Flutter

Faded, soft, a large swathe of well-worn and much loved fabric; Lance's jumper sits, folded, on the end of my bed. I've had it ever since he leant it to me, and somehow I never got around to giving it back. And now I can do nothing but stare at it.

Three days have passed, and I have been unable to do anything but think, my thoughts frantically rushing around inside of my head, trying to confuse me. I spent some time with Olivia, and she slept over and chattered at me. But I think she realised that I wasn't able to engage in the gossip and the resulting social categorisation that is typical in all high schools. She hugged me, kissed my cheek, and told me to call her when I was ready to talk. I haven't done that, yet, either.

I keep telling myself that, yes, I know what is the right thing to do. But then what is right becomes wrong, and it changes again and again til I'm not sure if they're not the same thing. What is troubling me is that I know what I want, and I know that I shouldn't want it, which is a strange and confusing thought in itself.

So I stop thinking. I roll onto my back and watch the ceiling for a moment. It is comforting and saddening at once, because I have always had the constant of the roof above my head, but, through my eyes, I see the fading forms of dreams unlived, words unsaid and unheard. And I feel sad, that no one else will ever see any of them, or hear any of them.

So, while I am alone, I reach into the drawer at my bedside and take some paper and a pen -obnoxiously pink and feathered, a joke gift from Marc -and I write down as much as I can, as many of the snippets, snatches of phrases and prose, words I think are beautiful. I write until I hear mum's footsteps coming towards my room. And then I shove the paper and pen back into my drawer and lie back in my bed, waiting as she opens the door. I think it is the fastest I have ever moved, and all because I wanted to hide my dreams.

Mum takes me to see Tatiana. I haven't seen her in a while, and the prospect of seeing Lance there is making me nervous. Usually, I call him first. But I tried that once, and he didn't answer; I was a little relieved, but also disappointed. I assumed he was sleeping and forgave him; he, of all people, deserves rest. And if he isn't sleeping, then he's at school, and I forgive him for that, too, because as much as I wish I was near him, I do not wish to be back at school. That is one bout of normalcy I can do without.

Mum drives me to the hospital and dad comes along, wheeling me up the ramp and into the elevator as mum goes to the bathroom. He smiles at a nurse and says hello to a supervisor and pushes my chair into Tatiana's room. And I look at her small form on the bed, her slim, bony body beneath the sheets; my eyes track to the single machine monitoring her heartbeat, and I think that this is good, because it is only one machine, and one is fine, one is ok, one is better than two or three or more. She had a relapse, last night; Lance sent me a brief message, but all I said was that I was glad she was alright, because I didn't know what else to say.

My eyes track to the body beside her, in the chair by the bed. He leans his head against his crossed arms, his shoulders rising and falling softly with every breath, the nape of his neck and the curve of his shoulders, the splayed outline of his fingers against the sheets, somehow vulnerable yet strong and making my heart flutter strangely inside of me. With nerves or fear or a combination of the two.

Silently, dad wheels me out of the room and into the corridor. He comes around to the front of the chair and crouches to be at eye level with me. "Do you want to go home?" he asks.

I shake my head. "I think I'll stay and wait for them to wake up," I say. And I know it's a little selfish, and I hate myself for it, but I want to be there when he wakes, and I don't know why. But I do, a little, and it scares me and thrills me at once.

Dad's lips thin slightly, and he looks at me shrewdly for a moment. "Was there a certain reason you asked me that question, a while ago?" he asks quietly. "About love?"

I glance over my shoulder, and my neck hurts but I don't care. I see his tall frame spilling from the chair, and the sight makes me smile. I look back at dad. I don't answer. But this, to him, is as much an answer as any words would be.

His lips pull into a smile, almost reluctantly. He stands and smooths back my hair, and presses a kiss to my forehead. "Do I have to tell you to be careful, Syl?" he asks.

I frown. "Of what?"

He looks at me seriously, as if in the process of deciding to say what he really means, or to smooth it over. I know the expression, because he uses it with mum, sometimes, when he doesn't want to hurt her.

