Part One: A Picture’s Worth A Thousand Moments

Ally sat on her bed, looking dreamily out her window at the sunrise. Danny used to love the sunrise, she thought, before he died.

“Allyson! It’s time to leave, honey,” her mother called up the stairs. Ally pulled her coat over her black dress and took one last look at the sunrise. Her family was leaving early for the funeral so that they could help set up. Danny would have wanted an outdoor funeral. He always seemed so touched by nature. I wonder if he’ll be there with us today.

“Honey, this is Daniel Norman, our new neighbor. He’s 4 also,” Mrs. Crefice says to her hiding daughter, “Daniel, this is my daughter, Allyson.” His eyes meet hers, and he smiles, “Hi.”

“I like to be called Ally,” Allyson suddenly speaks up, stepping out from behind her mother. No one else ever called her Ally, and she had never asked anyone to before.

“Hi, Ally. Do you want help me make up a story?”

“About what?”

“Anything we want, silly. It’s our story.”

“Can it have a dragon in it?”

“Sure, if you want.”

And so it was. They passed years like that, meeting between their houses to put on plays, write stories, and make up odd games. They grew up together, and neither ever had a better friend.

            “So, are you going to the dance tonight?” Danny asks as they sit on the bench between their houses, the one they had built together years ago.

            “I have a dress, but I don’t want to go alone, so I’ll probably just stay home,” she replies, feeling truly sorry that the dress would have to sit in her closet for another occasion. It was periwinkle blue, and it matched Danny’s eyes perfectly.

            “Well, I don’t have anyone to go with, but I’m going.”

            “That’s different. You’re a boy, and you can ask any girl sitting down if she wants to dance. But if a girl goes alone, she’s taking the risk that no one will ask her and she’ll have a miserable time.”

            “But your friends will be there, right? Can’t you dance with them?”

            “They’ve all got dates, and they won’t want to dance with me. Besides, I don’t want to feel like the odd one out.”

            “Don’t you always? You’re friends have always had dates when you go places with them.”

            “But this is different. It’s more important.”

            “Then come with me.”

            “What?!”

            “Just as friends! Come on, Ally, we’ve known each other forever! You’d have someone to dance with, and we’d both get to go.”

            “I don’t know...aren’t you worried about what people will say?”

            “What do you mean, ‘what people will say’?”

            “Well, the entire class is just holding their breath for us to date.”

            “But that would be so weird!” They say in unison, a little too loudly.

            “Well, alright, I guess I’ll go. Let me go get changed, and I’ll meet you back here in half an hour.”

            They arrive at the dance just in time for the first song, but neither of them really feels like dancing.

            She looks so beautiful tonight, Danny thinks to himself as he leads her to the photographer.

Danny and Ally sit on a blanket on the beach, watching the sunrise up over the water. It was one of those clichéd things that Danny had always wanted to do. A moment later, Danny takes her hand, looks into her eyes, and pulls a box out of the bottom of the picnic basket. She couldn’t help a little cry of “oh!” as she held back tears.

“Ally, you mean the world to me. You always have, and you always will. And as forever is allotted to us, I want to be with you forever. Will you marry me?”

Finally the tears came, tears of joy in the early morning of September 3^rd, 2003. She didn’t have to say anything, because the kiss she gave him said more than everything.

Danny lays on his hospital bed, conscious but weak. It has been that way for two months now. The bandages that cover where his periwinkle eyes used to be cannot guard against the cancer that has spread to his brain. The doctors gave him less than a month when it was first discovered that the surgery had not worked, but he always prayed that he would live until his wedding day, even if he could not see how beautiful Ally would look in her dress. 

She hugs him and holds him close, and they both know that it’s the last time she ever will. She leans close to his ear and whispers, “I will always love you.” His smile lights up her world in a moment that seems to last forever. The monitor flat lines and she knows that he is gone forever.  And yet, she feels that he is closer to her than physical touch could ever allow. 

**************************************************************    

Ally walks home in the drizzling rain after the funeral, thinking about how much Danny influenced her life. Not just that she had loved him, but that he had shown her what love really meant. Every moment she had spent with him had seemed to last longer than a moment, and every smile seemed to make the moment longer.

