Into the Garden (30 page)

Beggars can't be choosers, Geraldine would remind me, but I couldn't have had a better choice.
Both Doctor Marlowe and I discussed my final year of schooling and decided I should return to the public school system. She wanted me to live as normal a life as was possible, to meet people, to do the things girls my age were doing. Under her guidance and Emma's encouragement, I actually participated in some extracurricular activities. I tried out for the school play and got a good part.
Jade, Star, and Misty came to see me perform and after- ward, we all went out together for pizza We had kept in contact most of the year, despite Jade's mother's attempts to keep us apart. She blamed most of what had happened on Star, Misty, and me, telling Jade we were bad influences. How could her daughter do such a thing as bury a person?
Jade was as defiant as ever, even after the court proceedings, and her mother quickly reverted back to her regular lifestyle. Jade adjusted to her father's new life as best she could and seemed to get past another crisis.
Misty's father did break up with Ariel before the year was over. She said nothing made her mother as happy as that did. In the end though, Misty seemed to feel sorrier for him than herself or her mother. She said he seemed lost and confused and she started to spend more and more time with him.
"We're actually getting to know each other, finally," she told us.
Larry and Star planned their wedding. In June, right after graduation, they were married in a church, just as Star had wanted. Larry got a good job, too, and Rodney came to live with them in their home in Encino. The three of us went there for dinner one night in July and we had a great time together. Soon the three of us would be off to college.
Jade was admitted to Boston University. She said she wanted to go-to school as far away from her home as she could and was disappointed she wasn't accepted at Ox- ford. Misty was accepted at Berkeley in San Francisco, and I entered UCLA. I would live at home with Doctor Marlowe and Emma, at least for the first year.
Late in my senior year, my house was sold and the money was added to my trust. I took everything from the house that I wanted, which wasn't all that much. When I told the girls, they took a ride with me because I wanted to visit the house one more time. It wasn't that I was all that nostalgic about it or that I wanted to relive some hap- pier memories. I just felt I owed it a final visit.
It seemed already to be a tomb. The emptiness, the cold shadows were really what greeted us. I walked through it, gazed out the windows, went to my room and stood by my bed remembering my lonely nights and my ugly times with my father, but also my time with Stuart.
Do you leave yourself in a home that you've spent so much of your life within? I wondered. Will the next inhabitants sense my presence here, or will fresh paint, new carpets, and furnishings erase all the history? What is a house anyway? It can't keep its secrets in the shadows forever and ever. Windows are thrown open, new voices and new laughter chase out the gloom.
All of that is scattered in the wind and hopefully will find no new home, I thought.
Misty came up beside me and hugged me.
"Say goodbye forever and ever," she whispered.
Star agreed and Jade waved her magic wand, the one we had taken to Misty's father's wedding. She had brought it along because she said we never stop needing magic.
"Be gone forever all you sad moments," she cried.
We all laughed and then turned away and walked out. As we drove off, I glanced back and imagined Geraldine in the window, looking out, dreaming of her own escape. In the end she was buried beside her adoptive parents and Alden, her one and only love. Maybe, that was her escape.
"We're all going to be fine, just fine," Jade declared. "In fact, we can retire the OWP's. It's served its purpose," she said.
No one disagreed.
"But that doesn't mean we won't be together forever," she promised.
We all promised.
But we knew what promises were. It didn't matter. What we had together, we would always have. Time and new people, new friends and new loved ones couldn't take that from us.
Our candles would burn forever in the darkness of our precious memories.
And our flowers would bloom in the garden every spring, every year, forever and ever.
Goodbye would never really cross our lips.