A Thousand Words
Maybe it’s wrong.Maybe it’s weird. I know for sure it’s not mentally sound, but whenever things go wrong, I like to come and talk toTiff.
“Hey, Tiffster.” I drop down on the grass, stretching my legs out in front of me before opening the takeout bag I’ve brought. “Remember when we used to get burritos everyMonday?”
I unwrap the top end of the tin foil around my giant burrito and take a bite. Tiff doesn’t answer. She neveranswers.
“You always said Monday was the least exciting day of the week, and that we should have a reason to look forward to it. You always needed something to be excited about, didn’t you,Tiff?”
I pluck a blade of grass from the ground with my free hand. Last summer you could still see the outline of the grave; the plants didn’t have time to catch up and cover the freshly turned earth before fall came. Now the only things to prove she hasn’t been here long are the fresh flowers her mom still replaces every week—proof that this grave hasn’t been abandoned, forgotten, as so many others seem to be— and the immaculate black marble headstone, still shining as bright as the day they put ithere.
Not that I’d know. I didn’t go to thefuneral.
“I’m sorry they put you here, Tiff. I know you told me if it ever happened, you wanted your ashes to get sprinkled from a zip line, or launched off a waterfall. Something adventurous for my little daredevil,huh?”
I laugh but it catches in my throat, coming out like more of asob.
I used to think that’s why she ended up here, in the cemetery. I thought maybe if she’d led a safer life, hadn’t been on that constant quest for the next adrenaline high, she wouldn’t be under the groundnow.
Without that thirst for adventure, that need to get the most she possibly could out of life, she wouldn’t have been Tiff, though. I might still have her beside me, but she wouldn’t be the girl I loved, the girl who’d brave rapids for fun, climb in a shark tank to win a bet, or jump off a cliff just to feel the wind in her hair. She was my daredevil, always after the next big thrill, and if I’d tried to change that about her I would have been asking her to be someoneelse.
“And I wouldn’t have wanted that,” I say to her. “Besides, no one could tell you what to do. I knew that from the first day I metyou.”
I still remember it. The day a girl like Tiffany Goodall moves in next door isn’t something youforget.
It was the summer before my junior year. I was an absolute little shit for most of high school, way more of a douchebag than the one I started acting like to shut people out after losing Tiff. Me and my crew of asshole friends roamed the hallways in leather jackets, thinking we were some kind of cross between rock stars and thugs. We gave all our teachers a hard time, cut class to smoke, and broke every heart who fell for the bad boypersona.
Tiff didn’t fall for it. Not one bit. That day her family’s moving van pulled up, I walked over to watch her hauling boxes around in high tops, a tank top, and those teeny tiny denim shorts that could stop a guy’s heart. She saw me standing there with a cigarette between my teeth and told me I looked like a child predator and to please fuck off and take my disgusting habits withme.
I suddenly wanted to quit smoking right then andthere.
Living so close meant we saw a lot of each other, whether she wanted to or not, and somehow over the course of that summer we ended up becoming best friends. My own friends thought I was crazy for never making a move on her, but I couldn’t see her the way I saw other girls at the time: as a form of entertainment and the occasional chance to cup a feel. Tiff was different. Even then, she had a boldness to her that left me in awe. She always wanted more out of life and she had the guts to go and getit.
She pushed me to do the same. I’d only discovered photography a few months before meeting her, and when she accidentally found my camera gear, she wouldn’t let it go. I wouldn’t have ended up going to photography school if it wasn’t forher.
She was a year younger than me, and during the times I visited while she was still stuck in high school something between us changed, or maybe something that was already there came to light. We became a long distance couple until she graduated, and then she spent a few weeks every season living with me, and the rest out thrill seeking as a ski instructor in the winter, a rafting guide in the summer—anything extreme enough to keep her entertained while paying thebills.
It wasn’t even that extreme, the thing that did it. She was out water skiing with some friends from her rafting job. They said it was a freak accident, that another boat came by, but I never cared to hear the details. It was supposedly instant and I hope that’s true. I couldn’t handle the thought that she knew she was about to lose the one thing she loved most:life.
I had just been accepted to advertising school and I almost dropped out completely. I kind of lost it for awhile and delayed starting for a whole semester, spending days at a time just staring at my ceiling, wondering what the point of doing anythingwas.
Tiff was the one who told me I’d be good at advertising, who encouraged me to apply to the college after my corporate photography work got me interested in business. She’d filled me with so much hope, so much belief inmyself.
I think deep down I always l knew I’d lose her, but I thought it would be because she chose to leave me, not because she was ripped away before either of us were ready to say goodbye. I could tell that giving up on new adventures to come back and see me was getting to be too hard for her. If she’d asked me to let her go I would have done whatever she needed to be happy, but she never even got the chance to dothat.
Realizing how fragile life really is, how little control you actually have over anything, makes it difficult to live your life the same way. I couldn’t be Aaron Penn anymore, not the way I was before, so I became someone else, someone who stayed in the shallow end of life and never went too deep. I kept my distance and played it safe and I thought I could learn to be okay withthat.
Then Christina proved mewrong.
“So Tiff, as much as I enjoy visiting you, I have to admit I’m here for a particular reason today. It’s about a girl.” I let out a laugh. “That’s weird, isn’t it? Me telling you about another girl? I guess me telling you anything at all is kind of weird. You’re really not that great at giving advice these days,Tiffster.”
Again, my laughter starts to sound like more of a sob. I give up on my burrito and return it to thebag.
“So, I met this girl at school. Her name’s Christina. You’d like her. She kind of reminds me of you in some ways. She’s a lot more uptight and I can’t really picture her going base jumping or doing any of that other crazy shit like you, but she doesn’t take no for an answer and she’s always pushing herself, always testing her limits. I really admireher.”
I pull up a few more blades of grass and start twisting themtogether.
“It’s more than admiration, though,” I continue. “I like her. Ilikelike her. I didn’t think I could feel that way about anyone else, not after you. I didn’tletmyself feel that way about anyone else, but I couldn’t stop it when it came to her. She makes me feel like there’s a way out of this mess I’m in, a way to really fix things and not just cover them up. I still love you though, Tiff. I don’t want to have to forgetyou.”
