Page 4 of Little Pieces of Light

Hand in hand, we ran to the pond’s edge. Emery didn’t seem worried about getting dirty and knelt with me as we tossed bits of bread at the minnows and carp. She squealed with delight as a turtle poked its head above the murky surface.

“That’s a red-eared slider,” I said. “You can tell by the red mark on its head. Lots of people keep them as pets, but they’re also considered an invasive species in some areas.”

“It’s so cute!” Emery looked to me. “How do you know that? Do you get to automatically know stuff if you’re a genius?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t usually play with anyone when I come to the park, so I learn about the animals and plants and stuff instead.”

I expected her to feel sorry for me, but Emery smiled her pretty smile. “I’m so lucky.”

“You are?”

She nodded. “Because now I get to learn what you learned while we play together. It’s like a whaddyacallit…when more than one thing good happens at the same time?”

“A win-win situation,” I murmured, my throat suddenly tight that this girl considered herself lucky to know me.

“Yes!” she cried. “A win-win situation.”

“I’m the lucky one, Emery,” I said before I could take it back.

Her head whipped to me. “Why?”

“Because…” A hundred options came to mind, but I told the truth. “Because today is one of the worst days of my life and you’re making it better. More than better. It’s not even the worst day anymore because now it’s the day that I met you.”

Emery’s eyes widened in surprise, and I cursed myself for saying too much. She was going to think I was a creep, but a pink blush came to her cheeks and her smile was prettier than ever.

“Me too,” she said. “I mean, I’m still worried about Grant, but I’m also…happy. Is it bad to feel both at the same time?”

“No,” I said. “I’m still sad about my mom, but I’m happy too.”

Another small silence fell, but this one felt nice. Warm. Like I could stay in it forever… And then a stinging explosion of water hit me square in the back.

“Get lost, Bender!”

We got to our feet and turned just in time for a second water balloon to hit me in the chest. Water droplets splashed my glasses.

I wiped them on my shirt, humiliation burning my skin so hot I thought my clothes would dry in an instant.

Two boys—one blond and big, one dark-haired and skinny—were standing twenty feet away, laughing.

Emery stomped her foot. “Stop it, you guys!”

“ Stop it, you guys, ” the blond mimicked in a high-pitched voice. He hurled another balloon. I pushed Emery behind me, and the balloon hit my thigh, soaking my jeans.

“Looks like he peed himself,” the dark-haired boy sneered. “Did you pee yourself, Bender?”

“You shut up, Rhett!” Emery cried. “Stop it, both of you!”

“Or what?” the blond taunted.

“Or I’ll tell my dad,” Emery said.

Both boys instantly stopped smiling. They glanced at one another, then hurried away as if Emery had cast a spell.

“Scaredy-cats,” she muttered. “One good thing about my dad is everyone’s afraid of him, not just me.” She glanced at my damp clothes. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I said quickly. “Just water. No big deal.”

“I’m sorry about them. Tucker and Rhett are jerks.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. Xander—”

“Just forget it, okay?” I bent to pick up the pieces of balloon so I wouldn’t have to look her in the eye. “Don’t want the turtles to eat the latex…”

Emery knelt down beside me as we hunted for stray strips of balloon. After we’d gathered them all, we took the scraps to the trash can by the rock. Our rock. We sat down on it again and instantly felt better. Because it was our safe place.

“That was sort of cool, what you did,” Emery said after a minute.

“What was?” I asked, because as far as I could tell, there was nothing cool about me. Not one thing.

“That one balloon would have hit me, but you stood in front of me, and it hit you instead,” she said. “You protected me.”

I frowned. I didn’t remember doing that. It was just instinct, maybe, to put myself between Emery and something that could hurt her.

“Thank you, Xander,” she said, and then I felt the soft touch of her lips on my cheek.

Instantly, a tingle of electricity shot through me, raising the hair on the back of my neck, but in a nice way.

