Before I Let Go

by Marieke Nijkamp

“Death is a thief,” Mr. Sarin says after a moment. His expression is filled with kind concern. “It slips into our lives and steals what we care about most. It breaks us, and even when we piece ourselves together again, the pain remains.

Silhouettes darken the windows of almost every single house. Everywhere I turn, everywhere, they stare. Yesterday I thought that Lost Creek looked like a collection of dollhouses; today I’ve found the dolls.

“My mind is a stranger to me,” she repeated, harsher this time. “I can’t control what it does. I know I can’t change that, but I can try to find a better way to live with it.”

And in the town where nothing ever changes, everything is changing.

“Think of your meteors. What if they aren’t all science? What if the burning lights we see are spirits, falling back to earth? What if they’re trying to return to their loved ones before they burn out? What if a falling star is a soul coming home, one last time?”

“It doesn’t have to be a happily ever after or happily always. Just a happily once. A happily sometimes. Hope. That’d make our pain worth it.”

But hope is the cruelest of all.

“The world doesn’t end when one of us leaves it. We change by being here.

“We could all do with more heroes.”

together we held our darkness up to the light, and it became easier to carry because we were not alone.

“Stories remind me of heroes and possibilities. Stories remind me that I’m not the only one to deal with this. Stories make me feel less alone.”

But I want my life to have meaning because I give it meaning, not because someone else says that it does. I want my life to mean something because I create. Because I love. Because I make the world a better place.”

are. Intent only takes us so far. It’s a shield people hide behind, but not a weapon.”

We live in this tiny corner of the universe, up against impossible odds. And yet, here we are. We’re made of stardust. We’re supernovas. We’re entire constellations.

Home is awe and wonder. Home is the aurora borealis.

I want people to care about me, not in spite of my illness and not because of it. Because of me, Cor. Just because of me.

How can I tell her that this is where we’re both meant to be, when only I can be here?

I thought life as we knew it was truth, instead of just another story we told.

We must not deny our fear. We have to remember to be afraid. And we have to go on anyway.”

“We call them hero days,” Kyra said, “because that is when we fight fear itself. And we win.”