Maybe, it’s not how long our time is, but what we do with it that is so memorable, she thinks as she takes a turn down the street that will lead her to the beach they watched the sunrise from, not so very long ago.

Maybe it’s just that the people with the biggest hearts have the longest moments...that a moment is only as long as you can make it feel, and you can make it feel that much longer when you never want it to end...because you love someone.

She sits on the beach thinking all evening, and watches the sunset on the day just as it had set on her precious little time with Danny. And she sits there thinking all night, staring out at the ever changing waves until morning, thinking that some things will never change. As the sun comes up over the water, she whispers, “My love for you will last forever Danny, longer than forever is allotted to us.”

Part Two: Time Cannot Erase

I watch my life flash before my eyes. Everything I took for granted, even the love I had for her...now it feels like my time was too short. All the time we spent together, all the times her smile lit up my world: now they’re just memories from a past life. Sixteen years...sixteen years worth of smiles and love...gone forever except here, in this limbo of my soul.

            “Go and meet our neighbors, sweetie,” my mom smiles at me. We’re at our first block party in the new town. Our next-door neighbors have a daughter my age, with a smile like the sun even as she hides shyly behind her mother. I walk over shyly, sure that it could not end well. Who would want to play with a girl?

            “Honey, this is Daniel Norman, our new neighbor. He’s four also,” Mrs. Crefice says to her daughter. “Daniel, this is Allyson.”

            “Hi,” I say with a small smile, my eyes meeting hers. Suddenly, she steps out from behind her mother and smiles even wider.

            “I like to be called Ally,” she proclaims. I am the only person she has ever asked to call her Ally.

            “You two play nicely,” Mrs. Crefice says with a smile, then stalks off to speak to my mother.

“Hi, Ally. Do you want help me make up a story?” I say with another tentative smile, my eyes never leaving hers.

“About what?”

“Anything we want, silly. It’s our story.”

“Can it have a dragon in it?”

“Sure, if you want.”

            So I lead her over to the porch swing, where we sit down and spend the next hour or so making up a wonderful story about a dragon, a princess, and a mysterious future-telling monkey. Mrs. Crefice came to get her to go home, but we agreed to make up more stories the next day. She wanted to put all of them down in a book. I just wanted to see her again.

We were always there for each other after that. Years passed, and we both grew up. We shared each others fears and worries, and parental problems. I was the first shoulder she cried on when her long-time crush turned her down viciously in front of all his friends.

            “I told you, I don’t like you. I only like the cheerleaders. Bookworms like you couldn’t ever stand a chance. I can’t believe you’d have the stupidity to think you would. I can’t believe you’re not quite nerdy enough to have figured that out,” Steve Grashel spats, to the roaring laughter of the entire middle-school soccer team. To a seventh-grader, that’s pretty hurtful.

            Tears well up in Ally’s eyes, and she turns to run. I catch her and hold her as she tries to flee; guiding her down the hallway to the bathroom, where I wait outside while she dries her tears and cleans up.  When she comes back, we walk to the courtyard, where we stayed the next two classes. She cried a bit more, leaning on my shoulder and asking me why boys don’t like her. I patted her back and tried not to cry with her.

            “You have no idea how wrong you are, Ally,” I say quietly. I pull her a little closer and wipe tears off her face.

            “What do you mean? No boys like me at all!” she sobs, defeating the purpose of my drying her tears in the first place. Oh, well, I think, but I don’t see why he’s worth her tears in the first place.

            “Nothing,” I say quickly, having just registered that she had spoken. “Just that somewhere out there is a guy who loves you more than you can imagine.”

            “But this isn’t a fairy tale, Danny. We’re past that age. Why can’t you understand that life doesn’t work out the way it does in our stories?”

            “Because, Ally, sometimes it does.”

            She recovered from that particular heartbreak, and I swore that there would never be another. But I couldn’t protect her from myself. If my soul could cry, I would be crying a river for her. 

            It wasn’t until our freshman year of high school that she realized what I had meant that day. But unfortunately, we were both right. Even our fairy tale didn’t work out the way we had expected it to. Obviously. But, as most things in life, it was good while it lasted. No...better than that.   

