Page 139 of Let the Game Begin

“No!” I screamed, leaping up to run for the edge of the pool.

But the Boy was gone. He had vanished. I searched the bottom of the pool and the paved area all around it but h-he…wasn’t there. Instead, the memories came to take his place.

Those fucking memories…

***

It was raining.

It was the middle of the night, and my parents were asleep.

I got out of my bed and left my room.

I padded barefoot down the hallway, glancing briefly at my brother’s closed bedroom door.

Silently and on tiptoes, I descended the stairs. I was only wearing my underwear because I had taken off my pajamas and neatly folded them before putting them away in my drawer.

It was pitch-black outside, but the orange glow of a garden lamp filtered through the large window, cutting the floor into neat segments. It was this light that guided me outside.

I opened the glass doors and walked out onto the lawn, under the pouring sky and the slashes of lightning. I brushed my wet hair out of my face with one hand and proceeded toward the pool.

I didn’t yet know how to swim, and that was exactly why I was there.

I glanced up at the dark sky, and it seemed as though the storm had waited for me.

Like it didn’t want me to cry alone.

I had learned to endure the pain, but I could no longer keep it inside. In that moment, I felt like a wild bird beating its wings against the storm, knowing it would never survive the tumult, would never watch the sun come out from behind those black clouds.

I opened my hands and held them out, letting drops of rain patter against my skin.

I saw them; I heard them. I was alive, but I was still filthy. Too filthy. All the water in the world wasn’t going to make me clean again.

Every drop of rain in my hands felt like another piece of me that I could no longer hold together.

I balled my hands into fists and stared into the pool in front of me. It looked like the deep, dark pelt of a sleeping animal.

It had never been so scary as it was in that moment.

In that moment, I felt a fear more ancient than any other emotion: courage, excitement, insanity, desperation.

I didn’t look back once as I opened my arms up wide. I looked just like anangel then. Or maybe not.

I would probably become an angel, though, after I went through with it.

Mom wouldn’t have been happy with my choice, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t go on the way I was.

Just then, the garden’s flowers bent against the rain, wind shook through the leaves on the trees, and the world looked like a painting.

Fate had spoken, and it had told a story about a boy who was ready to stop fighting.

He’d already stopped hoping, and he couldn’t keep living with the sadness, with the dulled colors and the knot that constantly tightened around his heart.

I thought about the note I’d left on my desk for my family:

“When the rain is over, I will be on my way to Neverland.”

And so, after one deep, final breath, I shut my eyes and let myself fall forward, held fast in the silent arms of the storm.