HOME | DD

Description
The winter sun is just visible, rising over Lake Michigan and casting brilliant rays of gold over the grey ice. Looking out of my apartment window, I can see the beach, sand buried under snow, just past Lakeshore Drive. Cars slosh by, slowed by the ice and the dirty, melting heaps of snow that had, for about five minutes around midnight, been pristine and untouched, having since fallen victim to snow plows and early morning commuters.

I am standing in the living room, watching the snow fall in flurries and cover the frozen world. In my hand I hold a small porcelain heart, hollow on the inside and with a thin gold-painted clasp which opens to house some small treasure---a trinket, a folded-up two dollar bill, coins or beads or buttons. A letter.

Seven years ago, I received a package in the mail. The box had been postmarked from Barcelona, and I knew it was from my cousin Dylan.  I wondered where Dylan would be by the time I opened the box, on Christmas Eve. Would he still be in Spain? Or would he have moved on, to Italy or China or Brazil?  He had become quite the vagabond, having begun his around the world travels after graduating from the University of San Diego with a business degree that had yet to do him any good. He was restless, he said. He wanted to see the world.

I had put the box under the small tree in the tiny living room of my apartment and waited. It was a tradition for me never, ever to open any gifts before 6 o’clock on Christmas Eve, even the one from Aunt Sally, which I knew, without doubt, would be a fruitcake that would inevitably get thrown out after sitting in the freezer for three months. It had been a struggle for me not to open Dylan’s package. I had not heard from my cousin in over three months, and it was not sitting well with me.

Before his decision to go on the great around the world trek, we had never gone so much as two days without calling each other. Having been an only child myself, he and his sister Marie were a brother and sister to me.  Painfully shy as a child, I did not make friends easily, but Dylan, with his infectious smile and his refreshing sense of humor and adventure, had been so easy to get along with. Growing up together, we had quickly become best friends. He and his family lived down the street from us, and Dylan and I had gone to school together from pre-school to high school.  In elementary school and middle school, we would skateboard down to the beach every day after school to go surfing or play volleyball. In high school, we studied together, having both chosen to take the advanced track, and wade through the ocean of homework assigned by our seemingly sadistic teachers. On the weekends, we used to go to the movies, usually just the two of us and sometimes Marie, and on occasion with a few friends from school, although I’d yet to make many real friends aside from Dylan. We spent so much time together, most people assumed we really were siblings, or something else, an idea which made me shudder. Our relationship had never been anything but platonic, and the very idea of anything more was partly amusing, but mostly just disturbing. Although Dylan was incredibly popular, it was a mark of his loyalty that he chose to spend so much time with me when he could have been partying with his friends or going out with any one of the dozens of girls who swooned whenever he passed. Sometimes, when I persuaded him, he’d take one of those girls to the movies instead of going with me, but he always complained afterwards, telling me how dull and superficial they were. I never knew if he meant it or just said it to make me feel better about not being one of the cheerleader types who everybody seemed to love so much, but I appreciated it either way.

When we graduated, he stayed in California for college, but I headed east, to New York University. We now lived across the country from each other, the farthest we’d ever been. Before college, we had never gone so much as a week without seeing each other, and that was only when Dylan’s parents sent him to an all-boys camp in Michigan, the summer going into eighth grade.  All throughout college, we kept in touch, instant messaging each other every night and calling three times a week.

I shouldn’t have been upset by the current prolonged silence. I was, but I shouldn’t have been. The world was calling to Dylan, and he was doing what he had always dreamed of doing. Carpe diem, he had always said. You’re only young once.

So, I waited until Christmas Eve to open his package.

That year, Christmas Eve saw a foot feet of snow, light and powdery, and a wind chill of -30°. I had all the heaters turned on to the max, and was wearing a thick wool sweater and two layers of socks, and my feet slid on the smooth wooden floor as I walked to the Christmas tree, glass of eggnog in hand.

