I Fell in Love With Hope Read online

  C cocks his head to the side. “On cigarettes?”

  “And gummy bears,” I say. Neo tosses the bag over his shoulder into C’s chest.

  “C’mon, C.” Sony puts her hands on her hips. “What would we be without irony but boring cliches, yeah?”

  “Not using a wheelchair patient as a mule?” Neo tries to roll himself away, but C holds onto the back like you’d hold a shirt collar.

  Neo rolls his eyes. He takes out another notebook from the side pocket, this one with the front torn off. As we start making our way across the street, back home, he adds, one by one, today’s conquests to our Hit List.

  Cigarettes (the cool ones in bond movies.)

  Beer

  A lollipop and crappy sunglasses

  Gummy bears

  An afternoon outside

  A heaping pile of jitters

  We’ve only been stealing for a short time, Neo, Sony, C, and I. It’s been years since they’ve been in and out of the hospital, but it hasn’t been long since we became full-fledged thieves.

  When Neo, Sony, and C go home, they don’t go home for long. Disease is greedy. It takes pieces of you till you no longer recognize yourself, and Neo, C, and Sony don’t recognize themselves outside of the hospital anymore.

  Whether you’re sick or not, the night creates mirrors out of windows. In the past, it showed my friends images of corpses in the glass: skeletons with bones unwrapped by flesh, organs falling through their ribcage, blood seeping from the mouth. They trembled at the foretelling, their fingertips grazing the surface that entranced them. Diagnoses, pills, needles, and so many new mirrors they never meant to find encroached on their lives. Their reflections became their realities.

  So rather than meet the new versions of themselves made vulnerable by the beds they slept in and the gowns they wore, my friends turned off the lights. They climbed a staircase and met on a rooftop. They let their fingertips graze the sky, no barrier to stop them from touching the stars.

  Let’s steal the world, Sony said. Even with a low burning flame, she was brave. Let’s steal everything we can before we go.

  Everything? C asked.

  Everything.

  Everything’s a long list, Neo said.

  Time, disease, and death steal everything. I said. Why don’t we steal some of it back?

  That was the day our Hit List was born.

  So far, everything isn’t ours yet.

  I lied to you back there. It turns out we’re quite terrible thieves.

  Stealing is an art form, and we’ve yet to learn how to stroke the brush. Neo’s too sarcastic to woo strangers, too grouchy. Sony’s a wildfire, so loud it’s impossible to hide from justice. C is too elsewhere, always wrapped up in headphones and Neo’s poetry.

  But it doesn’t stop us from trying.

  “Baby, you are a pillar,” Sony says. The hospital building across the street looks down at her like a scolding parent. Sony ignores it, pride and comradery licking the underside of her teeth. “Without you, the mission would fall apart. Who else would keep track of our glorious histories?”

  “Plus, you make a great shopping cart,” C adds, petting his head.

  Neo smacks him away. “Ableist.”

  “Cheer up, Neo!” Sony pats his back. “They’re sticking a metal rod in your body tomorrow.”

  “Look Coeur, traffic.” Neo groans, pointing at the road. “Push me into it.”

  Too busy chewing to speak, C shoves a handful of candy into Neo’s mouth before we make our way home.

  Sony jumps the white lines of the crosswalk like skipping stones over a stream. C pushes Neo right behind her, two ducklings following in a row. I’m the tail end, the narrator. They always reach the finish line before I do.

  Neo carries our Hit List in his lap, a glint of light catching on the metal spirals, fleeting like the sun decided to tease it. I look up to find it, staring beyond the line of cars that branch off after the intersection.

  My heart drops.

  Just past the cars, a river cuts the city in two. Its bridge is all that connects either side. A bridge I’ve known my entire life that creates an ache in my chest. Instead of laughing strangers and children throwing coins into the water, I see snow across the railing. I see the dark swallowing my memories.

  Every glance I give that bridge, the sounds of my sobs and the love I lost shake in their graves. I go to look away, leave the past on its own, but something else emerges behind it.

  Yellow.

  Just a glimpse of it.

