"I vill show you, I vill show you, now we go, le's go, le's go. No time to vaste." I laughed and let him take my hand as he led me to the front door. "I'm going out!" I called up the stairs, to Jake. "Bye," he called back uninterestedly. I followed Tyler out the door and he opened his car door for me. "Thank you, sir."
"Ye, ye, le's go, le's go." He grinned at me and closed the passenger door, walking around to the other side of the car.
The nearest graveyard was almost an hour away. Angela questioned me persistently as we drove, looking out her window and trying to figure out where I was taking her, making incorrect hypotheses and begging me to end her suspense. When we got relatively close to the graveyard, I pulled over and made her tie a scarf, which I had borrowed from my mom, around her eyes. When we pulled up to the entrance, I got out and went to ask where Dustin's grave was. I was pointed in the right direction, and I got back in the car and drove as close as I could to the grave. When I parked, I got out and went around to Angela's side, opening her door and unbuckling her seatbelt for her. Her breath was warm on my head as I reached over her, but she didn't stiffen as my arm brushed her leg, and I released her belt. She let me take her hands and I led he rout of the car. She sniffed around, and I smiled at her curious face, though I couldn't see her eyes. "This place smells familiar," she said. I laughed and shook my head, "Of all the things I thought you might say when I took you here, that was not one of them." She grinned, "Where am I?" I shook my head, though she couldn't see me, "Nope," I said, grinning at my advantage over her, "Not yet, little missy." She pouted, but consented when I pulled her forward. I found Dustin's grave and stared at it for a moment before turning to Angela. "In loving memory" it said, "Loved sister, daughter, friend" it said. It was so bizarre to me, looking at that. It was the world's view on life, on what it meant. She was someone's sister, someone's daughter, someone's friend, and she had been loved. But I, who had never known her, not really, though I felt as if I had, I knew there was so much more to her than that. It made me think of faith, of life after death. Could anyone really believe that this was it, that this incredible girl, and so many others, were simply gone. Well, she had a good life, now it's over. The end. Could anyone really believe that? Even if I hadn't had my faith, I would have been able to say, in that moment, that it was impossible to believe that of this girl. Her spirit was too strong to be gone.
I took the scarf off of Angela's eyes, then, and watched her face. She blinked. Her mouth fell open a bit. "Oh," she said. Her eyes crinkled for a moment, tears springing up in them, but she quickly swiped them away, and took a confident step towards the gravestone. She smiled slightly, her eyes still wet, and touched the top of the stone, wiping off the dust that had gathered. "I haven't been here since the funeral," she said, still smiling slightly, tears running down her white cheeks. "When I saw this," she said, and her voice caught in her throat. She paused a moment, gathering herself, and then continued, "When I first saw this..." she trailed off, staring at the stone. She looked off, away from it, and then met my gaze. She smiled sadly, her lips pressed together firmly as the tears continued, "When I first saw this, it felt like... Wow. She's really gone, isn't she?" She nodded, looking back at the grave.
The first time I saw Dustin's grave stone, it was surrounded by people dressed in black, their heads tipped to the ground, their cheeks wet with tears. It smelled like ambrosia, and the sky was bright with sunlight in a way that felt disrespectful. I remember looking up at the sky, just as everyone whose heads weren't already ducked tipped their heads down, in prayer. I looked up at the sky, and I wanted it to rain more than I could possibly explain. I wanted the weather to do my sister justice, I wanted the Earth to tip its head in mourning, I wanted everyone to weep for the loss of my heart. Now, though, as I looked at the grave, I realized Dustin wouldn't have wanted it to rain. She loved rain, but she always said that though she loved rain, and the warm, comfortable feeling it gave her, she always found sunlight better for celebrating, because it was so uplifting, and rather than wanting to curl up in front of a fireplace, it made you want to dive into a lake, to take a chance, to celebrate. We hadn't been mourning Dustin's death that day, she wouldn't have wanted us to go. As the saying goes, we were "celebrating her life". "No," Tyler said, pulling me out of my thoughts. "No?" I asked, turning my head to look at him. "No," he said, smiling sadly at me. "No, she's really not gone." He tucked his hands into his pockets and looked up at the sky, where the sun was, as before, shining bright in the sky. "Dustin had faith," he said. "She had faith, and she'll never be gone." I bit my lip, unable to contain the emotion flooding through me. He looked over at me, smiling more joyfully now, "I didn't actually know Dustin... but every time I feel sun on my back, every time I see a ray of light reflect off a window, she comes to my mind." He squinted up at the sun and finished, "She's here in the sunlight. She's with the source of her faith, and she shows herself to us in the sunlight." I smiled widely as the emotion overtook me, and I realized just what emotion it was. I moved towards him and wrapped my arms around him. "I love you," I sighed, and it was genuine. Right there, right then, I was reminded that I loved him. And his shocked expression, when I pulled away from him, shocked me, also. Then I laughed out loud as I remembered how I had responded when he told me he loved me, and I realized that though this was really only a rather unnecessary reminder, to me, that I loved this person, to him, it was the first time the words had left my mouth.
Luckily, he seemed pleased.
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