The Part Where You Let Go

Last night I had the most vivid, most real and most terrifying dream I have ever experienced. It was both the best and worst dream that I can remember ever having. Which was the problem - I don’t remember my dreams. Not even my nightmares! Ever. I guess that this one just must’ve made sense…

You see, last night’s dream wasn’t really a dream. Or at least, it wasn’t like a good dream or a bad dream or one of those night terrors I used to have as a kid. This dream was more like a reality; I just don’t know how that could be possible. Because last night I found someone that I know to be dead. Yes, DEAD! But there he was, in my bedroom, (or my dream-bedroom, at any rate) just standing there with all his hair grown back and looking more radiant and lively that he had before he’d gotten so sick.

Said boy, Zachary, was a year above me at school and it was only really in eighth grade that I began to take an interest in him. That was before the cancer came. Not that I didn’t still like him! Of course a little thing like cancer couldn’t keep me from day-dreaming about those gorgeous curls and those soft, kind brown eyes… But then the chemo started, and he lost all his beautiful hair, and that wasn’t all. Zachary couldn’t go to school anymore.

My connection to him was cut short. All we had in common was the Drama Club and the bus we took to school since the two of us lived in the same neighborhood. Drama was great. And Zachary was great too – he could shift into any role with the blink of an eye, just long enough for him to get into character. He was the envy of the class. The teacher always chose Zachary to stand in front of the other club-members to demonstrate some new technique or recite something another member of the club had written.

Once, after the day’s club meet had been dismissed, Zachary had pulled me aside. Well, I guess he didn’t really intend to since our parents forced us to walk home together after drama club since the buses didn’t run late. Okay, I told my mom I walked home with my friend Sasha who lived several blocks in the opposite direction of my house. She didn’t know that of course.

So anyway, one day when we were walking back home he suddenly talked to me. Like, really talked. Not the ‘wow-that-one-scene-was-just-brilliant’ or ‘how-is-your-grandmother’s-hip’ stuff, but more like the stuff you can just talk about. Just… stuff. It was so weird, but I felt as though I’d been ‘accepted’ or something. I guess it must’ve been then that I began to see him in a different light. We never talked like that again.

Then he got that cancer and had to have chemotherapy and lost all of his gorgeous hair and soon he was too weak to go to school and I was left to making brownies with icing on them to bring to his doorstep and leave with his mother under the false pretense that it was my mother who had sent them over because I was too scared and too shy to see him in his cancerous state. How I wish I would have gone to see him, cancer or no cancer.

And suddenly Zachary was cured. The tumor was gone, and he even had a friend over once or twice in the following weeks, and his family had gone out for a vacation in some faraway country in Europe. I had begun to hope again, and planned to tell him my feelings as soon as school started up again in the autumn.

Then the cancer came back.

Oh God, now I’m blushing and crying into a fucking journal page. I had a crush on Zachary. Actually, I guess I still do. But he’s dead. As in NOT ALIVE, and I can’t help but think he’s still there. Like in my dreams.

He felt so real. He just… he felt so real. In my dream, the first time I saw him, I woke back up with a start and found myself in a cold sweat. When sleep had finally found me again by early morning, I saw him again. And I wept. In the dream, and when I woke up again and found myself crying into the pillowcase. I hugged him and held him close and told him everything that had happened and he listened, he listened and watched so intently with those kind, soft brown eyes… and I clung to him and buried myself in those curly brown locks of his and cried until I could cry no more, and even after my eyes were dry I sobbed for what seemed like hours.

And then he whispered something in my ear, and gave me an envelope with a letter inside. I never found out what his letter said even when I woke up sobbing and clutched an exact replica of the envelope in my dream in my hand made of flesh-and-blood. I gave that to his parents.

How could I have gotten so worked up over a guy I barely knew? How could I have been so cold at his funeral with all his best friends holding hands and crying and his parent’s hearts shattered and the leaves on the trees falling and dying just like Zachary had? Why did he have to die before he ever knew how I felt? Why had he been lost to me forever?

And why can’t I just let this whole damn thing go?