Chapter 13
The Last Letter
December 15th, 1993
Dear Luke,
I struggle with where to begin, so pardon me if this is a bit scattershot.
None of what happened was your fault. I’m ashamed I didn’t understand what was actually happening until Nadine told me what Aaron did to her, but now that I know, I need to repent of all neutrality and be perfectly clear: Aaron bullied you, lied to you, abused your Pokémon, and knew exactly what he was doing.
I don’t know exactly how Aaron put it, but whatever he told you to make you think I wouldn’t want you around if you gave up on Indigo, he was lying. I only wanted you to succeed at battling to the extent I thought you wanted to yourself—I would have been no less happy if you stayed on the sidelines each time to take pictures. I was never looking for ideal training partners. At the beginning, I asked you to come with us because I thought your camera was cool, and I pushed you to stay with us because it didn’t take me a week to decide you’d be a wonderful friend.
I regret foisting that “pact” on you more than I can bear. It was something I said on a whim, just a thoughtless expression of gung-ho optimism. The only part of it that meant anything to me down the road was the who, not the what. I would never have thrown you away before I threw away the pact; not at the beginning, and absolutely not after you became a true friend and so much more to me. I can only beg you to forgive me for taking it for granted that you understood how I felt, and that I missed every sign of how much I was hurting you, which must have been staring me in the face.
I don’t blame you in the least for throwing battles or anything else you did to cope with what I let Aaron put you through. There is nothing for me to forgive there. Nothing. And if I had seen what Aaron did to Zoe at the end, I can’t promise I wouldn’t have punched him either. If you insist on apologizing for hitting him on the grounds you knew better, or that you had only moderately superhuman patience, then I forgive you. Completely, utterly, without reservation. And if you feel what you concealed from me under duress counted as lying, I forgive you for that even faster. If you still feel an ounce of guilt over what happened, please let me carry it instead.
I never realized just how much it must have pained you to write to me all this time, and to have me pushing to see you in person. I confess, that didn’t stop me from waiting for you here. I knew if you wanted to see me, we would have met already, but I hoped and still hope that if you learned the truth, you would feel differently. The reason you’re reading this is because I reached the limit of how long I can stay in one place and think about one thing. I’m ashamed to admit this, even if it might be for the best that I wasn’t here when you got back.
You’ve now read everything I would have said to you in person before I let you get a word in edgewise, and you have every right to decide you can’t change your mind about seeing me. When I’m done with this next survey, I’ll go back to Goldenrod. The office address is in the phone book, and whoever’s at the front desk will know me if you ask. I won’t try to ambush you anymore, but I will never stop waiting.
When I was at my lowest point, you taught me not to punish myself for having feelings. If seeing me would be a punishment, it would be hypocritical of me to tell you otherwise. But I won’t despise my own feelings, either: I won’t be at peace until everything is made right. And I feel too strongly about you to be satisfied unless my being near you is part of what makes things right. So, please, let me help you.
Love,
Wendy
December 16th, 1993
Luke struggled to hold the paper steady. His eyes skipped right past every occurrence of the word “forgive” in Wendy’s letter as two years of his life played back in his head. Over and over, he saw where he had taken Aaron’s word for it about how Wendy would think, even long after he had come to hate Aaron’s guts. He had actually treated as fact what his least favorite person in the world told him about his
very favorite.
He felt like the most colossal idiot in human history.
To have let all this happen, all because not once in
twenty-seven months had he managed to talk to his best friend about the one topic from which came his every trouble…
It was unpardonable. Wendy was wrong to forgive him.
Hands shaking, he put the letter back in its envelope, and the envelope safely in his pack with the others. Before he zipped the pocket shut, though, a wave of nausea came over him. The idea of having these letters on his person was suddenly intolerable. He took out all seven, and got up.
Upon standing, he reeled. Going too many nights without Zoe’s help lately was catching up to him. Ignoring the eyes of the other trainers in the Pokémon Center, he staggered to the waste bins.