“So, are you going to the dance tonight?” I ask as we sit on the bench between our houses, the one we built years ago, to sit on while we made up stories; the porch swing was just too small to hold them all.

            “I have a dress, but I don’t want to go alone, so I’ll probably just stay home,” she replies, and I can tell that she is truly sorry. She had shown me the dress, saying that her mother had commented that it matched my own periwinkle eyes perfectly; yet another in a string of hints that had been dropped often in the last few months. I though she would be absolutely beautiful in it.

            “Well, I don’t have anyone to go with, but I’m going.”

            “That’s different. You’re a boy, and you can ask any girl sitting down if she wants to dance. But if a girl goes alone, she’s taking the risk that no one will ask her and she’ll have a miserable time.”

            “But your friends will be there, right? Can’t you dance with them?”

            “They’ve all got dates, and they won’t want to dance with me. Besides, I don’t want to feel like the odd one out.”

            “Don’t you always? You’re friends have always had dates when you places with them.” Except me, I think, I’ve always been waiting for you.

            “But this is different. It’s more important.”

            “Then come with me.”

            “What?!”

            “Just as friends! Come on, Ally, we’ve known each other forever! You’d have someone to dance with, and we’d both get to go.”

            “I don’t know...aren’t you worried about what people will say?”

            “What do you mean, ‘what people will say’?”

            “Well, the entire class is just holding their breath for us to date.”

            “But that would be so weird!” We say in unison, a little too loudly. Weird only in theory, I think, even though I couldn’t care less what people thought when it came to my feelings about Ally. Except her, I think, what she thinks matter more than anything.

            “Well, alright, I guess I’ll go. Let me go get changed, and I’ll meet you back here in half an hour.”

            We arrive at the dance just in time for the first song, but it’s not a song that either of us knows or remotely likes, let alone feels like dancing to.

            She looks so beautiful tonight, I think to myself as I lead her to the photographer, just as I knew she would.

            She had become my whole world over the years. Ally, my other half. Ally, someone I could always turn to, no matter what. And I never wanted that to change.

            Six years after that night, we were still together. We had known each other all our lives, there were no secrets to prevent trust between us. It also helped that we had the same goals and dreams, that our lives were moving in the same direction. But what she knew but went without saying is that I would have given up a million of my dreams just to be with her when she accomplished hers. For to be happy, I would have given up the world.

I sit with her on a blanket on the beach, watching the sunrise up over the water. It was one of those clichéd things that I had always wanted to do. A moment later, I take her hand, look into her eyes, and pull a box out of the bottom of the picnic basket. She couldn’t help a little cry of “oh!” and recognize her expression as she holds back tears. I pray with all my soul that they are tears of happiness.

“Ally, you mean the world to me. You always have, and you always will. And as forever is allotted to us, I want to be with you forever. Will you marry me?”

Finally her tears came, tears of joy in the early morning of September 3^rd, 2003. She didn’t have to say anything, because the kiss she gave me said more than everything.

            A month later, I passed out in the hallway to our apartment, and the doctors caught the cancer that had finally showed its face. They said it was eye cancer, and so I had surgery to take out my eyes. I learned to feel where everything was, to hear things to know where they were. My other senses became so finely tuned that it was almost like I had never lost my eyes. I learned to hear it in Ally’s voice when she smiled, and when she was sad.

            Another few weeks went by without incident, until I began forgetting things and passing out at odd times, for only a second or two. Finally I had to be readmitted to the hospital when I again passed out in the hallway, on my way to work.

            The doctors said the cancer had spread along my optic nerve to my brain, and they struggled to tell me I only had a few more months left in that life. I remember Ally crying buckets when we told her. No matter how long I held her, I knew that I had not done enough to save her from heartbreak. Her heart was breaking even as I held her.

            We were never to be married. If I had lived but a month longer, we might have been. I was never afraid for myself of my dying. I was afraid for Ally; especially on my last day.

