A/N: I'm kind of fond of how this turned out. It was one of those little stories that burrowed itself in and clung on until I got it on paper. I'm glad I finally got it typed to post. Enjoy! R&R! -Mac
Disclaimer: I don't own.
In Pencil Lines On Paper
Leslie had a spark within her that had brought Jess's world to life. She had awakened something in him that he didn't know existed. Losing her is almost like losing what almost like losing what she gave to him. He is able to recapture a little of it when he gets to rediscover Terabithia with MayBelle. When MayBelle begins to fill in too many of the spaces of Terabithia, crowding out the parts of it that made it Leslie's, Jess stops going. He doesn't stop believing—he never will, not really—he just can't be there without the one who made it all real for him. Instead, he retreats into the things he can create without Leslie.
Somehow she creeps into his creative process. Jess spends years trying to draw a perfect rendition of her face, but he can't seem to capture the part of her that made her so beautiful to him. There's always something wrong, something off—her eyes too far apart, her nose sloped a little too much, or her smile tilted off kilter just so. He can't figure out if it's his drawing ability that's limiting him or if his memory of her is failing him. Although his artistic ability is the only thing he has to get him out of this place, he prays for the former, because the latter would have the distinct ability to break his heart and send him spiraling into a deep, dark depression.
Even though the task seems futile, Jess keeps trying. When that proves to not be difficult enough on its own, he begins to torture himself with trying to imagine what she would look like if she had been able to grow up. He then devotes himself to trying to capture those fantasies of an older Leslie on paper. Each drawing leaves a scar on his heart because it's a reminder of a day that she missed out on. It's beyond difficult imagining all the things Leslie will never experience, but he shoulders the burden like a penance.
It's his way of keeping her alive, the way he hadn't in real life. It's his way of keeping the rope from breaking, so that somewhere—even if it's in his head, or in pencil lines on paper—Leslie gets the life she deserved to live. It may be the death of him, but he feels he owes her that much for the selfish act he can't take back.
OoO
Jess gets into an art school that takes him away from that place. Sometime near the end of high school, he thought the going away would allow him to leave behind the painful memories. It's silly to believe that escaping the physical place that she died, that he could escape the fact that she died. He has always known he would carry Leslie with him wherever he goes.
He learns a lot, discovers artistic skills he never knew he possessed. Everything he learns is applied to the endless project he will never finish. When he tries to draw her the way she was the last time he saw her, his depictions of her are more accurate than the ones he drew in his youth. There's still something off about them that he has trouble putting his finger on. Stacks of her face are piled up in his work space in his dorm room. Even the ones with small mistakes are kept, filed away and stored. He can never bring himself to throw a single one out. He knows it's obsessive and borderline unhealthy—probably more than that—but he isn't ready to let go.
Going back to his second task of drawing Leslie into the present, Jess gets caught up thinking about what it would be like if she was still alive. He imagines their friendship growing through high school, he sees her going away for college near him; and, because his mind has a tendency to inflict as much brutality on him as possible, he imagines their relationship would evolve into something more. As a child, he never would have gone down that road, but to a near-full grown Jess it makes perfect sense. The revelation makes him cry for the first time since she died. He misses a couple days, withdrawing into himself, and then he realizes what's off about his drawings of her. He realizes he has been taking on the virtually impossible task of confining the fully rounded, multi-faceted Leslie into a two dimensional medium. There's no way to overcome this; so he accepts it. He spends a week drawing her into his memories from the past few years, pretending for that short time that he could have experienced them with her, because the realization that had she lived she could have been the great love of his life showed him that it wasn't just about what Leslie missed out on, but what he had missed out on as well.
When he reemerges after that spurt of creativity, he knows he has to move on or at least attempt to. Leslie is still his most common subject outside of what he does for his classes, but he no longer lets her memory cloud every aspect of his life. He begins dating a girl who is the opposite of everything Leslie was and he slowly falls for her. When he is with this girl he isn't overwhelmed by thoughts of the past—she keeps his mind off Leslie. He cherishes the time he spends out with his girlfriend because they are the short hours when he feels at peace. His desperation to lengthen that time of relief leads him to forget how present Leslie is when he asks his girlfriend to see his dorm room for the first time. His intentions are honorable, but his intentions are irrelevant once she sees the first drawing of Leslie.
