The outskirts of the city trail the shoreline. The sea mingles with eroded cliff sides, birds flying in arrowheads, matching the rhythm of the waves. Driving the road outlooking an open bay, I gaze out at a world I’ve never seen with my own eyes.
“That’s the ocean?” I ask, leaning over Sony, hands against the window.
“Is it as beautiful as you imagined?” Hikari asks.
A half-moon crests her skin above our binding line of promise. On mine, a half sun mirroring hers.
We left the parlor thanking Carl for his hard work. Carl thanked us for the story. Then, he, timidly, tapped Sony’s shoulder and asked if she’d give him a call sometime.
Sony smirked, as devils do. She grabbed Carl by the face and kissed him with such force he stumbled back into the front desk. Freedom comes in degrees, and Sony basks in whatever heat of freedom she chooses. Once she was done with him she wrote her phone number on his palm and followed us out.
The ocean graces us with salty scents laden in tart and as stars skate over every ripple. We grace it with our scream-singing voices and poor renditions of beloved classic rock songs. Windows down. Music blasting. Not a care for what we leave behind.
With our remaining six dollars and ninety cents, we park the truck beside the boardwalk and convince a short woman with a white hat and a cart to sell us ice cream for half the price. She calls us damned kids and shoves the cones in our hands.
Hikari points to the ocean reaching for shore, foaming white like a beer bottle and misting like cigarette smoke. On the beach, parties hold on to their end-of-season zeal. People dance beside on-the-sand bars with the familiar smell of actual cigarettes and alcohol.
Lapping at the ice cream, Sony gives her remaining to Neo. She flings her dirty white sneakers off, leaving them on the boardwalk and hopping down to the sand. Effortlessly, she blends into the crowd of end-of-summer deniers.
Strangers look twice, caught by that brutal beauty. The roan layer of hair and the dancing constellation across her nose. C hops down with Neo on his arm. Strangers look twice as strength’s tiny body moves in sync with compassion’s gentle beat. I take Hikari and her sundress into the scene. She stumbles, but I catch her, interlacing our fingers, dancing the only way I know, with her leading my hand. Strangers look twice, not for any semblance of lost time, repulsing illness, or death. They look twice at kids lost in the moment and in each other.
Adventure becomes impatient, and we race to catch it, across the beach all the way to a stretch uninhabited by anyone but the gulls diving for fish and the critters in the sand.
The wind is ferocious here. Sony shrieks into it, stretching her arms out to either side. I run with her, shivering as we dip our feet in the water. She flags this beach from the grassy dunes to the depths of the sea as ours.
The waves we gifted with our messy dancing, and lack of hair urge us on. C takes off his pants and shirt shamelessly, letting the sea take him. His chest and the plastic protecting his tattoo stay above the surface as he mingles with his old friend, cupping the sea in his palms and splashing it onto his face with a sigh.
Seashells gather in Sony’s pockets as she and Hikari fish into the shallow end like fishermen in a canal. They’re soaked from the thigh down, but neither of them seems to care. Sony wrings out the material of Hikari’s dress and rolls up her pants before they sit in the sand, dirty and giddy as they sort their spoils.
Chased mercilessly by C and I, Neo throws his hoodie over his head, leaving his shirt and pants on. He pretends to be angry when we tackle him into the water. Once his lower half is submerged by the waves, a violent tremble runs up his body. He wraps his arms around C’s neck for warmth, the two beaming at each other. C twirls in the water as he did on the beach, smiling into Neo’s neck.
I bring Hikari back stones eroded by salt from the muddy bank. They shine, some with a single white line encircling them around like rope with a tear down the middle. I also bring her a tiny crab missing a claw that was stuck in a shell. Together we bring it back to the ocean, watching it scurry into the sea.
Later, on a pile of our dry clothes on the dunes, Sony, C, and I make out the shapes of offshore islands, giving names to lonely ships in the far distance. Neo and Hikari write and draw in the Hit List. They mark each stone, shell, island, and ship. The wind weighs in on our conversation, flipping pages in disagreement and tickling our noses when it is pleased.
My friends laugh into its calling, filling page after page, not a dull moment between them. They smile, hug, kiss, run, speak, sing, shout, swim, play, create, and love without constraint.
With a pencil between her teeth, Hikari walks me to the foamy edges of the shore and hands me a drawing. On a loose piece, three kids dance together amongst a nameless crowd. Their expressions are their own, but they are real. I stare at it, ghostly fingers dragging over my friends’ faces. It is a single moment, but through her gift, it is engraved in eternity.
I smile. Because it is a single moment that cannot be stolen.
