Revived (Cat Patrick)

everything, I know I love him.
    Without thinking about it, I walk over, stand beside him, and grab his hand.
    My eyes stay on Audrey’s casket. I don’t look to see for sure, but I assume Matt’s do, too. He doesn’t pull away; he holds tight and doesn’t let go. What we both need is each other.
    We stand like that, staring, forever. With her brother next to me, without the crying fakers pretending to be her friends, I let myself really feel the loss. I feel it in every part of me: in my hair and in my toes. I feel it like something is rotting deep down in my core, releasing bitterness and anger and pure sadness into my veins.
    Standing here, holding Matt’s hand, I want to say so many things to him. I want to tell him that I’m so sorry. I want to say that I feel horrible that Revive didn’t work. I want to say that I love him and that I want to take all of his pain away.
    But I can’t. I can’t speak. And I can’t take Matt’s pain, because I have too much of my own, and I have no place to put his.
    As if it’s mimicking my emotions, the afternoon sky clouds over. It smells like rain is on the way. I break from my trance and look to the clouds.
    Are you up there? I think to Audrey. Nothing happens.
    Because she’s dead.
    Dead.
    I think of what that really means.
    It is not like being gone—like my real parents or the nuns or people in the cities we had to leave—because gone implies that you can come back if you really want to. Contrary to what I may have been taught, there’s no coming back from death. Not really. Someday, I’ll die for good. And then I’ll be like Audrey.
    Not gone.
    Dead.
    I shudder at the thought, and Matt squeezes my hand tighter.
    I look back to earth and the gravesite. Only then do I realize that Matt and I are alone. I look at him.
    His eyes are on me.
    “Hi,” he says, as if he’s seeing me for the first time. He looks down at our clasped hands and smiles, and then moves his gaze back to my eyes.
    “Hi,” I say back to the boy I never want to leave.
    “I’m really sorry,” Matt says.
    “Me, too.”
    Eventually, we leave the cemetery. We drive in heavy silence to Matt’s house. Cars are parked everywhere: in the driveway and out front, across the street and around the corner. Matt eases into a small space down the street and as we approach on foot, I try not to look at Audrey’s happy car.
    Inside, there are piles of food on every available surface, and every room is crowded with people wearing black and navy blue, talking in hushed, respectful tones as if they’re afraid they’re going to wake the dead. I feel like I have cotton in my ears: When people talk to me, I have to ask them to repeat themselves.
    “What?” I ask Mason after he mumbles something to me.
    “I asked if you’d like some food,” he says, looking at me with concern.
    “Oh.”
    My thoughts snag on something I don’t remember five seconds after I think it, and when I look back at Mason, he’s not there. I’m not sure whether or not I answered his question. Maybe he’s gone to get food; maybe he’s just gone.
    I stand in one spot until I start to feel paralyzed, then I move to make sure I still can. That’s when I realize that Matt and I are never more than a few steps away from each other. After we arrived, we split up, but we never really split apart. Bound by an invisible chain, I move into the kitchen, thirsty, and he’s already there, his nose in the refrigerator. He sits on the sofa and I check out the photos on the living room walls. I lean against the piano, desperate for this day to be done, and he lightly brushes my shoulder as he passes. I realize that we’re giving each other strength using all we’ve got left: our presence.
    Matt is sitting on the hearth across the room when Mason walks up and tells me that it’s time to go. I’m beyond exhausted, and it could be eight or midnight: Either would make sense in my new, strange world.
    Fifteen feet between us, Matt and I stare at each other, neither of us moving but both of us knowing it’s going to get more difficult before it gets better.
    “Okay,” I say, still watching Matt. I’ll see him at school when he comes back. But it will be different. Leaving now feels like saying goodbye to our old selves, to anything light and carefree.
    Goodbye, halcyon.
    My eyes well up with tears, and they stay locked on Matt’s until I reach the doorway of the room and am forced to turn a corner. Even when I look away, I can