someone else's words

I'm sitting on Brice Jackson's patio at 4:36 in the morning watching Anna Hadley smoke a cigarette. The way Anna smokes is she takes one drag and then just waves the cigarette around to emphasize what she's saying. The orange tip draws little shapes in the air that seem to hang in the dark like neon letters. She's talking about Mary again.

Sometimes, Anna tells me, Sometimes I just don't understand what God was thinking, you know?

The only light out here is coming from inside, filtered out of the kitchen window through some pale green curtains, and from the moon, which looks like a chalk smudge on a blackboard because of the clouds in front of it. I can just barely see Anna sitting across from me at the patio table, but her eyes look enormous, all shiny and pink from crying. She's still crying, even though it's been weeks since the funeral. I can't see the stars, just the bright tip of Anna's cigarette and the thin line of smoke curling up from it that scatters every time she moves her hand.

You can't, I say. He's God. That's the point.

Yeah, but like. She gestures around with her cigarette. Taking Mary. I don't understand why he'd take her so goddamn young, you know? Twenty-five. Way too fucking young.

Anna and I are both twenty-five as well, but it doesn't feel that young to me anymore. Two of my friends died this summer. Yeah, I say.

She was only married for a few weeks, she says. That's fucked up. Only been married, like, four goddamn weeks. Anna's looking at me with those big eyes, waiting for me to agree with her that it's all wrong, the whole thing. And I'm trying to think of a word that means what her eyes look like right now.

You think there's a better time to die? I ask her.

Hell yeah. When you're old, she says. When you got all them fat grandbabies and shit. That's when you're supposed to die. She flicks the ash off the tip of her cigarette, pushes her dark brown hair behind her ear. The word is luminous. I think.

I tell her, Yeah, I guess. But really I'm thinking it's better to die suddenly when you're young and happy. I figure Mary was never happier than she was right before it happened. So I tell Anna that, too. I tell her that, you know, maybe Mary got a sweet deal, going out on a high note like that and all.

She takes a second to think about it, then says, Maybe you're right. And then she starts crying again. Her face scrunches up and she wipes her eyes with the palms of her hands, cigarette dangling between two fingers. After I found out about Mary, I stood in the shower crying until the water ran cold, because I didn't want anyone to hear me. But for as long as I've know her, Anna has worn her emotions like a new pair of boots, expecting people to notice them.

While she's crying, she says that Mary was an angel, and that God called his angel home.

Mary was, she was really, Anna chokes out, and the long ash on the end of her cigarette falls and breaks against the glass tabletop. One of a kind, she says. And now she's in a, she's in a, in a better place. Her voice cracks on the word place.

I just nod. It's what I've been doing since the accident, nodding along to the same damn things everyone else has been saying since it happened, the exact same damn words. The same words they said about Brandon, Melody, Angela, and the rest of our friends who've died. I'm nodding because that's what you do, even though I can't imagine those words helping at all, making any difference in the way we all feel about what happened to Mary.

I want to ask Anna, does saying those things make you feel better? Does it make you miss her any less? Does it help you stop crying? Because it’s not working for me, Anna. When I say those words, I feel nothing. They mean nothing to me because they're not mine.

Anna sniffs, wipes her eyes again, and smokes. She says, her voice still shaky, I read what you wrote about Mary. What you wrote online.

Oh, I say. I almost say I read what she wrote, too, and what everyone else wrote: R.I.P., Mary. You were truly one of a kind. We never realize what we have until it's gone. You will be greatly missed. Words can't express... Reading those things made me wonder what I would say to Mary if I had the chance. So I made a list, called it Things I Didn't Tell Mary, and posted it on the Internet. That's how I learned Shakespeare.

I didn't want to read it, Anna says. I saw it, and I thought, that girl's gonna fucking make me cry again, and I don't think I can. Been crying too goddamn much already.

I'm sorry, I tell her.

No, it was, she says, and gestures with her cigarette. The smoke disappears into the air. Beautiful. I fucking cried through the whole thing, but what you said was damn beautiful. Her eyes look so big while she's telling me this.

Thanks, I say. And because she seems to expect more, I tell her, I, uh, I cried while I wrote it.

Yeah? she says. She looks surprised, like she can't imagine me crying over anything. She says, But I bet you felt better afterwards.