He kisses my forehead again, and sighs heavily. "Don't break yourself, Syl." He looks behind me, over my head and into the room. "And try not to break him."

And I am speechless. Wordless. So that when he pushes my chair into the room, I have nothing to say. When he closes the door behind me, I am quiet.

Lance shifts with the click of the door, but Tatiana remains motionless, curled on her side, her chest rising and falling almost imperceptibly beneath the sheets. Lance leans back in the chair and looks at me for a moment, eyes tired and barely awake. And then he stretches his hand out towards me, and I slowly stand from my chair and walk towards him. No safety barriers. Nothing to hold on to. Nothing to help me.

When I reach him, he pulls me down into his lap and cradles me against his chest, and I curl up my legs and settle against him. His breathing falls into an easy rhythm, and he is asleep again, just like that. And I wonder how it feels, to be so safe and easy in the presence of another person, that he could just fall asleep like that, trust me so willingly and so readily. And then I realise that I know how it feels, because I am feeling it now. And I am warm and safe and comfortable and perfectly at ease. Because he is my friend and he cares about me and I care about him and this is so simple that I can hardly believe it. I feel as if I shouldn't believe it. I feel like this should feel wrong, strange, being held so close by a person I have not known for very long, for as long as I have known Marcus. A person I have been disagreeing with. A person for whom I have unresolved feelings. But it feels right, and it seems like I have known him forever; I cannot remember a time when I did not know Lance. When I did not know the perfectly controlled feel of him at my side. And it is almost as if everything that went wrong between us has been dissolved in this moment. Like we are what we were always meant to be.

And I think about what dad said, just before. About not hurting myself, but also not hurting Lance. And I think I know what he meant. I think he meant not to hold back what I want, what I need, because soon I will not want or need anything anymore. And I think he meant that not reaching for what I want will hurt not just me, but Lance as well, because he feels the way that I feel. Because, apparently, according to some person whose name I don't know, it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. And if words that beautiful are wrong, than I don't know how I will live my life.

Of course, there is always the other side of dad's words, the other side of the argument. That he meant that Lance will feel the same way as I do. And we will be happy, and then I will die, which is inevitable, and he will be crushed. And I think of breaking him like that, and it makes me hurt in a place I never thought I could hurt, a place I cannot put a name to. And I feel his arms around me, strong and sure and perfectly controlled, even in sleep, and I think of losing this, because I know I should. But I don't want to.

So I close my eyes and make my thoughts into poems; into words; into butterflies with their wings made out of the soft curves and sharp points of letters; into creatures that flutter up, through the ceiling of my mind and into the air, and become invisible constellations in the day-time sky. I think of them like that, like stars. Grand and bright. Their light taking hundreds of thousands of years to shine down to the earth. So big and so bright and so full of life. And most of them already dead.

Small fingers on my arm wake me. Hesitant and fluttering, like wings against my skin.

I blink open my eyes, and blink again to clear the haze from my vision. I am still curled in the warmth of Lance's arms, but Tatiana is now awake, her face centimetres from mine. I blink, startled, and then smile at the animated expression on her face.

"Sylva!" she says. She is so excited, her voice is almost a squeal, but she is being quiet for her brother. I don't move because I don't want to wake him, and I am comfortable, and this is the perfect position for me to look at Tiana from. My legs curled up beneath me; Lance's arms around me; my neck curved so that my head rests beneath the hollow of his throat, towards his shoulder.

"Hello lovely, and how long have you been awake?" I ask her. She grips the rail on her bed and leans back a little, settling down on her knees.

"Not a very long time, but more than a bit," she says, and my smile grows a little. "Did Lance tell you? My heart stopped moving. But the nurse did this." She puts her hand over her heart and mimes thumping it against her chest. "And then they brought a machine, and I woke up. Mitch said that I'm special, because it doesn't work for everybody."

Who is Mitch? I think. And I see the subtle rise of bruises beneath her hospital gown, just over her chest, showing above the neckline of the fabric as she moves. I think about the pain of having life pumped back into my body and she is so small and young and the bruises and her heart and why does this hurt so much? Why is my heart stronger than hers? What did I do to deserve it? My head hurts from all of the thoughts inside of it, and the complex pain of the notion of her heart stopping.

