Haley stretched her legs out in front of her haphazardly and leaned back onto her elbows. Scattered about her were yellow post it notes with little phrases, quips, and words that jumped out at her while she read. What used to be a study habit in high school had turned into an obsession by college. Her beige carpet had been lost to the waves of yellow and ink about an hour ago, but she had run out of post-its.
She ruffled through the pages to her left with thin fingers, plucking a few up at random, analyzed them, and tossed them. Vision. Pursuit. Malleable. None of the papers were really all that meaningful, but it didn’t matter. Now that her floor had disappeared, her body had begun to feel cramped from the bent position of writing. Standing up, she kicked through the sheets, sending them fluttering like crisp leaves. Maybe she’d make enough to jump in, like when she was little. She smirked.
Haley tossed her long hair over her shoulder, feeling the weight shift to her back. She paused and glanced at herself in the full-length mirror hanging on her door, evaluating the brown locks that almost reached her hips. She had a small physique, her hair acting as the biggest part of her. She pulled at a few strands, glancing down at the edges before tossing them back over her shoulder. She licked her dry lips as she thought of a haircut and walked towards her own reflection, opening the door to the rest of her cramped apartment.
--
“Damn it, Hales,” Mark threw a glance over at his passenger. “What is it this time?”
Haley propped a leg up on the dashboard in front of her, “Don’t get defensive. I was just saying that we should do something.”
“You’re always bored.”
Haley’s eyes flashed, “No. I’m not.”
Mark sighed, turning into his neighborhood, “Right.”
She turned her body more towards him, sitting awkwardly in the worn seat, “Why do you say that? Like that.”
Without bothering to look at her, Mark responded, “Like what? You’re just always bored. I cannot come up with nearly enough ideas to keep you entertained.” He shrugged, “There could be some days where we do nothing but enjoy each other’s company.”
Haley furrowed her brow, “I do enjoy your company.”
Mark instinctively drove on past his house, knowing she didn’t want to stop there. “Okay, I’ll pretend to believe that.”
“You’re being an ass.”
“Sorry.”
Silence followed as Haley turned her eyes out the window, propping her chin in the cup of her hand. She didn’t really care where Mark was taking her. She watched as her view seemed to fast forward as Mark headed back out of the neighborhood, pressing more heavily into the gas petal as he breached the main road of their little town. She closed her eyes, counted for a moment, and tried to guess where they’d be when she opened her eyes again.
“So can I ask you a question?”
Haley opened her eyes to see that her guess had been off by a restaurant. Her gaze wandered back towards Mark, “Do you want an actual answer to that?” She smiled prettily.
Mark eyed her briefly, “Funny. But seriously. You’ve bought a million packs of post-its this weekend. What project are you working on this time?”
Haley jumped in her seat, bringing her leg down from the dashboard. “That reminds me! I need to go to the store.” She grabbed her purse from the floorboard and began rummaging through leaflets that had made her company. Anxiety.
“Really, Hales? You have them with you?”
Haley glanced up before continuing her search for a pen, “These are old. I need new ones.” Finding one at the bottom crevices of an overly-large purse, she held it up and smiled at him. “Please?”
Mark shook his head and shrugged, “Why not. But what are you writing on all of them? Your own personal dictionary?”
Haley plucked a random sheet from the top of her purse and turned it over to the blank side, writing a single word and sticking it to Mark’s shoulder. “You could say that.”
Mark pulled the post-it from his shirt and glanced down at it as he waited for the light to turn. “Burn? All the words that simple?”
“Flip it over.”
Mark did so and smirked as he looked at the three letter word pet name, if one could call it that, scribbled neatly across the yellow, “Ass.”
Haley grabbed the sheet from his hand and stuck it back into her purse, “Simple can still say a lot.”
Mark rolled his eyes as Haley pulled her legs up into the seat with her. The streets rushed by under her surveillance – small neighborhoods with obscure names, houses with cheesy lawn ornaments, and home-made mailboxes, all blending together as Mark drove on towards a nearby Wal-Mart. Family-owned diners sat next to chain restaurants and horses roamed in the fences built in front of suburban homes. The town Haley had grown up in was steadily expanding, creating an odd mixture of old and new. Haley glanced down at the purse still sitting open in her lap. Blanch and Pervasive sat on top, guarding other personal items like a once red wallet and a scratched personal mirror. Buried at the bottom were Pilgrimage, Cope, and Desensitize, crunched up balls of ink that had been stuffed into her purse in the beginnings of the post-it phase. Haley zipped her purse and rested her arms across it as Mark pulled into the parking lot.
--
Haley flipped a page in her scrapbook and paused on a photo of her mother holding her as a child, a lopsided grin mirrored on both of their faces, “Think I still look like her?”