  The gray cowers, strands of color carried by the river’s breeze. Did the sun descend to earth and decide to spend a day among its subjects?

  I crane my neck to get a better look, but there are too many people on the bridge; the couples, the tourists, and the children block my view, and cities are impatient. A honk pulls me back to where I stand, my friends waiting for me just ahead.

  “Sam?” C calls.

  “Sorry.” I scurry the rest of the way. As we step inside the hospital together, my chin catches on my shoulder, the bridge too far to hurt me. I keep looking back till my reflection ghosts across the glass doors.

  “Well, well,” Sony says, lollipop between her teeth. “Look at the smuggler crew returning from a day at sea.” She tucks the cigarettes in her sleeve once we reach the atrium.

  It’s an old thing, falsely joyful, as most children’s hospitals are. Fancy balloons and faded color tiles attempt to brighten a space where many enter or leave, feeling dim. There are posters and banners on the walls about treatments and real-life survivor stories, but those are old too, nurses and doctors clocking in and out to complete the scene.

  “Now, quick!” Sony says. “Let’s get everything upstairs before–Eric!”

  Our floor’s most notorious jailor (nurse), Eric, has a keen sense of timing. He raises a brow at Sony’s tone, his foot tapping away at the ground. His bullshit detector is a honed weapon and when he gets mad, I wouldn’t wish his wrath upon actual prisoners.

  “And right under the idiot smuggler’s nose, history repeats itself,” Neo narrates. “Should I say I told you so or rat you out for kidnapping me–” C stuffs more candy into his mouth while I open the book from the side pocket and put it in his face.

  “One of you care to tell me where you were?” Eric asks. His under-eye bags and dark hair match in color, his arms crossed on his chest.

  “Eric, Eric–first of all–are those new scrubs?” Sony asks, pointing smoothly up and down. “They really bring color to your face–”

  “Not you.” Eric puts his hand up, silencing her. Then he looks right at me. “Sam.”

  Now I really wish I was invisible.

  “Just getting some fresh air?” I say, looking at the ground, scratching the back of my neck.

  “Mm,” Eric hums, completely unconvinced. “Did you just forget we have an entire floor dedicated to that?” He’s referring to the gardens.

  When Neo’s back still functioned, the four of us would hide in the bushes up there. We made a plan to live our entire lives in the garden and pretend we were woods-people living off wild berries. It worked for about three hours, but then we got hungry and cold, and C was close to tears at being unable to charge his phone to listen to music. We came back covered in mulch and smelled of soil.

  Ever since then, Eric hasn’t been too keen on letting us out of sight.

  “Well!” Sony almost falters to answer him. “Excuse us for needing a change of scenery.”

  “Alright, enough.” Eric swipes his arms through the air, the four of us huddling closer together. “Go upstairs. I’ve got better things to do than tell your parents you went on another escapade. Get!”

  When a jailor sets you free, you don’t wait for permission to run.

  C hurls Neo’s chair forward as we trot to the elevators. Sony presses the button with the sole of her shoe. Once we reach the top floor, C picks up Neo from his chair, cradling his skinny frame, careful of his spine. From here, we have to tra
vel up stairs to get to the roof. I grab the wheelchair while Sony skips up the steps. Halfway through, C and Sony need a short intermittence.

  Sony closes her eyes and leans against the railing. Half her chest rises, deep and quick, but she refuses to open her mouth to breathe. Such an admittance of defeat is not a satisfaction she would give to a mere rise in altitude.

  C does the same, Neo’s ear pressed flat to the center of his chest.

  “Does it sound like music?” he asks, his voice nearly gone.

  “No,” Neo says. “It sounds like thunder.”

  “Thunder’s nice.”

  “Not when there’s a storm between your ribs.” Neo taps the scars of blood vessels climbing C’s collarbones. “Your veins brew lightning. It’s trying to escape.”

  C smiles. “You really are a writer.”

  “Yeah.” Neo shifts for balance, ear called back to the beating. “Breathe, Coeur.”

  This is ritualistic too. A moment of silence for half a pair of lungs and half a heart.

