Author's Note: This is a very sad little thing I wrote very late one night…I was in a weird place when I wrote it…I dunno. If you hate it I understand. It's different from my other stuff, obviously. Well, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Hey Arnold! is not mine. Obviously. Because my name's not Craig.
Sweet Sixteen
"After all, to die will be an awfully big adventure."
-J. M. Barie, Peter Pan
She was sweet sixteen. She had woven ribbons through her hair in honor of her birthday.
He was only fifteen then. He was much older now, but he remembered.
Barbara would be angry at him for not taking an overcoat. It was chilly, even for late March, and he wore only thin shirtsleeves. But it didn't matter.
Barbara tried not to get angry with him. And she didn't really get angry. She scolded, because she was worried about him. After all, her mother had died several years ago and there was no one else to look after him—her brother and sister lived too far away. She had problems of her own—although her husband Jack was well off enough, she had to balance four children. Marie, Tommy, and the twins.
Marie was sweet sixteen, too. She was a wonderful girl, with blond hair that no one in their family could understand, unless she got it from her grandfather. He had had blond hair, too, but it had gone gray early. It hadn't been really golden since he was fifteen, though…from grief, they said.
And they hadn't even been lovers…
She had been beautiful at sweet sixteen. He remembered her face as she opened her present from him. Her cheekbones were high and defined—she had lost her baby fat early. Her eyes were wide and astonishingly large, framed by thick, pale lashes. Several freckles skimmed her thin, tipped-up nose, and her mouth was wide and sensitive. Wisps of ash-blond hair struggled out of her elegant hairdo as she looked up at him, that sensitive mouth quirking now.
"It's a locket…"He rounded the corner now, heading for a hillier part of town. His breath hung in icy plumes before him, reminding him again how cold it was. Maybe he should have taken a jacket…he clutched his bouquet of lilies tightly, careful not to crush the aromatic petals.
My beloved is mine and I am his; he feedeth among the lilies…Sometimes he wondered how he had gotten so old. His skin hung from his arms, his cheeks, his neck, in loose, trembling folds, a tracery of blue spidery veins. His nails were yellow and coarse, horse's hooves on every digit. His fingers were gnarled, cramped claws, useless for doing any of the things he had loved. All in all he was useless. It was time to go…
At least one of them went at the proper time.
She had been sweet sixteen. She had woven ribbons through her hair…
"It's a locket."
She looked up at him. Her eyes were stormy marbles.
"I know."
"You looked confused."
Her eyes were robins' eggs. "Not confused. Surprised. I…used to have a locket."
"Oh. What happened to it?"
"I…put it away." Her eyes were far-off seascapes.
He glanced at the box in her hands. "You don't like it."
A little boy he knew waved at him. A woman walking her dogs across the street called a greeting. He nodded at both, saving his breath for walking. He was almost there now.
He couldn't deny that he had loved Linda. He had, in his way. She wasn't the same as first love—no love is the same as first love. But she had been kind to him, and tried to understand him, and supported him. She had been a good wife and mother, and he didn't regret a day of their fifty-seven years together. But her eyes were basset hounds.
And he loved his children more than he ever thought would be possible. Practical, brilliant Barbara, who was walking practically from birth. And athletic, personable Jordan, who was running and catching practically from walking. And little-bit-of-everything Miranda, who was cracking jokes and making friends while her older siblings were walking and running. He had been miserable when she moved across the country to live with her new husband, the movie producer—his baby, his little Randy, his daddy's girl.
He doted on his grandchildren. He was an old man when the first of them came, but he had started late. Barbara—she was never "Babs"—had moved back to the town she'd grown up in when Linda died, and so her children were close to their grandfather, or as close as they could be. They knew him as well as anyone did. The world outside saw the kindly philanthropist, who had worked for others his whole life, donating the money that had come in when his parents' bodies had finally been found, along with the rest of the tribe liquidated in the volcanic holocaust. His grandchildren, among a small few, knew him as a sad, quiet man with a soft and gentle smile, small and unassuming and utterly a product of an event eighty years ago. An event that had been his fault…
She had been sweet sixteen…
"You don't like it."
"No, I love it. It's beautiful…Football Head."
He smiled, relaxed, hearing his old teasing name on her lips.
"Do you want me to put it on you?"She nodded and turned, handing him the delicate silver heart. He placed it around her slender neck carefully, clicking the clasp shut.
"Thanks."
"No problem. Do you…" He paused, wiping clammy hands discreetly on his pants. "Do you want to dance?"
