Marked
By Kathryn S. Gardiner

A lot of time had passed since they last saw each other. A fly landed lightly on her bare shoulder and Jacob wished he had the strength to lift his hand and brush it away.

“I always liked your hair like that,” he said.

She rolled her eyes and touched fingertips to her two-tone bangs, golden on one side and dyed black on the other. “It was supposed to be, like, black and white, but it’s just blonde and black.”

Jacob smiled. His skin felt tired and stretched. “Still liked it. Yin and yang. Your light side and your dark side.”

“Yeah, whatever. I’m a human Oreo.” She leaned her chair back on two legs and sighed.

Her voice hadn’t changed either, Jacob noticed. He was surprised how well he remembered it. Surprised how it still reached in and touched something deep inside him. She glanced at her watch, bored.

Her parents had named her Misty, one moment of knowing their daughter before a lifetime of letting her slip away.

“So, like, are you dying?” she asked.

Jacob breathed out and it rattled in his chest. “Oh, probably.” He patted the mattress next to him. “Deathbed.”

Misty shifted uncomfortably on her chair. Her grey eyes drifted slowly down the length of his weakening body beneath the blankets. She plucked at a fraying thread on her denim cut-offs. “So what am I?”

“A figment of my imagination, I suppose.”

“Do I know you? Do I, like, actually exist? I feel like I do…”

Jacob nodded, let his eyes blink once—it felt so good to close them—but it had been so long since he’d seen her. He wanted to look at her a little longer. “Yep,” he said softly. “You were a senior and I was a freshman.”

“What’s your name?”

“Jacob Weidland.”

“Jacob Weidland…” Her lips twisted in thought. “Are you that little round kid from choir?”

“That was me.”

Misty huffed a rough laugh. “Well, it looks like you thinned out all right.” She leaned forward, inspecting his face with eyes lined with thick, black mascara. “Not a bad face. You might’ve been hot, if you weren’t, you know, dyin’. And kinda old.”

“Thanks.” He mustered his strength and shrugged himself higher on his pillows. After a moment’s hesitation, she slid to his side and curled one marked hand around his upper arm, helping him. In class, she always drew on her hands, elaborate tribal designs in black pen ink—redrawn and redrawn and redrawn through every boring math lesson or listless study hall. As soon as he was settled amongst his covers, she withdrew her hand and returned stiffly to her chair.

“You –” She rubbed a hand across her forehead, leaving a faint ink shadow. “I was about to ask if you’re all right, but since you’re fuckin’ dying, I’m guessing not. Heh. Oh. Pardon my language.”

“A little swearing won’t hurt me now.”

“And I cuss around you a lot in school anyway, don’t I?”

“You did.”

“Then, damage done or whatever.” She traced the curve of an ivy vine snaking up her wrist. “So, like, why am I here? Why me? Don’t you have a wife or nothin’?”

“I do have a wife.” Jacob smoothed the covers across his chest with a shaky hand. “We were married for forty-eight years. I’m looking forward to seeing her.”

“So are you some perve seeing teenage girls before you shrug off this mortal coil?”

Jacob smiled. “Exactly. And leave it to you to know fancy phrases for dying.”

“Yeah, well.” She pulled a book from his shelf, flipped through it once, and put it back. “You learn a thing or two when you think about killing yourself all the time.”

“I know,” he said. The pain sliced through his heart, as sharp now as it had ever been.

Her misty eyes slid to him, narrowed. Her cheeks looked sallow.

“I had a crush on you in school,” he said. “That’s why you’re here.”

“A crush? On me?” She said it as though the phrase itself were ridiculous. “You don’t—do we even know each other?”

“I know you. I saw you struggling. I saw you drawing. I heard you singing. You didn’t know me, but I know you.”

“That’s kinda creepy. Were you stalking me or something?”

Jacob thought back to bike rides past her house, eavesdropping at the drinking fountain by her locker. “I guess I kind of was. Yeah.”

She laughed, so he laughed, too. “Eh, okay,” she said. “Whatever. I’ve had scarier guys after me, so I guess I can handle you.”

And Jacob knew that, too, but he didn’t want to have that conversation now. Not with her so close again, so youthful and marked, just like he remembered.

“So what do you know about me?” She stood and turned her chair around, straddling it casually like she’d always done with the folding chairs in choir.

“I know your name is Misty Sagan. No middle name. I know you like to draw and want to work in a good tattoo parlor—like that one downtown that you said was like a spa where instead of massages you could get a bad-ass skull tattoo on your left butt cheek for fifty bucks.”

She grinned. “That place is fuckin’ awesome. So do I end up working there?”

“I know that you want a big wedding with all the trimmings, but with a blood-red dress and you and your new husband will cut each other’s palms and mingle blood after the vows instead of kissing.”

Misty let out a bark of laughter and clapped her hands. “I did say that, didn’t I? Damn, that’s dark. Please tell me I did that.”

Jacob smiled weakly. “I know that you hated everything about prom except bowling at the after party. You bowled a 290 by yourself at the lane by the kids’ bathroom that used to overflow all the time.”

“Jacob?”

“You wore that red Kurt Cobain shirt and you looked so sad and determined.”

“Jacob, man…”

“I loved you. I really did. First girl I ever loved and I didn’t get it then like I do now. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense or if we were totally wrong for each other. I should have told you right then, the moment I thought it.” His voice caught and cracked.

“Jake,” Misty said, and her voice sounded grave. “Why am I here?”

Jacob clamped his eyes shut tight; they burned; and when he opened them, the water in his gaze wrapped Misty in a light like her name.

She stood, moved the chair out of her way, and sat down on the mattress beside him. Her slate-colored eyes were cool and clear. She touched an inked hand to his cheek. “Why am I here, man? C’mon,” she said.

Jacob gasped through the knot of pain and guilt and regret in his chest. He sobbed and felt his heart tearing, bleeding, mending. He lifted wet eyes to her. “I love you,” he said. “And I’m so sorry I never told you. I’m sorry you died thinking no one did. I’m sorry you died alone.”

Misty smiled, then. “Duh, Jake. That’s what this is: No one dies alone. Not you; not me.”

She nudged his shoulder with hers, intimate and friendly, and Jacob felt himself descend into a body burdened by too much extra weight on a small frame. The soda touched his tongue through the straw, flat and syrupy but refreshing for its coolness. He watched the girl in red, the dark girl from his choir class as she bowled alone.

Her purple ball raced down the lane and slammed into the pins, knocking down eight and setting the ninth and tenth to tottering before they too clattered to the polished wood. A subtle pump of her fist was her only celebration and she turned to hold her hand over the air vent, cooling her skin, waiting for her ball to return. She glanced up and caught Jacob’s eye. He wanted to look away, embarrassed, but their eyes held. He couldn’t breathe until she looked away.

I love you, he thought, and felt it through every part of him like a prayer. I love you, and someday, I’m going to tell you.