Mark turned his head to view the picture better, “Just like her.”
“It’s her birthday tomorrow.”
“How old would she have been?”
“Forty-eight,” Haley flipped to another page. Justify.
“You doing anything this year?”
Haley looked up, “Would that be weird?”
Mark shrugged, “Is it weird for you?”
“No.”
“Then it’s not weird.”
“Okay,” Haley smiled wistfully, bending forward to write beneath the pictures on the page. Memory. “I’m thinking about writing her a letter. I used to after she first died. My aunt would tell me that God would make sure His angels got their letters. Even though it’s bullshit, I haven’t done it in a while.”
She flipped to the next page, eyeing an awkward photo of her in middle school, braces glaring in the bright sunlight of the picture. Exclusion. She winced and laughed, “God, we were so ugly.”
Mark shook his head with a smirk, “I was not. I was always a beautiful kid.”
Haley pointed at his slumped stature that still towered next to hers in the picture, “This begs to differ, sir.”
Mark grinned, “We’re all allowed a bad picture once in a while.”
Haley shrugged, “So what do you think? About the letter.”
“If you want to. What are you going to do with it – take it to her grave or something?” Mark glanced around Haley’s room as she continued flipping through her scrapbook, eyeing the piles of post-its that had accumulated around their small sitting area. Posters of actors like Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt cluttered her walls with their airbrushed faces, and a calendar hung a few months behind.
“I guess so. There’s just a lot I want to tell her. And praying makes me feel stupid, like I’m talking to myself.”
“Then go for it. Is that what all these post-its are for?”
Haley shook her head, “No. I don’t really know what these are about. Just picking out words I like, I guess.”
“You’re a special kid.”
Haley laughed, “You could say that.” She turned her attention to the pile she had shoved into a corner earlier. Levity. Syllogism. “I just want to understand things better. Some of the words I know, some I don’t. Some have just certain connotations that are interesting.” She looked back at Mark, his brown eyes never wavering. “My mom once told me that attention to detail is what helps us survive. Anyone can survive accidently.”
“What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know. I think it mostly means to be active in your life. You know, don’t let life do all the work for you. People can go their whole lives without truly living it,” Haley leaned back onto her hands, scratching slowly at the carpet.
“Yea, I guess that makes sense.”
Haley looked up at the ceiling fan that was turning at its lowest setting above her and sighed, “She’d say a lot of things that didn’t make sense at the time.” She looked back at Mark, “Now I’m trying to remember it all.”
--
Haley leaned against the gravestone, her arm draping over the engraved name. In her other hand, she loosely held an envelope that was marked to match the engraving in the deep gray stone. Haley watched the breeze gently urging the branches of surrounding trees as she turned the envelope in slow circles between her fingers. She glanced down at the worn grass where she often sat, the blades yellowed and flat in a perfect circle, before turning her gaze back out in front of her. The clouds hung loose and grey, lined in white, casting the sky in layers. She let the letter drop. Systematic.
She used to go around reading other people’s letters addressed to the deceased. Sometimes she’d try to guess how they died – old age, disease, accident. Little games of postmortem clue. She would also let others guess how her own mother died. She’d have fun revealing the different stories, elaborating on some while being vague on others. Once she convinced a childhood friend that her mother had gone skydiving and splattered into the pavement. When her father got wind of it, however, Haley stopped. It was the only time her father ever scolded her, citing that her mother’s death wasn’t a joke – making up stories wasn’t going to change anything. That was before he dropped her off at her aunt’s.
Her mother had tried to make everything into a game to amuse Haley. Pretty soon, Haley’s life was consumed by little projects, little games. When her mother died, her habit grew to include even the most miniscule. At work, she had turned counting the register into a game of “guess how many” like the little jars of jelly beans at school fairs. She had gotten good at the little things that didn’t seem to matter much.
Haley straightened and patted the top of the stone, almost in sympathy before letting her hand rest for a lingering moment, feeling the heat that met her hand.
She moved along to other gravestones, reading over the familiar names and dates. Mrs. Bates had died thirty years ago – her daughter cited cancer in one of her letters, Haley remembered. Haley had guessed car accident before that. Mr. Palmer was a newbie, arriving only a few months ago. His happened to actually be a car accident. Haley stopped at Mr. Lightbody’s and stared at the crisp envelope addressed to him as though the plot were his official address. She read the dates carved into his personal mailbox of sorts and figured it must have been old age. She picked up the envelope and saw that it was sealed. As though it mattered. Haley never bothered to seal hers. She dropped it face down and moved on. Indignation.