It was hard, but I saved Dylan’s gift for last. Aunt Sally’s was first, and I unwrapped it to find, sure enough, a fruitcake.  Mom and dad were next, and I had chuckled when I discovered a thick cashmere sweater, and a note that said ‘Keep warm!’ My parents, born and raised in California, had never understood my desire to live in the Windy City.  Various other gifts from friends were hastily unwrapped and set aside, leaving piles of multi-colored wrapping paper and ribbons strewn across the floor. A novel from my friend Jane. Tickets to see Hamlet from Charlie, fellow intern and owner of the apartment above mine, who just so happened to be deadly handsome and conveniently single. Endearing, yes, but not exciting enough to overcome my eagerness to open Dylan’s package. Finally, only his package remained unwrapped under the small pine.

Feeling its weight in my hand, I smiled, and took a knife from the kitchen to slice off the scotch tape. I opened the cardboard flaps to pull out a brightly wrapped package, and searched for a note. Nothing. I had wanted nothing more than to hear Dylan’s words, to hear of his travels and, most importantly, to hear when he was coming home. Somewhat disappointed by the apparent lack of news, I set to work slowly and carefully peeled off the wrapping paper to discover the porcelain heart I held in my hand, seven years later, watching the snow fall. First, I stopped to admire the intricate inlay of a rose that was on the front, feeling its cold and grainy surface against my palm, and then, noticing its weight, found the clasp and opened it to reveal the wedge of paper. He had written, after all! Carefully, I pried the letter out. It had torn a little, and was slightly crumpled, but when I unfolded it, there were, folded up tightly inside, two entire pages, front and back, of notebook paper, crammed with my cousin’s small, cramped, chicken-scratch writing.

Dear Annie, he wrote.
     I am writing to you from Barcelona. My hotel looks over Las Ramblas,
and looking out my window, I can see all the vendors and street performers. It's so wicked awesome! I have to take you here sometime. You can put those four years of high school Spanish to use.
     Yesterday, I did some shopping in La Boqueria, a public market just off Las Ramblas.
They have the most exotic selection of sweets! And of course you know me and candy---my worst vice, mom always said..
     There was so much to choose from, it nearly drove me crazy! Then, of course, I passed the fruit stands and saw a Guava fruit smoothie---which I had to get. Remember the time Aunt Sally first brought home Guava juice? And they were selling star fruit, and I've always wondered just how that tasted, so I got some of that, too. I think I'm spending more money on food here than anything else…
      I also visited Gaudi's Cathedral----they've been building this thing for 100 years! You'd like it, being the big engineering geek and all. Even I can tell the architecture is pretty crazy neat.
     Then, Dylan went on to talk about his time in England, and how the Buckingham guards really never moved, even if you made fun of their ridiculous hats, and how the French really knew how to cook. He made fun of the oxymoronic signs in Turkey that advertised “Genuine Fake Rolexes.” Nostalgic, he told me of the market in Holland that sold the most beautiful figurines and statues he had ever seen, and how when he saw the little heart-box, decorated with roses, he just had to get it for me.  He praised the grandeur of the pyramids in Egypt and bragged about how much Arabic he had learned while in Cairo. For a moment, reading his letter, I envied him, wishing fervently that I had accepted his plea to come along, instead of taking up the engineering internship with a professor at Illinois Institute of Technology.

Then I reached the part that made me chew my lip and frown. “I will be coming home in September,” he wrote. “I’m stopping in Boston to see Marie, and then catching a flight back to LA. Hope to see you then!” That was another eight months! I set his letter down, frustrated, wondering what was so great about Barcelona.

On September 7th, he called. He was with his sister Marie in Boston, and would be catching a flight to Los Angeles sometime during the next week to see his parents. After that, he asked when I would be free, so he could come to Chicago and tell me everything, and do some much-needed catching up. We agreed on the fifteenth of September, and I hung up, feeling childishly excited.

