Read Online Kissing in America by Margo Rabb - Free Book Online Page B

that he said that. I loved that he wanted that to be true, that he knew how incredibly important it was for that to be true. Something relaxed inside me, like an unwinding coil.
    He looked at me like I was the only thing he saw, not the stairs or the window or the trees swaying outside. He understood, without judgment or surprise. It was like our surfaces were peeled off and it was just our cores. He didn’t ask for details; he didn’t show the eager hunger. He just listened.
    â€œWhat bothers me most of all is that I don’t know what he felt in those last minutes. What happened to his body. Sometimes it upsets me more than even the fact that he’s dead—that I don’t know if he passed out and died peacefully, or if he felt pain . . . or if he was sort of asleep . . .” I had to stop and speak more slowly and keep my voice level. “It matters for some reason. I don’t know why. But it matters.”
    â€œOf course it matters.”
    Once I started telling him things, I couldn’t stop. “My mom got rid of all his stuff after he died, but one of his ties was hidden in a ball in the corner of their closet. She made this horrible groan when she found it months later, like she was so mad that he still had stuff in our house. She threw the tie in the garbage.”
    He stared at me, listening.
    â€œAfter she went to bed, I fished it out of the trash. I had to wash coffee grounds off it and egg and tomato sauce and it took me forever, it was silk, so I bought this special silkcleaner and spent three days getting the stains out. It actually looks pretty good now. I keep it in my shoe box. I only have a few things of his, and I hide them in my closet in a shoe box.”
    I’d never told anyone, besides Annie, about the shoe box. It had seemed too weird, keeping his receipt and candy wrappers and stuff hidden in my own closet. But Will was looking at me, not judging or anything, just staring at me patiently—it was okay to tell him; he was nodding like he understood exactly why I spent three days washing that tie.
    â€œI wish I could’ve met him,” Will said.
    â€œI can show you some candy wrappers. It sort of brings him back.”
    I took a tissue out of my bag and wiped my nose. We were quiet for a while, sitting on the stairs.
    Will said, “I almost killed myself—not on purpose—when I was a kid. We lived on the second floor of a brownstone, and one night I sat on the fire escape and I just jumped. I was eight. I guess I thought if I hurt myself really bad, it would make him come back.”
    I asked if that was where the scar on his chin was from. He nodded.
    â€œI also kind of thought that if my brother was dead, maybe I should be dead too. Or that maybe I could bring him back. I barely even remember my brother, but I still think about him all the time.” He paused. “I guess you never stop missing them.”
    You never stop missing them. It was a simple thing to say. But I’d never heard anyone say it before. Not the grief counselors. Not my mom. Everyone seemed to think the opposite: you moved on, you forgot, it was impolite to keep talking about it. My mom had stopped missing my dad years ago.
    We stayed on the stairs for a long time. I sat quietly in his arms until he said, “I want to show you something.” He picked up my bag again. He started up the staircase. It led to the south tower, the closed-off part of the school.
    â€œWhere are we going?”
    â€œYou’ll see.”
    We kept climbing the winding steps, higher and higher. At the third floor he stopped by a black door. “My coach came up here to propose to his fiancée two days ago. I snuck the champagne up here for him. He forgot to ask for the key back.”
    He opened the door.
    The walled garden looked like a surreal kingdom: birds fluttering, a blanket of weeds and tall grass and spindly dark trees sprouting from clouds of ferns and