*This is just a short story, none of this actually happened to me in real life, an idea just hit and I wanted to use it. This is also part of Short Story #1's series. Please DO NOT steal this short story or any of my others that I will write and post, and if you would like to use this one or any future others for whatever reason in something, please please please credit me and leave a link to my blog. I worked really hard on this and even though it is rough and needs improving, it's just a little story I wrote for you guys, so I would appreciate it if no one tried to call it their own. Thank you and please enjoy! I will polish this up and post a finished version later if requested:)*
Beyond the Skies
It's been two years since I lost the people closest to me, all three of them. One of them might not have been real, but to me, that's all she was.
Everyday, the foster home that picked me up lets me wander back to Commons Park, where everything started for me. Everyday, I sit under the Beechwood and stare at the stone under the old cherry tree, and a feeling of nolstalgia comes over me. Because something in my seven year old body knew that stone, and differently than you might think. And it was perhaps during this time, when the best and possibly worst event in my life happened.
I met her.
She was older than Diane, maybe twenty one. She was... she was so much like her. But there was something different about her... she had a maturity, a gently solemnity to her aura.
When I first saw her, she was sitting in her truck, a dark green pickup polished to a shine. She was staring down at something in her lap, headphones in her ears. Though it wasn't evident, I had a feeling her cheeks were wet with salty tears. When she looked up, she had a look in her eyes; perhaps closure, if closure has a look. Then she spotted me. She looked me in the eye, and she made me shy the way Diane made me shy. I averted my gaze, back to the stone. I observed it for the upteenth time, not realizing that she stood next to me whilst my mind was away. When I turned, I gave her a slight smile, which surprised even myself, as I hadn't given away many smiles since that fateful day two years ago. And, seemingly also surprised at her own action, she gave me a slight smile back. The feeling I got when she did was so similar to the way Diane's smile gave me.
Her hair was straight and short, it looked newly cut as well. Almost like a fresh start. She was also taller than Diane was, maybe by two or three inches. Her build was petite, and her features soft. She sat next to me silently before finally speaking.
"My name's Amanda," she said. I hum a bit, nodding, still shy. She notices and relaxes her posture, leaning on the beechwood exactly as Diane once did.
"What's your name love?" That caught me off gaurd; she use to say that all the time. I was Diane's love and darling, my mother's princess, my father's sunflower. Was I ready to be someone else's love again?
The pain feels like yesterday, and yet, it's been so long since someone loved me as their own. I tell her my name, not making eye contact but also leaning back on the tree next to Amanda. She noticed my silent way of communicating and I sensed her smile, perhaps bigger than normal. I tell her my name.
"It's lovely," she said. "I've... I've seen a lot of you, lately. I mean, I drive past sometimes. And uh, you always seem to be here, sitting here. Does your... mother know you come here?" She asks the question almost hesitantly, which maybe might've made so much more sense if I were older.
"She used to." I say, feeling a familiar tightness in my chest. "I'm sure she watches down on me sometimes. I'm sure my father does too. I don't know if I want him to. I don't know if I've forgiven him. But I'll never know if he was ever forgiven by anyone. Now I go home to strangers." I shocked myself once again, this time with how much I told this basic stranger. But I felt I should trust her, and I felt like I've known her somehow.
I jump a bit when I feel her hand drawing small circles on my back, a new gesture to me. But I don't pull away.
Maybe if I had, my road would've been different. Maybe it would've been straight, boring. But, I think, the whole act of staying paved me a different path. A winding one, with many bumps and hills. Perhaps harder than the one I could've had, but I do know that it ended up a lot lovelier than what it could've been. But I didn't pull away, and that was the start of a very long relationship.
When Amanda adopted me, I had just turned eight and she twenty two. The days went past faster, the events in them livelier. I never noticed that the book Diane once gave me seemed to disappear, I never cared that I never saw Commons Park again.
When Amanda adopted me, she showed me new skies, grander ones with more colors than Commons could even begin to imagine capturing. Commons skies, in comparison, were small. Lovely, but small. I saw new stars, though a few still shone brighter than others. I saw green and blue in the sunset where before there was only orange and pink.
The knowledge Amanda seemed to have didn't appear to be the kind you could simply read from a textbook. It seemed like the kind she had on her own created, or otherwise experienced. She taught to me sorrow, and closure, and happiness alike no other. She taught me about loneliness, about loss, and new findings and adventure. In a way, she told me her own story. But an eight year old's mind is still too dense to understand the depth behind a wise man's words.