Luke stood still over the long slot for paper recycling. There were too many conflicting impulses for him to do it right away. But he knew he would never sleep again if there was anything around to remind him. He gripped the envelopes by their edges with both hands. He held them. And held them.
Then he pulled. They ripped an inch. One more pull, and they were torn in half. He let the halves fall into the slot.
Vision blurry, he retrieved his pack, then left the increasingly claustrophobic building for the cold night air.
He let out a long a breath, then watched it rise and vanish. It was over. Now he could forget. However many years it took, he would be free again. A car honked at him. He woke up a little and stepped back to let it pass. With no other cars behind it, he tried crossing the street again, this time without incident. On he went. He was walking home to stay for a while, now that his journey as a trainer had come to a close. That was all.
He remembered dropping his housekey before getting inside. Between then and bed, he remembered nothing.
*********
Luke watched the clock as he agitated the film canister. The roll was already developed and washed, leaving only this application of stabilizer. It was his least favorite part, when anything that could go wrong had already happened, but he still had to follow through with treating what might be worthless film. Ten seconds left. Zero. He set the canister on the table and let the roll soak for another minute. Then he unscrewed the lid, poured the stabilizer back into the bottle for reuse, and finally removed the spool.
He uncoiled the film. There was only one frame he was interested in out of the seven rolls he’d shot on the excursion. He already knew he hadn’t botched the development process from his cursory inspection after draining the fixer, but the question remained of whether he had gotten the all-important shot right to begin with.
He had. Even in negative color, Luke could see it was in sharp focus and had healthy contrast. It was going to be perfect.
“Well done,” said his dad over his shoulder. “…Is that one
red?”
“Yup.”
“Wow. May I?” Luke handed him the wet roll for his closer inspection. “…That’s your best composition, too. And
very sharp—you’ve got enough detail to crop it down to a head-shot. This is one-in-a-million.”
“Got lucky.”
“Don’t pull that on
me. I’m the one who told you that’s a boast in disguise.”
Luke chuckled, barely. “Yeah, yeah. I do think Zoe helped a bit, though.”
“Is that right?”
“Maybe. Not quite sure.” Luke sat on a stool and allowed his dad to hang the film to dry. He was so tired, but at least it had been worth it.
His dad returned to the customer’s portrait he was working on, comparing two test prints to decide on which was better cropped and color-balanced. A few minutes went by in silence. Luke had six more rolls to develop, but couldn’t feel any urgency about them. He had done it. He was ready to go pro.
“By the way, Son…”
Luke’s face went blank. Dad didn’t often break out the “Son.”
“…Yeah?”
His dad didn’t answer right away, either. When he did speak, it hit Luke in the stomach.
“Your mother met someone who was watching the house, day before yesterday. Didn’t come in. Seems to have been going by a fake name.”
Luke was silent. This wasn’t supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to have to think about this. He was supposed to be free now. His dad walked over again, leaned against the sink, and looked at the far wall. Eventually, he took Luke’s silence as an answer and spoke again.
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“…No.”
This wasn’t what he wanted. It was bad enough to have years-old mistakes to forget. He didn’t need reminders of awful things he’d done
this week. Leaving her to wait, watch, and agonize day after day? While he delayed coming back specifically to avoid her? It was abominable. And now it wasn’t even a secret.
“Well,” said his dad, “I assume you know who I’m talking about. We don’t have to talk about her, but…”
Luke put his head in his hands. “Just spit it out.”
To his surprise, his dad didn’t chastise him for his impertinence. “Okay. We’ll keep it short.” He sighed. “I can’t tell you
what to do, but you shouldn’t do
nothing. That isn’t fair to her, or to you either.”
He was right. It wasn’t something Luke should have needed to be told. He was being a coward. If he was going to do this to Wendy, he needed to make it a clean cut so she could cauterize her wound. Anything less was unacceptable. He had to leave her one more letter, and she had to get it as soon as possible.
