A Song Below Water (A Song Below Water, #1)

by Bethany C. Morrow

He told her that grief can be cyclical. Years pass and you travel around the circle, thinking you’ve left the hard part behind, until you get back around and it knocks you down again. Time does not heal all wounds.

I’ve been asked more than a few times whether I agree with destruction of public property and—even if I don’t psych myself out with what may or may not actually be the heat of a siren call pluming in my throat—I’m not sure I’m allowed to speak. The question’s always framed so that bringing up destruction of human bodies sounds like a deflection even to my own ears. Which is scarier than anything else.

I find myself wondering, would it have mattered if he’d pulled up his pants for that casual photo? If he’d gone to the crosswalk to cross the street would he be graduating high school next month? Is that why I am alive and he isn’t? Is that the thing holding death at bay? Etiquette, and an ever-present fear of being shot? Because the fear is in all of us.

When we smile or we dance or we march or we win, it isn’t because we didn’t have reason to be afraid. It isn’t because the uncertainty is gone. It’s because we did it anyway. Because we cannot be exterminated.

Portland has this energetic way of carrying itself; it can be really annoying, to be honest. Sometimes it seems smug in an organic-er-than-thou kind of way. But I’ve never felt how strange the air would be without it, until now. When a city has a character, it can’t just be replaced. If it loses its weird, you just feel the void.