As the years went by, I never really did learn too much about Amanda. Just the days she would meet me underneath Diane's and my beechwood, sittng for hours trading stories about fairytales and debating the politics of a mad man's mind. I only knew the days we spent eating ice cream in the heat, going through a Summer and a half before she appeared at my foster home and took me home for good.
Amanda sent me to college, she supported me through work, she joined me in business partners, simply telling stories about the world. As our names got further known, we moved aorund a lot. She showed me new cultures, she fed me new food, we traveled to distance lands, we experienced new skies.
But I never truly met Amanda until the days we got older, had lost spouses and were back to where we first started. In the weeks we built her death bed, hardly without knowing it, that is when I learned the most about her. It was then, when Amanda enlightened upon me the greatest story of them all. When she showed me the largest, most beautifully tragic sky an Earth had ever had the pleasure and pain of housing.
"Come here, love," she had croaked, her eyes fixed out the window. When I approached her, she gently took my hand, and I watched our wrinkled hands intertwine.
"The sky is always so, so much bigger than you think it is. The sky, it is really a story. The story you travel, and you will always find more chapters. Now... now I think it is time, to read you the most important parts."
Through sixty four years of my life, I had only gathered more knowledge. And yet, all the wisdom I ever gained, came from Amanda alone.
"You know me from a long time ago, through a person who left a longer time ago. I believe, in your most dire time of need, you summoned upon a support system. The only soul in Commons, was indeed Diane. And I, I could not see her. But I do believe her last name was Anders." Amanda smiles slightly, closing her eyes.
"When I begin to pass, please place those earbuds in my ears," she points to some headphones and an attached tape recorder on her nightstand. "Then press play. Once I'm buried, I would like you to go to that old cherry tree in Commons Park. Read the stones. Remember Diane's last name. And remember ours. Beside my stone wll be my best friend's, practically my sisters." Amanda breathes heavily, exhausted from the amount of talking she just had to do. I don't know when my cheeks got wet, but they were by the time Amanda was closing her eyes. They were still when I had arranged the headphones on her head and ears.
It was a few hours before she spoke again. And she only said four words.
"I love you," she paused, closing her eyes for the last time. "Play."
I've felt true heartbreak many times in my life. But none of it felt as lonely as the heartbreak I felt then. When I pressed play. When I watched her smile for the last time. When she inhaled for the last time. When she exhaled for the last time. When she was only for me, only Amanda, for the very last time.
It took two weeks before I could finally go back to Commons Park, where everything started, where everything ends. As I walk, I try to find a bright side in the whole thing. But by the time I arrived, I discovered that bright sides aren't always big. And they're not always bright LED's. As I catch the cherry tree in my peripheral vision, I realize that sometimes the bright side is rather soft sunsets and rises, gentle colors of the skies and candles lit with nostalgia.
When I finally reached Commons Park, I spared a longing glance at the beech wood tree that started it all for me. I felt my eyes burn as I tore my eyes away, as the tree looked abused and burnt from the years, hardly holding on to its limbs. But the old cherry tree.
When I saw the old cherry tree, my heart almost shattered. Because although I never looked at the stone before, I knew what it would say.
I approach the stones carefully. I turn my back to the sun as it sets, and in the dying light I read the stones. But what I got, was different from what I thought. And I felt my heart break, shatter into a thousand million pieces, it burns and the shards pierce the organs in my body. For one stone read:
Amanda Sails
A mother, a sister, a daughter of the deceased, a widow, a best friend of the best kinds.
But the other one says,
Diane Anders
To a daughter, but also a sister. To a girl who wishes to tell another, that she will always remember, their old cherry tree.
And everything clicked.
Everything.
Clicked.
All my childhood, my imaginary friend, her way of chasing faith.
Everything made sense.
And as the sun sank low and all of the colors of all of the skies I'd ever seen mixed together, and it was breathtaking. And my tears, they created kaleidoscopes in my eyes and diamonds in the night. And in the end, one more star joined the sky that night.
Fourteen stars, in the night. Fourteen stars, shining bright. Somewhere, beyond the skies, my whole little family is sitting under a cherry tree, hoping I succeed in chasing faith. What a world it is, beyond our own little skies.