“It’s not easy, this kind of thing,” said his dad. “If it were, you’d have been born about eight years earlier. Probably would have had a brother or sister or two.”
Luke paid no mind to where his dad was going with this. He was busy working out the math on when he could make it to Blackthorn, and whether she would already be there. Difficult, but not impossible.
“…Dad?”
“Yes?”
Luke swallowed. “…Can you tell Mom I won’t be back in time for Christmas? I’ll try to be here for New Year’s.” If he was going to do this, it surely earned him the right to duck out of
that conversation.
His dad rubbed his chin. “…That’s a tall order. You’re sure you need to go
right now?”
“…Define ‘need.’”
“…All right, but you owe me. See you soon. Don’t worry about the film—I’ll stow it when it’s dry.”
They left it at that. While his dad went back to the customer’s order, Luke snuck upstairs to repack his things and fetch Zoe.
*********
After stocking up at the Mart, Luke found himself on the trail again, heading east and up along the mountain streams and through the small but hardy groves of trees. His first attempt at retirement from Pokémon training hadn’t lasted twenty-four hours. He tried not to think about that. That is, until he thought about Wendy standing outside his house, pretending she didn’t know his mom, after which thinking about the former didn’t seem so bad.
He supposed it was only appropriate he would have to tackle the Ice Path one more time before the end. It would be more difficult going solo, but at least there wouldn’t be the constant griping or joking about the temperature. Also good was that it was already chilly outside. The cold under the mountains was unchanging, and the less he had to acclimate to it, the better. He hoped it would be closer to freezing outside tomorrow when he reached the entrance.
Zoe was out for an hour of hiking around noon, then out sporadically to handle the odd wild Bellsprout and Tangela, and again for the last hour before camp. It was already dark by dinnertime. The shortest day of the year was coming up, but the hours of sun in a day was going to be moot when they reached the Ice Path. Luke decided it was time to call it a night earlier than usual and made to recall Zoe to her ball.
She grunted in a frustrated, insistent tone. Luke shook his head.
“Not tonight. Sorry.”
She went back into the ball with a huff. Luke didn’t expect her to understand, and anyway, it was his call. If he got anything like decent sleep tonight, the nightmares would be bad, and he needed to pace out her medicine. Between her getting sick and his settling for a long break in lieu of proper rest, the latter was the clear choice.
It was a long night.
The sun was already low next afternoon when he reached the entrance. In defiance of all laws of atmospheric pressure, an icy wind blew from the dark cavemouth. Luke took a deep breath, set down his pack, let out Zoe, and made ready. More layers went on under his jacket, and a scarf over that. He switched to his thick socks and slid two of the precious handwarmers into his gloves. When he needed them, all he would have to do was crush his hands together and rub them—no need to remove the gloves. They would last about twenty hours each.
As he put on his knit hat, a group of boy trainers, probably twelve, came up and began discussing what they needed in the way of clothing. “I’ve got enough hair,” said one of them. “And we’ll be moving around a lot anyway, right? If I get cold, I’ll put it on.”
Luke rolled his eyes. “Put it on now, dummy.”
“What’d you say?”
Luke looked back at the tough-acting idiot, who promptly shut up. Between his height advantage and the serious-, scary-looking rings under his eyes, it took little effort to intimidate younger trainers who didn’t know they could probably out-battle him. As he returned his attention to his pack, the kid mumbled something to his friends about how, “Whatever,” he might as well put the hat on now. It was a faint, fleeting relief to Luke to know he’s done his part to prevent a case of hypothermia.
When he was ready, Luke walked in with Zoe following.
“Flash.”
Since it had already been a long day, he limited the first march to only a few miles. Putting aside Mt. Silver, there was no tougher trail to traverse in Johto than the Ice Path. Every step demanded care. Most of the ground was rocky and uneven, while the rare flat surfaces were likely to be frozen puddles. Fortunately, Zoe was a pro at illumination. The hazards were visible enough that Luke could avoid them even in his fatigue, for now.
