Chapter Seventeen

It’s after seven before I get home. Ryle called an hour ago and said he

wouldn’t be coming over tonight. The confushercackle (whatever that

big word he used was) separation was a success, but he’s staying at the

hospital overnight to make sure there aren’t complications.

I walk in the door to my quiet apartment. I change into my quiet

pajamas. I eat a quiet sandwich. And then I lie down in my quiet

bedroom and open my quiet new book, hoping it can quiet my

emotions.

Sure enough, three hours and the majority of a book later, all the

emotions from the last several days begin to seep out of me. I place a

bookmark on the page where I stopped reading and I close it.

I stare at the book for a long time. I think about Ryle. I think about

Atlas. I think about how sometimes, no matter how convinced you are

that your life will turn out a certain way, all that certainty can be

washed away with a simple change in tide.

I take the book Atlas bought me and put it in the closet with all my

journals. Then I pick up the one that’s filled with memories of him.

And I know it’s finally time to read the last entry I wrote. Then I can

close the book for good.

Dear Ellen,

Most of the time I’m thankful you don’t know I exist and that I’ve never

really mailed you any of these things I write to you.

But sometimes, especially tonight, I wish you did. I just need someone to talk

to about everything I’m feeling. It’s been six months since I’ve seen Atlas and I

honestly don’t know where he is or how he’s doing. So much has happened

since the last letter I wrote to you, when Atlas moved to Boston. I thought it

was the last time I’d see him for a while, but it wasn’t.

I saw him again after he left, several weeks later. It was my sixteenth

birthday and when he showed up, it became the absolute best day of my life.

And then the absolute worst.

It had been exactly forty-two days since Atlas left for Boston. I counted every

day like it would help somehow. I was so depressed, Ellen. I still am. People say

that teenagers don’t know how to love like an adult. Part of me believes that,

but I’m not an adult and so I have nothing to compare it to. But I do believe

it’s probably different. I’m sure there’s more substance in the love between two

adults than there is between two teenagers. There’s probably more maturity,

more respect, more responsibility. But no matter how different the substance of a

love might be at different ages in a person’s life, I know that love still has to

weigh the same. You feel that weight on your shoulders and in your stomach

and on your heart no matter how old you are. And my feelings for Atlas are

very heavy. Every night I cry myself to sleep and I whisper, “Just keep

swimming.” But it gets really hard to swim when you feel like you’re anchored

in the water.

Now that I think about it, I’ve probably been experiencing the stages of grief

in a sense. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I was deep

in the depression stage the night of my sixteenth birthday. My mother had tried

to make the day a good one. She bought me gardening supplies, made my

favorite cake, and the two of us went to dinner together. But by the time I had

crawled into bed that night, I couldn’t shake the sadness.

I was crying when I heard the tap on my window. At first, I thought it had

started raining. But then I heard his voice. I jumped up and ran to the

window, my heart in hysterics. He was standing there in the dark, smiling at

me. I raised the window and helped him inside and he took me in his arms and

held me there for so long while I cried.

He smelled so good. I could tell when I hugged him that he’d put on some

much-needed weight in just the six weeks since I’d last seen him. He pulled

back and wiped the tears off my cheeks. “Why are you crying, Lily?”

I was embarrassed that I was crying. I cried a lot that month—probably

more than any other month of my life. It was probably just the hormones of

being a teenage girl, mixed with the stress of how my father treated my mother,

and then having to say goodbye to Atlas.

I grabbed a shirt from the floor and dried my eyes, then we sat down on the

bed. He pulled me against his chest and leaned against my headboard.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him.

“It’s your birthday,” he said. “And you’re still my favorite person. And I’ve

missed you.”It was probably no later than ten o’clock when he got there, but we talked so

much, I remember it was after midnight the next time I looked at the clock. I

can’t even remember what all we talked about, but I do remember how I felt. He

seemed so happy and there was a light in his eyes that I’d never seen there

before. Like he’d finally found his home.

He said he wanted to tell me something and his voice grew serious. He

readjusted me so that I was straddling his lap, because he wanted me to look

him in the eyes when he told me. I was thinking maybe he was about to tell me

he had a girlfriend or that he was leaving even sooner for the military. But

what he said next shocked me.

He said the first night he went to that old house, he wasn’t there because he

needed a place to stay.

He went there to kill himself.

My hands went up to my mouth because I had no idea things had gotten

that bad for him. So bad that he didn’t even want to live anymore.

“I hope you never know what it’s like to feel that lonely, Lily,” he said.

He went on to tell me that the first night he was at that house, he was

sitting in the living room floor with a razor blade to his wrist. Right when he

was about to use it, my bedroom light went on. “You were standing there like

an angel, backlit by the light of heaven,” he said. “I couldn’t take my eyes off

you.”