  Sony is the first to open her eyes and start up again. She kicks the door to the rooftop wide open, arms stretched, reaching for the horizons on either end. A whistling tune of an unconvicted criminal leaves her along with a few giddy foot taps.

  “We made it!”

  “We made it,” I whisper, putting Neo’s chair back down and adjusting the breathing tubes at Sony’s ear. C gently sets Neo down, removing some pieces of paper from his back pocket and handing them to Neo.

  “You liked it?” Neo asks.

  “Yeah, I did.” Neo and C are creating a novel together. Neo is the writer. C is the inspiration, the reader, the muse, the one with ideas he can’t always put into words.

  “But I was wondering,” C says, still reviewing the chapter in his head. “Why do they just give up at the end?”

  “What do you mean?” Neo peers over the pages.

  “You know, the main character. After they find out their love has been lying all this time, they don’t yell or get angry or throw things like you want them to. They just… stay.”

  “That’s the point,” Neo says. “Love is hard to walk away from, even if it hurts.” He absentmindedly caresses the bandage on the inside of his elbow, the cotton still guarding a fresh needle prick. “Try walking away from someone who knows you so well they ruin you. You’ll find yourself wondering how you could love anyone else. And anyway, if I gave you the ending you wanted, you wouldn’t remember it.”

  Neo doesn’t just read stories, he holds them. He doesn’t just write stories, he becomes them. Most of the little things he writes ring true, give a certain chill, but then again, most little things he writes get erased or tossed away. That’s how it’s always been.

  Sony places a cigarette between Neo’s lips, then another in mine. Gripping the cylinder firmly in his mouth, Neo cups a hand to shield it from the breeze. The lighter flickers till the embers catch Sony’s fire.

  We’ve never actually smoked before. Or drank. Neo doesn’t inhale, rather, he observes, as I do, lets the scent tingle his nostrils, and watches the smoke rise, becoming one with the clouds. C and Sony don’t sip the alcohol bubbling at bottle caps. They lick the foam, tongues slapping the roofs of their mouths.

  Our forbidden targets were ours the moment they lay in our hands. We’re greedy creatures, but not ungrateful. You don’t have to partake in destruction to admire the weapons.

  Neo sniffles, caressing that book that never leaves his side. His copy of Great Expectations. It’s a constant, like a beauty mark or the shape of his nose. And it’s bent at the spine, just like him.

  “Do you think people will remember us?” Sony asks, staring at the sky, toying with her tank. C caresses his scars and the lightning in them. Neo shifts protruding bones against his seat.

  Injustice or tragedy, my friends are going to die.

  So what is there left to do but pretend?

  “I don’t know.” They all look at me. “Our ending doesn’t belong to us.”

  Sony smiles. “Let’s steal our endings then.”

  “That’s why we came up here, right?” C piles on. “We said we’d plan it today. Our great escape from the hospital.” Neo glances his way. The possibility of today, but grander, stirs between us. C shrugs. “What’s stopping us?”

  The door creaks open.

  “Here we are. You’re not supposed to come up here, but sometimes the kids like to–” Eric’s voice startles us. C nearly breaks his bottle by stepping on it while Neo and I toss our cigarettes so quick we almost set each other’s hands on fire.

  The second we’re on our feet and turned around, Eric is already seething, but amidst the chaos, time slows. A familiar melody strikes a single note, turning all heads in the orchestra.

  I go silent.

  Yellow light emerges behind Eric’s frame.

  And a sun hides behind him in the shape of a girl.

  sunrise

  I still see him sometimes.

  He frolics, a boy who doesn’t feel the weight of the place where he lives. His hands toy with mine. He doesn’t hold things, holding my hands is the wrong word.

  Can hands kiss? he asks. Questions are his favorite form of play.

  I don’t know.

  I think they can. His laughter rings in beats of three, all the way down to his fingers. Our hands are kissing.

  He settles in his bed during the painful hours. Needles protrude from his body, tubes and machines with names too difficult to pronounce attached. He’s a machine of his own. A broken one engineers deemed doctors take a crack at.

  His nerves protest, sharp, like a jab in the ribs. I see their symptoms in his twitching face, the shifts, and subtle groans. None inhibit his curiosity. His mind, while his body cannot, frolics all the same. He continues to play with my hands in any way he can. He laughs when his ribs allow it.