Finally, they came to the first landmark of the trek. The tunnel emerged upon a clifftop that stood halfway up a massive cavern with a lake of ice at its bottom. The shore below would be a good, clear spot to camp for the night. As they made their way down the long, narrow switchback path, Luke began to confront the decisions ahead of him.
First was the direction they would take tomorrow. The trail split in many ways from here, most of which eventually came to the eastern end. The question was whether to take a longer, safer, easier route, or one of the temptingly short ones.
There was a thud behind him. He turned around, and saw an unconscious Sneasel which had presumably attempted to ambush them from above, and which Zoe must have noticed in mid-air. “Good job,” he told her. Executing Hypnosis solely on Psychic energy—with no help from the pendulum—was no mean feat.
When they reached the bottom, Luke forced himself to attend to the questions again. While he felt capable of taking one of the harder paths, there was a more important factor to consider than travel-time and difficulty: Wendy was down here somewhere.
Suddenly, Luke felt the cold get to him a bit. He crushed the handwarmers to start the chemical reaction.
Since Wendy was here for her work, not simply to get from one end to the other, it seemed safe to bet she would spend most of her time in the neighborhood of sites like this one, where Ice-type Pokémon were more apt to congregate. Taking out his map and lamp—“All done, Zoe. Thanks for the light.”—he considered which tunnels she was most likely to traverse. He wanted the fastest path among those with a low chance of running into her.
He felt like an utter bastard.
No, he told himself, it had to be like this. Seeing her was still out of the question. His only options were to write her to say it was over, or go silent. He was still doing the kindest thing he could.
With that in mind, he realized it was better to spend as little time in Blackthorn as possible, so he decided he ought to start the letter now. He turned to his pack, unzipped the pocket where his pen and paper were, and suppressed his bile at the thought of what was now missing from that pocket. Now lost forever.
This is how it should be. I need to forget.
He took off his right glove, regretted it immediately, and put it back on. But it was no use: Even with a decent surface, he couldn’t write with a glove this thick. Off it came again. He rubbed his hand between his other arm and his side as hard as he could. This bought him a minute of pen usage before the sting became unbearable again.
It was so cold. He was so tired.
*********
If the first full day of walking was tough, the second seemed poised to defeat him. Luke had to stop every fifty feet to convince his eyes to cooperate again. Every breath, fully visible, made it more difficult to stay focused on the ground. It was even worse when Zoe needed a break and he was forced to use a flashlight instead. His progress slowed to such a crawl he considered sharing her long breaks himself. But time was a factor. On he went.
All the while, the wording of the next paragraph ate at him. How could he keep the bitterness out of finality without softening it to a “maybe?” How could he avoid saying what sounded like a euphemism for the opposite of what he meant, like, “It’s not you, it’s me?” It truly was him, not her, but there was no way in the language to write that and have it believed.
He strayed sideways and bumped into Zoe. He apologized and kept walking. The important thing, he realized, was not to be afraid of hurting her feelings a little for now, as long as he put it in a way she would understand eventually.
But the thought of hurting her at all made his stomach ache. How awful a person did you have to be to do something like that to someone like Wendy? To answer such sweetness, such boundless understanding with dismissal? His footsteps felt heavier and heavier as he reminded himself of how there was no avoiding this.
His right foot slipped. The rest of him followed. He hadn’t seen the cliff. He was in freefall.
Before he knew what was happening, his momentum ceased with a jerk. His body glowed blue all over. As he realized what this must be, he found himself flipped around and guided to the rock wall, where he groped for and finally found a handhold. If Zoe had been in her ball, he would be dead.
He climbed back up only with further psychic aid. As he crested the edge, he saw the glow slowly dim from his own arms and from Zoe, who stood still as a statue with eyes shut. Once he was fully up and safe, he dragged himself to the opposite wall and waited for his heartrate to fall to something that felt less life-threatening.