"Who is she?" his girlfriend asks. The question becomes a demand when she has to repeat it.
No one there knows about the girl from his past, and he isn't ready for that to change. He can't find the words to explain himself. His girlfriend picks up a few of his most recent drawings of what Leslie would look like incorporated into his most recent days. He knows what she must think, but he feels powerless to change her mind. She doesn't dump him that night, but they don't last much longer because she is certain he is hiding something from her. He doesn't blame her, because it is the truth—it's just not the something she thinks it is. It teaches him to better guard this part of his life and he moves on from it as well.
OoO
Life has a way of never slowing down. Jess gets older, graduates form art school, meets another girl that he doesn't compare to Leslie, gets married and settles into the life still ahead of him. After his first girlfriend leaves him, he doesn't spend as much time drawing Leslie. He still feels a lot of the things he felt as a kid, but they've dulled with the time gone by. By the time he is married, the thing he once feared most has happened. He hates to admit it, but his memory of Leslie has faded as well. If he tries really hard, and he rarely does, he can picture her standing beside him as Terabithia spills open before them. Even then, it's an image he can only hold onto for a few moments before it slips through his fingers. Since she is so rarely a subject of his art anymore, sometimes he forgets the boxful of images of her face tucked in the back of a closet or that his wife knows nothing of the great tragedy of his childhood.
The lesson of his first girlfriend forgotten as he grows comfortable in his routine, he isn't expecting the sight he stumbles upon one evening when he comes home. His wife is sitting on the floor of their bedroom, the box pulled out from the closet and pages upon pages spilled out onto the ground. His wife is surrounded by papers filled with sketches of Leslie. She is pulling more papers from the box, looking at each one with an indescribable emotion on her face. She looks up only when Jess comes all the way into the room.
"Who is she?" his wife asks. The words aren't accusing. They're full of awe and curiosity.
Jess kneels on the ground in front of her and looks at some of his old drawings. His heart pounds, his hands shake and he swallows hard. Then he tells her. He tells her about Leslie and his friendship with the girl with the open mind. He tells her about everything: the first day he met Leslie, the race, Janice Avery and Gary Fulcher, Miss Edmunds, Prince Terrien and Terabithia. He spares no details in describing the fantasy world. He wishes Leslie could be there, because she was always better with words than him and would do a better job of telling their story. He tells his wife that too. It brings tears to his eyes, but he tells her about his day at the museum, his selfishness in not inviting Leslie, his return and the news that awaited him. He lays everything out before her and she is the first person that wasn't there that day that he has told this to. When he is done, when he has no more words to force out, he lets his wife take him in her arms and hold him close to comfort him. In that moment, he feels the first tendrils of real relief from the burden he has carried all these years. The wonder, love, courage, pain, heartbreak and guilt he has felt from knowing and losing Leslie is not riding only on his shoulders anymore. He has been pretending at moving on and now he finally has for real. He can finally let her go.
OoO
Later that night, Jess wakes up and he experiences a brief moment of complete clarity. He can see her, Leslie, every detail illuminated in a way he hadn't experienced since she was alive. He stumbles from his bed and to his desk. He takes a clean sheet of paper and a pencil—and he draws. He doesn't pull the pencil from the paper until he has etched in every line in the proper place. When the pencil finally drops from his hand, he picks up his creation and looks at it under his lamp light. His breath catches in his throat, because this drawing—this last drawing—is perfect. This is Leslie Burke the way he has spent decades trying to reproduce. He slumps back in his chair because he realizes he doesn't need it. He doesn't need Leslie's image to remember what she was to him—but it makes sense to him that the only time he is able to get her right is when he isn't trying to anymore.
He spent years trying to reverse time with pencil lines on paper, but time hadn't been what was holding him back. The only thing standing in his way of that clarity was himself. Now that he has been able to release all the things he has kept bottled up since that day, he is able to do the one thing he should have been doing to honor Leslie all along: live to the fullest the life he has before him, because he wouldn't be where he was without Leslie and the short, tragic time they had together.
-fin-