(no subject)
Rich text mode, anyone? hehe
Anyway. The weather here in good ol' Albion Park still can't make up it's fuckin' mind. Yesterday it was scorching - it got up to 33 degrees Celsius. And today? It's overcast, it's cold, and it even rained at one point! Rained! I hope come two weeks from yesterday the weather's like it was last Christmas though, I hate hot weather. I just wish the weather would make up its mind, that's all.
I'm thisclose to finishing the overhaul of Waterfalls - I should probably be finished by tomorrow. Then it's only a matter of copying the lot over to this computer, and then uploading all four hundred files to the server. It's gonna take me ages...
I finished this ages ago, but I still haven't got around to posting it yet. The link to the unfinished-as-yet story is here: Changes. This is the completed epilogue of the story - the whole story is from Zoe's POV.
I threw myself onto my bed and stared up at the ceiling of my room, a small smile playing on my face. In my right hand was clutched my English assignment, marked in the top-right corner with an ‘A’. Twenty out of twenty.
I kicked a stuffed toy monkey out of the way as I manoeuvred myself to lie full-length on top of my quilt, my head on my pillows. Mum and Dad were proud of me, for not only landing full marks for my assignment, but for telling Taylor’s story. It was a truly perfect example of how change can affect someone, and I’d used it to my advantage. And on my own initiative too…I grinned, then stifled a quiet yawn. Pulling too many all-nighters was going to backfire on me sooner rather than later…starting now it seemed. My eyes slid closed and I drifted off into sweet oblivion, the stapled sheets of computer paper still held loosely in my right hand.
“Regressing to old habits, are we?”
I awoke with a jolt, my eyes flying open. I winced at the intensity of the light in my room; catching a glance at my alarm clock, I saw that it was well past dinner time, and my ceiling light had subsequently been switched on. Groaning, I answered the question posed by the mystery voice.
“No, I am not regressing, thank you very much. I’ve pulled a hell of a lot of all-nighters to get my English assignment done, and I landed full marks for it if you’re wondering. I deserve an afternoon nap.” I frowned. “Who the heck are you, anyway?” I asked.
A tall, thin figure stepped out of the shadows cast by my desk, wardrobe and open bedroom door. And even though I had only a very vague, fuzzy memory of them, and only ever saw their face in family photographs, I knew who they were.
“Taylor?” I asked timidly.
He laughed. “So you do know my name.”
“Of course I know your name,” I retorted in mock indignation. My tone softened. “I missed you,” I said quietly. “I wish I’d been able to get to know you.”
“I do too, Zoë,” he agreed. I sat up, and he sat down beside me, turning blue eyes to stare into my own. “You’ve grown up so much,” he said softly. “You’re beautiful.”
I immediately blushed. “Mum says I look like Delta Goodrem,” I said softly, bowing my head.
“And you don’t believe her?” I shook my head. “Zoë,” he chastised me gently. “You should know by now not to believe what other kids say, or to let it have an impact on you.” He reached out a hand and gently tucked a lock of hair behind my left ear. “You’re seventeen years old. And you are quite possibly one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen.”
“Taylor…” I started, stumbling only slightly over the use of his name. “How…how old were you?”
“I was nineteen,” he answered, picking up on the hidden meaning in my question. “Four days shy of my twentieth birthday.” His eyes clouded slightly with sadness. “There is so much I missed out on,” he said quietly. “I’ve been watching over you guys, but it just isn’t the same as being a part of it all. I wanted so much to be there to see you grow up, and I wasn’t. I’m really sorry about that.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I told him. “Shit happens.”
“And such an eloquent way you have of putting it,” Taylor laughed.
“Mum’s always told me that everything happens for a reason…but I’ve never been able to see any sort of reason in this whole thing. It’s not logical.”
“It doesn’t need to be logical.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Think of it this way - we’ve each got a predetermined length of time that we have to live. And when your number’s up…it’s up. You can’t fight fate.”
“You can’t fight fate,” I murmured.
“Exactly.” He gently trailed his fingertips down my face. “Zoë, I know that you barely knew me, but there is something I want you to know. I love you so much. You see that teddy bear over there?” He nodded to the chocolate brown teddy bear that had pride of place on my dresser. “I gave that to you for your fifth birthday, and you named it after me. And that little gold angel on the ribbon…”
“I gave that to you,” I remembered. “That was the last time I ever saw you, and you were so sick…”
He nodded, and began to recite a prayer. “Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom his love commits me here. Ever this day, be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.” He blinked back tears. “You learned that just so you could say it to me. And I never forgot it.”