Zoe sat down by his side. She held her pendulum in front of his face, plainly suggesting he needed sleep. There was no dismissing the point, but between gasps for air he said, “Not yet. Long way to go.”
Still, Luke wasn’t stupid enough to start again immediately. They took a long rest, during which he also ruled out trying to go by flashlight again. It was Zoe’s pace or nothing.
*********
Luke stared up at the ceiling of the tent, or at least where he knew it to be. It was pitch black—not that it helped him sleep any. For a minute there, he thought he might nod off, but the echoing cry of a distant Jynx ruined any hope of that for at least an hour. He couldn’t blame the Jynx, though. If it weren’t her, it would have been some other noise, some other thought, the awareness of some muscle or bone or other in his body. It was an altogether hopeless errand.
He turned on his right side, not that it would help. The letter wasn’t finished yet. There was one more paragraph to go, maybe two, and he was running out of time to write them. One day’s march remained until the exit.
Or, perhaps, he should just write one more sentence, sign his name, and leave it at that. The point was already there—the rest was messaging. And why should he care about messaging anymore?
Because it would hurt her even worse.
He told himself to shut up. It was her or him. She would understand. She had said as much. It was in her last letter.
The letter he’d torn up and thrown away, along with all the others. All those words that had become
her in his mind, become his greatest comfort, his dearest friend all these months, gone. Killed.
He cursed, squeezed his eyes shut, and tossed to his left side.
Through closed lids, he saw something that stopped his heart.
His eyes shot open. He knew it wasn’t real, that there was no light to see, but she was
there. Wendy lay next to him on her side, young as he remembered, eyes closed, dressed in short sleeves. Her body shook all over.
Now her eyes were open. But they didn’t notice him. They were fixed on the piece of paper in her hands. It was the letter. The one he was still writing.
Wendy shook even harder. Her lips and fingers were blue. She was freezing to death. He had to do something. His arm weighed a hundred pounds, but he pulled it out of his sleeping bag. He reached out. His vision glowed.
Luke awoke with a scream. He was in the same position as before, but now felt his hand on Zoe’s knee. Before he even caught his breath, he sat up and found the lamp. After his vision adjusted, he saw the look on Zoe’s face: stern and piercing. His whole head, but especially his eyes, felt strange, like that time at the Lake.
Something was wrong. For one thing, Luke could have sworn he’d put Zoe back in her ball before he set up the tent. She couldn’t have gotten out, could she? That must be the dream messing with his memory. And the dream was the strangest part. If Zoe was out, and that had been a nightmare, why wasn’t she sick? He looked at her again. She seemed perfectly well, and her serious expression was unchanged. So, either she
hadn’t been using Dream Eater, which was not at all in her character, or she had fed him back a bad dream on purpose. She’d never done that before, not once.
Luke stared her in the eye. She stared back. Something told him it
had been on purpose. Thoughts presented themselves in the back of his mind as if carefully placed in sequence for his finding and understanding. It wasn’t that she had shown him a bad dream, but
this exact bad dream. Zoe wouldn’t have shown him any other tonight.
He sighed. “I’m sorry, girl. This is how it has to go.”
She was unmoved. Was there no way of making her understand?
“I can’t go on like this. When I forget, everything will be all better. I promise.”
Zoe lowered her head. Luke could tell this wasn’t comprehension, only acquiescence. She extended her hand and pushed his face in a way that was physically uncomfortable, but consciously-subconsciously reassuring. Then she held up her pendulum. Luke felt sleepy at once.
“Thank you… Good night… Zoe…”
*********
The last tunnel of the Ice Path opened onto a bare landscape, little brighter than below ground. The cloud cover was too heavy to allow more than a hint of the rising moon to peek through. The only real light came from Blackthorn City some half a mile south and three hundred feet below. Luke and Zoe clambered down the trail, such as it was. There were more boulders to traverse than dirt paths to follow.