I lay on my hospital bed, conscious but weak. It has been that way for two months now. The bandages that cover where my periwinkle eyes used to be cannot guard against the cancer that has spread to my brain. The doctors gave me less than a year when it was first discovered that the surgery had not worked, but we always prayed that I would live until our wedding day, even if I could not see how beautiful Ally would look in her dress. 

She hugs me and holds me close, and we both know that it’s the last time she ever will. She leans close to my ear and whispers those words from years ago, which would always echo through my soul, “I will always love you.” The smile in her voice lights up my world in a moment that seems to last forever. The monitor flat lines and she knows that I am gone forever.  And yet, she seems to know that I am closer to her than physical touch could ever allow. And I always will be. 

            And that’s where it ends. I hope that eventually she will find someone again. Even if I cannot be with her, I want her to be happy. It was all I ever lived for, and it was something I would have died for. I feel as if I have been taken before my time, but she will heal. Time can heal all wounds, but it cannot erase memories. No, I think, they will always be there. Time cannot erase...

            And with that last thought, I move forward into the light that is my next life. Please, let me find her and love her again. I have to, I pray, we are soul mates, intertwined forever.  

Part Three: Things Left Unsaid

            Less than a week ago, the only woman I ever loved disappeared forever. She, in turn, lost the only man she ever loved two months ago, and I grieved the loss of my best friend right along with her.

            After a while, I thought things would get better. I thought she would find a way to be her usual, strong self. I thought the Ally I knew and loved would be back.

            Well, now all I have are the pictures at her viewing…pictures of Allyson Crefice, Daniel Norman, and me….me and all the things I left unsaid for far too long.

            The first picture on the table was taken on the front porch swing of Ally’s house, when we were twelve. We spent so much time on that swing, making up fantastical worlds and beings.

“Mom, I’m going to meet our neighbors!” I yell up the stairs on the day the moving van occupied our new driveway (flat enough to skate on!).

            “Well, take a plate of cookies with you,” she says down to me. Mom’s really into the “welcome to the neighborhood” type of thing. Except it’s our new neighborhood. WE’RE the new neighbors.

            Jeez, she’s such a nut. Would it kill her to be less crazy? I think to myself as I load up a plate of chocolate chip cookies and Oreos and make my way out the open front door onto the lawn.

            I look around and decide that the house to our left looks a promising place to start. I ring the doorbell (which rings Beethoven’s Fur Elise), and peer in the small window.

              As someone clamors down the staircase, I dart away – mom always says it’s rude to peer in when waiting – and wait for them to answer. A second later, the most beautiful girl I have ever seen pulls the door open, takes the cookies, and ushers me inside.

            “Wait – wha - “I stammer as she pushes me towards the kitchen. This girl doesn’t know me! This is what mom would call “rude.”

            On second thought, I think, mom would probably enjoy this, nutty as she is.

            “My name is William,” I finally manage to get out as she comes to a stop and puts the cookies on the table.

            “I know. My name is Allyson.”

            Ally, I think, is a much better name for you.

            Aloud I simply say, “How do you know me? I only just moved in. As in – TODAY”

            “Danny and I have been spying. He lives next door, to the left. We were just trying to decide how to fit you into the story when you came over.”

            “Story?’

            “We write stories all the time! About magical worlds, creatures, fantastic events…everything! We have been since I moved here eight years ago. Would you like to join us?”

            “Sure! Can we take the cookies with us though?”

            Danny turned out to be my polar opposite, and everything I would’ve wanted in a brother. The only thing we had in common was Ally.

“So, you’re actually going to the dance this time?” I ask Ally as I stand outside her bedroom, waiting for her to change. Downstairs, Danny is getting dressed up in the office. I am the only one who managed to be on time…

            “Yeah. I didn’t think I would. You and Danny always have had dates, and I never do.”

            “I guess it’s because you’re waiting for us to confess our love to you and take you ourselves.”

            “Two guys…I’d sure be confident then! No, Danny is taking me.”

            “Oh.”

            I’ve loved Ally practically since I met her. But Danny has known her way longer, and I’ve known for quite some time that he was in love with her. But I always secretly hoped that she would pick me anyway.