She leans back in towards me, and lowers her whisper conspiratorially. "Mitch says that I'm very lucky I came back, and I asked him where I went. And he told me he didn't know. But aren't grownups meant to know these things, Sylva?"

I take a small breath, but I cannot force my smile to stay. "No one can know everything, lovely."

"Not even grownups?" She tilts her head to the side, and her bright green bandana shifts. Absently, she rights it, still watching me.

"Not even grownups," I agree.

She frowns, hard, in the way that only children do when they're thinking about something fiercely. After a moment of thought, her face clears. She smiles at me, widely, contradicting her appearance. She does not look sick when she smiles; she looks alive, and bright, and young, and a little smug. "I think I know more than Mitch," she says, "because I know where I went. Mrs. Abernathy says that when we die, we go to heaven. And I only died a little bit. But I think I was there, for a second."

For a moment, I wonder who Mrs. Abernathy is. And then I realise what she said, and my breath catches in my throat, and I realise that Lance's arms are stiff around me, his body tense; he is awake. He wakes much quicker than me; I am still half asleep, registering everything a moment after she says it, like I am one of my father's computers and I am processing so many commands that I have not yet been able to catch up with the newest ones being issued.

"Why do you think they didn't want me? The angels?" she asks.

I open my mouth, and then I close it. And then I open it again, and I force the words to come out. "You weren't ready yet, lovely."

"Why aren't I ready? Mrs. Abernathy says that heaven is full of everything we want, and I want fairies and a castle made of clouds. And my unicorn." She picks up the creature and hugs it close, as if someone is about to snatch it away. I don't know what to tell her. I don't know what to tell a child who thinks she is ready to die, when I am just beginning to realise that I am not.

"You have to learn more," I tell her, latching on to any idea in my mind, anything at all that I can find. "See, there are some things that grownups don't know. Only kids can learn them. And you're not ready to go yet, because you haven't learned enough."

Her face clears. "Oh," she says, simply. As if that makes sense. As if I didn't make that up to soothe her mind, to make her find some reason to want to live. My own reason tightens his hold on me, though not by too much, and presses his face into the curve of my shoulder. My other reasons walk through the corridors of their high school, and stride through their home, and whirl through my mind in snatches of phrases and places I have not been; a small, complete list in Tom's pocket. I am not ready to go. I am not ready. Not even a little.

I watch Tatiana settle back on the bed, her unicorn held tightly in her grasp. "Will you help me learn, Sylva? So I'm ready next time?"

"Of course," I tell her, my voice a whisper. And she smiles as if my promise means anything, as if it is the best thing in the world, and begins to chatter at me about her friends from down the hall. Meaningless chatter. And I look at her and think of all the reasons I have to live.

When Tiana is asleep, Lance helps me out of the chair. He has been motionless and soundless, so far, so his sudden movement and the low, rough timbre of his voice startle me. "Come on," he says, simply. And he takes my hand and walks with me, even though I am infuriatingly slow, even though every step is a painful triumph.

When the door closes behind us, we keep walking down the corridor. I am tired, but his hand is in mine, and he is so patient, and I can go on; I will.

Lance is quiet. I don't think he will be the one to speak first. So I do, because if there is one thing I can do without tiring myself too much, it is talk, and words are the least I can give him. "I'm sorry," I say.

He looks at me through hooded eyes, head tilted to the side, in a way that would have covered his eye with hair had he enough to do so anymore. My fingers itch to reach up; to trace the birthmark beneath. But I focus on walking. On moving my legs and my feet.

Walking is such a complex thing, when you think about it. Your brain tells your muscles that you want to walk, and it sends an electrical impulse, which has to turn into a chemical message along the way, and then back to electrical and chemical and electrical all over again to bridge gaps you didn't even know were there. And thousands of cells are firing with these messages and when they reach their targets, you move, and it is such an amazing thing; neurons firing and muscles stretching and tugging and you would never think that something like walking was amazing, but when you treasure the days you can stand on your own, you learn to appreciate the miracle of the human body.

