More Than a Story: Part 3~Ali Cummings

More than a Story
Part 3

There were sounds everywhere. Forks and spoons and knives clicking, and trash can lids lifting and being set back down again. And then there were chair noises as they were dragged across the floor when people wanted to stand and get something else to eat. But mostly talking. Happy chattering, quiet whispers, and loud shouts and exclamations all bounced off the walls of the Fellowship Hall, and were carried down the hall and into the Youth Room, where they would have found me if someone came looking for me.
As people joked and laughed with their friends, I mourned the death of mine. I sat in my chair, my eyes squeezed shut, trying to remember the happy times when I didn’t know Sam McMillen.If I hadn’t met him, I thought angrily. Then I wouldn’t be in this mess right now!And then suddenly I opened my eyes, and somewhere inside of me, something else opened too.
If I hadn’t met him . . .
If I hadn’t met Sam McMillen, I’d probably be dead right now. I would have commit suicide in January like I had planned. If I hadn’t met Sam McMillen, I’d be alone right now. (Well, I am! I thought angrily again.) But then I thought about it. I’d have been virtually alone for the past two years. If I hadn’t met Sam McMillen, I would be gone.
I couldn’t believe the truth. If I hadn’t met Sam, I would be long gone. And he might not have died. It was my fault.
Suddenly I could not take it anymore. I finally broke, and it was as if the heavens had unleashed all of it’s rain. I sobbed until no more tears came.
And then my sadness came back out as anger. I was horribly infuriated with myself. If it wasn’t for me, Sam would still be alive. He wouldn’t have been going out that day. He wouldn’t have been going to the mall that day. And as I kicked a nearby chair and sat down on the floor in frustration, my mind flashed back to Sunday Night Bible Study, last week.
We were standing out at the pavilion, and Sam was watching his breath come out in little white puffs, and laughing as they got larger and larger. And I laughed as I watched his mouth widen in his quest to blow a huge white breath and blow it into Sara’s face.
"Sooooo," He said mischievously.
"What?" I asked, still laughing as his mouth widened as far as it would go.
"It’s your birthday soon, right?"
"Yeah," I said wondering where he was going with this. "Why?"
"‘Cuz I know what I’m getting for you!"
I sighed. "Sam! You’re going to torture me about it, aren’t you?"
"Yep." He said, half laughing as he saw my frustrated expression.
"Yeah, my dad and I are going to the mall tomorrow, and then . . ."
"Sam!"
" . . . I’m going to that one store and getting that one thing . . ."
"Sam!"
" . . . And then I’ll wrap it in that one color that you like . . ."
"SAM!"
"Okay, okay!" He said with a laugh. "I won’t tell you!"
"Good!" I said, amused.
But after a few minutes of blowing his breath into Renee’s face, Sam started again.
‘I just know it’s going to be perfect!" I heard him say. "It’ll be white, cause white goes with everything, plus you said that the white ones were your favorites . . ."
"Samuel Tod McMillen, what am I going to do with you?!" I said, exasperated.
"Absolutely nothing! I like myself right where I am, thank you!" He said with a laugh.
The scene melted away. I wanted so much to have that moment back. To tell him that I liked him where he was too, and that I didn’t want him to ever leave, and that I loved him too much to let him go.And then I went numb. I had no emotion whatsoever. I wasn’t angry anymore, but I wasn’t depressed either. And I was certainly not happy! I was just numb.
Maybe it was because I didn’t know what to feel. I was still convinced that if Sam hadn’t been on his way back from the mall, then the car would never have fallen off the bridge . . . would never have rolled . . . would never have slipped . . . he would never have died.
But at the same time, I was telling myself that this was ridiculous. It couldn’t have been my fault. There was no way!
And then I went numb.
And then all the emotion came back, and it was like a smack in the face. It hit me like a wave pulling me under, ignoring the fact that I was trying to swim back to the surface . . . to peace.The whole room seemed to be fading away slowly. I felt as if I was falling. All of the emotion that surrounded me was overpowering. I couldn’t take it. My head began throbbing. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t feel.
And then there was nothing.
~ ** ~ * ~ * ~ ** ~I figured out later that I had passed out. I had gotten myself so stressed and upset that I just fainted, right there on the Youth Room floor. It gave everybody a good scare, but I was alright.I wished that I wasn’t alright. I shouldn’t be alive, I told myself. Not when Sam’s dead and it’s my fault. I don’t deserve to live.
And that night as I lay in bed asleep, I dreamed that Sam was still alive, and that he and I were playing ping-pong in the Angle Room. And then the next moment I was telling him how I felt about him. And then the next he was saying the same things. And then the next, we were.I awoke thinking that the dream was reality. But as I sat up in bed, the bright lights and sounds of 5th Quarter didn’t surround me. Instead, the emptiness and darkness of my room swallowed me, and found me crying myself to sleep the next minute.