            “Now don’t laugh…I’m coming out.” She steps out of her room without a spot of makeup on like all the other girls, but looking more beautiful than any angel I have ever imagined. Periwinkle blue…it’s been my favorite color ever since.

            And it matches Danny’s eyes perfectly, I sigh to myself as I imagine them dancing close.

                                                            *          *          *

            After Danny and Allyson had their picture taken, we got a table so we could rest and eat a while. I don’t have a date…I could only think of one person I would want to dance with…maybe two. My two best friends.

            Who are sitting oddly close and whispering what sounds like sweet nothings, I think as they lean their heads together.

            “Let’s take a picture,” I suddenly say, not wanting to see what was in front of me. I asked a neighboring sophomore to take our picture for us, and we leaned into Ally and smiled wide. A split second later, she leaned toward me and whispered a sentence I never forgot my whole life.

            “I love YOU too, you know.”

It’s almost funny, I think, that she’s closer to me in this picture than she is to Danny. Much closer.

The phone rings at eleven at night, and I’m just getting into bed.

“Hello?”

“Hey! It’s me! Want some great news, or do you want to head back to la-la land?” Ally practically screams at me. She never really understood that cell phones CAN work just fine...sometimes.

“What’s the news?” I reply groggily...she could’ve picked a better time to tell me something.

Then again, I think, it IS great to hear her voice before I go to sleep.

“Danny PROPOSED!!!”

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!

“Will? You still there, hon?”

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!

“Yeah, Allyson. I’m here. When did all this happen?”

“About ten minutes ago. Hey, I have to go so I can call some other people. But Will?”

“Yeah, Allyson?”

“I love YOU too, you know.”

Click.

And as my heart was breaking, I fell asleep repeating her words to myself.

That night I had dreamed that I was the one whom Ally was marrying.

Ally leans over Danny’s bed as they talk quietly. After a long surgery to remove his eyes – Ally’s favorite part of him – the cancer is back. It’s spread to his brain, and he’s been in this bed for two months. Across the room, I work on my laptop. I don’t want to have to go the office and miss anything. Not a moment of my friends’ fleeing life.

Suddenly, Ally cries out, and the monitor above the bed beeps loud and clear. I look up, and all I see is a flat line. A doctor tries to usher Ally out, but she runs to me and hugs me hard, burying her face in my shoulder.

“Allyson, maybe we should go and call our families. They should be here before they do anything with the...with him.”

“I loved him.”

“I know. I know you did. We all did.”

“He loved me too.”

“Very much. But we really need to go.”

“Ok,” she says, wiping her eyes, “But Will?”

“Yes, Allyson?”

“I love YOU too, you know.”

And as our hearts were breaking, we called all of our families, and waited.

“Allyson, seriously. It’s going to be ok,” I say to her over the phone. Two months after Danny’s funeral, she had sunken into a deep depression, and now it is worse than ever.

“I can’t live without him, Will. I just can’t,” she whispers through her tears.

“Allyson, wait. I’ll be there soon. I’m on my way. Promise me that you’ll be okay until I get there!” I’m frantic, getting my coat and not even bothering with shoes. I have to stop her before she does something rash.

You can’t live without him, I think, but I can’t live without you.

“Goodbye, Will. I love YOU too.”

And then I hear it. The one sound I swear I will never forget my whole life. A gunshot that I could swear to you I hear in my heart and not my ears. And she was gone.

“Are you alright, son?” the minister asks me as I make my way past the pictures and too my seat.

I don’t answer him. I don’t know how too. I can live for sure, but I can’t help but wonder if I shouldn’t have left anything unsaid. Ally spent our whole friendship telling me she loved me too, and I never said I loved her back. I never told her that I wanted to be with her; never said how much I loved her; never said she was my whole world. No...instead I let her and Danny be together, and that was fine. But she should’ve known.

As it turns out, nothing goes without saying, and I can’t unlove her. 

AS I look up at the sky, cloudless and periwinkle blue, I swear that I hear it echo:

“I love YOU too, you know.”

 Once upon a time...end of story

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A dusty photo album, covered under ten years of others from summers and Christmases gone past – and one not-so-dusty one for a wedding. Surprisingly, if one bothered to take a look at the two together, side by side, they might find that these two  photo albums have almost everything in common.

