to the sun" 

............. Did he actually mean that he wanted....... needed to be
physically closer to the sun? What did he want so badly? Why would 
someone work so hard just to get another three or four feet closer to 
the sun?  That was it; his explanation was over; his seriousness didn't 
change. Now I didn't need the mysterious presence to send any more 
questions to my brain.  I was flooded with my own. I was about to start 
with, “What do you mean?”, and with his newfound seriousness I even 
expected an intelligent answer and maybe even a debate. For some reason 
I had the feeling we were going to be able to talk about (maybe not 
solve but at least discuss) the weird feelings I had been having 
lately. But before I could get my question out, I heard Katy yelling at 
me from her upstairs window. 

“HEY......... YOU............. DUDE............" She laughed. "I DON'T
KNOW YOUR NAME" More laughter. "WILL YOU COME UP HERE FOR A SECOND? I 
NEED A FAVOR." 

I didn't say anything. I looked at Jessie and he still looked the same.
I looked back at the window and she was still leaning out. She smiled. 
I got up and started running towards the back door. It took about half 
a second to realize how dorky that looked so I slowed down. The damage 
had probably already been done, though, unless I had gotten lucky and 
she had gone back inside. I looked up and saw I had no such luck.  She 
was not only still there but she was laughing, not viciously or 
anything but still laughing. I smiled and I'm sure it looked very 
uncomfortable. When I got to her room, my jaw fell to the floor. She 
was standing there in nothing but a small pair of shorts and a bra. She 
was looking at her profile in the full-length mirror and kind of 
pulling her shorts down a bit and lightly stroking her belly. I was 
mesmerized. 

She nonchalantly asked, "do I look pregnant?" 

My jaw found a way to drop further. "Aaaaaaa.........uuuuhhhhhhhh" was
about all I could manage and I was pretty impressed I got that out. I 
swallowed hard. Could she know what this was doing to me? I mean of 
course she knew. This is the kind of thing girls do intentionally just 
to make guys nuts, but how could she know? I wasn't sure of all the 
emotions I was feeling, but she must have seen something in my face 
because she put her shirt back on, which wasn't really the reaction I 
was hoping for. But it did make communication a lot easier. 

"Do you really think you’re pregnant?" I asked. 

"I know I am. I have a feeling, and I missed two periods," she said. 

"Who's the father?" 

"My boyfriend." I assumed that was the guy with the muscle car, the
finger, and the winning phone personality. "Oh, and by the way, you're 
my boyfriend now." My jaw dropped again, and my speech went back to 
babble. "Umm...... wha??????" 

"Yeah, that's right. I told my boyfriend that I had a guy over here and
he was my new boy friend." 

My heart sank to my knees. I decided I definitely believed in love at
third sight. Again I had a million questions but was cut short. She 
looked up and said, "SSSSSHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" 
"That's my mom and dad's car! They're home and I'm not allowed to have 
boys in my room. I could get in a lot of trouble." 

For the first time I saw something other than playfulness in her face; I
saw real fear. "You have to go out the window!" 

"WHAT! Are you crazy? I could get seriously hurt." 

"Please..... please. I need your help!" 

FUCK! How could I resist the girl of my dreams playing the damsel in
distress? I climbed out on the overhang just under her window, hung 
from it and aimed for the nearest pile of dirt and dropped. I think I 
twisted my ankle pretty good, but for the most part I was ok. I started 
to hear yelling in the house again so I hobbled off toward my 
grandmother’s house. 

8 

My mom leaned her head in my room the next morning and said, "Your
grandmother wants to talk to you." As I wiped the sleep from my face, I 
looked at her.  She looked at me and shrugged. I thought this was 
unprecedented and probably should have scared the shit out of me, but 
I'm especially stupid in the morning and didn't even really realize 
what was going on until I was walking through her door. I kneeled/sat 
down by her bed while I continued to wake up.  It was a slow process. 
She took a deep breath and started saying what she needed to say. 

“I know we don't talk much, and I'm sorry to be dropping this deep a
subject on you in what must be a weird time for you. But it breaks my 
heart to see the way your mother's life has turned out and I never had 
the guts to tell her this. So in a weak attempt to make up for the 
mistake I made by being too afraid to talk to your mom about hard 
subjects, I am going to talk to you. 

