Hello, Goodbye

Chapter Twenty

She'd left shortly after dinner that night and had gone home with nothing but a small container of leftover salmon and a chipped heart. Sleep had completely eluded her, and so she'd spent half the night in the studio painting a teddy bear and a train against a child's gravestone on a white canvas. And when she could no longer hold the brush, she went to bed and poured over the same journal, tearing through penciled pages in the hopes of making out anything else. She fell asleep with the journal in her hand, and when she woke up she found it was lying open on the floor. Another sleepless night. She let off a giant yawn and looked over at the clock. It was ten in the morning, which meant she'd only been asleep for a few hours. For a moment, she considered rolling back over and allowing dreamland to take her again. But she knew Zeke wouldn't be working in the graveyard that day. He always went to the city Monday mornings. So it was just going to be her. And she couldn't let him down.

She slid out of bed and made her way to the shower, hoping the steaming hot water would wake her up. It didn't, so she vowed to get herself a cup of coffee from her favorite coffee stand before heading to the graveyard. She didn't even bother with her makeup, and put on a pair of ripped jean shorts and an old paint stained t-shirt with her flip-flops. Usually she would try to look pretty. But Zeke wasn't going to be there anyway. And besides, he'd made it perfectly clear that nothing could happen between them. So she had no choice but to let it go.

After hooking up the wagon full of cleaning supplies to her bike, and ordering a triple shot iced hazelnut caramel macchiato from the coffee shop, she headed over to the graveyard. The iced coffee helped wake her up a little bit, but she still didn't feel quite herself. As she pulled into the graveyard, she felt her phone go off in her pocket. When she pulled it out, she saw a picture of Avery's face on the screen. Sighing, she slid her finger over the green circle and held it up to her ear. "Hey," she said, and she hated how sleepy she sounded. Maybe she should've gone back to bed after all. "What's up?"

"Hey, hey, hey," Avery said in a much cheerier voice than Emersyn expected. She grimaced at the sound and took another big gulp of her iced coffee. "Just calling to see what you were up to today?"

Emersyn rode her bike into the graveyard and parked it right next to a row of unclean headstones. She held the phone up to her ear as she began pulling out cleaning supplies. "Oh, you know. Just... cleaning some marble stones. Same as always. What's up?"

"Again at the graveyard?" Avery asked, and Emersyn did not like where this conversation was going already. But Avery surprised her by saying, "Do you need any help? I'm done with school, and Axel and I are bored out of our minds."

Emersyn wasn't expecting her friends to offer to help, but she couldn't deny that she could use the assistance. Especially since she knew Zeke wasn't going to be coming. "Actually, yeah," she replied, unloading one of the buckets and making her way to the hose so she could fill it with water before dragging it along with her. "That would be really great. Are you sure that's what you want to do though? I mean... graveyard...?"

"If it's good enough for you, then it's good enough for us," Avery said, and Emersyn smiled. "Okay, we'll head your way in a few minutes. Hope you have enough sponges or brushes or whatever the fuck you use."

Emersyn laughed into the phone. "I'll throw a few extra in just for you, my darling," she said.

"Make sure you get them extra sudsy," Avery said with a giggle before hanging up the phone. Emersyn shook her head, grinning, and threw a few extra soft bristled brushes into the bucket of water. Avery and Axel arrived about half an hour later, and by that time she was already halfway through one gravestone. She hadn't really expected them to want to help her, but they both dove right in. After explaining the process, and how important it was that they be very careful with their scrubbing, the three of them got to work. Emersyn was still horribly tired, but having her friends there to keep her company was doing wonders at keeping her awake. Much better than the coffee had done anyway.