At the edge of town, there was a lone streetlamp with a sign at its base for those arriving this way. It read, “Congrats.” It had never come across as more sarcastic.
When Luke reached buildings, there were plenty of people out late. Some were shopping, but most were touring the Christmas lights hung all over the houses and stores, most of which were built out of stone from the mountain they stood on. Nobody seemed to mind the temperature.
The way to the Pokémon Center escaped Luke at first. He had only been here twice before, both times with younger friends he’d long since said goodbye to and never heard from again. Well, not
that long since in the case of Ken, Sundeep, and Parker, but it felt like ages ago. However long it had been, he started to remember the way when he passed a few familiar streetcorners.
Soon, the red roof came into view.
*********
December 22nd, 1993
Dear Wendy,
I’m glad you told me everything, even if it’s going to make the rest of this harder to write. There’s no gentle way to put it: I can’t see you, and I can’t write to you anymore either.
Although I’ve never felt or thought better of you than I do now, the bottom line is that I can’t take this. As happy as your words make me while I’m reading them, I can’t live with that period of my life continually on my mind. I’m not the type who can shake off constant reminders of bad memories. They keep me up at night, and ultimately force me to choose between Zoe’s health and mine.
I won’t pretend this will hurt me as much as it hurts you, not because it doesn’t hurt me greatly right now, but because I know this is the only way I can eventually numb the pain from three years ago. I know you forgive me for what happened, and I wish that were any comfort, but it isn’t, because I don’t think you should. The way I mistrusted you and mistreated you may be something you can live with, but it’s not something I can live with.
You deserve more than this, but I can’t give it to you. I can only apologize—I can’t change my mind. I hope your life after this is filled to overflowing with people who can treat you better.
Goodbye,
Luke
Luke read the letter over one more time. All that had remained when he got to the Center was to fill in the date. And now, he knew it was time. He folded it up and stuck it in the envelope. Then he licked the seal, closed it, and pressed it. Lastly, he uncapped his pen again and wrote “Wendy Merrick” on the back.
With the envelope in his jacket pocket, he finally approached the front desk. Only one trainer stood in line in front of him. There was some chatter going on in the rest of the room, but none of it registered with him. When it was his turn, the nurse gave him the usual welcome as he put his card and Zoe’s Poké Ball on the counter. She typed his ID number into the computer and placed the ball into an open slot on the machine. Luke put his hand on the envelope, but waited for the nurse to finish speaking.
“Let’s see… no injuries, mild fatigue. This should take about five minutes.”
“Thank you.”
He walked back to his chair, hand still on the envelope. Might as well wait until Zoe was done and the nurse had nothing else to think about. He sat down and stared at the ceiling. Before too long, the nurse called him. He approached again, hand still at the ready.
“Here she is!” She returned Zoe’s ball to him. “Thank you for waiting, and we hope to see you again!”
“Thanks.”
Luke walked away. He wasn’t unaware of the letter in his pocket. His hand simply hadn’t taken it out.
Back at his chair, he found himself in a dearth of sensation and other feeling. Hours passed, and he probably ate something at some point, but eventually he was lying in his sleeping bag on one of the spartan bunks in the boys’ sleeping quarters, staring at the ceiling. Zoe wasn’t out, so he was unlikely to sleep for some time.
He didn’t dream, but the sight of Wendy lying exposed to the cold with the letter in her hands would not leave his head.
In the morning, Luke admitted it: It was too cruel to do this by written word. He had to tell her in person. All that mattered on his end was the long run—he could endure her face, voice, and tears for two minutes as long as he never saw her again after that. He owed her this small kindness, even if it was only a relative kindness.
So, he decided to wait. The next morning, he took a chair near the front door, listened for when anyone came in, and waited. She’d done it too, so it was only fair he had his turn.
