Final
Pebble
I got out of my car and slammed the door shut behind me. The water of the lake was smooth, unbroken. A foggy mist coated the water and the trees, making it feel ten degrees cooler. There was no one here except for me, I liked it that way. Snowflakes were slowly falling and melting to the ground. They peppered my hair and made my hands and cheeks feel numb. I shoved my hands into my pockets and made my way to the edge of the grassy slope that slid off into a mixture of mud, shells, and bits of trash. The cove.
The place Sulli used to go to blow off steam and chill out for a little while. This was our place. This used to be our place. A ghostly image of Sulli wearing revealing black Nike short shorts and a faded red t-shirt appeared out of the foggy air a few feet in front of me, her bare toes wiggling in the muddy sand. She belonged to a different time. The ghostly figure stood there, her head tilted to the side thoughtfully, her dark eyes piercing right through me, her dark brown hair tucked behind her ears. Then the girl stooped over, pawing through the mud as if searching for something.
I stared down at the figure from on top of the grass with a blank expression. This always happened whenever I came back. She’d always appear when I came back. I watched as Sulli’s eyebrows flip up, and she broke out into a cheerful smile. Her being flickered as she held up what looked like a heart shaped pebble. My fingers went up unconsciously the identical necklace hanging around my neck. Sulli disappeared into the fog, and with her, the stone.
I looked down at the necklace laying in between my fingers. It didn’t look like much. The pebble was smooth and worn from all the times I rubbed it for good luck. The rock hanging on the necklace was tiny, a little bigger than the size of a pencil eraser. It had the color of blackened marble with flecks of gold, and was cool to the touch. But most importantly, it was the same rock Sulli had found at this very spot more than a year ago, the same one her ghost had found just a second ago. I shut my eyes and breathed in the chilly fog, remembering the day.
It was a hot summer day, the sun beat down mercilessly on me as I fanned myself near the edge of the neighborhood pool. My phone buzzed on a nearby table, and I snatched it up quickly. A smile crept on my face once I saw who the text was from. Sulli. I read the text: ‘That’s a nice bathing suit.’ I furrowed my brows together and glanced up to see if Sulli would be standing there. But after my eyes scanned over the crowd of overweight parents and chubby toddlers for a few moments, I gave up.
I went back to sun bathing when a pair of hands grabbed my shoulders from behind and shook me. “Hey, silly goose, are you wearing sun screen?” I heard a familiar voice murmur into my ear. I shivered, goosebumps sprouted over my bare arms and legs. “How about we go somewhere funner than this? You look bored right now.” Sulli’s hands left my shoulders and I stood up, slipping on a pair of purple shorts, a loose fitting blue t-shirt, and slid on my flip flop before turning around to face her.
When I did, I caught a whiff of her floral scented shampoo that wafted off of her long dark brown locks. She was wearing a pair of blue sandals, black Nike short shorts, and that red t-shirt of hers she knew she looked good in. A beautiful smile crossed her features, “Come with me, Krystal.” When she parked the car and got out, I looked around with a confused face. I got out of her car and joined her in the ankle deep water. Her eyes were trained on the sandy floor of the cloudy water. “What are you looking for?”
I whispered, staring out into the endless wasteland of blue water. The tide was coming in, and I stepped onto the grassy embankment to get away from the waves crashing down on the place where we’d been standing moments before. But Sulli only took a few steps towards me, staring hard at the sand. The girl stooped down and picked up a pebble out of the million of the little stones laying there. She held it up as if were a nugget of gold. I stepped down to look at the tiny object in the palms of her hands. Sulli passed it to me, and I the pebble.
There was a perfect hole near the top, where a chain could be teased through. As if Sulli had read my mind she pulled out a thin silver chain out of thin air, like a magician. “Come here,” she called softly, holding the necklace out for me. I pulled my hair back and let her snap the necklace together around my neck. It felt cool against my skin. I looked up into Sulli’s dark orbs and smiled, “Thank you.” The whisper of the waves crashing on the small rocks reminded me of the way she would whisper in my ear as if she had a secret.
Drops of water from the spray of the waves hitting my face reminded me of the tears that fell down Sulli’s face when her mother and father died in a car wreck. The chill of the creeping fog made me think of how empty she must have felt when she walked around school like a living zombie. The lake became our place to be together, to enjoy each others company. It was like our own secret world. A magical place where everything was okay. I stepped down into the sand, my eyes trained on the mud.
