Quotes by Sarah Ockler

Sorry.” I’m surprised and glad she doesn’t recognize it. I run my thumb back and forth over a crusty bit on the shoulder strap as a five-second version of the cake fight flashes behind my eyes like a movie stuck on quick search. Don’t cry over spilt frosting, Anna. “I just – I like this one.” “What for?” she asks. Just tell her. “It’s from the – it’s just the–” I bite my lower lip. Tell her. “Anna? What’s wrong?” Oh, it’s nothing, really. Just that it’s from the first time your brother kissed me and made me promise not to tell you. And I was in love with him forever, and he was supposed to tell you about it in California, and we were all going to live happily ever after. I still write him letters in the journal he gave me, which he doesn’t answer, since he’s dead and all. But other than that? Honestly, it’s nothing. “Anna?” She watches me with her sideways face again. “Huh? Oh, sorry. Nothing. I’m fine. I – I’ll get rid of it later.

Through pictures, we cut reality in pieces. We selected only the choicest moments, discarding the rest as if theyd never happened.

This boy wore the ocean in his eyes, green-gray-blue, ever shifting, and I recognized him immediately. Knew before he said another word that he was as dangerous as he was beautiful.

Beneath the vast diamond sky, I felt both all important and utterly significant, the goddess and the damned in equal measure.

So just over a year ago, there was this guy. I really liked him. I mean really – since I was a kid.” “Did Frankie know him?” “The three of us were best friends. We basically grew up together.” “Complicated.” “Very. So anyway, last year on my birthday, he finally kissed me.” Sam stays quiet, focused on his feet taking off and landing against the sand. It feels strange to tell him about this for so many reasons, but the words are coming too fast for me to stop, even if I want to. “We started hanging out all the time – even more than before. Every night. Only we didn’t know how to tell Frankie, because we didn’t want her to freak or feel left out or whatever.” “Makes sense,” Sam says. “He thought it would be better if he told her himself, so I promised him that I wouldn’t say anything. But before he could talk to her about it, he–” I almost choke on the word, holding my hand against Sam’s arm to stop our forward motion along the shore. “What did he do?” Sam asks. “He just – he – I’m sorry. Wait.” The words of this story have passed a thousand times from my hand to the pages of my journal, but never from my lips to the ears of another living soul. I take a few deep breaths before I’m able to meet Sam’s eyes and say it. “He died, Sam.

There was no going back to the way things were, because all you ever got was the way things are.

It seemed everything that had ever lived and died in this world had passed through here, had left its indelible imprint.

Happy birthday,” he whispered, his breath landing warm and suddenly close to my lips, making my insides flip. And just as quickly as he’d surprised me with the cake, he kissed me, one frosting-covered hand moving from my hair to the back of my neck, the other solid and warm in the small of my back, pressing us together, my chest against his ribs, my hip bones just below his, the tops of our bare summer legs hot and touching. I stopped breathing. My eyes were closed and his mouth tasted like marzipan flowers and clove cigarettes, and in ten seconds the whole of my life was wrapped up in that one kiss, that one wish, that one secret that would forever divide my life into two parts. Up, down. Happy, sad. Shock, awe. Before, after. In that single moment, Matt, formerly known as friend, became something else entirely. I kissed him back. I forgot time. I forgot my feet. I forgot the people outside, waiting for us to rejoin the party. I forgot what happens when friends cross into this space. And if my lungs didn’t fill and my heart didn’t beat and my blood didn’t pump without my intervention, I would have forgotten about them, too. I could have stayed like that all night, standing in front of the sink, Matt’s black apple hair brushing my cheeks, heart thumping, lucky and forgetful…

I follow the path we’ve taken so many times this summer – across the front, down the street, cut back through a neighbor’s yard, down the stairs to the beach, past the pier, through the campfire labyrinth, up to the deck of the Shack, and straight into Sam’s arms. Without speaking, he kisses me hard on the mouth and I kiss him back, sobbing and crumpling into his chest like a broken puppet.

The late-night backyard encounter and kiss induced insomnia.

