The first week tasted like ocean water, the kind that tastes like shit but you can't help gulping down. Chandler stayed overnight with me, and in the morning it was two cups of coffee and a shovel. I pried up the packed dirt in my backyard, grass roots popping as they broke. I flung the remains into the bed of scattered pine straw, and soon the ground around me is blotted out.

By lunchtime, I was chest level with the surface, and my fingers throbbed like drum beats. Chandler peeled open a package of Stouffer's and heated it in the microwave, and we sat and watched MTV. I tucked into him, and we passed the macaroni and cheese back and forth until it got too cold to eat. I remember how Eurythmics came on, and Chandler was making fun of the random cows that walked by the camera. I couldn't stop tapping my finger to the beat against his leg. Sweet dreams were made of it.

We kept MTV playing from the living room, door cracked open and volume cranked up so I could listen while I worked. I'm glad Chandler didn't help. I needed the time to get dirt under my fingernails, sprinkled over my hands. I needed the sweat on my brow and the thumping under my skin. I think he knew how I needed to be left alone, let the thoughts exhaust themselves.

He comes out later in the afternoon, helps haul me out of the pit I created. He dusts the fine layer of dirt off my rumpled clothes, held me by the shoulders and straightened me. I looked at him, and all the worry, the empathy, it's there, burning in his eyes. I tucked my head into his neck, and I could feel the jagged breaths well up against my collarbone.

Before long there was a shaking in my chest, and my cheeks were warm and coated with tears. Chandler was crying too. His shoulders trembling with uneven breaths as he pulled back, face reddened and blotchy, akin to mine. Hands quavering as he wiped a tear off my cheek with his thumb.

"I c-can't stan-nd..." a choking breath jolted his chest. "I can't stand-d seeing you like this. It's..." he shook his head, mouth parting against all the words fighting to pass his lips. I pulled him to my chest, and his heart bumped against mine.

"It's like it's m-my fault," he whispered, warm breath kissing my cheeks. "I'm... abandoning you here, like this, with your guts t-torn out and displayed in front of you. And I'm just w-walking away."

My head bobbed no, of course not. But there was a part of me that hissed in approval, that chanted over and over again that he's leaving me, he's leaving me. And my fingers brushed against his cheek, "Chandler, this was never your fault—"

"—But it feels that way." His gaze was like a muggy summer's day that felts loose over your skin. "I want to stay here with you. But Dad, Mom, they're p-pushing me, and they're th-thinking..." A ragged sob scrapes his throat. "They want to move," he moans between breaths.

I tried to come up with ways to comfort him, but my body was clogged with the way tears dribbled off his chin, his arms so helplessly desperate. His face read like a waterlogged book, the pages synched together in warped lines, like his lips, quivering.

A line came to mind. Stolen right off the paper crane I gave Chandler for Valentine's Day. "I will be with you again. I will begin again." His eyes met mine, and recognition sparked.

"U2," he breathed, a faint chuckle in the back of his mouth. "New Year's Day."

"Right." I smiled. "This doesn't mean the end. People come and go from our lives in seasons, and you're taking an intermission. You'll be back. And even if you're not—" a jagged breath interrupts my words. "If you're not, I..." Trailing off, I searched for words.

"I'm going to plant a garden in my mom's grave," I murmur, my words slow as I fought to control my breathing. I picture going to Lowe's and getting thirty dollars of marigolds and peonies and hydrangeas, filling up my pink wilderness explorer backpack with flimsy plastic pots. I imagine how I'll come home, and it'll be a Saturday, and I'll take out the shovel again and make more holes than I need. And then I'll grip the wad of roots and dirt with both hands and carefully wedge it into the ground.

I take a breath, eyes drifting to the hole, the empty one. I envision a small, cresting hill of blooms, golden in the sunlight. Turning back to Chandler, I trace my finger along his jawline.

My voice is quiet, margined. "I'm going to plant a garden in my mother's grave, just like I'll plant one in ours."

It takes a moment for Chandler to understand, but I can see it in the subtle way his eyes clear and the corners of his lips rise like small suns.

He didn't say anything. I didn't either. We finished the job. He left, and his eyes were calm. Mine, I see only the approaching night.

Chandler, I'm going to keep you here. Anchored, like that day in first grade as I traced my finger across your book's words. Do you remember that mural on the classroom walls? How the universe seemed to stretch out for miles around us?

I want to feel that endlessness again. I want us to be the center, two clasped forms as contrast to the inky dark. Lightning in our mouths. Thunder in our chests. Your eyes glittering as stars whirl around our fingertips.

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Published 12-12-16
Final chapter 12-16-16