I am still standing in my living room, still looking aimlessly out at the snow, the small heart pressed in my palms, stabbing my flesh with its pointed end. My eyes sting, and I clutch the heart tighter.

It was about ten o’clock on a relatively clear September day. I was working with Professor Nadeem in the office, and we were in the middle of a conversation about the aesthetic appeal of a new design we had come up with, when Paulie, the architect we were working with, came in to the office, ashen faced. Charlie, the co-worker from my apartment, was with us too, also working on Professor Nadeem’s team, and when he saw Paulie, he stood up hastily and crossed over to the young architect.

“Paulie? What’s the matter?” Charlie asked, eyeing the other man in concern. “Has something gone wrong?”

Wordlessly, Paulie walked over to the television set and switched it on. Fox News was on, reporting live from New York. When we saw the destroyed buildings in the background, the room went silent.

We watched in horror as they replayed scenes of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center in New York City, and then I choked, spraying coffee everywhere, as they announced which planes had been hijacked. The first had been American Airlines flight 11, flying from East Boston to Los Angeles. The second had been United Airlines flight 222, flying the same route, seventeen minutes later. The others barely glanced at me, but when I stood and excused myself, Professor Nadeem stopped me. “Annie? Do you know anyone in New York?” he guessed, evidently seeing my panic.

I shook my head, and then managed to say, “My cousin. He was flying to LA. From Boston.” The others looked stunned as I turned and left, fumbling for my cell phone. I dialed my aunt and uncle’s house, hand shaking.

“Hello?” A tearful sob broke the words on the end of the line. My worst fears, it had seemed, were already confirmed.

“Aunt May?” I questioned hesitantly.

Another broken sob, and then, “Oh, Annie….have you heard?”

My throat closed up as I nodded, then, remembering she couldn’t see me, replied, “Yeah…I. I heard. Was Dylan…was he on one of those planes?”

“Yes. The second. He…we haven’t heard…they think no one survived from the plane.”  There was a long pause. “We’ll call you if we hear anything else.”  I thanked her quietly and hung up, turning to go back to Nadeem’s office. Halfway there, I could contain my tears no longer, and had to duck into the women’s room. There, I leaned against the wall and let out a choked cry. I slid down to sit on the tiled floor, curling my legs up to my chest, my head buried in my arms, and sobbed, tears that wracked my body, muffled by my sleeves. I could feel the cold, smooth tile under my hands, its texture registering in some small section of my mind. What an obscure thing to remember, in the midst of all the chaos. Funny, what makes an impression on you at the time.

I can’t remember much of the rest of that day. I stayed in the bathroom for ten
minutes or so, bawling as the most insignificant details of my childhood with Dylan resurfaced. Then, I had struggled to my feet, dabbed my eyes with a wet paper towel, took a few deep breaths, burst into tears again, had to repeat the process, and then returned to Nadeem’s office, where the entire team had gathered around the small television set. Charlie had come over to me as I entered and wordlessly slipped his hand into mine, squeezing it comfortingly. Nadeem stood, and offered me his seat, and I collapsed into it, staring dumbly at the screen. No work would be done that day, we all knew, so we left early. Charlie and I went home together, and he seemed reluctant to leave my side, rightfully so, as in my dazed state I recall nearly getting run over as we made our way to the L.

The family gathered a week later in LA for a memorial service. I allowed myself to be comforted by my parents, had held hands with Marie as tears ran down both our faces, and then had gone back to my hotel and stared out dimly at the Los Angeles lights, my mind numb, feeling restless and empty and unable to sleep, but not wanting to sleep.

Seven years later, I still have not recovered. I am still working on Nadeem’s team, and still have the same apartment, same life, but after Dylan died, everything seems different. Now, Charlie and I are engaged, and excited though I am, I never thought that on my wedding day, Dylan would not be there. He would not see me as I walked down the aisle, never toast me at the reception. He would never be there to help raise kids, to be the jovial and easy-going nomad uncle. Every day, I think of him, in his tacky Hawaiian shirts and blond California surfer hair cut. I can picture him in Barcelona, gazing adoringly at stalls of brightly colored sweets in La Boqueria, his green eyes sparkling childishly.

