Chapter 13

I walk out of the camping store and put my hand up in the still freezing air.

"At least it's not raining anymore," I whisper to myself, wondering if E.J. is already making arrangements to go back home.

I can't help replaying the fight we had over and over in my head. I feel guilty for what I have said. I don't know what came over me. I didn't mean any of it, but maybe it's good that I have said all that.

I stick up my hand once more and when no taxi stops I sit down on the curb, opening my bag and pulling out the list.

I slowly run my fingers over number ten. The end. The end of everything. The end of me.

"I'm glad you won't be there to see it," I whisper into the paper as if it's a portal E.J. can hear me through.

"Get out of the way kid!" a guy in a suit says as he walks by. Usually I would get up and scream something back at him, but not this time. This time the fight has been taken out of me. I can't fight any longer. Actually I just don't want to fight any longer.

I am done with this list of things that I still wanted to do. I am ready to skip to the very last one. What is the use of completing a list when you're gonna die in any case? Why do people follow their dreams, and their hopes, and ideals, when someday it will all be gone. Forgotten. Sure, a few people might remember you in the beginning. E.J. might. He might cling to a photo or two. Maybe he will even end up visiting my grave a few times at the beginning. But as my flesh decay over time, so will his memory. He will move on, like everyone does, just like I did with my mom. One morning you wake up and it dawns on you that you haven't thought about the person you lost in days, maybe even weeks. And you feel a guilty pain on your stomach, but by the afternoon life is happening again, a death anniversary speeds by, and you don't know where the time went to. Then, somewhere, a few years later you find that old piece of clothing you never returned when the person was still alive and you feel the old emotions returning and your brain fuzzes up completely, making you cry so much that you want to vomit. But the really strange things about all of that? As you cry you want nothing more than to die, but by tomorrow you look your responsibilities in the eye again and you keep on going forward, purely because you have no other choice to do so.

"Do you maybe have a dollar to spare?"

I look up into the face of an old lady. Well, not that I can judge by her face. The sun has done a lot of damage and I am very sure she is at least ten years younger than what she actually is, but that still doesn't mean she's young. She looks like she might have had dinner with Noah when she was on the arc with him.

"Are you homeless?" I find myself asking as I get up from the curb, my ass a little bit wet from the rain of the last couple of days.

"Yes," she answers, looking down at her hands, avoiding eye contact almost as if she is ashamed of her answer.

"Then what is the use of living any longer? What is the use of living when you have already lost everything?" I ask, reaching out my hand and taking hers in mine.

"For the same reason you are still alive," she answers, looking me right in the eyes, lifting her head almost like she has regained her pride.

"Which is?" I ask, not breaking eye contact once.

"We believe that tomorrow might just be better. That out there, there might be a saviour. That somehow, some way, a miracle will happen that will take the mask from your face and give me a roof over my head, and heal all the sick, and stop every war. It's human nature to hope, because without hope we have nothing. We are nothing. But as long as we hope the reason to live is there, because we can still achieve all the miracles we would like to have happen, if only we believe in our own hope," she says as she breaks into a smile, showing more than a few missing teeth and I can't help but show her mine as my mouth opens to answer and then closes again.

I leave her hand and push it deep into my pocket, pulling out a fifty dollar note.

"Thank you. Please know you made a difference in my life today," I answer as I push the note into her hand and pick up what I bought at the camping place and walk over the street without even looking both ways, knowing that if it's meant to be there won't be a car hitting me today.

I pull out my phone and dial the very first number that pops up. It takes only one ring before he answers.

"Where the fuck are you?" E.J. greets on the other side of the line.

"I had a revelation," I answer. "And we need to get the fuck out of this city, and I know you're mad at me and you have every right to be, and I will be fine if you want to go home, but I need to just see you one more time. I have something I need to tell you, and I need to do it face to face."

I take a deep breath after trying to say everything as fast as possible out of fear that E.J. would end the call before I have had a chance to say everything I want to say.

