I'm Still Here

Maya didn’t show up for class that Tuesday, three days after Joni's traumatic incident with Fin. Though confused and expecting a picture of the damned parrot, Joni was glad. She didn’t have the capacity to be sympathetic to Maya’s concerns over her dead bird right now.

Joni moved through her days on autopilot for the next week, trying to enjoy TV with her grandma, jamming to music with her dad, and baking with her mom. But she quickly realized that she was feeling worse than ever since all this started.

Only Fireball—it was always Fireball, her very own magical dose of pain cure—had any chance of making her feel better. He cuddled up with her as if he could feel her sadness, and it made her glad that she would never need another dog again.

Fireball was forever the best one.

When the Tuesday after rolled around, Joni was surprised to see that Maya was absent once again.

Weird, she thought. After all that blackmail you’d think she’d have the etiquette to show up to class, or at least the gall to do it. Whatever, I guess.

Joni decided she wouldn’t dwell on it further. Just as she was about to log off the online meeting platform, Maya’s avatar popped into the meeting and then, immediately after, traded places with the girl's disheveled appearance.

“...Maya?” Joni asked, worried. She waited, taking in Maya’s uncombed curly hair, the dark bags under her watery, red eyes, and her dry lips, trembling as if the weight was too heavy to bear.

It took Maya two whole minutes to say something, and when she did, Joni’s heart, already broken, shattered for her. “H-H-Help me, please?” Maya cried, tears dropping onto her wooden desktop. “H-He died.”

Joni swallowed. “Who did?” She asked carefully.

“My boyfriend. Pat. My boyfriend was killed at a party. A fucking party! H-H-He’s... gone…” Maya brought a soiled napkin to her nose and blew into it, a suggestion that she’d been crying for quite a while before this. She looked square into Joni’s face then, as if the computer itself was no longer there and Maya was standing chest-to-chest with Joni.

Joni felt like she had no room to breathe.

“Bring him back.” Maya whispered, then yelled, “Bring him back, please!”

“Maya--”

“Please!”

“Maya!”

“Please! Please, you can’t leave me like this. I’m dying, Ms. F. I can't—” She cut herself off with a sharp intake of air and continued, “I can’t go on like this when I know I can have him back... I can have him back. Instead of Wingnut.

“Please. Please, bring him back.”

Joni stared wide-eyed at the screen and felt goosebumps travel up and down her body the longer she sat still. Thoughts of Fin bopped around in her brain. She’d cried just the same as Maya the day she’d learned of Fin’s fate.

I wished him back a million times. I beat myself up for never bringing him back even though I had the ability to. And now, finally, I—I fulfilled that wish. And things still turned out like this.

Maya’s going to suffer. So much.

“Okay.” Joni agreed, more reluctant now than she had been for the bird. The risk was greater this time. “I can bring him back for you, but you have to understand. No one can see him. No one. Not one person in the whole world can know what I’ve done. What we’ve done. Your boyfriend, Pat. Others know that he’s passed?”

Without saying anything, Maya nodded her head. Joni winced, “I thought so. It’s too recent—"

“No, please! Others won’t know, I promise!”

“Maya, Maya, it’s okay. I’m not saying I won’t do it. But there are precautions you have to take.”

“Of course,” Maya said immediately, nodding her head a dozen times. “Done.”

“And there’s another thing... He’ll be different.”

“You said that about Wingnut. I know already.”

“No! No. Listen to me. You must understand that your pet bird being different than before won’t feel nearly as devastating to you as Pat being unable to behave like a common human being. If you really want this, you have to be ready for it.

“He’ll be different, Maya. So different. And if you’re not careful, he won’t survive it.”

And neither will you, Joni naturally thought about herself.

She sat on those words a while, trying to picture herself as someone other than a flailing swimmer who sinks to the bottom of the ocean. But she couldn’t make it happen, images of herself free of struggle.

Finally, she sighed as she imagined another world with different rules and another chance at life. She wanted to be there. In a utopia.

But not here. I hate it here.

Joni spends the most time on Pat’s eyes, wanting them to appear alive. Truly alive. Her hopes are to make up for whatever strange and inhuman things he does with eyes that tell Maya, ‘I’m still here.’