Something stirs within me at this memory. This, I think, is the first time in seven years I have ever really remembered Dylan, remembered him with such clarity that I see him, standing right next to me, his face reflected next to mine in the tinted window of my apartment. “What are you doing?” his eyes seem to ask me. “Standing here, feeling sorry for yourself.” He shakes his head. “You’re pathetic!” the not-really-there Dylan exclaims. “You’re wallowing. It’s been seven years. You’re going to get married soon! You have a life, Annie! Live it.”

I know that Dylan is not really standing next to me. I know I was not just lectured to by a dead man. But I also know that if Dylan really were here now, that was exactly what he would have said. I feel guilty, for honoring Dylan’s memory so poorly by staying stuck in the past. Because that’s what I’d been doing. I had been stuck in the past, refusing to move on, unable to move on, without Dylan. I had forgotten to live my life. How disappointed Dylan would be with me if he could see me now!

That very day, I call a travel agency and book a one-way ticket to Spain, and then call Charlie and explain, as best I can. He says he understands, although I don’t think he does. He says he’ll miss me, and I know it’s true. I say I’ll miss him too, which is also true, but this is something I know I have to do, if I ever want to let go of the memories.

It is now New Year’s Eve. The day my flight leaves. Suitcases are piled into the back of a taxi that takes me to O’Hare airport. As the plane flies out of Chicago, taking me to adventure and excitement and away from the mundane, I smile, because I know this is what Dylan would have wanted.

I look one last time at the Windy City, seeing the John Hancock building and the Sears tower disappear into the sunset, and then take out a small smooth object from my pocket. It is the porcelain heart, with Dylan’s letter.

”Carpe diem,” I whisper to myself. “You’re only young once.”

Description
The winter sun is just visible, rising over Lake Michigan and casting brilliant rays of gold over the grey ice. Looking out of my apartment window, I can see the beach, sand buried under snow, just past Lakeshore Drive. Cars slosh by, slowed by the ice and the dirty, melting heaps of snow that had, for about five minutes around midnight, been pristine and untouched, having since fallen victim to snow plows and early morning commuters.

I am standing in the living room, watching the snow fall in flurries and cover the frozen world. In my hand I hold a small porcelain heart, hollow on the inside and with a thin gold-painted clasp which opens to house some small treasure---a trinket, a folded-up two dollar bill, coins or beads or buttons. A letter.

Seven years ago, I received a package in the mail. The box had been postmarked from Barcelona, and I knew it was from my cousin Dylan.  I wondered where Dylan would be by the time I opened the box, on Christmas Eve. Would he still be in Spain? Or would he have moved on, to Italy or China or Brazil?  He had become quite the vagabond, having begun his around the world travels after graduating from the University of San Diego with a business degree that had yet to do him any good. He was restless, he said. He wanted to see the world.

I had put the box under the small tree in the tiny living room of my apartment and waited. It was a tradition for me never, ever to open any gifts before 6 o’clock on Christmas Eve, even the one from Aunt Sally, which I knew, without doubt, would be a fruitcake that would inevitably get thrown out after sitting in the freezer for three months. It had been a struggle for me not to open Dylan’s package. I had not heard from my cousin in over three months, and it was not sitting well with me.