~ ** ~ * ~ * ~ ** ~
The next two days filled me to the brim with a depression I never though possible for me to have.We did nothing Monday, short of school. Tuesday was our running around day, but, as I didn’t get any sleep the night before, I was left to sleep in.
And then Wednesday was the worst day of the week so far. I had to show up. I could not skip church over something so small as Sam dying. That’s what I told myself, Renee, and my mom when they all asked me if I wanted to go. Renee nearly cried when I told her. My mom was just silent, and then she said "okay".
I hadn’t thought about Wednesday night yet. I was still trying to get over Sunday. I had never considered everything that may have happened that night.
For one thing, Sara was in class that night, which told me that the slow, painful healing process had begun. She too, like me, had gotten little sleep, and was ready to cry almost every minute. But if there was one thing that I had discovered that night, it was this:
That around every corner, fitted into every minute, and found in every little thing that I did and didn’t do, I found Sam. If I played a CD, it was from an artist that he had enjoyed listening to. If I read a book, there was something about every character that I read about that reminded me of him. If I did something stupid, like pick up a pen or pencil and draw a star, I would be reminded of that Wednesday night class so long ago, when Sam had erased my perfect star with a smudgy eraser. We had never laughed so hard and so silently at the same time.
I realized with a shock that, in every thing that I did, a little bit of Sam would haunt me. His death was hung over my head, and it was all my fault. And if there was one thing that I was sure of most in the world, it was that I would never get over it.
Everything about Wednesday night was depressing. I had assumed that we would have a substitute teacher, but we didn’t. And I had never seen Sam’s dad so emotional. I figured that, like everyone else, his family would just try to suck it up and deal with it. But I was horribly wrong.Krissy barely talked. It was as if she was numb to the fact that her brother was dead. And I was unfortunate enough to witness the instant in which it finally sunk into her.
She and Hannah were playing basketball outside next to the pavilion. Everybody else was out on the front steps; I was the only one around at the back, save Hannah and Krissy.Hannah was just taking a shot at throwing the ball into the hoop, and she was steadily getting bored with the fact that Krissy wouldn’t talk to her. So she kept up the chatter, every so often pausing and waiting to see if Krissy would respond.
"I caught this newt the other day, no, it was a fence lizard, and I had trouble naming it."She paused. Krissy said nothing.
"So I went into Renee’s room to ask her, and she screamed and told me to get it away from her. Another pause. Still no response.
"So I went to my mom and she told me to ‘get that thing out of this house right now, Hannah Lynn!’."
Silence.
Somehow I knew where this story was going, but I was only half listening, twirling a blade of grass in between my fingers absentmindedly and losing myself in my own thoughts. I should be dead, not Sam. I should be dead, not Sam. I should be dead, not Sam.
"And then finally I went to Megan and said ‘What should I name this fence lizard I caught?’ and she didn’t say anything. I thought she was asleep, and so I tried to wake her up."Something about this particular story was nagging at the back of my mind. I did remember Hannah waking me up, and I had been having a dream about Sam. So then the first thing I had said was . . .
"And all she said was — "
I leapt to my feet. "Hannah, don’t! — "
". . . Sam. What kinda name is that for a fence lizard?"
As soon as the words came out, Hannah must have realized what she had just said, because she turned pale. I felt the color draining from my face as well. I couldn’t look at Krissy, but when I did, I regretted it.
At first she was still. If we had been playing musical statues, she would have been the winner. And then a small sob issued from her. For a moment, she just made that one sound. It seemed to echo inside my head, bouncing around, with no way of escaping. And then she sobbed again. And again, the noise threatened to burst it’s way out of my throbbing head.
And then finally, she broke down, and, crumpling to the ground, began crying, completely unconsolable.
Hannah stood with a look of complete shock on her face, trying to work everything out in her mind about what had just happened. And I guessed that she figured it out in a hurry, because her eyes opened wide, and she began to shake from head to toe, finally coming to the conclusion that she had said something terribly wrong.
I myself was frozen. I could not believe what was happening. It had finally sunk in, and I had been there to witness it.
I walked over slowly and knelt down. The muffled sounds of Krissy’s sobbing almost broke my heart, but I re composed myself and whispered, "It’s okay . . ."
But I knew in my heart that those were empty words. Sam was gone, and that was anything but okay. I could never live with it, but at that moment, I realized that I wasn’t in the boat alone.But they don’t have to live with the guilt that you have to, A small, creepy voice seemed to echo in my mind. I shuddered and tried to block it out. But in my mind, my own voice answered. You’re right.What was going on?