Lance moves his hand to my waist, resting his fingers there, his arm around my back as he takes back my hand with his free one, so that we are strangely wound together as we walk. He is supporting me so that I don't have to worry about falling or tripping or holding myself up, and he does it without even asking or making a deal of it, not even wanting to be acknowledged. So I don't say anything about it, but I look at him so that he knows I have seen what he has done, what he is doing. He blinks, and then looks away.

"For what?" he asks.

It takes me a moment to recall my own words. "For saying that to Tiana," I tell him. He knows what I mean; that I said I would help her prepare to die. What a horrible thing to promise a child. What a terrible person I am.

His fingers tighten, and then smooth out against my side. "You know, for the past couple of weeks she's been saying that she's ready to die. And I want to know how she can know that. How a kid can know when she is ready to die, but I hardly know how I want to live. How can she be ready for that? How can she be ready to go? To leave everything behind?"

He looks at me beseechingly, but I cannot answer his question, because I am focusing on walking, on the miracle of movement, and my legs hurt and I am so, so tired, and my breath is laboured, sawing in and out of me. Without a word, he stops and lifts me into his arms. I sigh and settle against his chest, and he carries me easily down the hallway. "I don't think she is ready, Lance," I tell him quietly, after I have my breath back. "I think she just dreams about another place, another world. And she thinks that she'll get there, soon." I pause, take in a breath as he carries me down the stairs. "I guess she's just hoping for something more."

He laughs hollowly, and nudges the door open with his elbow, taking us into the car park. The cars glint with the sunlight, reflecting between mirrors and doors and shining bumper bars. It is a surprisingly beautiful sight. "Why the hell does hope have to exist, anyway? It isn't as if it's done any good."

He carries me to his car, and sets me on my feet. I splay my fingers against the window, and examine the way the light spills around them, leaving a hand-shaped shadow on the seat. The doors unlock with a click, and he opens mine for me. "Hope is all we have," I tell him.

He looks down at me for a moment, so close that I catch my breath, his lips pressed into a thin line. And then he lets out a heavy breath and helps me into the car, does up my belt, and runs back inside to get my chair. When he gets back, he drives me home, though I didn't ask him to. The sky is brightening slightly, the way it does when the sun is about to start its journey down, and the horizon is startlingly brilliant. I fold down the visor to shield my eyes from the glaring sun, though it does not help very much, as I am too short for it to be effective. It is silent in the car, but it is an easy silence, one I can bear.

"Have you decided, Syl?" he asks, his voice soft.

I don't move. Continue to stare out the window, at the slowly darkening sky; I must have been asleep for a long time, considering I got to the hospital in the early afternoon. "I thought I had, but I'm not sure anymore," I tell him. I look at him. He swallows, and his fingers tighten on the gear shift, but he nods. Accepts it. And I can tell that his patience, in this, is not coming easily. But then, neither is mine. I am just as frustrated with my inability to choose.

When we get home, he leaves me with my parents. He brings my chair inside, and he stands in the doorway for a moment, hesitant. Then he steps forwards and leans down, pressing a kiss to my cheek before turning and walking back out the door. And I lean against dad and taste chlorine in the air before the wind takes it, and all I have left is the memory.

"Lance looks good," mum says, after a moment. I nod and watch him get into his car, folding his long body into the drivers' seat.

Dad puts his arm around me, holding me up, relieving a little of my weight, and I hold back a sigh. "He looks sad," dad says, surprising me. I stay quiet. He looks down at me, but I watch Lance; he meets my eyes with his own, startlingly amber through the windscreen of his car, even at this distance. "What are you doing, Syl?" dad asks.

Lance stares at me for a long moment before looking away; the car starts with a soft roar, and he backs out of the driveway and turns, raising his hand in a small wave before moving away, down the street. I close my eyes and stare into the black behind my eyelids, but all I see is him: driving away, and coming back. Always coming back.

My voice, when I speak, is a whisper. "I don't know."

We all stand outside for a while longer. And then I start to shiver, and dad wordlessly picks me up and carries me inside. Mum closes the door behind us.