“Come on, Krystal!” The sound was carried on the wind softly, whipping around my head like a floating leaf. Her voice grew so quiet, I was straining to catch onto her last words. “It’s for you.....,” She walked out of the fog, and stepped in front of me. I stopped cold at the sight of her, my heart heavy with sorrow. The spark in her eye, the dimple in the corner of , her goofy half-smile was all I could think about. Sulli was here again. She was so close, close enough to touch for one last time.
All I had to do was reach out...and as I did..in an instant, she was gone. Whisked away with the harsh blowing of the cruel wind, howling through the bare branches of the dead trees with their spider-like arms raised to the heavens. I breathed in and out, creating my own trail of fog that left my mouth and s up to join the misty cloud that hung over the lake. Snow began to fall harder from the swollen clouds towering overhead, slowly coating the desolate landscape with peppered white. Even though the cold was nipping at my face and my hands, I didn’t feel anything. That’s why I liked the freezing cold, it made me numb. When Sulli died, I felt the desperate need to move away to somewhere where the land was always frozen and it was always white with snow.
Visiting the old town of Icheon, Korea, was painful for me. Every turn I took, I saw the phantom of Sulli in her past. I walked down the empty halls of our old middle school and high school, and there she was, passing me on the other side. Sometimes she’d flash me a grin, but most of the time she’d just give me a small smile and the girl would have an indecipherable look in her eyes. She’d be wearing a blouse and a pair of rocking pants, her backpack slung over one shoulder, a red and blue binder clutched to her chest, a pen or pencil twirling in her right hand. Every room I peeked into, I’d see a memory of the past. A younger version of me in a blue jacket and blue jeans would raise her hand, looking at the teacher in determination.
While a pale vision of Sulli would stare at me, her head propped up on her elbow, glancing down at a nonexistent sheet of paper and jotting down notes on it with a pen every once and a while. I walked into the gym to relive Sulli’s last concert that Luna, my best friend, invited me to. In an elegant black dress, Sulli played her heart out on the last song, a distant look on her face as she hit every single note just right. Once she’d finished a song I couldn’t hear but could see, she got up, shakily holding her violin and her bow in one hand and bowing to what I was sure was a cheering crowd standing in the empty bleachers around me. She played out my memory of that day perfectly, flashing the empty bleachers a warm smile, and nodding at a spot on the shining floor of the basketball court. Then she turned to look at someone in those empty stands, and I knew that person would be me she was seeing then, that I’d be me she was staring at with those eyes full of love and lust. Sulli was reliving her last few years of life in my head.
I took a trip to Sulli’s old house, where I used to go late at night on Fridays and watch old movies with her. I could almost smell the popcorn we would pop on those nights I looked forward to so much during our school years together, but I always left early because I couldn’t stand to be there for long. Somehow I made it to my old house okay, which lay empty and dormant, waiting for my arrival. I slammed the door shut and locked it behind me, making my way to the kitchen I made sure was stocked with food. I opened the fridge door and glanced over its’ contents. When I closed it, I felt a chill in the air and I knew Sulli was in the room. Glancing over to my right, I confirmed my suspicions.
The girl was leaning against the marble counter, her arms crossed over bold yellow lettering on her black shirt. Her faded jeans were tucked into a pair of boots. “Hungry, huh?” I heard her voice faintly, as if she were a thousand miles away instead of beside me. The girl took a couple steps closer, walked through me, and disappeared. The sensation made my skin prickle with goosebumps, chills rolled down my spine. I in a shaky breath and decided to go to sleep after chewing on a bag of baby carrots. Sulli’d always liked carrots. Instead of going to sleep right away like I usually did, or swallowed sleeping pills to knock the dreams out of my mind so I wouldn’t wake up crying, I read until dawn.
A sunbeam landed on the page of my book, the stream of light poking through the cracks of the drapes hanging over the window. Today was my last day in Icheon, the last time I would visit the budding place of Sulli’s and I’s love before I let her go. I decided to spend the whole day at the lake, where my last, clear memory of Sulli was. We spent so much time there, it became something like a second home to us. A home away from home. A paradise away from chaos. Sulli taught me how to skip stones there, we had a whole jars full of skipping stones that we would collect and take with us whenever we went to the lake.
