Hello, Goodbye

Chapter Twelve

It only took a couple weeks for them to establish some sort of routine. She would usually start before Zeke, spending a good part of her day in the graveyard cleaning stones and crossing them off the map one by one. If they were potential matches, she'd mark them on the map in red so she could look more into it later. And in the late afternoon, Zeke would meet up with her at the graveyard, and she'd show him all her progress. More names crossed off the list. Getting closer and closer to answers every day. He was always so appreciative that she was doing this for him. But he didn't understand. She wasn't really doing it for him. This project was breathing life back into her. And he didn't need to know that, after they'd part ways for the night, she'd stay up late sketching pictures of gravestones covered with flowers and stuffed animals and cards. She was so inspired by the gifts life would leave to death. And before long, her grandma's old studio was covered in paintings and sketches of gravestones. Her fingers were stained with gray and green paint, but she didn't care.

It had started with a before and after picture, which was something Emersyn loved to do as she cleaned the headstones. She would take a picture of it covered in filth, clean it, and then take a final picture of the stone when it looked like new. But one day, a couple weeks into the routine, she saw something in one of the pictures she hadn't seen before. A certain light shining on a teddy bear in a military uniform that sparked something inside of her. She stared at the picture for a long time, unable to take her eyes off the glow of the bear in the white uniform as it rested against the hard gray stone. For a while, she debated on whether or not to show the picture to Zeke when he met up with her in the graveyard in the late afternoon. But there was just something about it. Something magical. She didn't want to share it with anyone else.

The next day, she felt the same magic as she stared at a picture of a stone surrounded by beautiful fresh lilies. And then again when she noticed how the sun reflected against a penny someone had placed on top of another stone. It was fascinating, and really quite lovely. She took picture after picture of the gravestones, and after obsessing over them for several nights as she lay in bed staring at her camera gallery on her phone before falling asleep, she finally decided to pick up a pen and begin sketching. That was just a few weeks ago, and already she had a studio full of drawings and paintings of gravestones. She didn't know why this particular idea called to her, but she knew painting the stones onto the blank canvases was what she was meant to do.

But still, she was afraid to show her artwork to anyone. Afraid they wouldn't see what she saw. Scared they wouldn't be able to see the beauty in the gray, lifeless stones. She, on the other hand, was becoming more and more obsessed as the days went by. Some nights she'd stay up until three in the morning working. Until she was practically falling asleep with a coated paintbrush in her hand. Losing consciousness standing up. And then she'd crash in her day clothes, not even bothering enough to change into pajamas or wash her hands. Her bedding had spots of gray and white paint on them, and she knew they wouldn't come clean in the wash. But the spots were just reminders for her. And she'd get up in the morning and start the day over again.

"You look tired," Avery said one afternoon, as pistachio ice cream melted off the cone and onto her fingers like a clock from The Persistence of Memory painting by Salvador Dali. "You must be working on something."

This was the bad part about having friends who'd known you your whole life. They literally knew everything about you. All your quirky habits and eccentricities that you tried to hide from everyone else they could read like an open book. She shrugged her shoulders, trying to dismiss this. But they knew better. "Are you going to show us?" Axel asked, having already finished his ice cream, a very light hint of chocolate still coating his top lip.

She bit her lip nervously, that same old fear and anxiety rising to the surface. She'd never been insecure about her art before. But this was different. Most people would think what she was doing was morbid. Some might even think it was unethical. It wasn't like she was getting permission from the families to paint their loved one's gravestones. But still, she couldn't stop. She had to capture the breathtaking beauty of it. It was like there was an insatiable creature living inside of her that was only calm when she was painting. The canvas was its body, and the acrylics was its blood, and it wouldn't rest until it was covered.