Extraordinary Means

by Robyn Schneider

In AP Bio, I learned that the cells in our body are replaced every seven years, which means that one day, I’ll have a body full of cells that were never sick. But it also means that the parts of me that knew and loved Sadie will disappear. I’ll still remember loving her, but it’ll be a different me who loved her. And maybe this is how we move on. We grow new cells to replace the grieving ones, diluting our pain until it loses potency. The percentage of my skin that touched hers will lessen until one day my lips won’t be the same lips that kissed hers, and all I’ll have are the memories. Memories of cottages in the woods, arranged in a half-moon. Of the tall metal tray return in the dining hall. Of the study tables in the library. The rock where we kissed. The sunken boat in Latham’s lake. Sadie, snapping a photograph, laughing in the lunch line, lying next to me at the movie night in her green dress, her voice on the phone, her apple-flavored lips on mine. And it’s so unfair.

“I really want to be mad at you,” I told him. “Because we’re in love with the same dead girl?” he asked. And he looked so broken that I couldn’t say any of the angry things I’d wanted to say. So I nodded and said yeah, because we were in love with the same dead girl.

But I couldn’t. It seemed so wrong to me then that there were only ten options, only ten types of pain. Because I’m pretty sure there are hundreds of types of pain in this world, maybe even thousands. And none of these are numbers on the same scale. They all hurt differently, and amounts have nothing to do with it. They all hurt too much, and not enough.

I climbed in my car and started to head home, my visor down against the glare of the sun. But at the last minute, I turned left, because I never had before, and because I had time to go down a different road.