*           *           *

After catching the cat and a million sneezes later, I was staring at an old and blue-faded-to-grey photo album; one that, if I recall correctly, was bought for me by a rather special person, a person who is only now vaguely in my life.

The very first picture is of myself and this person, under a pavilion after a long battle.

*           *           *

“Hey Aidith, you were getting in some pretty good hits out there today. You sure you don’t want to join with us instead of Sparta?”

“I’m sure Deviant. I can’t pass up the chance to be the only female Spartan in the history of the group. You can always come along you know.”

Yeah and hell can freeze over, he thought to himself as he watched her rehydrate and rest. She really was a great fighter these days – a fighter when she was mad. Passionate. That’s what he loved about her. And what he hated….

What he hated was that he couldn’t have her.

“She has a boyfriend already!” he almost yelled aloud to himself frustradedly.  She did have a boyfriend – a college boyfriend living far enough away to be missed and close enough to be on her mind often enough to keep him off of it. So he thought.

*           *           *

“However,” I say to the cat, who has managed to wander back in and poke her nose into my long buried past, “a bottle of tequila and some mai-tai can put anyone on anyone’s mind.” The picture had been snapped as we danced together to the hand drums. I loved to dance – especially when I’m drunk and don’t have the mental capacity to be embarrassed.

The next page is packed with movie ticket stubs and poems – poems torn out of a journal of them that I used to keep many moons ago. A journal that eventually became a way to pass messages romanticized by rhyme. A small strip of pictures from when we went into one of those idiotic picture booths at the mall is the only real color on the page.

*           *           *

“You know, you haven’t even come close to physical contact with me since the campout. A hug here and there, sure, but even at practice you avoid touching me like the plague.”

“Um…yeah. I know,” she replied in an embarrassed and awkward whisper. It just isn’t as easy as it might sound, she thinks to herself, to make the decision to give up someone you love for someone you think you might love. It can tear you apart…especially if you get physical contact and hormones involved.

“Well, on just this one occasion…can I kiss you?”

After that, there wasn’t any need for an answer. She’d never been the type who was able to hide how she felt and who she was. Her eyes always did give it away.

                *           *           *

“He timed it just right,” I tell the cat as she snuggles in like she always does when I start talking to myself. It’s almost as if she expects a story out of it. “He always did have good timing. He kissed me just as the thing took the picture. I never could show these to anyone else though. Not after that summer.”

I continue to flip through the pages, glancing here and there at pictures of battles and campouts – pictures of a marshmallow fight, pictures of many hugs, many dances, a few random hanging out sessions, and a birthday.

                *           *           *

“Happy birthday, Elizabeth,” he said with a kiss on her forehead.

“Please don’t call me that…you know I prefer Liz. Or Aidith – everyone remembers me better as Aidith,” she replied awkwardly. Of course, she did see his answer before he said it. He always did like her name more than she did.

“Because nineteen years ago today, almost to the minute, it’s the name your parents decided to give you. It’s who you are,” he sighed, predictably.

And then, at exactly 3:32 A.M., he kissed her like he hadn’t before. And this time he didn’t bother asking permission.

                *           *           *

“That was a bittersweet night,” I say aloud, to apparently absolutely no one, since the cat has once again disappeared in the middle of a story that she wanted to hear.

A bittersweet night…the last time I saw him that summer. And the last time I saw him outside of battles for the rest of my life. I had – we had – one summer. One perfect and yet completely imperfect summer. A summer that, at its end, saw me back to school and back to my boyfriend. And a summer that saw him back into the rest of his life, before I ever came in and made it complicated. That last kiss…the only thing I have to compare it to is the kiss I shared on my wedding day.

                *           *           *

That summer, at 3:32 A.M on August the twenty-second, a man looks up at the waning moon. Across the world, an archaeologist looks up at the same moon, and for a moment, feels like she’s not alone. Because somewhere, across continents and oceans, is a man who she shared the best kiss of her life with…once upon a time.

Once upon a time, end of story. The middle – the blank part – it’s all just possibility.