He watched me walk around my bedroom for a while. Watched me lie on the

bed and write in my journal. And he put down the razor blade because he said

it’d been a month since life had given him any sort of feeling at all, and

looking at me gave him a little bit of feeling. Enough to not be numb enough to

end things that night.

Then a day or two later is when I took him the food and set it on his back

porch. I guess you already know the rest of that story.

“You saved my life, Lily,” he said to me. “And you weren’t even trying.”

He leaned forward and kissed that spot between my shoulder and my neck

that he always kisses. I liked that he did it again. I don’t like much about my

body, but that spot on my collarbone has become my favorite part of me.

He took my hands in his and told me he was leaving sooner than he

planned for the military, but that he couldn’t leave without telling me thank

you. He told me he’d be gone for four years and that the last thing he wanted

for me was to be a sixteen-year-old girl not living my life because of a boyfriend

I never got to see or hear from.The next thing he said made his blue eyes tear up until they looked clear. He

said, “Lily. Life is a funny thing. We only get so many years to live it, so we

have to do everything we can to make sure those years are as full as they can be.

We shouldn’t waste time on things that might happen someday, or maybe even

never.”

I knew what he was saying. That he was leaving for the military and he

didn’t want me to hold on to him while he was gone. He wasn’t really breaking

up with me because we weren’t ever really together. We’d just been two people

who helped each other when we needed it and got our hearts fused together

along the way.

It was hard, being let go by someone who had never really grabbed hold of

me completely in the first place. In all the time we’ve spent together, I think we

both sort of knew this wasn’t a forever thing. I’m not sure why, because I could

easily love him that way. I think maybe under normal circumstances, if we were

together like typical teenagers and he had an average life with a home, we could

be that kind of couple. The kind who comes together so easily and never

experiences a life where cruelty sometimes intercepts.

I didn’t even try to get him to change his mind that night. I feel like we have

the kind of connection that even the fires of hell couldn’t sever. I feel like he

could go spend his time in the military and I’ll spend my years being a teenager

and then it will all fall back into place when the timing is right.

“I’m going to make a promise to you,” he said. “When my life is good

enough for you to be a part of it, I’ll come find you. But I don’t want you to

wait around for me, because that might never happen.”

I didn’t like that promise, because it meant one of two things. Either he

thought he might never make it out of the military alive, or he didn’t think his

life would ever be good enough for me.

His life was already good enough for me, but I nodded my head and forced

a smile. “If you don’t come back for me, I’ll come for you. And it won’t be

pretty, Atlas Corrigan.”

He laughed at my threat. “Well, it won’t be too hard to find me. You know

exactly where I’ll be.”

I smiled. “Where everything is better.”

He smiled back. “In Boston.”

And then he kissed me.

Ellen, I know you’re an adult and know all about what comes next, but I

still don’t feel comfortable telling you what happened over those next couple of hours. Let’s just say we both kissed a lot. We both laughed a lot. We both loved

a lot. We both breathed a lot. A lot. And we both had to cover our mouths and

be as quiet and still as we could so we wouldn’t get caught.

When we were finished, he held me against him, skin to skin, hand to heart.

He kissed me and looked straight in my eyes.

“I love you, Lily. Everything you are. I love you.”

I know those words get thrown around a lot, especially by teenagers. A lot of

times prematurely and without much merit. But when he said them to me, I

knew he wasn’t saying it like he was in love with me. It wasn’t that kind of “I

love you.”

Imagine all the people you meet in your life. There are so many. They come

in like waves, trickling in and out with the tide. Some waves are much bigger

and make more of an impact than others. Sometimes the waves bring with them

things from deep in the bottom of the sea and they leave those things tossed onto

the shore. Imprints against the grains of sand that prove the waves had once

been there, long after the tide recedes.

That was what Atlas was telling me when he said “I love you.” He was

letting me know that I was the biggest wave he’d ever come across. And I

brought so much with me that my impressions would always be there, even

when the tide rolled out.

After he said he loved me, he told me he had a birthday present for me. He

pulled out a small brown bag. “It isn’t much, but it’s all I could afford.”

I opened the bag and pulled out the best present I’d ever received. It was a

magnet that said “Boston” on the top. At the bottom in tiny letters, it said

“Where everything is better.” I told him I would keep it forever, and every time I

look at it I’ll think of him.

When I started out this letter, I said my sixteenth birthday was one of the

best days of my life. Because up until that second, it was.

It was the next few minutes that weren’t.

Before Atlas had shown up that night, I wasn’t expecting him, so I didn’t

think to lock my bedroom door. My father heard me in there talking to someone,

and when he threw open my door and saw Atlas in bed with me, he was

angrier than I’d ever seen him. And Atlas was at a disadvantage by not being

prepared for what came next.

