Part 48: James

For the second time in three days, James found himself swinging. The weekend you left and I couldn’t stop swinging, he lyricized. It was Tuesday, but that didn’t matter. The weekend wouldn’t really end until Hannah came back. If she came back. Maybe she was gone forever. Maybe she had never been anything but a figment of his imagination. Maybe she had been too good to be true. Not Eve, not the snake, but the Garden of Eden itself.

That was why had tried to catch Victoria’s eye every time they had crossed paths over the past few days. He wanted to talk to someone else who knew Hannah, who remembered Hannah, to reassure himself that she was real. The teachers hadn’t commented on her absence; even Courtney Collins wasn’t spreading rumors about where she had gone, using her privileged position as Hannah’s neighbor to gain some sense of authority. It was like she had never existed.

And if that could happen to Hannah, then imagine how quickly and completely someone like him would be forgotten if something happened. Not that anything’s going to happen, he insisted, thinking of Susan and her irrational fears. Of course, if she was really afraid, she wouldn’t have let him leave so easily this afternoon. Unless she was so afraid of him that she didn’t want to say no to him or even ask where he was going. Like parents were supposed to.

This time, he wasn’t crying, but he was listening to music. CrossMyHeart - his band, his rock. A band that definitely knew what it was like to cry on the swingset of your old elementary school. The same album he had listened to on Friday afternoon, start to finish, but now he was jumping around from song to song because it’s what Hannah would do. He had started with the second-to-last track, and now was on the fourth, “My Promises / Your Lies.”

“Lie here with me and I’ll always be honest

It’s not a threat, it’s a fucking promise.”

James wondered if they’d started with honest or promise. They were both good words, important words, words that he would gladly wear on his chest (he had started to read a summary of The Scarlet Letter last night) - but why would he want her to lie to him? Real relationships had to be based on honesty and trust. And “lie with” sounded awkward and unnatural to his ear, like saying “talk with” instead of “talk to . . .” Unless . . . 

It clicked into place. It was “lie” as in “lying down” - oh, that was clever! James felt a surge of something like excitement flow through his body as he pumped his legs, and promptly felt guilty for it. He was supposed to be brooding, he was supposed to be missing Hannah. It seemed like his feelings had been so much more pure on Saturday. The way the sun had been so high in the sky and his shadow had stretched out in the afternoon light, the song stuck in his head more powerful than the one in his ears, knowing no one was home (well, except his dad, but he didn't count), no one expecting him or wondering where he was . . 

The song was reaching its end. James ground himself to a stop, pulled his mp3 player out of his pocket, and raced to change the song before the next one started. What was the most random number to come after four? The last one God would expect him to choose? (He was back in the Garden of Eden.) Seven - something about seven felt especially random. He hit the OK button just in time, experienced another jolt of joy, and chastised himself.

But would Hannah deny herself these small pleasures? Of course not. Hannah was all about finding happiness wherever and however she could, and that was why a world full of greedy TV executives and selfish alcoholics would never grind her down.

James realized he was staring at the patch of woods on the edge of the playground. He remembered how mysterious and vast they had once seemed, during all those countless recesses. When they lost a soccer ball in there, no one went to get it; they just started playing tag instead. They said it was because they didn’t want to get in trouble, but it had to be more than that. These were kids who were “in trouble” every day, kids whose personal clothespins lived in the Red Zone, kids who had a reputation as “Bad Kids” to keep up. But even they hadn’t gone after it. (Hannah would have, if she had been there.) They would have followed someone in, but there was no one to follow.

And then, one day, some teacher or other - it wasn’t their regular teacher, maybe a substitute, or a Music/Art/PE teacher who only lasted a few months - decided to take them on a walk through those same woods. There must have been some reason, some assignment, but James only remembered walking through the woods, and being shocked that there was a trail in there, that there were little signs labeling all the trees. And there was the soccer ball! Sean had picked it up, the teacher had yelled at him to leave it, and they had all ganged up on the teacher, explaining the story all at once so that he must have heard nothing but chattering, and had acquiesced.

After all that, the woods turned out to be just another part of school.

What would it look like in there now? James got off his swing and walked in that direction, still holding his mp3 player in his left hand so he could change the song. That would be a good way to distinguish today from Saturday. Saturday would be the day he cried on the swings; Tuesday the day he went in the woods. Both attempts to recapture the past, both attempts to find some way forward without Hannah, just in case she was really gone.

He would have to live without her someday, he figured. It had just happened so much sooner than he expected.

“I’ll never say ‘I miss you’

Cause you’ll always be in my heart.

I’ll never say ‘I love you’

Cause I loved you from the start.”

Yes, that. Exactly that. It wasn’t about the past or the future; it was eternal; love was eternal.

I’m in love with Hannah, he realized suddenly, as he took the first step into the woods and the brightness of the afternoon turned to shadow and cool.