3. MADDY

3

MADDY

Nature is crying, and tears are dropping from the sky.

It’s late evening. It’s raining. My living room has sunken into darkness, only lit up by the phone in my hand as I look through the pictures of Raven, Little, and I. The sandwich I made for myself two hours ago sits untouched on the coffee table.

Little called earlier and got upset when I told him Raven went to Port Mrei indefinitely. He didn’t believe me and demanded the truth. He is little but not stupid.

“Something happened to him, didn’t it, Maddy?”

I didn’t know what to tell him except, “Raven will come back soon.”

When you feed children lies long enough, they soon forget the hard truth. I learned that as a child.

I am in no condition to be around Little and feed him even more lies when I’m constantly on the verge of tears. Callie understands it. She said she’d keep him distracted for as many days as she could.

I sift through the pictures of Raven until the tears start coming again and won’t stop.

It was hard to explain to my dad what sort of relationship I had with Raven. It’s still hard to interpret it even to myself. The last night together changed our dynamics and promised so much in the future. An actual future. It filled me with hope and happiness that was snuffed out in minutes in the jungle. Not just snuffed out but sliced away. The last images of Raven, the chain, the blood, the violence, “Step away, beautiful girl,” are like a serrated knife slowly sawing my heart into pieces.

I cry until my chest hurts. It’s hard to breathe. Despite my friends and Dad and everyone’s phone calls and messages that I don’t answer, the knocks at the door I don’t reply to, I feel so lonely. The world feels empty without Raven. My chest is hollow. It’s extraordinary how one person can become your entire world in such a short time.

I walk out of the bungalow, and the two new guards stand up at the sight of me. I don’t say a word, but they follow me down the stone steps onto the main road. I’ll have two shadows from now on. And I still feel unsafe. Whereas when Raven was around, he didn’t have to be next to me. Just the fact that he was watching over me made me feel protected.

I need him, pieces of him, whatever bits I can have in order to stay sane.

So, I walk to his house. I’m about to call Archer and request Raven’s main door to be unlocked for me, but when I step onto Raven’s porch and try the door, it opens.

The last and only time I was here was two days ago.

The memories assault me immediately as I step into the dark living room with only the moonlight shining into the window.

Two days ago, I was happy. I could touch him, kiss him, hear his voice.

I flick the light switch on and look around his bungalow.

Every place has a character. Raven’s bungalow is almost void of personal objects, but that’s character, too. Stoic? Maybe, ascetic? That’s him. Like I said before, Raven feels like a gothic castle. And every castle has secrets. If I dig deep enough, I’ll get to know his. He probably wouldn’t like it. But then the cruel thought creeps back into my mind—he might never come back. The dread returns with another kick, even more powerful than before.

The first thing I notice is the flowerpot by the balcony doors. My flower.

I hold back a sob as I walk up and run my fingers along its leaves. I check the soil. It needs water. Holding back tears, I walk to the kitchen, fill up a coffee mug with water from the tap, and water the plant.

Raven’s bedroom is simple and neat, too. Besides his clothes in the closet—a few and almost all black—there are barely any personal belongings here. His entire life could fit into one suitcase.

I open the nightstand drawer and frown in surprise. The only thing there is a bracelet.

Right away, I recognize it, the golden chain and flower made out of gems. It’s mine. But I haven’t had it in a while. I thought I lost it at Archer’s birthday party.

But here it is.

I want to pick it up and put it on, but that’s the only thing of mine in this house, and I close the drawer without touching the bracelet—I want something of mine here, by Raven’s bed.

I walk back to the living room. A couch, two armchairs, a coffee table—the standard Ayana style. There’s a wicker chair by the balcony. A tall bookcase full of books is at the back wall, a desk next to it. I step closer. One small book sits on the desk. It’s full of little torn papers as bookmarks. Raven must’ve been reading it recently.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

He just told me about it the other night. I pick it up and open one of the pages.

A sentence is carefully underlined with a pencil.

“Help me,” he said very quietly, speaking in the way that the dying speak. “I want to fly more than anything else in the world…”

The phrase gives me a flashback to the last time I saw him. I bite my lip, suppressing an urge to cry, and open a page with another bookmark.

“He was strong and light and quick in the air, but far and away more important, he had a blazing drive to learn to fly.”

That’s Raven. I smile at the words and open another page.

“Well, sure, O. K., they’re Outcasts. But hey, man, where did they learn to fly like that?”

I take a deep breath and hold it, trying to suppress the emotions that clench my heart.

A desk drawer catches my attention. I pull it open slowly, uneasy at prying but wanting to understand what Raven was like when he was alone, when his cold mask was off.