  Needles are swords, he says. Pretending. His most glorious of games. Pills are gems.

  What are gems? I ask.

  They’re stones, he says. Very pretty stones. Some even shine. Like the sun.

  Aren’t all stones pretty?

  No, he says. His voice shifts with his body, into a territory where playing takes too much energy. He empties, little by little. The disease drains him and weighs him down.

  I feel like a stone, he says, sinking into the bed.

  I interlace our fingers and move along the joints so that he knows I’m still there. Our hands kiss.

  You’re a gem then, I say. Like the sun.

  He likes touching in the same way he likes pretending, asking, talking, even when he has nothing to say. It makes him feel like he has a greater purpose than just to be kept from death.

  He smiles for me, but his face twitches. He shifts, rustling the sheets, looking out his window.

  The sun rises every day, he says, light affectionately caressing his skin between the blinds. Do you think it rises because it fell?

  He didn’t understand that I could’ve never answered him at the time.

  I never knew any more than what he taught me. I knew that hands could kiss, and that I wanted to caress his face as the light did.

  He was my light. He was my sunset. Violent with color. Submerged peacefully by the dark.

  That was a long time ago.

  He lives in my memory now. Buried. Rebellious, as he was before. He emerges, sometimes, in the corner of my eye, his laughter lost in a crowd, remnants of his questions still waiting for answers in the night.

  The truth is, I don’t fear the night at all.

  I live in it. Your eyes adjust, your hands become used to not being kissed, and your heart settles in the numb. The night isn’t the enemy I make it out to be. It’s the natural state of things when your sun burns out.

  So color me surprised, when years after mine has long set, a beam of yellow rises from the stairwell and eclipses the gray…

  Yellow.

  Her hair is yellow. Not blonde or flaxen, yellow. Like dandelions and lemons. The co
lor crowds dark roots just enough that you know it’s a choice, framing her face with the glasses perched on her nose. The eyes behind them flicker and I can hardly breathe when they land on me.

  “Eric!” Sony spreads her arms and legs out as if it’s possible to conceal foaming beer bottles and cigarette stench by puffing her feathers. “Would it help if I told you your shoes are just stunning!”

  While still holding the door open, Eric makes a throat-cutting motion across his neck. Sony promptly shuts up in response.

  “Hikari,” Eric sighs, “This is Neo, Sony, C, and Sam.”

  Hikari.

  Does Hikari know she has suns in her eyes?

  “Hey there!” Sony yells, waving with an open mouth while C waves more subtly, and Neo just nods his chin.

  “Hi,” Hikari says. Her voice is liquid, streaming, sultry and cool like shade spooling over the edge of her mouth on a hot day.

  “Wow,” Sony says, making her way into Hikari’s personal space. “You’re pretty.”

  “Sony,” Eric scolds.

  “It’s fine,” Hikari says, like she’s amused, enchanted even by Sony’s enchantment with her.

  “Are you fun?” Sony asks. “You seem fun.”

  “I like to think so.”

  “Hikari,” Neo says, pensive over the syllables as he rolls his chair deliberately in front of Sony. “Are you from Japan?”

  “My parents are,” Hikari says. “I’m from the suburbs.”

  “I’m from the suburbs too,” Sony coos.

  Neo rolls his eyes. “Didn’t know the suburbs were in hell.” He deservedly gets flicked on the temple for that statement. “Hey!”

  “That’s Neo,” Sony says, patting his head. “He’s our baby.”

  “Your captive is what I am!” Neo smacks her hand off. “Hikari, you’ve got legs. Run for it.”

  “Oh dear God,” Eric sighs into his hands, and I now wonder if they teach babysitting in nursing school.

  “That’s C.” Sony points. “His name is big, and French like him, so we just call him C.”

  “Hi, Hikari. Do you need any help to get settled?” C leans over Neo’s handles, propping his upper body weight on them. The wheelchair tips back, Neo nearly falling out of it. He hits C’s arm with his notebook till the wheels reconcile with the ground.