“In six months you will have forgotten about me, and that's ok, and
that's how it should be, but please don't forget this: love is all that 
matters. My body is leaving this world now but my heart left it with 
your grandfather six years ago. I was sad then, but I'm not sad now. I 
hope I am going to meet him, but no one can really say that for sure. 
The important thing is that I loved the time we had together.  We lived 
the time we had together, and that means more to me than life or death 
or anything. It wouldn't have mattered if that time was a minute or a 
lifetime, if I would have missed it, or made the mistake of recognizing 
it but not seizing it, or if I would have been too scared to hang on to 
that time, my life would have been very incomplete. As it was I felt 
like my life could not have been fuller. I was sad when Grandpa died, 
but I was content, as I myself am content to die now. I...... we lived. 
 We truly loved each other, and because of that we were able to love 
life regardless of any other circumstances. We were probably lucky and 
maybe it is something that is hard to find.  I hope you have listened 
and that if you are lucky enough to find it in your life, you will 
remember how important it is and never let anything stand between you 
and love." 

She smiled and looked at me.   She was done.  Even though she looked
sort of dead I didn't go into my descending spiral of death obsession, 
she blinked a couple of times and closed her eyes, still smiling. I sat 
there for a while. It should have been a shocking conversation, but I 
wasn't shocked. Here was a woman I barely knew.  She was family, which 
is different.   She was not a stranger, but still, I had seen her maybe 
once or twice a year at best, and even that had lessened in the latest 
years. She was right: we never really had talked much, and if she had 
said these things before I left Seattle I probably would have just 
thought she was crazy and gone back to hanging out. But in light of 
recent events and how messed up my brain had been, the things she said 
sounded like they were coming from the mouth of a close friend that I 
had been informing about my life and feelings on a daily basis. She 
knew. Somehow she knew. She knew and I still wasn't shocked I just 
loved her. Not exactly like the life-making love she talked about, but 
enough to give me a taste of what that love might be like - a taste of 
what it might be like to have someone in your personal universe 
forever. You might say I became a man at that moment. I would 
definitely say I had done a lot of growing up in the last few minutes, 
but I wouldn't say I had become a man, yet. I knew what I had to do, 
but just knowing it doesn't make you a man. Doing it does. I know this 
now, and I owe it to my Grandmother. I loved her.  I needed to talk to 
Katy. 

9 

I rushed through my breakfast (I would have skipped it if my mom hadn't
collared me as I was heading out the door). When I got to the door at 
Jessie’s house, I heard more of the same yelling.  I guess it was 
constant when their parents were home. The thought of turning away or 
doing something other than knocking on that door never occurred to me. 
I assumed it was her dad that answered and asked, "WHO THE FUCK ARE 
YOU?” 

He was wearing a wife beater and it had stains, like his wife’s apron
had stains, but they were different. They were spreading stains, brown 
to tan, originating at his armpits and not stopping until they ran into 
each other. There were also some food droppage stains on the gut area 
(as opposed to the food preparation stains that were on Kong’s apron). 
He smelled like a big chunk of really bad cheese (not bad as in gone 
bad but one of those cheeses that smells bad even when it's new) 
dropped into a bucket of battery acid. 

"WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU!" he asked again. 

I looked through the door and could see Katy Jessie and their mom all in
the living room. Katy had a blanket wrapped around her and I could see 
blood and bruises on her face. She wasn't crying, she looked sad and 
disgusted. 

"WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!" Her dad said apparently for the last
time because his throat sounded pretty screamed out. 

"My I please speak to Katy?" I asked. 

"CAN'T YOU SEE WE'RE HAVING A FAMILY CRISIS HERE?" 

"I'm her friend, please, ask Jessie, I need to talk to her." 

"OH A FRIEND HUH? THEN YOU MUST KNOW DENNIS!" 

I wasn't sure but I had a pretty good idea of who Dennis was. 

"HE'S THE ONE THAT BEAT HER UP AND I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE A LITTLE TALK
WITH HIM, SO IF YOU KNOW WHERE HE IS, YOU BETTER TELL ME NOW, BOY!" 

"LET IT GO DAD!" Katy screamed. Now she was crying. 

Her dad turned around and closed the door while telling Katy, "WHEN I
FIND HIM I WILL KILL HIM!" 

The screaming was still going on in the house.   I stood there for a
second but I didn't really have any hope of talking to Katy. I would 
figure out a way as soon as I could. 

10 

I went back to their house the next day and it was empty. I looked in
the back yard........ nothing, no cars in the driveway, no lights in 
the windows. The next day was the same, deserted. I was scared I would 
never get to talk to Katy, to tell her how I felt. I had missed my 
chance, just like Grandma said. 