"I'm at the bus station. I've been waiting for you to pitch up. I was thinking you already left," E.J. says into the phone, making my legs want to become jelly and melt where I am standing.

"I thought... After what I've said..."

"We both said things," E.J. replies. "Now get your ugly muck here so that we can get out of this place that doesn't seem to appreciate your inner beauty."

Having E.J. say something like 'ugly muck' makes me smile. It makes me think about the time we met in the hospital and he made fun of my face just as I made fun off his ass. Somehow nobody could understand how we could joke about things that serious, but in a way joking about it made it better. Less painful in a way.

"I'm really sorry about what I said E.J..." I say again, but once again he cuts me off.

"Leave it. We both said stuff. Just get your ass over here. This isn't the type of place you should be at all alone," E.J. answers before he hangs up the phone, leaving me to push the phone back into my pocket and stare up into the sky, past the high buildings that surround me and into the grey clouds forming above me again, threatening to snow down on me and cover me in white.

"Every cloud has a silver lining, huh?" I ask up to the clouds, but just as I thought they don't answer me.

I step to the edge of the curb once more and stick out my arm, wishing that I didn't have a mask on that would scare cab drivers away, and at the same time knowing that the alternative of them gawking at me all the way to the bus station would be way worse.

I count exactly seven cabs before a yellow car stops next to me, allowing me to get in.

"The bus station," I say as I pull out my phone again, pointing it out of the window before the driver can pull away, taking a shot of the old lady who changed my life in a way, hoping that one day I can show this photo to my children, or even my grandchildren and tell them about how hope saved my life today.

I pull my list out again and look at it as the driver pulls away to take me to where E.J. is waiting for me and I read through it once more. For a moment I want to cross out the tenth inscription, the one telling me that everything comes to an end, but I don't, because no matter what, the tenth line saying that there will be an end is correct. In time there will be an end. It could be right now if the driver were to run a red light. It could be tomorrow if a stray bullet from some weird ass Bonnie and Clyde robbery hits me. It could even be next week if I decide that my body would make a nice Christmas ornament from the branch of a tree if I am hanging by my neck. Just as well it could be in seventy years from now, warm in my bed, holding hands with someone I love. Truth be told I would never be able to know when my time is, and when the end will be, but I am certain that there will still be an end somewhere in my life, and even if I don't get to cross this one off my list, life will do it for me eventually.

When the cab finally stops and my hand automatically reaches for money to pay while my head still reaches around for more bullshit philosophy about death, I climb out of the warm cab, facing the cold New York weather once more, and wondering how people could like living in this cold. Why people don't just migrate to warmer climates over the winter time. I have always thought it would be nice to just travel from one warm place to another.

"Brody!" I hear him calling. I would know his voice anywhere. "Get your head out of the clouds!"

I barely have to look around to see the skinny punk kid jumping up and down and waving at me so that I can see him clearly in the crowd. It almost baffles me that he doesn't have a coffee in his hand yet.

I make my way over to him as fast as I can, while he simultaneously pushes toward me.

When we stand face to face I'm not sure what to do. Do I hug him? Kiss him like I want to?

"What did you want to tell me?" E.J. asks breaking the ice.

"Does it matter?" I ask.

"I think it does," he answers. "Especially if it's the same thing I want to tell you."

I imagine for a moment in a perfect world or a fairy tale what those words would be. In an old Julia Roberts movie this would be the part where I chicken out and not say it, making him not say it either. Disney would make me say it without thinking twice and it would end in a kiss and a happily ever after. Yet, life is never that simple.

"I can't imagine my life without you in it," I say copping out of what I originally wanted to say, but still enjoying the smile that breaks out over E.J's face.

"Yeah, yeah... You've grown on me as well," he answers as he hooks his hand into my arm and we march together to the ticket booth that might just take us on the biggest adventure of our lives.