Joni shakes her head as she finishes the sketch and sets it aside to give her body a prolonged stretch. She doesn’t want to wish Maya’s boyfriend back. The girl will suffer with him. She’ll lose herself to loneliness and longing.

She’ll have him. Joni thinks, fighting hard with herself to stop thinking that it isn’t fair.

She shakes the negative thoughts from her head and replaces them with thoughts of Maya’s home, which she knows from pictures and videos Maya shared to her phone. She hopes within her that Pat shows up there, all shiny and brand new.

And please, she adds, let him stick around for longer than my Fin did.

She surrenders to the always-there throb in her chest as she questions whether not reviving Fin a second time is the right choice. In the end, she agrees with her decision because the feeling of Fin’s hand fading away in hers kept replaying in her mind, haunting her.

It had been one of the worst feelings. Still is.

Just then, her phone alarm screams to life, scaring her away from her desk and straight into a standing position. Hand on her racing heart, Joni stops the alarm and checks the time.

Nine o’clock. Time for her “date” with Wes at the coffee shop. That’s what Joni’s calling it, her quote-unquote date. Considering she’s a girl who couldn’t put her dead ex-boyfriend to rest so badly that she brought him back, she doesn’t know if she has the right to think so wistfully about her old friend and major high school crush.

Twenty minutes later, Joni stands outside of the Bean & Brew coffee shop, staring at the “Push” inscription on the fat door handle instead of doing as it says and going inside. Where she is, she can hear the morning birds singing their tunes of a new day, not knowing they don’t have many more songs left to sing. Outside, she can hear sirens in the distance, a new common occurrence in these end days, no matter the time of day or day of the week.

Outside, she can breathe a little.

How freaking ironic, she thinks and rolls her eyes at herself.

But the truth is, she can’t handle how thinking of meeting Wes right now has her heart doing silly things in her chest. I want to talk to him until the sun goes down, hear his voice in my ears. He'll make me laugh and forget about the world ending, just like he always did.

… Maybe things won’t be so bad. Joni thinks and places her hand on the door handle with care. He doesn’t know… she hesitates, everything. It’ll be okay. I want to get close to him again. Tell him things!

Joni can feel herself getting excited, an almost foreign feeling for her. It feels… good. New. The strength of it has her ripping the door open without further delay and marching inside to find Wes.

She spots him in a booth in the far left corner of the room. He’s illuminated by the single wall lamp he sits beneath which hangs at an intriguing and awkward angle. He glances up when she comes in, as the bell above the door chimes for entering customers.

And the smile he gives her as he meets her eyes lights up the room like the radiant sun. Joni almost stops in her tracks under the pressure, the fresh ease, behind that smile, and wonders if it’s been reserved for her even after all this time.

Whoa… she thinks, breathless.

“Hey, Joni!” Wes calls and waves her over with such animated excitement that Joni almost laughs.

We just saw each other yesterday. Why’s he behaving like a puppy? She wonders, fighting against a beaming smile that’s trying to take over her face. Yet, she can’t deny that she’s also lost her composure, at least on the inside.

That heart of hers is on it’s very own playground.

“Hey,” Joni says as she sits down across from Wes, her voice shier than expected. She clears her throat.

Wes laughs, “You still do that?”

Joni smiles, her brows knitted together in confusion, “Do what?”

“That!” Wes clears his throat like Joni had and he laughs harder when her puzzled look becomes more pronounced. “You’ve always cleared your throat whenever you were shy or embarrassed.”

Joni’s mouth drops, “No, I do not!” she cries.

But then fights hard not to clear her throat afterwards.

Joni stares at Wes a second and then they both start cracking up loudly in the coffee shop that has welcomed more customers this morning than one would expect these days. It’s a cozy place with dim lighting, dark walls spotted with artwork, and fresh coffee bean smells. There’s no wonder why it’s a popular place to meet people, kick back with your friends and chill.

It always has been.

It was a place that Joni at one point felt like was home. Sitting across from Wes as she was now, his smiling eyes directed at her and her only, she can see it having a high chance of becoming home again.