Disclaimer: Not mine. Title comes from the novel of the same name by Alice Sebold, as does the basis for the plot.
"These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections -sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent- that happened after I was gone." -The Lovely Bones
It was supposed to bring them together. But it only served to define all the ways that they would forever be apart. I liked to think that maybe there was a little hope left over, that things would eventually be okay, but healing was more difficult then I would have thought. Of course, once you're dead, you don't have to think too much about getting over things because there's not much of a choice. It's almost like: you're dead, accept it. I did. They didn't.
Sometimes, it was exhausting to watch. For the longest time, I paid the most attention to my mother, even though I knew that she would heal the fastest, that she would move on because she didn't have a choice. She had my sister, which I was forever thankful for and I thought she would be enough. But she only seemed to make it worse. They spent the first few days avoided each other, with Kaitlin locked in my room, imagining that she could still hear me, smell me, see me in all the corners and crevices. My mother wanted in so badly but she kept the door locked for almost three days, until at midnight she finally left in order to get something to eat. She felt guilty about her hunger but that didn't stop her from emptying a Ben and Jerry's carton that night. She felt even more guilty about having yet to cry but I didn't hold that against her.
My mother seemed to be taking all the tears in the house. She stayed in her room, trying to drown herself in her tears and the pillow and refused to see anyone. Dr. Roberts disappeared for a few days, which only made things worse on Summer, but neither of them realized this. When my mother wasn't in her room, she was leaning against the door to mine, pretending that the reason she wanted in so badly was to be with my sister but the truth was that she wanted to throw herself into my bed and drown herself in my pillows. She, like my sister, only wanted tangible memories of me: my smell, the clothes I left behind, all the things that Kaitlin hadn't messed with prematurely. Both of them hated the fact that she had been given permission to inhabit the room and, for a while, Kaitlin didn't want it anymore. But she didn't leave, sitting on the floor in my closet, wishing that I had left something behind that she could bury her face into and pretend I was only going to be away for a little while. That I was coming back.
Eventually, my mother noticed that my sister was slowly eating all the food that had been bought before my death. It took her until the day after my funeral to realize this and when she did, she stayed in the kitchen until my sister entered and refused to let her leave until they shared a sentence. I didn't blame my mother for her inability to be with Kaitlin for almost a week after my death, because she wasn't the daughter that she wanted anymore. I felt bad for Kaitlin and hoped that she would understand but it was clear that she didn't. Thankfully, it had only taken my mother a week to realize that Kaitlin needed her as much as she needed a daughter and, while my mother was blocking my sister from getting to the pantry, they both broke down and held each other on the floor, which hadn't been mopped or swept in a week. They sat there, clutching each other as though they worried that letting go would mean the lost of another person they loved and I watched, missing them both so much I would have cried too if I had been able. I wanted to be a part of that Cooper family hug and knew that I never would be sandwiched between my sister and mother again and tried to remember what they smelled like, just as they were doing. Their memories were more successful because I was still there, lingering in the house. They were gone from me forever.
Just as they had lost me, I had lost them. Whenever I watched, I wanted to be a part of what I saw, I wanted to be where I had been before, with everyone I had left behind. If I had the chance, I knew that I would have done so many things differently, that I would have said and done all the things I never had been able to for various reasons.
I would have told Summer how she had been one of the most important people in my life. I knew that she didn't know this because I watched her in the moments after my death, before I thought about finding the others. She was with Seth, trying to fill the space I had created by forcing Seth into filling two holes in her life; I knew, then, that he wasn't going to be able to make the fit and when he told her, months later, that he couldn't be me, I was torn between understanding how he felt and wanting to kill him for the affect his words had on my best friend. My death had helped my mother and sister bridge the gap that I had always created; my death had torn a wider hole in Seth and Summer's all ready tattered relationship.
If I had been there, in that moment, watching as she sat on the edge of Seth's bed, staring at the wall but seeing a slide show of memories, I knew that she didn't believe that I had loved her. I wanted to tell her that I had never loved anyone like I did her, that, at times, she had been the only person I had, my family and I wished I had never decided to leave. Of course, I had been wishing that a lot because I believed that if I had never agreed to join my father on his ship, then I never would have put myself in the position that had caused my death. Now, of course, I have stopped thinking about what I would have done differently that night because my death was something unavoidable. If it hadn't been that night, on that road, it would have been another night, another way, another place.