He hadn’t been ready for the small heart attack each time the door slid open. It was worse when any of the trainers resembled Wendy as he remembered her in the slightest, even the ones who were preteens and couldn’t possibly be her now. There was no rhythm to it, no predictability from minute to minute. It was an existence of twenty-second to half-an-hour stretches of exhausted worrying punctuated by spasms of terror.
By noon, he couldn’t help it. He had to walk around the block a few times. It was ridiculous. He was the
king of sitting around and waiting. It was the one thing he was provably excellent at.
It first truly sunk in for him then: Wendy had done this for over a week.
Twice. It must have been agony. And he had prolonged it on purpose. He could only guess how much apologizing this would take.
The afternoon passed no quicker, nor did the evening, nor did the night.
*********
Luke’s head hung low. Two days of waiting were through, and so was he. It was a small mercy that trainer-traffic had been low that day. He thought about the letter sitting in his pack, and whether he would have to leave it with the nurse after all.
No. She waited longer. You have to hold out.
Easier said than done. He stood up. The clock said nine. He thought about bringing out Zoe for a night of sleep, but he was down to one pill of her medicine, so he had to hold out on that front, too. How he was going to get home, he had no idea.
Since there would be no getting to sleep that night regardless, he decided to stretch his legs. His pack stayed by his chair as he walked out the door. Pokémon Centers were fairly safe even when busy, and his bag contained no camera, nor anything else he would miss if it were stolen, anyway. All he cared about was Zoe’s ball on his belt.
It was cold out, but not cold to the point where a Mahogany Town native who’d been through the Ice Path a few days ago would mind. As empty as the Center had been, the streets were bustling. Lots of families, lots of couples, no shortage of carolers, either. Luke walked mostly at random, but found himself angling for where the commotion was lesser. Only when he was near the outskirts of town did it occur to him why so many people were about.
It was Christmas Eve.
He didn’t envy his dad right then. Nor did he envy himself the earful he was going to get from his mom later for changing his holiday plans without running them by her first. Worse yet, if he didn’t get out of here in a few days, he was going to hear it about not being back in time for New Year’s, either.
It was weird to think it, but he wished Wendy would show up.
This got him thinking about what they were going to say to each other. It wasn’t hard to predict her objections, but there were a ton of them to cover. Most of his rebuttals boiled down to “It doesn’t matter. I can’t do this.” But one of her likely objections—the summary of all of them, really—gave him pause.
“I found every last thing that stood between us, and I cleared it all away. What is still wrong?”
Compared to that—to the sheer depths she had dug to unearth the entire truth—his reason for saying goodbye felt so small. And that was the crux of it: His reason was miniscule since it wasn’t the product of reasoning. It was visceral more than anything. Since it wasn’t rational to begin with, he could only try to rational
ize it.
He strained to come up with something more robust. Where he got stuck was the thought,
When did it become too late to fix? Obviously, it couldn’t be too close to the beginning. They could have done any number of things differently in those first few weeks. Just as obviously, it had to be well earlier than the end. By then, the pressure would have blown up no matter what they did.
But where in the middle? Every point felt either too early, too late, or both.
The streets came to an end. He found himself at the head of the trail to the Ice Path again. He leaned his back against the lamppost and stared into the shapeless night. It felt like he was down to two possibilities for the “point of no return” on his timeline, both of which depended on one of his first assumptions being wrong.
Possibility one: It had always been too late.
Possibility two: It would
never be too late.
It was a pretty dumb thought, but he was out of smart ones.
He gave the lamppost a kick, and the sign next to it too for good measure. Then he began to pace in circles. He went over all the ways to say “Sorry,” “Goodbye,” and the rest in his head. When he saw a snowflake, he stopped.
He looked straight up, watching the flurries as they popped into the lamplight out of nowhere, slowly at first but picking up in pace. It had snowed on
that Christmas, too. He hadn’t gone outside then, not with his mood where it was, to say nothing of his shoulder. What would have happened if he’d stood outside with her watching it? Or sitting by a window? If he’d kept it together for three more days? What would she have said about this?
