Dead Awake: The Last Crossing by hades Page B

seconds after I
dashed from the door, a lady came out. I don’t know if she saw me,
but I ran like an escaped convict, and dove into a bush a block
away. The door closed. Apparently the lady hadn’t seen me, but I
couldn’t be sure. It was troubling that she had just gone out,
apparently to do nothing, and then gone back inside. Had she seen
me from inside? It could have been Higinia, but there was no way to
tell, and that made it even more embarrassing. I felt like giving
up and walking my silly little body over to her door, and turn
myself in. I didn’t do it of course, just hid. Not daring to try a
stunt like that again, I sat motionless from within the bush
waiting for a chance to escape. All the while my mind saw fit to
pester me with stories of a girl in trouble. I tried to shrug it
aside, reasoning with myself in distressed conversation.
    “ There can’t possibly be
anything wrong,” I said, “I just feel this way because I haven’t
seen her in a few days; but nothing’s the matter with her. Don’t be
silly, Mr. Finch. Get a grip.” I said this to myself as a comfort,
yet I couldn’t help to imagine something terribly wrong. It was the
feeling of certain doom. The kind that could only be resisted a
short while. It was amazing that I even lasted a minute before I
found myself running towards Noelia’s small straw house.
    The speed only made the
dread greater; fortunately, for my sanity, it made the arrival
faster. Her mother was standing in front of the house, and had seen
me coming from a distance. She was waving her hands in the air,
signaling me to come quickly. My fears of being seen left, but all
the rest remained. Could I have been right? Was there truly
something wrong with Noelita? I got to the front of the house and
already the tears of despair had begun to run down Higinia’s
face.
    She grabbed me and pulled me
inside. There was an outpouring of words, of which I caught only a
few. Part of it was because I had only begun to understand Noelia’s
native tongue; the other part was because of how fast and jumbled
the explanation came. I understood enough though.
    She thought I’d come because
I had heard the message they had sent to me. Apparently they had
already taken the initiative and had sent word to me, but I told
them that I had not received such message and had only come because
I had felt there was something wrong. “I would have come sooner,” I
said, “but I thought she didn’t want me here.”
    My heart dropped to the pit
of my stomach as I found out what was happening. Her mother, with
tears streaming from her eyes, said that it had happened because
Noelia had missed me so much that her heart had broken. She took me
over to the place where Noelia was laying and placed my hand on
hers. Higinia was hoping that my mere presence would revive her
daughter again.
    Jose Luis was there also and
he was shaking his head at that ridiculous idea. He shouted to his
wife, trying to explain what he’d probably tried to explain many
times before: that it was not lovesickness, but something else. I
didn’t understand what that something else was because he was using
words I had never heard before.
    It was all too much for me.
The strength seemed to drain from my feet as I knelt down beside
Noelia’s bed. There she was lying, dark and cold. I held her hand,
and it was obvious to me, at that point that she was dying. I was
no doctor, but I could almost swear she had no pulse. I was scared
and tried to point it out to her father, who was the most rational
of the house that day.
    I looked to see if I could
feel her breathing, but I could not. Tears were already pouring
down my face, and I didn’t realize I was asking him in English: “Is
she dead?”
    All the darkness and fright
returned telling me that I had lost forever my time with her. Never
again would we walk through the forest, where I could hold her hand
and promise all my love. Everything was lost, and never would I
find another in the