Page 2 of Fragments of the Lost
Just say it—
Just pick up the shirt at the foot of the bed, the one he wore the last time you touched him.
Just start.
The shirt still smells of him. Dove soap. The cologne that always let me know when he was behind me, a smile starting even before he’d place his hand on my waist, his lips on my cheek. I don’t bring it to my face. I don’t dare bring it any closer. I throw it into the corner—the beginning of a pile.
See, Caleb? I’m starting. I’ve started.
Underneath the shirt, there’s also the jeans. Knees worn thin, hem slightly fraying, soft and familiar. I’m holding my breath by the time I get to the pockets, except I already know what’s there, so it should prepare me. But it doesn’t. The chain crackles, cold on my fingers. And then I feel something else: the memory of his warm skin as I placed it into his open palm.
I said:Please hold this for me.
I said:Please be careful.
He put it in his pocket, no big thing. He did it like that because of everyone watching. To show me he didn’t have to be careful anymore. Not with me.
The clasp of the necklace in my hand is broken, had already broken when I gave it to him, but the gold chain is now kinked and knotted too, from sitting buried in his pocket. I wore it every race, even though we weren’t supposed to, taping the dragonfly charm to the inside of my jersey to keep it in place while I ran. I wore it because it was good luck, because it was a ritual, because I had a hard time doing things any other way than how I’d always done them.
It broke on the starting line as I raised my hands over my head in a stretch. The pop against my skin, sickening. My body already wound tight, waiting for the gun. I scanned the crowd, and there he was—familiar. It didn’t occur to me right then that he had no reason to be there anymore. It didn’t even register. There was no mystery, just the momentary panic of a broken necklace and a race about to start.
Wait,I begged, leaving my place on the field. I jogged over to him, standing near the starting line, as everyone else took their places.
Please hold this for me.
Please be careful.
He frowned at the dragonfly in the crease of his palm, closed his fist, slid his hand into the right front pocket of his favorite jeans. Shrugged.
I wish I had known that this would be it—the last time I saw him. I would’ve made sure the last image I had of him was not like this: this apathy; his blue eyes skimming over me, settling to the side; and then the breeze, blowing his light brown hair across his eyes, shuttering everything. The image I see constantly, now burned into memory.
He left before the race was over, probably remembering he didn’t have to be there for me anymore. Or maybe it was something else. The rain. A word spoken. A thing remembered. Either way, he left. Came back home. Tossed his jeans on the floor of his room, my necklace still inside. Left them there. Changed.
Changed everything.
Caleb. Be careful.
—
The attic is too quiet without him, and the angled walls too narrowed, and I want to beout of this room,but then I hear his mother arguing below. She’s arguing with someone very particular. She’s arguing with Max. Sometimes his voice reminds me of Caleb’s. Sometimes, when I hear him, it takes me a second to remember Caleb’s gone.
“She shouldn’t be here,” he’s saying. “I told you I’d do it.”
“She will do it,” his mother says.
And this is how I’m sure that this is my penance.
I slide the necklace into my pocket, leaving his jeans on the floor—the outline of his ghost. I look over at the pile of flattened boxes leaning against the wall just inside the door, left there by his mother. His baseball cap hangs from the doorknob, wedged between the boxes and the open door. The room is untouched otherwise, frozen at the exact moment Caleb last left the room.
I can picture it so clearly, see it happening as if I were in this room that afternoon, beside him. The rain pelting the single window, the whir of the ceiling fan overhead. He throws his clothes on the floor as he changes. He must’ve been in a rush, because the clothes are just lying here, and hewas usually pretty good about getting his laundry the three steps from his bed to the hamper in his closet. And then: he leaves. He braces his hands against the narrow walls on the sides of the stairs as he catapults himself two, three steps down at a time.
There was this feeling, with Caleb, that he was always late for something.
I imagine this room would’ve stayed like this forever—the door shut, everything frozen in time, his mother sealing off the entrance, preventing anyone from touching it. Except they’re leaving. Leaving this town, leaving it all behind. It’s been one month since the memorial service, one and a half months since the flood, nearly two months since we broke up.
But as I stand in his room, all that time disappears, and I have to remind myself he’s not about to walk in and ask what I’m doing here. I swing the door slightly closed to prop open the first box, and his broken-in baseball cap sways faintly side to side. It’s solid blue with a white swoosh symbol, the brim arched, the edges worn and off-color, bleached from the summers of salt and sun.
And suddenly I can see him turning his face to me on the beach, as he did that first time, the summer before last.
