Over her bed is a painting Jasper did for her. It’s of a winding road. It’s filled with colors, a bright blue sky, lush vegetation crowding in the road from both sides, and so tiny it’s almost imperceptible, the little speck of a motorcycle.

The painting matches—matched—her personality perfectly. Not only because she always said she was going to go traveling, but because she was a sunny day, always energetic and full of life. Vivacious colors, wild, always searching for the next unknown.

Next to the bed is a map of the states, with routes drawn on it, and little pins on the places she’d already been.

Ruby was the type of person that would try anything once. She had no fear, no sense of her own mortality, and maybe that’s part of what killed her. Ruby loved living, perhaps a little too much, and that made her reckless.

Ruby was never a dreamer; she was a doer. She had all these grand plans… grand plans for a future she’ll never get to have.

I bite at my hand again, tasting salt and blood. I suddenly want to throw something, to scream and yell, cry.

But then I don’t. I take a deep breath, keeping my eyes closed, my head tilted toward the ceiling.

I put the photo of her back on the wall, press my hand to her handprint one more time, and then I close the time capsule behind me. I leave it the way I found it. Let someone else deal with Ruby’s things.

The things that were hers but are not her. The bits and pieces that are proof that she existed. None of it matters, maybe it should. Maybe I’m heartless.

Maybe it all should make me more sad than angry.

Death has a way of making every little thing and every reaction with a person seem so mediocre. Who’s to say that any of us really knew who Ruby was, in the end. Certainly, I never expected her to die the way she did.

These things, they can’t bring her back, they can’t even tell us Ruby’s thoughts and feelings, her hopes and dreams.

She was never shy about sharing everything, but I’m suddenly having a hard time remembering anything, as if someone hit ‘erase’ on all of our conversations and experiences.

How long before I forget the sound of her voice, the way she walked, her face? How long before she fades into the ether?

I am stone, a statue fixed in the present.

I spend the rest of the night watching cartoons and eating the pizza I ordered that’s long-cold now. I still can’t find Butters, but I assume he’ll turn up. I don’t remember falling asleep on the couch, but I wake up when a stream of light hits me in the face.

Another day. It feels wrong that the world won’t stop for a bit, that nature won’t mourn Ruby with me.

And it could be the rain was its way of mourning, but now the sun is out, as if the thunderstorm last night never happened.

I am stone, but even stones can break, and I can feel the fissures of my past meeting my present. I’m cracked already, maybe I always was.

***

Dear Ruby,

I went into you room today. It looks the same, but it does not feel that way.