Page 142 of When the Stars Rise

I follow the coast and run for miles and miles. I run until my lungs are burning, I’m coated in sweat, and my leg muscles cramp before turning around and running back in the direction I came.

I end up at the beach just below the bluff that Hayley’s house sits on.

It’s the golden hour and the world is bathed in a soft glow, but I feel so sick inside that I can’t fully appreciate the beauty.

It’s quiet. This beach is secluded and I’m the only one on it, so I kick off my running shoes, strip off my T-shirt and walk into the ocean. Then I dive into the waves, and I swim toward the horizon as the sun dips into the ocean.

I keep swimming until my arms and legs grow so weak with fatigue that I can’t swim another stroke.

The sky is awash with color. Brilliant pinks and oranges and violets and it’s so fucking beautiful I want to cry like a fucking baby.

It hurts. Everything hurts.

Dredging up all those memories was the worst thing I could have done. I failed Hayley. I failed her parents. Zeke. I failed him too.

How do I ever forgive myself for something like that? How do I go on living when I know I could have done something but didn’t?

Exhausted, I float on my back, letting the waves carry me.

My eyes drift shut. I’m weightless. Free.

Dying is easy. Living with failure and regrets and all this pain… that’s fucking hard.

Is this what you were thinking, Zeke? That you wanted it all to go away so you wouldn’t have to deal with whatever was weighing you down?

I can taste the salt on my tongue. Feel the ocean cradling me, rocking me in a soothing lullaby and I know that everything is going to be okay. Simple, really. It doesn’t even require that much thought.

Dying is so much easier than living.

I release all the air from my lungs and let gravity pull me under. My body sinks into the murky depths of the sea as a montage of memories plays out like a movie in my head.

I see Zeke jumping from that plane. The blissed-out look on his face when he was floating through the clouds, arms wide open, embracing the great unknown.

I see Dale Peterson’s face through the windshield. The resignation. The acceptance that this was the end.

At first it burns, and my lungs feel like they’re going to burst but I wait it out because I know it’s only a matter of time before the pain subsides.

A calmness washes over me. It’s peaceful. Meditative, almost. I don’t feel a thing. No pain. No fear. No guilt.

It’s all blue skies ahead. Not a fucking cloud on the horizon.

I’m sluggish and drowsy and I’m losing consciousness when I see her face.

Her smile. Her big hazel eyes. The lush lips I’ve kissed hundreds, thousands of times.

I see her jumping out of the treehouse, putting her blind faith in a knobby-kneed seven-year-old boy with skinny arms.

I see her running across the field with a crown of wildflowers on her head and the sun in her hair.

I see her face in the mosaic of my mind, wind blowing through her hair, cheeks flushed, those two dimples making an appearance when her radiant smile beams down on me from the heavens above and I want to tell her that I love her.

Shout it loud enough so she never forgets that she was loved.

I feel her hand reaching for me, dragging me back.

I hear her voice calling me home.

She’s not in the heavens above. She’s here on earth, and I want to live in this world, not the next.