“Can I ask you something?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“Are you…are you an angel?”
He looked at me. “Do you really have to ask me that?”
“No,” I realised. In all the pictures we had of him, he had quite a few noticeable scars in plain view. And I couldn’t see them. He really was an angel. “I don’t have to ask you that.”
I knew instinctively at that moment that his time was nearly up. “You have to go soon, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” He pulled me close and held me tight. When he released me, he spoke once more. “On your computer, there’s a letter I wrote to you more than ten years ago. You probably don’t know this, but your computer was once mine. It’s just been upgraded a hell of a lot. I wrote it a few weeks before I died; the hard copy is around here somewhere. Ayden typed it up for me. It’s called ‘Letter to Zoë’ and the password is ‘angel’.”
I nodded. “Thank you,” I whispered, tears making their way down my cheeks.
He took me into his arms again, holding me as he softly sang the chorus of the song he’d helped write so long ago. “If I’m gone when you wake up, please don’t cry…and if I’m gone when you wake up, it’s not goodbye…don’t look back at this time as a time of heartbreak and distress…remember me, remember me…‘cause I’ll be with you in your dreams…”
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against his shoulder. “Goodbye,” I whispered. “I’ll never forget you.”
He was gone when I opened my eyes.
Wiping my tears away on the sleeve of my shirt, I crossed to my computer and did a search on the filename Taylor had told me. It popped up as a hidden file, and I clicked on it. A letter unfolded on the computer screen right before my eyes. The date on it told me that he had died only two weeks after it was written.
* * *
February 27, 2003
Dear Zoë,
There are so many things I want to say to you, and to say all of them would take me at least a year, maybe even a lifetime. So I’m going to do my best to say it all in a letter, even though it’ll probably take me a couple of hours.
I’m going to say it straight out. As I write this, I’m dying - I have cancer, which is slowly killing me. It has been for the past eight, almost nine months. There is nothing I wish more in the whole entire world that there was something that could be done to get rid of it, so that I can see you grow up. I’m positive that you’re going to be gorgeous. But like they say, shit happens. I guess my number came up faster than I would have liked it to.
I know you probably won’t remember me after I’m gone. You’re only five years old, and Lord knows I don’t have any memories from that time in my life. So I won’t hold that against you. But I want you to remember this - I love you now, and I will always love you. I mean that. You ask Mum or Dad one day when you’re older - just because someone is no longer around physically doesn’t mean they stop loving you. They’ll always be around. And when you share a bond that’s as strong as the one I have with Ebony and Ayden (more so Ebony), you never stop loving someone. As they say in theatre circles, you’re just waiting in the wings, waiting for the day when you’re together for all of eternity. And we’ll be together someday, Zo - someday we’ll all be together.
I’ll never be too far away, Zoë. I’ll stick close by, guiding you step by step and keeping you safe. And I’ll always be your big brother, just like you’ll always be my little sister. You’re going to have a great life, Zoë - I’ll make sure of it. And while I can’t be with you in a physical sense, I’ll be with you in your dreams.
Love always,
Taylor
* * *
He was right, you know. I have had a great life. I have great friends, I have a family who loves me, and I have a big brother up in Heaven who keeps an eye on me. But at the same time, there was one thing he was wrong about. I do remember who he was, now that I’ve had a chance to look back. I remember that I had one of the most amazing brothers a girl could ever have asked for. I remember his smile, his voice, his sense of humour, his love of his life. I remember that, close to the end of his life, he was always the one to comfort me after a nightmare. It was never my parents, or even any of my other siblings. It was always him. And I am so unbelievably thankful for that.
Youth can be a curse a lot of the time. I don’t have the memories that my older siblings do; I don’t remember little things about him that they do. And a lot of the time, I wish I did. But at the same time, it can be a real blessing. I may not have many memories of my brother, but the ones I have I cherish. The memories I have of him are for the most part happy; I only remember the good times.
I don’t pretend to know just who my brother was, because in truth I don’t. I don’t pretend to say that I don’t miss him, because I do. I don’t pretend that I don’t believe in Heaven, because I do believe in it. I believe that it exists, because one of the most amazing people this world has ever seen is up there, waiting for the day when the people who loved him most in life, who he loved most, join him for all of eternity. I’ll see him again someday; it’s just a question of when.
Change in any form can be a real bitch. Believe me, I know. It sucks. But when it all comes down to it, sometimes…it isn’t so bad after all.