But I did wish that I had let Summer know that I needed her more then anything, that I would never leave her. How true that was now, now that I never could leave her. Only now I was forever out of her life and I had left for good. I watched her in the minutes before the call came in, before Kirsten answered the phone from the kitchen, where she had been washing dishes in hopes of keeping her mind off the graduation and the beautiful sadness that had come with it. I didn't watch her but I knew what she was doing; I was too busy watching Summer, wishing that I could be there to hold her when she found out.
Kirsten hadn't wanted to hear the whole story, because Ryan's voice, heavy and clipped, burdened with a sadness he would never lose, even years later after he had gotten married and had children, that told her that something had happened that was never going to be made right again. But she had listened, numbly, before hanging up the phone; she dried the last glass before going up the stairs toward her son's room. She knew that Summer was upstairs, because she had heard her and Seth come in when they were trying so hard to be quiet. She knocked on the door but only Summer heard because Seth was asleep beside her, not kept awake by the memories, the thoughts, that she was going through. Kirsten hadn't waited for a signal to enter, she had opened the door and stood in the foyer and Summer had stared at her then like she hardly knew her.
"Honey." Kirsten had said and that had been all. Summer knew and she cried, harder and faster then even my mother when she had gotten the same call from Ryan, moments earlier. My mother had dropped the phone, she had walked out of the living room and up the stairs, toward my bedroom to tell my sister. But Summer's tears came fast and heavy and she doubled over, hiding her face against the comforter and bunching her hair through her fingers. Seth had woken as soon as the strangled moan had escaped Summer's mouth and was trying to figure out what had happened in the time since he had fallen asleep. But no one had spoken for the longest time, with Kirsten standing the doorway like she didn't belong and Summer crying like she would never stop. Not even for Seth.
And she didn't, not for the longest time before she finally fell asleep. She just couldn't take it anymore. She dropped on the floor of the Cohen's kitchen, where she had been standing, crying and trying to drink the water Sandy had given her. She had dropped the glass and fallen into Sandy's arms and he had laid her on the couch and Seth had sat beside her until she woke hours later, unwilling to leave her side. He feared that if he did, she would leave him too.
It was a while before I could watch him. I looked for Volcheck instead, the man that had murdered me, unwittingly, accidentally. Ryan would never forgive him for what happened, never cease to blame Volcheck but I never did. Maybe it had something to do, again, with the fact that I was dead and that was that and no amount of blame or exacting punishment would change that fact. Or maybe it was because I knew that it had been an accident, that he had been so desperate to see me again, to talk to me, to have me that he had been blind. Not that that made it all right, but it at least made him less condemnable, to me at least. But I could see what no one else could. Volcheck driving until he ran out of gas. Heather getting out of the car and never looking back, bumming rides until she made it all the way to Utah, where she lived until she was killed in a car accident thirty years later.
Once he was stuck, Volcheck walked too, in the opposite direction Heather had gone. He had looked at the dent in the side of the van, fingered the crushed metal and thought of me. He didn't know I was dead but he knew that something had happened that night that he was the cause of. He yelled and kicked at the car and cursed me and Ryan but mostly himself until he, too, was too exhausted to go on. He had slept then, propped against the car that had killed me, his head fitting in the dent, waking when it started to rain. He walked until he found a diner and sat in one of the booths and wished that he had been able to see me that last time, wished that he had done something differently. He was sorry, he was repenting in his own way, smoking his cigarettes down to the quick and I forgave him. I was dead. That was the least I could do.
Seeing him was even harder then watching my mother tell my sister that I was never coming home, then watching Summer as she lay like a lump on the Cohen's couch, dead herself. He had never left me, just like I had asked. It was only after I was dead that he even got up, walking straight ahead because it was the direction he was facing and the easiest thing to do. Someone had seen him a few miles from the car and driven him to the hospital. The driver, a balding man in his fifties who would never get over the sight of seeing me in his car, limp as the dolls his granddaughter loved the play with, knew I was dead but didn't have the heart to say anything aloud. Ryan was still trying so hard to pretend that there was still hope.