FUCK! I didn't know what to do, so every day I would walk around
aimlessly, which would take me by her house three or four times. I 
never saw any changes. I was getting very depressed. On the third day 
of this routine I walked close enough to Grandma's house to see an 
ambulance driving off without the lights on. I ran as fast as I could. 

When I got to the doorway I could see down the hall into the kitchen.
Mom was sitting at the table, I think she was crying. By the time I got 
close enough to tell she had stopped and there was no evidence that she 
had been. "Grandma died,” she said. 

"I know, I saw." 

She asked if I was ok. I was, If Grandma had been happy with her life
and content to die now, I didn't see much reason to feel bad. "I think 
I'll miss her,” I said. 

She nodded, ruffled my hair and tried to smile. "It should only take a
couple of days to get things in order.  Looks like you will still get 
to have some of your summer vacation." 

Now I realized what this meant.  Now I had a lot of bad feelings like
fear, pain, urgency. I could feel the most important thing in my life 
slipping through my hands, like playing tug o’ war with Conan. There 
was nothing I could do. I had no control over any aspect of the most 
important thing in my life. That was the worst part. I went outside and 
kicked rocks out of the ground in the front yard, my hands buried in my 
pockets. 

11 

The next day I continued my routine of rambling around the neighborhood.
I didn't know what else to do. When I got within sight of their house, 
I couldn't see any changes, but as I got closer I swore I could hear 
digging. I started running. As I ran past the gate I heard Jessie yell, 
"HI, WANNA HELP DIG?" 

I ignored it and went straight to the door. I knocked and then stood
there forever.  I was about to go ask Jessie what was up when Katy 
opened the door. She didn't look as bad as she had when I saw her on 
the couch a few days ago but she looked bad enough. She still had 
visible bruises, a huge scab under her right eye, and I think I 
detected a limp. I wanted to take her face in my hands and promise to 
protect her for the rest of her life. She was different, but not, 
somehow. Maybe she had had the "little trouble maker" beaten out of her 
but she still had a spark in her eye. I doubted that anything could 
remove that spark as long as she was alive.   That was the Katy I 
loved. 

She said "Hi" and walked out to sit on the porch steps. 

I said "Hi" and sat next to her. I wasn't nearly as tongue-tied as I had
been before, I was quite calm but I wanted to start off slow. "I guess 
the last few days have been pretty weird for you, huh?" 

"Yeah," she said, "but my whole life’s been pretty weird". 

I was about to dive in headfirst even though I had no idea what I was
going to say. I was just going to tell her the truth - that I loved her 
- and see what happened. 

But before I had a chance she said, "Remember how I said you were my boy
friend now?" 

"Yeah." 

"I guess it's really true now, I'm not going out with Dennis any more."
She giggled. "I'm just teasing you. You sure seem really nice though.  
I would like to get to know you better." 

I could feel my heart smile. "If you're not going out with Dennis
anymore what will happen with the baby?" 

"Oh, daddy made me get an abortion," she said rather nonchalantly. 

I got the impression she didn't think it was any big deal, that she
didn't understand what that really meant. I'm not religious and I've 
never really strong opinion about either side of the abortion issue. I 
really hadn’t given it that much thought. But I had given a lot of 
thought to the preciousness of life lately and how easy it was to throw 
it all away. So my reply was natural. It was a reflex, and it was 
regretted as soon as the last moment of sound exited my mouth. "You 
killed your baby?" 

She looked at me with her natural smile still existing on her face for a
second like she was just going to continue with a normal conversation. 

She said, "I....." and then a few unintelligible syllables.   It started
to look like she was a long way away. 

"Katy, I'm sorry, that's not what I meant." 

"I guess I didn't really think about it.   That was my baby," she said,
slipping further away. "Could you go now?  I want to be alone." Her 
face still looked blank but tears were now finding their way down her 
cheeks. She moved like a crying zombie. She kind of backed and felt her 
way through the door and closed it slowly. 

Again I felt control slipping away, I wanted to bang on the door until
it broke but I didn't see how I could do anything even if I had been 
standing right next to her. Again I couldn't think of anything to do 
other than walk. 

I had been walking for a while hoping that after some time (not much
time, we didn't have much) went by, we could get together and talk 
about everything some more. Then I heard something behind me. I turned 
around just in time to keep from getting knocked over by Jessie. His 
momentum carried him five or ten feet past me.  When he righted himself 
and came back to me, he was too out of breath to say anything, but his 
eyes were screaming. "Kathryn - -," breath, breath, " - you friend - 
-," breath, breath, breath -  "HELP!"  - breath. 