The best way. I fought the urge to touch my face so I wouldn’t wash away the feel of her little kiss with my grimy hands.

I wiped them on my jeans instead and struggled for something to say.

But Emery’s kiss was a spell too, erasing all the thoughts in my head.

She’s like magic.

A slant of headlights cut across the parking lot. Dusk had fallen without my noticing; it was shocking how fast the world had shrunk to just me and Emery. My dad must have remembered me after all, except now the last thing I wanted to do was leave.

But it wasn’t Dad’s old Buick, it was a sleek black town car. It pulled alongside the far edge of the parking lot. The driver—tall and pale and dressed in black—got out.

“Miss Emery,” he called and waved her over.

“That’s Colin, Dad’s driver. He’s early. We’re supposed to stay until the fireworks.” Her eyes darted to me. “I have a feeling he’s here now because of Grant. Maybe bad news.”

“Or maybe good,” I said, and it felt like a lie.

Emery smiled gratefully, then looked sad again. “We’re supposed to go to Italy for the rest of the summer. I guess I won’t see you anymore.”

“I guess not,” I said, and yet another crack formed in my heart. There were so many, it must’ve been close to falling to pieces.

“I know!” Emery grabbed my arm. “You can write to me. Write to me, and then I’ll have your address, and I’ll write you back. Can you remember mine if I tell you?”

“Of course.”

“Yay! We’ll be pen pals! And even though it’s a long way away, let’s meet here next year. Next Fourth of July. Right on this rock. You want to?”

One year. It may as well have been a thousand, it felt so far away. She’d probably forget all about me, but it was my only chance, so I took it.

“Yes,” I said. “I want to.”

Emery’s face lit up with happiness at the idea of seeing me again, and that was the closest I’d come to crying all day.

She told me her address—a big house on the water, no doubt—and I committed it to memory as if it were the answer to the world’s most important question on an exam I must not fail.

The driver called her again, this time more urgently.

“Gotta go,” Emery said, walking backwards. “Write to me, okay?”

“I will.”

She gave me a little wave in the falling dark, then stopped and bent over a tall yellow flower—a daffodil with a bright yellow trumpet. Emery plucked it and ran back to me, breathless.

“You won’t forget me, will you, Xander?”

“I won’t,” I said. “Never.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

Emery’s smile stole my breath and my heart right along with it. She pressed the flower’s sturdy green stem into my hand. “See you next year.”

I watched her go, watched her climb into the waiting car that looked so cold. Today had been cold and raw too, but Emery…she was everything warm and good, and I knew I’d remember her forever.

***

Emery, Age Thirteen

He forgot me.

It was the only explanation. I’d been coming to Brenton Park every year for three years. To the rock. Our rock. And for three years, Xander was never here. This was the third year. The last year.

I can’t do this anymore.

I shifted on the hard stone. My butt was numb; I’d been sitting for hours—since this morning—because I didn’t want to risk missing him. But now the sun was sinking, and it was obvious that Xander wasn’t coming. Again.

I looked west to the ocean. The paper in my hand was getting wrinkled, the ink stained with my tears, the writing smudged.

It wasn’t a letter from Xander. He hadn’t written me either, like he promised.

Not once. Empty mailboxes for years. And each time there was no letter, some little piece of me that had been soft and warm grew hard and cold.

I wasn’t supposed to go in Grant’s room—no one was.

It was sealed off like an exhibit in a museum.

But I snuck in there sometimes. Jack did too, probably more than me.

He didn’t even bother to sneak, though. When our parents or Belinda—the housekeeper—caught him, he yelled and cursed.

He told them to fuck off. That they were insane. That he hated them.

He didn’t yell that at Belinda, just our parents.

I didn’t yell. I never yelled. Never made a fuss or talked back. I’d just sneak in and cry on Grant’s pillow, which hadn’t been used in three years and would never be used again.