I did, a little. I tell her, It's how I learned Shakespeare.

She gives me this look across the table, one elbow resting on the glass top. The tip of her cigarette glows for a moment and then she blows smoke out of the side of her mouth so it won't drift towards me. The smoke looks green in the light from the kitchen window. What, she asks, the hell is that supposed to mean?

Shakespeare, I say. You know. The writer? Romeo and Juliet?

I know who he is, she says. I'm not a fucking 'tard. What does it mean you learned Shakespeare writing about Mary?

This is the first time I've said this out loud, so I'm not sure Anna's going to understand it. I'm not sure I understand it myself, but I start trying to explain anyway. Shakespeare used to write these poems, I say. About women, you know? There's this one poem you've probably heard. It's the one that goes, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" You know that poem?

Yeah, says Anna.

Well, the last part of it goes, "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." It's like he's saying, Now that I'm writing this poem about you, that means you're going to live forever. Because the poem, it'll be around for a long time, right?

Right, she says, right. And I'm noticing how thin her wrists are. Her wrist bones look like they're glowing in the dark.

I always thought it was kind of stupid, that he would say something like that. Because no, the woman's not going to live forever just because of some poem. I mean, when she dies, she's still dead. I didn't really get it. I just thought it was some cheesy line.

Anna nods. Her gigantic eyes are starting to tear up again. She should have been a model. She's even pretty when she cries.

After Mary died, I tell her, I finally sort of got what Shakespeare was trying to do. It makes sense when you realize it doesn't have anything to do with you. It's just between him and this woman, you know? He's telling her... he's telling her that it's okay. She doesn't have to be scared. Whatever happens, whether there's an afterlife or not, she doesn't have to worry because there will always be a piece of her in the world just the way he remembers her. I mean, imagine how comforting that would be. For both of them. And hundreds of years later, we know that there was a woman who had an impact on this man, this writer. She changed him, and now she has this legacy. And when I got that, I realized that it wasn't just a cheesy line. It was actually, it was actually kind of beautiful.

When I get done trying to explain it, Anna's crying again. I don't know why she is, though, because the more I say this stuff out loud, the better I feel about it.

I'm not trying to say I'm like Shakespeare, I tell her. But after I wrote about Mary, that's when I got it. I want to tell stories about her, you know? I want to get Mary on paper just the way she was when I knew her, and then I want to get those papers everywhere, so other people can know her too. So they can know there was this girl who affected me so much that it's important for them to know about her, even after we're both dead. Because she deserves that. And anyway, it does make me feel better. Less like I lost her.

Anna's got her palms pressed to her eyes, but she's nodding, and her cigarette is so short now that it's going out. She sniffs really hard and wipes her eyes, but when she looks over at me, her face scrunches up and she covers her eyes again. She's got tears smeared down her cheeks when she finally starts talking. Shit, she says. You're so. You're so goddamn lucky.

What do you mean? I ask her. And I have to wait for her to finish crying again before she answers. I rub my arms. It's a warm night, and there are mosquitoes.

She sniffs hard and reaches for her pack of cigarettes to get another one. There's already a little pile of butts on the concrete floor beside her flip flops. Because, she says in this squeaky voice, because you've got this, this thing you can do. This fucking beautiful thing, what's it called, a tribute and shit. I ain't got anything like that. Mary... you're right, she deserves it, you know? But I can't do shit. She was my goddamn best friend, and I got stories about her too, but I can't do shit with 'em. Except cry. That's all I'm goddamn good for.

I don't know how to tell Anna she's wrong about that. I'm watching her cry, and I'm thinking about that photograph I took of Mary in eleventh grade, the one where she's looking at someone off camera with this giant smile like she's got a secret she can barely contain. After I took the picture, I turned around and saw Anna grinning back at her.

Tell me one of your Mary stories, I say.

So she does. We spend the next two hours on Brice Jackson's patio together, me and Anna Hadley, talking about Mary until just before the sun starts to come up, when the sky turns pink and lavender. And I'm watching her luminous eyes through the smoke from her cigarettes, and she's crying in between stories, filling every sob with phrases like, She was our rock, and I'm just grateful for the time we had, and At least we've got our memories.