And in this moment of pale dawn in the hours before we leave California, I finally realize what has been the hardest thing for me about Matt’s death. It isn’t that I lost a brother, like Frankie, or a son, like Aunt Jayne and Uncle Red. The hardest thing is that I’ll never know exactly what I lost, how much it should hurt, how long I should keep thinking about him. He took that mystery with him when he died, and a hundred thousand one-sided letters in my journal wouldn’t have brought me any closer to the truth than I was the night I pressed my fingers to the sea glass he wore around his neck and kissed him back. For over a year, the letters were my only connection to him; the only evidence that I didn’t imagine our brief time as other. When I first saw my journal helplessly floating on the waves, I felt a loss so immediate and overwhelming it was like being back in the hospital lobby when the doctor told us they couldn’t fix him. One minute, the journal was in my hands, soft and familiar and real; the next minute, it was gone. Just like Matt. And just like Matt, I need to let it go.

Im sorry. For all of us. Sorry for all the little ways the people who were supposed to love us most could hurt us so deeply, despite their shared heritage and blood, as thought their knowledge of our pasts gave them unlimited access to all the most tender places, the old wounds that could be so easily reopened with no more than a glance, a comment, a passing reminder of all the ways in which we failed to live up to their expectations.

Right after Matt died, I was afraid to do basically everything. I couldn’t even bite my nails or sniff my shirt to see if I needed deodorant without feeling like he was watching me. I willed and prayed and begged him to give me a sign that he was watching, that he was with me, so I would know. But he never did. Time moved on. And I stopped being afraid. Until right now, vulnerable and insecure and a little bit drunk. Lying in the sand and falling in crazy love with someone I just met. Matt is watching me. Observing. Possibly judging. And the worst part of it is, I don’t want to wake up under his landslide of sad rocks anymore. I don’t want to taste the marzipan frosting and the clove cigarettes. I don’t want to think about the blue glass necklace or the books he read to me on his bed or the piles of college stuff or some random boy in the grocery store wearing his donated clothes. I don’t want to be the dead boy’s best-friend-turned-something-else. Or the really supportive neighbor friend. Or the lifelong keeper of broken-hearted secrets.

Have some carrots. Theyre good for your eyes.Then you have some fries. Theyre good for your... I dont know. Theyre just good.

Ive never met a problem a proper cupcake couldnt fix.

For all its ridiculous imperfections, life is pretty damn perfect sometimes.

The guilt of not telling Frankie about Matt and me is overwhelming, but its a pale second to the violation I feel that she read my most private, raw thoughts and destroyed them. She broke into my carefully guarded heart, stole the only remaining connection I had to Matt, and turned it into a monstrosity.

Dear Matt, In less than a day, I’ ll be standing on the same sand you stood on so many times before. Well, not the same sand, with the tides and winds and erosion and all of that, but the same symbolic sand. I’m so excited and scared that I can’ t sleep – even though I have to wake up in five hours! You know, I saved every one of your postcards. They’re here in a box under my bed – all the little stories you sent, like little pieces of California. Like the beach glass you guys always brought me. Sometimes I dump it out on my desk and press my ear to the pieces, trying to hear the ocean. Trying to hear you. But you don’ t say anything. Remember how you’ d come back from your vacation on the beach and tell me what it really felt like? What the ocean sounded like at dawn when the beach was deserted? What your hair and skin tasted like after swimming in saltwater all day? How the sand could burn your feet as you walked on it, but if you stuck your toes in, it was cold and wet underneath? How you spent three hours sitting on Ocean Beach just to watch the sun sink into the water a million miles away? If I closed my eyes as you were talking, it was like I was there, like your stories were my stories. In many ways, I feel as if I have memories of you there, too. Do you think that’s crazy? Matt, please don’ t think badly about Frankie’s contest. It’s just a silly game. It’s so Frankie, you know? No, I guess you wouldn’ t. You’ d kill her if you did! She just misses you. We all do. I’ ll look out for her, though. I promise. Please watch over us tomorrow, and for the next few weeks while we’re away. You’ ll be in my thoughts the whole time, like always. I’m going to find some red sea glass for you. I miss you more than you could ever know. Love, Anna

Hey. What did you do to your - I mean, you look different. My cheeks go immediately hot. Not that your average onlooker can tell, given all the makeup Im wearing. Frankie and I were just messing around this morning. Oh, he says, tying the paper from his straw into little knots. It looks nice, I mean. I just cant see you, thats all. I make a mental note to ditch the makeup tomorrow. Then I get mad at myself for letting some boy that I just met dictate what I do with my own face. Then I get mad at myself for getting mad at myself and remember that I, too, prefer the natural look.

I closed my eyes under the fluroescent lights and tried to make another birthday wish, a onetime do-over, a rebate, a trade-in on the kitchen sink kiss that started everything, offered up for just one last miracle.