One thing that was always strange about the lake was that whenever Sulli and I went, there was no one there but us. I didn’t let it bother me much, the only thing that was important was spending time with her. By the time I’d set out and drove to the lake, the sun was just peeking over the barren hills surrounding me. The sky turned a light pink hue, reflecting on the water. If Sulli had been standing beside me, she would have taken out her phone and taken photos of the view. In her room she had hung her photos from transparent strings on the ceiling, just dangling over your head when you walked into the room.
On the backs of the photographs, in her elegant and flowing handwriting was the date the photo was taken, the location, and what camera was used. I can remember the pictures blowing around when the heater came on in the winter months, twirling around like snowflakes dancing as they fall from the sky. Some of those photos had me and her in them. One was of the two of us holding hands at an ice skating rink. Sulli’s face portrayed how frightened she was, one hand intertwined with mine, the other clutching to the side of the rink wall. A grin was plastered on my face as I watched Sulli struggle to move on the ice. In another photo, we’re peeking at each other from behind our books on opposite sides of an empty classroom. And in yet another, we’re laughing over dinner at Cheddar’s, Sulli’s neck was exposed as her head was thrown back in laughter. I missed that laugh. I missed her. Maybe it had only been a year and a half, but it Sulli’s death was still fresh in my mind.
She had gone down fighting, as usual. An attempted armed bank robbery. Sulli was there with her brother, about to deposit more than $1,000 or so to her savings account. I recall how excited Sulli was about the transaction, sending me a few funny text messages that are now permanently saved in my phone, her famous last words I suppose. She’d always talked about her future. The places she wanted to go, the things on her bucket list, where she would go after graduation. This stipend she was putting into the bank would make her account balance a whopping $20,000, and we were just juniors back then.
More than both of her brothers had ever earned combined. Because Sulli had never thought of making a will, (who would a such a young age think of their deaths so quickly?), her money went to her little brothers’ education and his future instead. She and her brother were standing quietly in line, waiting patiently for their turn when a man wearing a bulky overcoat and a black ski mask walked inside of the building. He took out a gun and shot the ceiling three times to gain everyone’s attention before speaking. “All of your money, your watches, your earrings, your jewelry, in the bag. Now,” he said in a low voice, pointing the gun at a little boy and his mother. Sulli began to walk over to the boy, but was stopped by the man.
“What do you think you’re doing?” He asked her in a cold voice, the barrel of the gun pushing into her sternum. The high schooler flicked the gun off of her as if it were an annoying fly instead of a deadly weapon, and began to comfort the boy when the robber suddenly pulled the trigger. Amazingly, Sulli survived long enough after that to shoot the bank robber back and save everyone but herself. I held her hand at the ER, begging her to wake up from the coma she was in, to wriggle her toes or show some sign that she could hear me. It was all to no avail. Sulli was proclaimed dead in the morning, and I felt a piece of myself die along with her.
I stepped tentatively into the rocks below, careful not to fall into the deep and icy waters. A crane flapped its wings overhead, a fish of some sort hung out of its long billed beak. The fair pink color had turned to a deep blue hue that spread across the world like a painters’ brush was slathering it on in layers on the bleak landscape. I looked down at the dark water and found Sulli staring back up at me, a look of pain on her face. Of course. Pain. She needed to go, needed to be set free.
I needed to move on and release her from this world. I reached underneath my hair and began to unclasp the necklace of the heart shaped pebble, the last thing that left her tied to me, the thing I called my most prized possession. Sulli stood beside me in the waters’ reflection, her image flickering with energy. “I love you,” I heard her whisper, just as I took the necklace in my hand and threw it with all of my might as far as it would go. “I love you,” Sulli whispered again, her voice growing fainter, her being fading.
“Don’t forget me.” I heard a soft “plunk” and watched the glittering chain sink in the water until darkness swallowed it up. “I love you too,” I muttered, walking back to my car. It felt like I was leaving behind all of my memories, all of the times I cherished with her. But at the same time, I felt better. I felt like a weight had lifted off my shoulders and I could move on, and that Sulli would be able to rest in peace at last. I took one long look at the lake. Then I got into my car and drove away. I didn’t look back for fear that if I did, I wouldn’t be able to leave again.
I feared if I looked in my mirror I would see the ghost of Sulli standing silently in a t-shirt and shorts, watching the waves roll over the mossy and slippery rocks. “Goodbye, Sulli,” I whispered to myself, driving out of the little town and away from her. “And thank you for the heart shaped pebble.”
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