The graveyard was nestled in the middle of nowhere, between Haley’s small town and another’s. It was fairly new – taken care of, spacious and open, with bright trimmed grass. There was a hugely ornamented sign as though the towns were proud to have such a nice resort for the dead. Haley could see the road from where she was standing, small cars cruising silently over the hill in either direction. It was as though the cemetery had invisible soundproof walls built around it. Although the road was in plain sight, Haley felt completely separated from it and the people it carried.
--
Haley came up behind Mark, wrapping her arms around his waist with a little squeeze as he turned.
“Hey you. Where’ve you been?” He leaned down to quickly kiss her with a small smile.
“Just driving around, doing some thinking.”
Mark gently rested his hands on her hips and watched her eyes avoid his, “What about?”
Haley shrugged and pulled away, “Just stuff. You ready to go?”
Mark glanced around his room, the old Batman posters still lingering, standing in opposition to the newest Joker, citing his progress in age. “Sure, I guess. Where are we going?”
Haley turned away from him and began leaving the room, speaking over her shoulder, “Mom’s.”
Mark sighed, resisting frustration. Haley had been playing detective for years, refusing to believe what she had been told. They used to say it was all part of the healing process, to linger in disbelief. However, he always thought of Haley as an extreme person. Even in her grief. Mark acted as her opposite, a magnetic positive to her negative. He tagged along when no one else would, when her imagination ran at its wildest.
--
Haley gripped the steering wheel, eyes locked with the front door of the house that she had once shared with her mother. The door that had been smashed through, the window that had been broken in the escape. The chairs left askew in haste. The mess left behind with a hint of ash and smoke haunting the hallways. Things like what happened to Haley’s mother didn’t happen too often in such a quiet neighborhood. Feeling safe had been taken for granted.
“Hales?”
Haley’s eyes never left the house as she spoke, “I’m fine.”
Mark reached over and placed a gentle hand on her thigh, “You know it’s not your fault, right?”
Haley blinked and tried to see the house for what it was.
“There was nothing that you could have done. You were a kid.”
She leaned forward and rested her chin on the steering wheel, watching the trees play against the aged boarding of the home. Mark was patient with her, repeating the old phrases of comfort every time she found herself looking back. She hardly listened to him anymore but still needed the familiar hand that kept her grounded. “I know.”
There was a pause. A sigh. “You sure?”
Haley licked her lips, quenching them. “Yes Mark.”
She could feel the air tense in the small car, but she refused to look at him. She figured one of these days he’d give up.
“Haley.”
Haley closed her eyes, shutting out the images in front of her. He didn’t see what she saw in her mind. Haley knew he wasn’t going to visit this place anymore. He saw it for what it was.
--
Haley sat with her legs dangling though the tire, holding onto the tired rope that held her light weight. She leaned back slightly and looked up at the sunlight peeking through the leaves, exploring the tree with careful bronze fingers of light.
“Haley!”
Haley swung her legs to turn the tire to face the front door. Her mother stood, red-silhouetted in the door frame, “Come in for lunch.”
The younger Haley carefully pulled herself out of the swing, imagining she was an explorer discovering a mystery land with mystery people. She tread carefully across the lawn of the village woman that had invited Haley to her home, grateful for a meal after her long day of climbing and traveling. Once she reached the woman, Haley evaluated the woman’s deep-set eyes that watched her in return, the blue irises beaming against her rosy cheeks. The woman smiled, half her face shaded by the door she held open for Haley. Haley paused before stepping through the doorway, her eyes adjusting to the change.
She felt the warm touch on her shoulder and looked up at her mother. She looked back into the weavings of her old home as she remembered it as a child. It was small and connected, littered with pictures and clocks, defined by colorful walls. The sunlight streamed through the cracks of the curtained windows, casting lines that bent at angles against the corners. A portrait faced the window and a beam stretched across her mother’s painted face, leaving the rest of the family in the shade.
She took in a small breath and smelt the damp ash for the first time. The hand on her shoulder burned in urgency as Haley stood defiantly in the doorway. She watched as the cackle rang in her ears as color dulled and captured memories began to melt. What Haley had always ignored pressed upon her senses – her ears felt the alarms’ reverberations, her nose recoiled as smoke reached it, and her eyes squinted in response to the bright flames. Her lungs felt tight and her heart raced with the primal instinct to escape. She could feel her body struggling to take deep breaths in pursuit of fleeting calmness.
Turning away from the overwhelming heat, she closed her eyes against the images overloading her senses. Everything began to evaporate slowly, cooling the air around her and loosening its grip on her chest. The immense ringing in her ears faded as the silence of her car replaced it. She suddenly became aware of her hands gripping the worn steering wheel and Mark’s hand pulled away from her thigh. She finally opened her eyes again, brought harshly back to the present. Haley could hear Mark’s quiet breathing without looking at him and knew better than to meet his gaze. Unblinking, she dropped her hands into her lap. Resignation.