Her smile was sudden and unexpected, lighting up the room. Her eyes were endless summer skies. "I'd love to."
He'd vowed never to love again when it happened, and he never had, not really. Not with all of him. Not in that way.
For years he had remained true to her, not thinking of romance anywhere. And then Linda had come along…
As he entered the ivy-twined gates he reached into his pocket and brought out another locket, this one gold. The picture was old, but the locket was untarnished, as good as new, due to careful and thorough maintenance. You could still open the clasp and read the inscription inside…
He gazed at it. A golden-haired boy smiled back at him, a secretive, innocent smile.
Sometimes he wondered how he had gotten so old.
…she had woven ribbons through her hair…
And she had worn the silver locket around her lily white throat at her funeral.
The headstones were gray-green and crumbling, falling into disrepair, with scattered flowers bursting like fireworks here and there. He knew the path by heart, just as the workers knew him and didn't ask if he needed anything. He stopped and watched as the cleared the dead flowers from the graves. Only certain things were allowed to remain dead in here…
He had kissed her for the first time on her sweet sixteen. Oh, they had kissed before, but this was the first time that he had kissed her.
He hadn't been planning on it. She'd walked by. Smiled. He saw the way her hair fell, the way her eyes were full to the brim with more emotions than he'd ever had, and he'd pulled her over—gently—and kissed her. Just lightly, on that sensitive mouth. She'd been startled, to say the least.
"What'd you do that for?""I don't know. Just wanted to, I guess."
"Don't tell me you're getting all mushy on me, Hair Boy."
"Me? Never. I just thought you looked like you might want to be kissed."
"Maybe I did."
That was enough reason to kiss her again.
"Hey, your grandpa's here!"That was his best friend. "I gotta go," he said, stepping back.
"Okay."
"Bye."
"Bye."
"See ya."
"So long."
"Talk to you later. In school on Monday."
"Okay."
"Bye, then."
"Bye."
"Okay."
They figured he was probably the last person to talk to her before…
She was sweet sixteen. She had woven ribbons through her hair…
A small granite angel marked the spot. He knelt by it, feeling the cold and damp seep into his knees. Barbara would scold him, indeed. But he wouldn't hear…
He placed the lilies on the grass in front of him and bowed his head. He was very tired. People lived long in his family, but there was such a thing as too long.
He took out the locket and looked at it again. Her parents had given it to him, had opened the inscription and understood. Her parents, who never understood anything, had seen what he had never been able to grasp. He swore he'd keep it forever.
He'd never wept.
The music swept around him. Was he fifteen years old? Or was he far, far older than that? He didn't know. It didn't matter.
An icy wind blew through the cemetery, but he didn't feel it. He was far away.
She was sweet sixteen. She'd woven ribbons through her hair. But that was eighty years ago, and the boy who'd kissed her was an old man in shirt sleeves, kneeling at her grave.
He smiled, his old bones relaxing, creaking softly into place. He was bending down, kissing her.
"What'd you do that for?""I don't know. Just wanted to, I guess."
The music swirled around him. It began to rain, slowly at first, then heavy and gray. It came down, soaking him to the bones, crumpling the flowers before him, beading in the angel's eyes like tears.
But she was smiling. Her eyes were endless summer skies. And she was sweet sixteen again.
They found him in the cemetery after the rain had stopped. He had been rushed to the hospital, but it was too late. He'd slipped into a coma, from which he never woke up.
The death came as an unwelcome shock to hundreds, thousands even, whose lives had been touched by him. The Times ran an obituary that was longer than the norm and read by people all over the city, and even the country.
"Noted philanthropist Arnold, for whom no last name is necessary, died yesterday, April 3, at the age of 96. He leaves behind three children, Barbara, Jordan, and Miranda, and seven grandchildren, Marie, Tommy, Hallie, Stephen, Christopher, Natalie, and Michael.
"Arnold has been on a first name basis with the rest of the city since he was 9, when he saved the downtown Brooklyn neighborhood known as Hillside, now a National Landmark. Since then, he has helped countless other people in need through various foundations and support centers.
"Arnold contracted a very serious case of pneumonia, and remained comatose for seven days. Doctors believe that the deceased caught pneumonia in last week's rainstorm at the Hillside Cemetery, where he was visiting the grave of childhood friend Helga G. Pataki. Ms. Pataki died on her 16th birthday, April 26, eighty years ago to the day of the rainstorm.
"Arnold will be greatly missed by friends, family, and the city of New York."