At the hospital, we were finally separated, though I had left him long ago. He sat in the waiting room, chilled from how cold my skin had been, pale like I had been, trying to remember when I had been alive. Then he had called my mother. They both pretended to be stronger then they were. Then he called Kirsten. Then he sat in the waiting room and cried because it was all he could think of to do. He cried because I was gone, he cried because he had let me go so many times before, he cried because he hadn't been able to save me, he cried because he knew eventually he was going to move on, to get past this night. Again, I had wanted to cry because I knew everything he was going through, knew what he was feeling and thinking and wanted to help in some way. I knew then that he loved me more then he would have ever been able to express and that we never would have been able to be together. We both loved each other to the point that would have eventually killed us both, emotionally of course. Even though we would have gone out separate ways, he would live forever with my shadow, no matter if he found the perfect woman. Now I had doomed him to that fate anyway.
Sandy came and took him home. Later, Sandy came and gave the corner the final ID he needed. He didn't stay longer then to look at me and nod, trying to figure out how I had gone from being the bright and bubbly young woman to someone he didn't even recognize. The coroner had kids, two daughters, much younger then I had been. He determined cause of death as a brain hemorrhage and internal bleeding in the chest cavity. He recorded my age, my weight, my height, my name and then he turned in his two weeks notice and went home to his daughters and wife. My death was the best thing that could have happened to him.
My dad came for the funeral. So did a lot of other people but no one that really mattered aside from my family and my extended family. Summer, unlike my mother, had been drugged for the past several days and almost fell over several times at the funeral. She leaned against Ryan and Seth and stared down at her feet, wondering if I would like it down there. By down there, she meant six feet under. After I died, she stopped believing in anything she had learned in church and I wished that I could restore that belief.
No one spoke much to each other. Dr. Roberts was still gone and my mother held onto my father and they both cried. My father blamed himself, both for leaving and inviting me to come with him. I wanted to tell him what I had learned: if not that night, then another. It was no one's fault, but no one knew that but me.
The dirt was poured, the prayers were said, the roses laid. Everyone left slowly, one by one. Eventually, it was only my mother, my father and my sister. Summer had been deposited in the Cohen car even though, in her stupor, she had wanted to stay. Only she had wanted to stay and never leave again. It would take her weeks to come out of the state she had been in that day, even after the drugs were gone. Seth tried so hard to be strong but he had only watched from the distance, protecting her and drifting away. When she came back, she clung to him with the oppressiveness that he so badly needed. They smothered each other and survived for weeks; they needed each other so badly, so much that Summer's refusal to leave Seth and Seth's constant need to make sure that he wasn't going to find himself with a dead girlfriend was necessary.
Eventually, Summer needed him too much. She needed him to be me before he could be himself. She wanted Seth so badly to be the person that she had lost that he hadn't been able to handle it anymore. He told her so, told her that he needed to leave one rainy night in August, when I was three months dead and the college year was about to start. Summer had hit him with the lamp in his bedroom and then left; she had stayed at the Cohen household all summer. There was no longer a place for her at her own home. Now there wasn't a place for her here. She had gone to visit me, kneeling down in the mud and rain and cried but not because she had lost me, but because she had lost Seth. She cried because she felt guilty for mourning his lose before mine. I understood her tears and knew that she was beginning the painful journey it was going to take for her to move on.
Ryan left. He went to Berkley and he didn't talk to anyone for weeks. He even ostracized himself from his family for a while. It had been a long time coming; ever since my death, he had been different, untouchable. One day, his lab partner had asked if he wanted to get together later and study the notes with her and he seemed to return to the place where he belonged. Ryan had been trying so hard to get to where I was and he finally realized that he never could, that he was meant to be in Berkley and to remember me and move on. He studied the notes with that girl. Her name was Sarah and she was beautiful. She married a stock broker shortly after graduating Berkley.
Every year, everyone remembered. My mother and my sister went to visit and brought flowers. Kaitlin came at least three times a month, which my mother didn't know. She talked about her reign over Harbor and told me about the first boy she ever slept with. I wished that things could have been different, that the talk could have happened in my bedroom, with the two of us snuggled beneath the covers, whispering until the early morning hours. When she graduated, Kaitlin left me her cap and tassel. Then she left New Port and went to New York, where she belonged. My mother let her go and it was the hardest thing she had ever done. She worried so much that she would lose another daughter but Kaitlin called every Sunday and they both grew stronger but not into stone.