I’ll never forget that moment for as long as I live. Being completely helpless

as my father came down on him with a baseball bat. The sound of bones

snapping was the only thing piercing through my screams.I still don’t know who called the police. I’m sure it was my mother, but it’s

been six months and we still haven’t talked about that night. By the time the

police got to my bedroom and pulled my father off of him, I didn’t even

recognize Atlas, he was covered in so much blood.

I was hysterical.

Hysterical.

Not only did they have to take Atlas away in an ambulance, they also had

to call an ambulance for me because I couldn’t breathe. It was the first and

only panic attack I’ve ever had.

No one would tell me where he was or if he was even okay. My father wasn’t

even arrested for what he’d done. Word got out that Atlas had been staying in

that old house and that he had been homeless. My father became revered for his

heroic act—saving his little girl from the homeless boy who manipulated her

into having sex with him.

My father said I’d shamed our whole family by giving the town something to

gossip about. And let me tell you, they still gossip about it. I heard Katie on the

bus today telling someone she tried to warn me about Atlas. She said she knew

he was bad news from the moment she laid eyes on him. Which is crap. If Atlas

had been on the bus with me, I probably would have kept my mouth shut and

been mature about it like he tried to teach me to be. Instead, I was so angry, I

turned around and told Katie she could go to hell. I told her Atlas was a better

human than she’d ever be and if I ever heard her say one more bad thing about

him, she’d regret it.

She just rolled her eyes and said, “Jesus, Lily. Did he brainwash you? He

was a dirty, thieving homeless kid who was probably on drugs. He used you for

food and sex and now you’re defending him?”

She’s lucky the bus stopped at my house right then. I grabbed my backpack

and walked off the bus, then went inside and cried in my room for three hours

straight. Now my head hurts, but I knew the only thing that would make me

feel better is if I finally got it all out on paper. I’ve been avoiding writing this

letter for six months now.

No offense, Ellen, but my head still hurts. So does my heart. Maybe even

more right now than it did yesterday. This letter didn’t help one damn bit.

I think I’m going to take a break from writing to you for a while. Writing to

you reminds me of him, and it all hurts too much. Until he comes back for me,

I’m just going to keep pretending to be okay. I’ll keep pretending to swim, when

really all I’m doing is floating. Barely keeping my head above water.

—Lily

I flip to the next page, but it’s blank. That was the last time I ever

wrote to Ellen.

I also never heard from Atlas again, and a huge part of me never

blamed him. He almost died at the hands of my father. There’s not

much room for forgiveness there.

I knew he survived and that he was okay, because my curiosity has

sometimes gotten the best of me over the years and I’d find what I

could about him online. There wasn’t much, though. Enough to let

me know he’d survived and that he was in the military.

I still never got him out of my head, though. Time made things

better, but sometimes I would see something that would remind me of

him and it would put me in a funk. It wasn’t until I was in college for a

couple of years and dating someone else that I realized maybe Atlas

wasn’t supposed to be my whole life. Maybe he was only supposed to

be a part of it.

Maybe love isn’t something that comes full circle. It just ebbs and

flows, in and out, just like the people in our lives.

On a particularly lonely night in college, I went alone to a tattoo

studio and had a heart put in the spot where he used to kiss me. It’s a

tiny heart, about the size of a thumbprint, and it looks just like the

heart he carved for me out of the oak tree. It’s not fully closed at the

top and I wonder if Atlas carved the heart like that on purpose.

Because that’s how my heart feels every time I think about him. It just

feels like there’s a little hole in it, letting out all the air.

After college I ended up moving to Boston, not necessarily because

I was hoping to find him, but because I had to see for myself if Boston

really was better. Plethora held nothing for me anyway, and I wanted

to get as far away from my father as I could. Even though he was sick

and could no longer hurt my mother, he still somehow made me want

to escape the entire state of Maine, so that’s exactly what I did.

Seeing Atlas in his restaurant for the first time filled me with so

many emotions, I didn’t know how to process them. I was glad to see

that he was okay. I was happy that he looked healthy. But I would be

lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit heartbroken that he never tried to

find me like he promised.

I love him. I still do and I always will. He was a huge wave that left a

lot of imprints on my life, and I’ll feel the weight of that love until I

die. I’ve accepted that.

But things are different now. After today when he walked out of my

office, I thought long and hard about us. I think our lives are where

they’re supposed to be. I have Ryle. Atlas has his girlfriend. We both

have the careers we’d always hoped for. Just because we didn’t end up

on the same wave, doesn’t mean we aren’t still a part of the same

ocean.

Things with Ryle are still fairly new, but I feel that same depth with

him that I used to feel with Atlas. He loves me just like Atlas did. And

I know if Atlas had a chance to get to know him, he would be able to

see that and he’d be happy for me.

Sometimes an unexpected wave comes along, sucks you up and

refuses to spit you back out. Ryle is my unexpected tidal wave, and

right now I’m skimming the beautiful surface.

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