He started pulling me back in the direction he had come from, but I
didn't need much persuasion. We were both running at top speed within 
about five feet. We ran up the porch stairs; he burst through the door. 
Jessie's left arm looked like it was involuntarily contracting to his 
chest, and then he started hunching over, his limbs being pulled into 
the fetal position by a magnet in his chest. The only exception was his 
right arm, hand, and finger. They were pointing up the stairs. 
"HHHHEEEEEEELLLLLLPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!" he screamed before he collapsed to 
the floor. I ran up the stairs in a panic. I ran to Katy's room and 
looked around quickly, not seeing anything. The corner of my eye caught 
something; my attention was drawn because it didn't look right. I 
turned my head slowly and looked down the hall. Through the bathroom 
door I could see a little bit of the end of the bathtub and even less 
of the water inside it. That's what wasn't right. The water was red. I 
started walking down the hall, I couldn't run anymore. As I inched 
closer I could see more and more of the bathroom, the bathtub, the 
water. I peered through the doorway and saw what I knew I would see. 
Katy, lying in a bathtub full of her own blood. Her head was on the 
edge of the tub facing me. Her eyes were open. The blood wasn't the 
only thing she had drained into the water; her life was gone too. The 
spark in her eye was gone. Our life was gone. She took it from us. 
"NNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I ran to 
her and put her head in my hands. It was still warm. I still loved her. 
"NNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!" The world started to go gray just as I felt a hand on my shoulder thr
owing me across the bathroom to the floor. "NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I looked up and saw what lo
oked like firemen, I saw Katy's lifeless body being carried away, and I 
saw Katy's parents fighting. Everything went black. 


Epilog 

I went to the funeral to say goodbye to Katy. I didn't really know
anyone in her family other than Jessie so I kept my distance. I felt 
like some kind of ghoul lurking amongst the headstones. I was close 
enough to see their bodies wearing black and their faces dressed in 
sorrow. I wondered if Jessie really knew what was going on, he seemed 
to have some idea. Either that or he was heavily sedated. Then I swore 
I could see a tear come from his eye. Suddenly everything seemed more 
real to me; you know how when things get weird in your life but since 
it's different it seems like a movie or something and it doesn't really 
sink in? It's easy to say that it was just some unusual circumstances 
and it's over, whatever. That time was over for me, I realized that I 
had come down here, fallen in love, and contributed to the death of the 
woman I loved. I would live the rest of my life knowing it was 
incomplete. This was no movie and I would be changed forever. I cried. 
I didn't cry often. It wasn't like in the movies where actors can just 
turn on the waterworks and tears stream from their eyes. It was like 
fighting, I could feel my eyes were full of tears, it hurt, it burned. 
I leaned my head back, facing the sky. I squeezed my eyes shut to force 
the tears out. They left hot little trails from the corner of my eyes 
to my temples and into my hair. Like little rivers of lava crawling 
down the side of a volcano. Then it was over, the liquid part anyway; I 
didn't feel any better. I'd heard people talk about how it helped to 
express you emotions, but I didn't feel any better. I didn't see how I 
would ever feel any better. All I knew was that Katy was gone, and I 
knew I would never cry again. 

2 

After the funeral I found myself walking again. The way I felt reminded
me of something Grandma had said during our talk. I was content to die. 
But obviously that feeling originated in two different places for us. 
She was content because she had lived and loved; I was sure love was 
lost. I heard the sound of digging and looked up to see that I was in 
front of Jessie's house. I peeked over the gate and saw Jessie hard at 
work still in his funeral slacks, shirt, and tie - and still not making 
much progress. 

I walked through the gate and sat down on the nearest pile of dirt.
After a few shovels full of dirt had found their way up the dirt mound 
(and then mostly back down in the hole), he looked up at me from under 
his eyebrows, his sweaty hair in his face, and said, "Kathryn is gone". 


"I know,” I said. This time I was sure I saw a tear run down his cheek. 

He said, "Kathryn is closer to the sun". 

I stood up, gently took the shovel from him, and started digging. 

********** Thanks to Kirdas (another writer featured on this site) for
all his help with the things spell check doesn’t’ catch. This story 
would look a lot different (and I don’t mean better) with out 
him.********** 


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