I look around and spy the sea of pink flowers two plots away. Pushing myself up, I let my curiosity get the best of me.
I reach out and touch one of the flowers, the petal soft underneath my fingertips.
“Stargazer lilies,” a voice says from beside me.
Jesus Christ. I jump, nearly having a heart attack as I look over to see Marley standing next to me, her long hair pulled back with a yellow hair tie. She plucks the Stargazer I was touching, her hazel eyes studying it.
My eyes study the headstone nestled within the pink blooms.
“My sister. Laura,” Marley says softly, before I can ask.
“She was my hero. Loved me just the way I was,” she says, as if we’re picking up a conversation we’d already begun. She places the flower on top of the headstone. “It didn’t matter to her if I was different. Or sensitive. Or quiet.”
She looks up at me, and I can see finally where the intensity in her eyes is coming from. It’s loss, buried in the deep hazel, a familiar pain wrapped around the irises. I know that pain. It’s like looking in a mirror.
“I wanted to be just like her,” she adds, breaking the gaze and turning her face back to the flowers.
“How old were you when she—”
“We’d just turned fourteen.”
We? But before I can ask, she answers that, too.
“Twins,” she says.
Shit. “What happened?”
“Oh, I don’t tell sad stories,” she says. Then she smiles sadly, and it’s as if a curtain drops behind her eyes.
All right, then. That’s clearly a sensitive topic. We stand in silence for a long moment.
“Oh!” She slips the yellow bag she’s carrying off her shoulder and surprises me by pulling a single flower out of a side pocket. Her eyes clear, and she holds it out to me as if I asked her to bring it.
Cautiously, I reach out and take it, inspecting the circular yellow center, the petals around it perfectly even and white. I actually know this one.
“A daisy?” I ask.
“Flowers have different meanings,” she says, sensing my confusion. She nods to the daisy in my hand. “This one made me think of you.”
“Why? What’s it mean?” I ask, honestly a bit surprised flowers have any meaning at all. I thought they were just nice to look at.
“Hope,” she says simply.
Hope. Does she think I’m hopeful? I don’t hope for much of anything anymore.
“I’m happy to see you again,” she adds suddenly, not looking at me. “I wasn’t sure I would.”
I decide that I probably shouldn’t say I wasn’t planning on seeing her again. I just smile, and then almost as if we’d already planned it, the two of us find our way down the path and to the pond. We buy some popcorn from a vendor and then walk to her side of the pond, where the ducks are. They gather around her feet to reverently stare up at her, quacking so loudly I swear they must all be holding mini megaphones.
I watch as she reaches into the red-and-white striped container and throws some kernels to them, her hair falling in front of her face. I mimic her, taking a handful of my popcorn and scattering it in front of me. The ducks converge on it like they’ve never eaten in their entire lives.
“Do you come here a lot? To feed the ducks?”
She hesitates, a fistful of popcorn in her hand. “Not as much as I used to.”
I nod, but I don’t ask why. I know what it’s like to stop doing things you loved.
A duck snaps at the popcorn in her fingers, and she squeals, breaking the tension with a laugh. She jumps back and releases the kernel before he can take off her pinky. Her shoulder brushes against my arm, lightly enough to leave a trail of goose bumps behind it.
I clear my throat and take a step back.
We follow the ducks down to the water, their quacks leading the way. A few feet from the edge, Marley pauses to look up, her hand frozen on top of the kernels.
“It’s going to rain,” she says thoughtfully, her head tilted back to see the heavy, dark clouds above us.
I follow her gaze, nodding. Something about it reminds me of the sky on the evening of the graduation party. The same ominous gray, the clouds dense with rain.
I’m struck again with the feeling that I shouldn’t be here.
“Kim always liked it when it rained,” I say, shaking my head at the sick irony of that.
As I pull my eyes away, I catch sight of a blue butterfly fluttering over the dark pond, its wings struggling to move.
Something’s definitely wrong with it. It’s airborne, but just barely. It painfully inches its way toward us, closer and closer to the water with every pump.