There are dozens of sheets of paper in the drawer, all with handwriting on them. On top of them is a notebook that I pick up and open.

“Lost people sometimes develop into greater human beings than those who have never been lost in their whole lives.”—A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren.

It’s a quote.

The next name I see is Hemingway, and it’s a quote from The Old Man and The Sea .

“A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

Page after page after page, there are quotes from books I know and great historical figures I recognize. As if Raven was trying to find answers to his past. That’s why we like quotes—we find ourselves through others’ experiences.

They are all written in a perfect handwriting. His. I stroke the words with my fingertips, feeling closer to Raven, a lone man with an extraordinary mind that I didn’t have enough time to get to know.

The last page with the quotes also has a folded white sheet of paper. I unfold it and read the text.

“My mind is my best friend. But my heart is a beast that doesn’t understand words or logic. Only kindness. Yours.

You tame it, heal it, and you keep that beast at bay with your gentle fingers and kind gaze.

Wishful kindness—you told me that once.

I think it’s a weapon. I deal with guns, but that might be a stronger one. I can’t buy it. But I can learn how to use it.

You don’t know that, but I can be a good student. With a teacher like you, I can…”

My heart twists at the words. There’s no author and no quotation marks around this passage. Those are the only words on the blank piece of paper. I can only assume these are Raven’s words.

Wishful kindness—I told him that. Does that mean he was writing this… to me?

I set the letter and the notebook aside and pick up the top sheet of paper from the stack in the drawer, Raven’s handwriting on it.

“Marcel Proust said, ‘It’s our imagination that’s responsible for love, not another person.’

That’s bullshit. All those famous people like to throw fancy wordy nonsense around.

YOU are responsible for what happened, Maddy. Only you.

I blame you.

I give you all the credit.

And I thank you.

YOU made it happen, and no matter what happens in the future, there will never be anyone like you. My imagination is not capable of conjuring anything so spellbinding, these feelings… none I’ve ever known before…

It was all you.

Since day one.

Since you put the stethoscope against my heart and said, ‘Hold your breath.’

And I’ve been holding it ever since.”

Tears well up in my eyes. Raven wrote me a letter—no one has ever written one to me.

I pick up another sheet of paper, and a tear drops onto it sloppily as I start reading it.

“To you, Maddy.”

My vision blurs from tears, but I read every word, wiping my wet cheeks, dissipating at the words that talk about life and love and feelings and pain, all of it addressed to me.

The next page is different. It’s the letter M, written multiple times, in even rows, as if someone was perfecting their handwriting.

Then there are words. All starting with M.

I pick up the next page and the next and the next, all of them crowded with that same letter M, words written neatly in some sort of messy meditation in rows and columns.

Milena. Magnetic. Melody. Mouth. Moan. Music.

Maddy. Magic. Moody. Moonlight. Midnight.

Milena.

Mind.

Madness.

Mirage.

Myriad.

Moxie.

Melancholy.

Mesmerizing.

Maddy.

Mercy.

Mother. That word is underlined and written several times.

Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.

And among those words, two names are repeated like the binder for them all—Maddy and Milena.

There is another one, at the very bottom of one page, written in the smallest font.

Mathew.

Tears spill down my cheeks. There is no way to stop them. Or stop the pain in my heart. Or other emotions that rip it apart. I wipe the tears away with the back of my hand, but they drop onto the paper as I pick up a pen and write, “ Mine ,” next to his name.

I finish reading the last page in the stack and stare at the empty drawer. Empty save for the white strip of paper taped to its bottom. In large letters and the familiar by now handwriting, it says, “WISHFUL KINDNESS.”

A sob breaks out of me. I lean onto the desk, and I don’t hold back the tears and sobs as I cry loudly, shaking, grieving for the scarred man with the most beautiful mind.

I feel like a ghost. There’s a black hole where my heart is. But when I close my eyes, here, at his place, I can imagine that I’m waiting for him to come home, that he will, any minute. And that black hole starts dissolving.

I am not grieving, I tell myself, I am waiting. For him.

Tonight, I decide to stay at Raven’s. I leave the light on in case he returns. I undress, get under his sheets, and bury my tears in his pillow, inhaling his scent.

One can’t live without kindness. Or love. Or hope. I want nothing more than for Raven to come back to me. I know he is somewhere out there. I can feel it. When I close my eyes, my heart talks to him. That means, he is alive.

I think about his ravishing kisses, rare smile, and gentle touch. His eyes—the starkest memory. The unspoken words. So many things we didn’t tell each other.

I want him next to me, with me, hand in hand.

My Raven, I repeat silently.

They say ravens mate for life.