“He was up in Providence, crossing the train tracks with his headphones on,” my father had told Jack and me on that Fourth of July three years ago.

After the park. After I sat on the rock with Xander.

Dad had gathered us in the sitting room, his tone the same as though he were giving a presentation.

“Grant’s music was too loud and he didn’t hear the train coming. It was a tragic, tragic accident.”

I had thought my heart was going to explode.

Surely Dad was lying, to say something that horrible.

I’d looked to Mom. She sat by the gas fireplace, which was on even though it was summer.

One manicured hand covered her eyes. In the other was a glass of ice cubes soaking in amber liquid. She almost always had one of those now.

“Mommy?” I whispered.

She’d said nothing. Not a sound. I wanted to scream and cry but that wasn’t what “polite young ladies” did. I’d been trained better than that.

Jack had made enough noise for all of us.

He crumpled to the floor as if someone had shot him.

He wailed and screamed and cried. He clawed at the carpet, his eyes wild, until my dad nodded at Belinda and Colin to take him to bed.

The next day, they told us Grant’s room was off-limits.

A shrine where no one was allowed to go.

All of his stuff, every photo with him in it—even the memory of him—was locked behind a closed door.

We weren’t even allowed to say his name.

Grant had lots of books. Whenever I snuck in, I’d peruse his bookshelves and take something to read. I always expected an alarm to go off, like what would happen if you touched an artifact in a museum.

The other day, I’d taken a book called A Prayer for Owen Meany.

It was well-worn and dog-eared, with lots of Grant’s notes in the margins.

He had wanted to be a writer. Dad had wanted him to go to business school and take over the family textile business.

They’d had lots of battles about that—a war where both sides lost.

Owen Meany wasn’t easy to read at first; it looked like it was going to be a religious book.

There was nothing religious or spiritual in the House of Wallace—my parents knelt at the altar of money, status, and prestige.

But I kept going and I was glad I did. The book was more about faith and fate, and I was a big believer in fate.

Like Xander and me. Like how his mother and my brother left on the same day.

That had to mean something, didn’t it?

Even though Xander had never written me—not one letter—and even though he never met me at our rock, I still hoped.

A lot. I had a lot of feelings about him, and they seemed to grow bigger and more complicated as the years went by.

So, the other night, I wrote them down. I wrote like how Owen Meany starts but changed it to fit Xander.

I’m doomed to remember a boy with mismatched eyes—not because of his eyes, or because he was the smartest person I ever knew, but because he is the reason I believe in true love. I’m a hopeless romantic because of Xander Ford.

It was mushy and girly but so was I. A romantic at heart.

I loved love stories. My books had to have one or forget it.

And I meant what I wrote. I think I fell in love with Xander when I was ten years old and didn’t know it.

I knew it now. But he obviously didn’t feel the same. He’d broken his promise.

He forgot me.

The sky was growing dark. The fireworks would be starting soon, and he wasn’t here.

He hadn’t written, and now I knew love stories were just pretty lies.

The only thing to do was to forget Xander too.

It hurt too much, and I was already hurting.

My father was strict as ever. My mother was a ghost. Jack was a stranger now.

I was the only one trying to make it all better.

To obey all the rules and be what they wanted me to be.

To make them proud. Because if I did that, maybe they’d finally be happy.

But I couldn’t do that and hold on to Xander too.

To the right of our rock was the trash can where Xander had once cleaned up the food I’d dropped after I hugged him…

but no. I had to push away all those memories and feelings.

Push away the sense that we’d known each other forever and had just been apart for a little while.

I had to shove it all into a secret room in my heart and lock the door.

Except I wouldn’t sneak into this room. I would keep it locked until Xander Ford was less than a memory. That’s what my parents were doing with Grant. I didn’t think it would work—how can you erase a whole person? But it was worth a try.

I tore the paper into shreds and put the pieces in the trash can, careful to let not even one word escape, and then I walked away.