Summer didn't go to college that year. She stayed in New Port, unable to leave for reasons she didn't know but I did. She couldn't leave me, even though she was the only one still keeping up the vigil. Seth had gone that August night and called once a month to let his mother know that he was still alive. He called Summer, once, but she had only cried and he had hung up. He hated himself because he wanted so badly to be stronger for her but didn't know how he could be there for someone that hadn't even begun to let the wound my death had caused heal up. Every time she thought she might be able to move on, every time she laughed or smiled or felt a hint of happiness, Summer tore the wound open again to punish herself. She couldn't leave me behind and I couldn't condemn her for that. But I wanted her to begin to get better, to be my best friend again. The fact that she loved me enough to want to keep me helped ease the fact that everyone else was beginning to move on, but it was too much.
Taylor tried so hard to be the friend that both Seth and Summer needed but loved them both too much. She knew where Seth was, visited him as often as she could. The night they went to bed together I stayed with Summer, because she was alone, in her apartment, my purple Carebear on the floor beside her bed. Her constant reminder of me.
Seth and Taylor didn't last. Taylor went to Korea and Seth went back to Summer. When she saw him, she cried but not in the ways she had before. She cried before she was finally able to let me go and take him back. They got married three months later. They had a daughter a year after that. They named her Marissa Isabelle but never called her by her first name. But every time Summer looked at her daughter, she thought of me. That was a better way to hold onto me then the way she had been.
Ryan met his wife while waiting for the bus in the rain. They had coffee and dated for five years before Ryan felt like he could trust himself to love someone again. He didn't want to lose me all over again, not in this new woman; but they stayed married for the rest of their lives, even though he never forgot me, even though I was the shadow that existed in every corner, in every dream, whenever he didn't look closely enough at the mirrors when he passed. Seth and Summer had two more children after Marissa Isabelle but divorced when their eldest was seventeen. I try not to blame myself.
Kirsten and Sandy moved out of New Port after Seth returned. They went to Palm Springs and lived the life there. I was slightly envious of them on my mother's behalf because she never left New Port after my death. To be fair, she never wanted to. She and Dr. Roberts married eventually but they didn't have anymore children. They were both too old by then and my mother feared that she would never love another child the way she had loved me. Kaitlin became an artist, lived in a flat with five other people, romanced every one of them and never went back to New Port. She still called my mom every Sunday until my mother died much, much later. After that, Kaitlin didn't know who to call but her husband tried to fill the void that her missing family had created. She had six children, all of them boys. She was grateful; she wouldn't have been able to look at a daughter without seeing me.
One by one, they all moved on, growing from the hole I had ripped in their lives. They all twisted in different directions, my death forcing them apart in a way they never would have gone if I was still alive. In a way, it was for the best. We needed to be without one another, we needed to become ourselves.
I regret that I never got to become the person I was destined to be. I was certain she wasn't going to be anything great but she was going to be something. I was forever stuck at eighteen, newly graduated, unhappy and dissatisfied. I had wanted a change but now I still long for things to go back to normal.
Years have passed and I know I'm just a scar on everyone's hearts, in their memories. I watched Summer's children grow up, I watched as Kaitlin's sons put her through the ringer. "Boys will be boys." She said over and over again and I always smiled. My nephews were handfuls and I wished I could have been a part of their lives.
I don't watch as much anymore. They don't need me anymore. They have all grown with me and without me; Summer carried me through her life until the day she died. Nothing was the same anymore, no one depended on one another the way they once had. They all grew, they changed, they adapted, they moved on. And they took me with them, just as they would have done in life.
In a way, I lost them, no matter how much they tried to keep me in their memories, how often I watched them. I was forever eighteen and they were growing and changing and experiencing things I couldn't dream of. It was strange to be the one left behind, the one to never grow up. Whatever I had wanted for myself, I would never achieve, but I could do nothing about that. Instead, I watched as my friends got everything they needed and wanted, as they made mistakes and learned from them and continued to grow. I never failed to be happy for every one of them.
After all, what more could I do?