You've Reached Sam (You've Reached Sam, #1)

by Dustin Thao

I grab his hand. “Don’t go yet.” Sam looks at me. “Julie … if I could stay with you, I’d never leave.” “But you did leave.” “I know … I’m sorry.” “You never said good-bye…” “That’s because I never thought I had to…”

It isn’t supposed to end like this. This was just the beginning. Our story has barely started.

I want you to know … if I could do it all over again, I would. Every second of it.” If the ending is this painful, I don’t know if this was worth it all.

I can’t keep you around, Sam. It makes me think you’re still here. That you’re coming back. That I might see you again.

Her students went around campus smashing clocks on every wall. What were they protesting? The concept of time.

I really need to focus again, and pull myself together, because what else am I supposed to do? The world keeps moving, no matter what happens to you.

“Julie, I know this whole thing’s been terrible for you. It’s been terrible for me, too. But you can’t avoid this forever.

“Who cares what everyone else says,” Mika cries, her body half rising from the seat. “It only matters what Sam would say.” “Sam is dead.”

“I know you don’t believe that,” Mika says. “Don’t tell me what I believe,” I say.

I try not to think about Mika and what I should have said differently, because it’s too late.

I don’t know where exactly I’m heading yet, but it doesn’t matter as long as I never have to come back to this place.

I understand you have to know the rules before you break them, but writing should bring you joy, right? I think teachers forget that.

I can’t get Sam out of my head, no matter how hard I try. He won’t be there when I open my acceptance letter. He’ll never know if I get in.

I’ll be honest. I used to be scared of leaving home. Now I can’t wait to move on and make new memories with you. Just don’t forget the ones we made here. Especially when you make it big. And whatever happens, promise you won’t forget me, okay?

My stomach sinks. It’s too late. Everything I had left of Sam is gone.

It wasn’t Sam who left me that night. It was me who abandoned him. The second I realize this, I’m back outside and running.

I take a few steps away from the gate, wondering why I came here. This was a terrible mistake. Sam isn’t there. I don’t want him to be.

Rainfall has softened the ground and filled it with puddles. As I’m running, I start imagining myself emerging into an alternate world where everything’s still okay, and wishing I could leap through time so I can go back and change everything. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to will time and space and undo the fabric that is twisting and pulling me apart.

I miss Sam. I miss the sound of his voice. I miss knowing he would always answer me if I called.

decide to go along with this, let his voice cover me like an umbrella, even though this can’t be real. I feel my mind slipping, and myself sinking deeper into the earth as I hang on to Sam’s voice like rope. Even though I don’t know where it’s coming from.

“Are you lost?” I think about this question. There are so many ways I could answer it. Instead, I close my eyes to shut out the rest of the world, focusing on Sam’s voice, trying to hold on to it for as long as I can.

“Wait!” My voice cracks. “Please don’t hang up!” I’m not ready to lose him again. “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “Get somewhere safe and call me back. As soon as you do, I’ll pick up. I promise.” He’s made promises before that he didn’t keep. I want to refuse but I can’t seem to speak. I wish I could keep him on the line forever.

“You called me, Julie. And I picked up. Like always.” It’s the same thing he said before. But it isn’t enough.

My head is pounding. I don’t know what to say, so all that comes out is a breathless, “I don’t understand what’s happening to me—” I am never like this, even when Sam died, I held myself together.

There’s a long silence before he finally answers this. He says, “I wanted to give us a chance to say good-bye.”

I stand there in silence beneath the light of the lamppost, as I hold on to Sam’s voice and tell myself everything is okay when I’m no longer sure what’s real and what isn’t anymore.

Before. What does he mean by that? There’s no going back there anymore.

After a moment, almost out of the blue, Sam says, “I’m sorry.” “For what?” I ask him. “For all of this.” At first, I still don’t know what he is apologizing for. But then I realize what he meant. At least, I think so. “Me, too,” I whisper.

He never kept that promise.

But there’s a weight at the table that keeps us quiet and somber.

The words are heavy in my throat. “You died, Sam … You know that, don’t you?” There’s a long silence before he answers. Sam lets out a breath. “Yeah I know … I’m still processing it.” A chill goes through me. A part of me wanted to hear a different answer. Something that could bring him back to me.

“It can’t be that simple, though—” I start. “But why can’t it be?” Sam asks me. “I know this doesn’t really make sense right now. But, maybe we don’t need to complicate it with questions we don’t know the answers to. Maybe we can just enjoy this chance for what it is. For as long as we have it.”

I just take this for whatever it is, and breathe in this impossibility of being reconnected to someone I thought I lost, no matter how ridiculous it seems.

The rest of our phone call goes on like a daydream, as I continue to question what is real and what isn’t. I’m wondering if any of it matters.

I don’t want to let him go.

How do you bridge grief and hopefulness, without having someone take it the wrong way? Without hinting at your secret?

He always loved having Sam around. Mr. Lee said he “brought in good luck.” “What did I bring in?” I once asked him. “You brought in Sam.”

Who knows … maybe if you change the medium in which you wrote, it might inspire something.”

“Use your time at the store. Talk with the books for inspiration. They’re full of ideas.”

Unlike my English teachers at school, Mr. Lee is well versed in the world of literature and always finds beauty in my words. He understands what it is I’m trying to say even when I’m not sure myself.

“I’m having trouble just thinking lately. I’m not sure what to write about anymore.” “What have you been thinking about?” he asks. I run my hand along the spine of the journal. “Everything, I guess. My life. What’s happening in it.” And Sa...

I write for myself.

“We have too many voices inside our heads. You have to pick out the ones that mean something to you. What story do you want to tell?”

“Because our connection is different,” he says. “And maybe I was waiting for your call. In a way.”

“Don’t worry. We would say good-bye first, okay? We’ll know when it’s going to happen before it does.” “You won’t just leave again?” “I promise, Julie. I’ll stay as long as I can.”

“I wish you were here with me,” I whisper. “I wish I were there, too.”

“I can’t stand it. No one even uses Facebook anymore, you know? I don’t remember the last time I wrote on someone’s wall. Suddenly, he’s dead, and it’s flooded? I read through them all. It’s like they’re not even writing to him. It’s like they’re writing to each other. Trying to see who can grieve the most, you know?”

“It’s not different if everyone’s doing it.”

“It really kills me, you know. That he never made it out of here. That this was it. That this line was as far as he got.”

As I listen to the song alone in my room, I suddenly realize I will never hear Sam sing it for me, and that “Someday” never came.