Just then, he realized two things. One, he’d been hearing footsteps, and not from the direction of town.
Two, they had stopped.
Luke snapped his head down and faced the trail. His breath caught in his throat, and he immediately, completely forgot whatever he’d been thinking about.
She stood at the edge of the light, glowing against the pitch blackness behind her, surrounded by falling snowflakes. Hat in hand, coat unzipped in the comparative warmth above ground, she stared back at him—eyes wide, mouth stuck silently open. He knew her face at once, but where his younger self had only begrudgingly acknowledged cuteness, there was now arresting, overwhelming beauty. He stood transfixed, hoping if he didn’t move, time wouldn’t move either, and the scene and figure before him would always be there.
Instead, the singular moment broke into a kinetic present. Wendy dropped her hat, shed her backpack, and ran at Luke like she was worried he might run away. As she raced toward him, a thought of surpassing inanity flashed in his mind:
This exact alignment of calendar, clock, location, precipitation, lighting, framing, and subject had formed the most wonderful sight he would ever see by the most cosmically happy of coincidences…
And he didn’t have a camera.
Luck had never beaten him so soundly.
Wendy almost knocked him over, but her own sense of balance and the tightness of her arms around his back kept them upright. The way she pressed against his chest sent a shock through his entire body. He hugged her back, wondering if it was okay to enjoy it this much. Then she lifted her face to his, eyes wet. He didn’t think.
At first, it was less a kiss than it was a nose-on-nose, mouth-on-mouth collision, but they sorted it out. After many long seconds or a few short minutes—he lost track—she released his lips and rested her head against his shoulder. He found himself saying, “Sorry.”
“No,” she said, “
I’m sorry.”
“For what?” It was an honest question. He couldn’t guess what she had to be sorry for.
She shivered. “Ask me later. I don’t want it to spoil this.”
“…Yeah, me neither.” He suddenly found it hard to imagine that “it” was even important. The only thing in the world that mattered now was her wanting “this” to last as long as he did.
“I… like your new voice,” she said, a slight tremble in her own. “A
lot.”
“Thanks,” he said. It didn’t feel to appropriate to say what was new about her he found himself liking so much right then. Instead, he held the back of her head, feeling her hair against his fingers and reveling in how this could be real.
“…Wendy?”
“Yes, Luke?”
“…I missed you.”
“Good.”
He laughed. How could he not? It was either that or cry.
She kissed his cheek. “I missed you, too.”
Luke slowly felt the tension ease out of Wendy’s body as she relaxed into his. They let the minutes pass, swaying in place with eyes closed for most of it as snow began to stick to their shoulders. Luke was torn between the desire to never leave the spot and the sense that if you wanted someone to stay with you forever, you had to say something eventually.
“What now?” he finally asked.
Wendy answered at once. “We stick together. We’ll play the rest by ear.”
He thought for a second, then did some arithmetic. “…If you can do the Path again, I’m sure my folks would like you over for New Year’s.”
“I’d
love that. First thing in the morning?”
“Sounds good.”
Even as he said it, it hit Luke that she’d only just emerged from the mountain after over a week in Arctic conditions. He couldn’t keep her standing out here when she needed to get indoors and warm up, so he loosened his arms a bit. At this, she only squeezed him tighter.
“Not yet,” she said, a hint of distress in her voice.
“Aren’t you freez—” he began, but she covered his lips with hers again to hush him. That answered his question, so he closed his eyes and let her decide when the kiss was over.
When she did, she returned her head to his shoulder and let out a long sigh of relief.
“Sorry,” she said, relaxing her arms but not letting go. “I won’t always be this clingy. It’s just… It hasn’t sunk in yet—that it’s really you, that you really came, that I finally caught you—so until it does, just…”
She tightened her arms again, breathed in sharply, then lowered her voice to a whisper.
“Just… hold still for another minute.”
The End
Can't wait to see how badly this all turns out
Look what he's doing! Stop letting him control you, Wendy!