The cemetery gate is busted, has been for the two years Tate's been coming. It's easy to just slip through. No one visits this one. The graves are old and anyone who would mourn those in the ground are worm food themselves by now. He likes to hang out here. It's quiet and private – woods surrounding three sides. He trudges up the little hill towards the oak tree. He spots Jasmine peering around it from the other side.

"There you are. I was worried you weren't going to come."

"I have about an hour before Constance notices I'm gone."

"Did you bring the book?" she asks, settling down against a massive root.

"Yeah." He digs it out of his backpack and hands it to her. "The Complete Stories of Edgar Allen Poe". She doesn't take it from him.

"What did you think?"

"It was...dark. I liked it."

"You can keep it. I don't need it anymore."

Tate shrugs. Throws it in his pack.

He sits across from her. The shade of the oak is stretching long over the ground, the late afternoon sun settling faster now that fall has come.

"So, you said you had something important to tell me."

Jasmine grins at him. Her teeth are strikingly white against her blood red lipstick. Her eyes though, lined heavily in black charcoal, aren't smiling.

"Tonight is the night!" she declares. She raises her arms up grandly to the sky.

"Tonight? Why tonight?"

"Why not?" she shrugs.

"I don't know. I just think... maybe you could just tell someone."

"Tate – "

"Like Miss Seely. Remember she said if you – "

"No, Tate. That's not happening. I already told you."

"But she could get you out of the house."

"Oh yeah, and then what? Foster care? No fucking way."

Tate pulls at the grass.

"How are you going to do it?"

She pulls up her sleeve and runs a finger up her forearm in a vertical line.

"They can't stitch it up that way." Her tone hints she's proud of herself for having thought of it.

He's quiet.

She huffs impatiently. "Come on, Tate. Don't make me regret telling you."

"In three years you can just live on your own, you know, or go to college."

"Jesus, will you listen to yourself? Three years. Three more years of that asshole – " She shakes her head. "No. No fucking way." She pushes up from the ground. She starts pacing. "Remember that last part from the story – what was it? 'There are moments when, something, something, the world of our sad humanity may assume the semblance of a hell...'"

"Yeah."

"I know there's someplace better. There has to be. Or maybe there's just, I don't know, nothingness. That's better, too." She stops pacing. "And if you're smart, you'd come with me."

He'd join her in a second. All that shit he said about only three years and college and bullshit was just fear talking. She was right. He knew she was right. And it wasn't the first time it crossed his mind.

"I can't," he says quietly. "I can't leave Beau and Addie."

She sighs and sits down again. "I know. You're a good brother. Man, if I had a brother like you..." He looks at her. "Well, my life would've been a lot different."

He wishes he could do something for her. But what could he do? He's a stupid fifteen year old kid.

"So, anyway," she says, nervously tossing back her jet black hair. "I have a favor to ask you."

"Okay."

She drops her eyes to the ground.

"Well, I know you don't think I'm pretty or anything – "

"Jasmine – "

"No, Tate, it's okay. It's fine. I just, well, the favor I want to ask is if you would kiss me." She ventures a look at him now. "Because I've never been kissed... by a boy that I like."

She suddenly looks so small and sad, her anger falling away for a rare moment so that he's able to notice how big and bright her eyes can be.

"Yeah. Yeah, sure. I don't think I'm very good at it, but..."

She laughs.

"Okay well me neither, so it will be the worst first kiss in the history of the world."

"Wow. That's a lot to live up to."

"Think you can handle it?"

"I'll do my best."

They both stand, awkwardly apart for a moment. Then he reaches to put his hands on her hips. She's so slight, like a little bird. He gently pulls her to him. She raises her face and their lips meet, pressing gently, then more insistent, then parting, and it's amazing how quickly those lips find their own rhythm, the boy and the girl simply following their lead.

After a time she gently pushes him away.

"Wow." she says. "That was really awful."

"The worst."

He leans his forehead against hers, his hands lingering on her hips. The only sound is the wind in the trees.

"Okay, well, look," she says, pulling away from him. "I'm going to give you this." She digs through her bag, pulls out an envelope. He goes to take it, but she pulls it back. "You can't read it until...after."

She offers it now, but he doesn't reach for it.

"Tate, just take it. Please. If I leave it at the house the asshole will never give it to you. Just – take it."

He does.

"Just remember – don't read it until – "

"After," he says quietly.

"Yeah."

She shifts restlessly. "Well, I'm going to go now. I'm just going to go."

He reaches for her arm, but she shrugs him away.

"Don't," she says, her voice catching.

He watches her run down the path, the wind whipping her hair. When she reaches the gate, she turns, offers a final wave.

And then she's gone.

Tate drops to the grass. He turns the envelope around and around in his hands. The dead leaves scrabble around him. They're so pretty when they change, bursts of orange and red, but they all come to this – brittle, dead.

He carefully opens the envelope. He pulls out the letter – written in her loopy, feminine scrawl.

"I take a walk outside

I'm surrounded by some kids at play

I can feel their laughter, so why do I sear?

Oh, and twisted thoughts that spin around my head

I'm spinning, oh, I'm spinning

how quick the sun can drop away

and now my bitter hands cradle broken glass

of what was everything

all the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed everything.

all the love gone bad turned my world to black

tattooed all I see, all that I am, all that I'll be...

I know someday you'll have a beautiful life,

I know you'll be a sun... "

Tate, remember when you played me this song? Think about me when you listen to it.

Love,

(Oh, wow. Corny, huh? Whatever, fuck it.)

Jasmine

P.S. You are one of the good people, Tate.

He lays back in the grass. It's chilly now in the shade. The earth feels so solid under his back. He imagines it covering him, weighing him down, pushing, sinking him steadily into the darkness, the wet earth seeping in through his pores, churning his bones. He feels an ache in is chest, a yearning for it, for the safety and sureness of it.

But the wind picks up and he knows he has to go. Has to get home to make sure Addie and Beau get something to eat. Because life goes on with our without black haired girls with big sad eyes. And this tree – this tree will give shade to any asshole, even the one who rapes her. Even the one lying here now, the one who will just let her go ahead and die.

So that is the secret. The secret is to be the tree, the earth, the sky. To be a bird, drifting over it all, never touching it, never worrying it, just fly.