When Hikari turns toward the sea, the breeze flirts with her figure. Her dress catches on her curves, the wet fabric stuck to her legs. My hands roam to her hips, pulling her to me, paper in hand.
I trace the lines of her face. She bites her blue lips and inhales the newborn air that very well could’ve been carried from across the earth. I mimic her. Our new tattoos touch, a spark of electricity exchanged by our hearts.
“Hikari,” I breathe.
She runs her fingers up my scalp, the watch on her wrist carrying grains of sand against my neck.
“Yes, Sam,” she whispers, and surrounded by the people we care about, I realize that this is what it was always supposed to feel like.
Our enemies have no claim to this place.
They have no claim to this day.
In Hikari’s arms, I forget what I am and where I am from. The idea of home no longer has gravity. I have flown off my orbit, chosen to follow meteors with no aim but to roam.
I am not afraid of what constitutes life or mere existence. I watch and yet I smile, hug, kiss, run, speak, sing, shout, swim, play, create, and love all the same.
This place–this exact spot where land and sea meet is where the world was born. It is where Time ceases, Disease festers, and Death dies.
Because the world was built for kids who dreamt of life and were raptured by loss. It is theirs and it is mine. It is ours to claim, and it is ours to reap. In this place, freedom takes us by the hand and we dance to its rhythm in coarse, cool sand and wild, welcoming waters.
In the book of our lives, upon a single page dedicated to its creation, we name it Heaven.
—
When night falls, we retire to C’s dad’s pick-up. The clouds dissipate with the dark, revealing a sky rendered black by a layer of stars. Fortunately for us, C’s limited thieving capacities grant us yellow blankets to warm our soaked skin.
We lie in the truck’s bed like poorly laid out sardines. We are tangled together, masses of bodies huddled, shivering, and laughing. Sony is at the center, Hikari and Neo clinging to her like babies while C and I make the outsides.
Our stories flow between us. Some are old humorous tales that get interrupted by cackling because we already know how they end. It’s like a joke that doesn’t need a punch line. A communal store of memories that make way to new stories.
“I can’t believe you kissed Carl,” Neo says.
Sony smiles in that way you know she’s thinking about doing it again just for the fun.
“Carl’s nice,” C says, arms crossed behind his head, acting as a pillow.
I’m about to add that Carl is also very skilled at his job, but then Hikari says, “He’s cute too,” and now I’m less eager to say anything.
I look down at her, propped up on my elbow with a frown. She rolls her eyes at me with a smirk and squishes my face.
“We should bring Eric out here,” C says.
Hikari giggles. “He’d scold the fish for swimming too close to shore and curse the seagulls for flying too close to the sand.”
“He’d curse the sand for being sand,” Neo says.
Sony taps their foreheads. “Oh shush, he’d secretly like it.”
“He’d like it because we do,” I say, the only fish sitting up in the bunch, listening to the waves who never sleep as the tide pulls in. I imagine Eric at the center of the nocturnal beach, watching us play as the gulls fly overhead, the salt sprays on our tongues, and the music plays from the boardwalk.
“Ever thought of turning your heartbeat into a song?” Neo whispers, tucked against C’s chest, his ear pressed against the hollowed valley.
“Would you write the lyrics?” C asks.
Neo shrugs. “We can write them together.”
“I’d like that,” C whispers.
“After our story?”
“Yeah, after our story.”
Sony stretches her limbs with a yawn.
“Neo,” she says, nudging his shoulder, “let’s read more of your manuscript, I want to know what happens next.” But when Sony looks, C puts a finger to his lips, revealing a sound asleep poet. He shifts in C’s arms, turning so as to be in Sony’s as well.
“Tomorrow then,” she whispers and kisses his forehead. C wraps them both in his embrace, squeezing my hand and Hikari’s arm once before they all fade into sleep.
“Look, Sam,” Hikari says, wide awake. She looks up at the sprinkled dusting of the galaxy, a painting that is ours. “Your stars are shining.”
They are. And their brilliance is reflected in her.
I tuck the yellow blanket over her shoulders, dragging my touch down her covered body to make sure she stays warm. Her drowsy gaze finds mine. The joy of today floats in the color, a liquid that cannot be dissolved by Time’s passing.
“What’s on your mind, Yorick?” she asks.
“That you and I were created for each other.”
“Were we?”
“No.”
She laughs.
“You’re a prince, and I’m only the skull of a nameless jouster,” I remind her.
“Nothing is nameless,” she says. “Not even bones.”
“Hamlet wouldn’t say that.”
“What would Hamlet say?”
“He would call the skull a fool for wanting him. For thinking it was any more than a skull at all.”
“Hamlet would never say that to his friend.”
“What does Hamlet know? He’s friends with a skull.”
She laughs again, dragging her fingertips across my face. I’m tempted to wrap myself around her, to breathe in the scent at the crook of her neck, and simply be so close that the idea of distance is forgotten.
“Hikari,” I whisper, the drawing of our friends still tucked in my pocket. “If you could go back and keep yourself from climbing that tree or going to that lake or from whatever unlikely steps lead you to this place–” I hold the same hand that saved me from that road and reminded me that to be alive is to feel as I do now. “Would you?”
“No,” Hikari says, without a second’s hesitation, shaking her head. “No, I’m happy here. With them. With you.” She looks at the stars again, then at me, no shadows left in the night.
“I’m happy,” she says again.
It fills the void in me, and what was once an empty shell, an outline of a person, is full again. I take her glasses off, placing them neatly on her chest. Now there is nothing in the way, not even a mirror. I fantasize about kissing her lips just to taste the words.
“What is it?” Hikari whispers, mimicking me, her finger caressing my cheekbone.
“Do you remember the night in the garden that we stole a race? You asked me what I thought of life.” I want to tell her that what I have has never felt like a life. But I also want to tell her that if this is living, then a life with her is all I want.
“I have to tell you something, Hikari,” I say. “About myself.”
Hikari blinks, waiting for me to speak, but somehow my words lose their shape before I can find them. I stare at her, longingly. Her affection is measured in teasing glances, little smirks, gifts only we know the meaning of, and nights peering over books. I cannot find the strength to squander all that. Not yet.
“There’s a dream in your eyes, my Yorick,” she says, and I decide I will tell her the truth later. The now does not need renditions of the past and the future does not need foretelling.
We have time.
I take the hand always so keen on exploring and kiss Hikari’s knuckles, the heel of her palm, her wrist, and all the little scars healing above.
“I dream of this life,” I whisper. “Us. Together. For all tomorrows to come.”
Hikari kisses me, pulling me down to the bed of the truck. I kiss her back, my arms on either side of her head. As her promise went on that little piece of torn paper, she says, between our affections, “Then all my tomorrows are yours.”
—
I don’t wake to the sun.
I wake to the sounds of struggle.
Choked gasps spare no effort. Someone is trying to breathe, desperately so, but the breath cannot be caught. It is interrupted, stuck in a coughing fit.
Air is a necessary medium of exchange between a body and its environment. It is not an infinite resource and those who no longer have the means to collect have only one place to fall.
That is what I wake to when the dream is over.
I wake to Sony drowning from the inside out.
“Sony?” Hikari, C, and Neo wake simultaneously, a herd hearing the faint cries of a wounded member in the night.
“Oh my god, Sony!” Hikari yells.
Sony is on her back, her eyes wide and afraid, her nails digging into the bed of the truck, her chest caved in. Spots swell on her right side as a violent shade of red spurts from her throat and stains her chin.
“C, get her in the backseat. Neo start the car,” I order, and everyone moves quickly, like doctors running down a hall, when a code sounds on the intercom.
Hikari whimpers, C rushing to pick Sony up. I open the backdoor and fumble for the tank under the seat and the oxygen mask.
C sits Sony down so that her back leans against my front. Hikari is crying in fear, her hands shaking as she helps me put the mask on Sony’s face.
The engine rumbles, and the headlights stretch into the empty lot, Neo turning the key in the ignition. He moves into the passenger seat over the console to make room for C. He reaches behind the middle compartment, grasping for Sony’s hand or knee or anything he can hold on to, not bothering with his seatbelt.
“Sa–mmy,” Sony tries to speak. Her vocal cords are submerged. Her body is weak and cold, yet still laboring. Even with consciousness, a body has automated responses set in an attempt to keep itself alive. Sony’s one lung will keep rising and falling till it doesn’t have the means no matter what ravages it.
“Squeeze our hands, Sony, take deep breaths,” I say, holding her neck straight, keeping the pathway for her lung as open as I can.
It’s the middle of the night and the roads are empty. C slams his foot on the gas, remembering the fastest route to the hospital.
Sony spits up more blood and puss. She doesn’t have the strength to tilt her head, so it ends up in her lap. Hikari tries to clean her up the best she can with her sweater. Panic trembles through her hands and her voice alike.
“Hikari?” Sony rasps.
“I’m here, Sony. Just hold on, okay?”
Sony smiles deliriously, her body going completely limp in my arms.
“You’re always so warm,” she says.
“Sony? Sony, stay awake! Sony!” Hikari yells, but Sony’s eyes have already slipped back into her head.