Before his decision to go on the great around the world trek, we had never gone so much as two days without calling each other. Having been an only child myself, he and his sister Marie were a brother and sister to me.  Painfully shy as a child, I did not make friends easily, but Dylan, with his infectious smile and his refreshing sense of humor and adventure, had been so easy to get along with. Growing up together, we had quickly become best friends. He and his family lived down the street from us, and Dylan and I had gone to school together from pre-school to high school.  In elementary school and middle school, we would skateboard down to the beach every day after school to go surfing or play volleyball. In high school, we studied together, having both chosen to take the advanced track, and wade through the ocean of homework assigned by our seemingly sadistic teachers. On the weekends, we used to go to the movies, usually just the two of us and sometimes Marie, and on occasion with a few friends from school, although I’d yet to make many real friends aside from Dylan. We spent so much time together, most people assumed we really were siblings, or something else, an idea which made me shudder. Our relationship had never been anything but platonic, and the very idea of anything more was partly amusing, but mostly just disturbing. Although Dylan was incredibly popular, it was a mark of his loyalty that he chose to spend so much time with me when he could have been partying with his friends or going out with any one of the dozens of girls who swooned whenever he passed. Sometimes, when I persuaded him, he’d take one of those girls to the movies instead of going with me, but he always complained afterwards, telling me how dull and superficial they were. I never knew if he meant it or just said it to make me feel better about not being one of the cheerleader types who everybody seemed to love so much, but I appreciated it either way.

When we graduated, he stayed in California for college, but I headed east, to New York University. We now lived across the country from each other, the farthest we’d ever been. Before college, we had never gone so much as a week without seeing each other, and that was only when Dylan’s parents sent him to an all-boys camp in Michigan, the summer going into eighth grade.  All throughout college, we kept in touch, instant messaging each other every night and calling three times a week.

I shouldn’t have been upset by the current prolonged silence. I was, but I shouldn’t have been. The world was calling to Dylan, and he was doing what he had always dreamed of doing. Carpe diem, he had always said. You’re only young once.

So, I waited until Christmas Eve to open his package.

That year, Christmas Eve saw a foot feet of snow, light and powdery, and a wind chill of -30°. I had all the heaters turned on to the max, and was wearing a thick wool sweater and two layers of socks, and my feet slid on the smooth wooden floor as I walked to the Christmas tree, glass of eggnog in hand.

It was hard, but I saved Dylan’s gift for last. Aunt Sally’s was first, and I unwrapped it to find, sure enough, a fruitcake.  Mom and dad were next, and I had chuckled when I discovered a thick cashmere sweater, and a note that said ‘Keep warm!’ My parents, born and raised in California, had never understood my desire to live in the Windy City.  Various other gifts from friends were hastily unwrapped and set aside, leaving piles of multi-colored wrapping paper and ribbons strewn across the floor. A novel from my friend Jane. Tickets to see Hamlet from Charlie, fellow intern and owner of the apartment above mine, who just so happened to be deadly handsome and conveniently single. Endearing, yes, but not exciting enough to overcome my eagerness to open Dylan’s package. Finally, only his package remained unwrapped under the small pine.

Feeling its weight in my hand, I smiled, and took a knife from the kitchen to slice off the scotch tape. I opened the cardboard flaps to pull out a brightly wrapped package, and searched for a note. Nothing. I had wanted nothing more than to hear Dylan’s words, to hear of his travels and, most importantly, to hear when he was coming home. Somewhat disappointed by the apparent lack of news, I set to work slowly and carefully peeled off the wrapping paper to discover the porcelain heart I held in my hand, seven years later, watching the snow fall. First, I stopped to admire the intricate inlay of a rose that was on the front, feeling its cold and grainy surface against my palm, and then, noticing its weight, found the clasp and opened it to reveal the wedge of paper. He had written, after all! Carefully, I pried the letter out. It had torn a little, and was slightly crumpled, but when I unfolded it, there were, folded up tightly inside, two entire pages, front and back, of notebook paper, crammed with my cousin’s small, cramped, chicken-scratch writing.

Dear Annie, he wrote.
     I am writing to you from Barcelona. My hotel looks over Las Ramblas,
and looking out my window, I can see all the vendors and street performers. It's so wicked awesome! I have to take you here sometime. You can put those four years of high school Spanish to use.
     Yesterday, I did some shopping in La Boqueria, a public market just off Las Ramblas.
They have the most exotic selection of sweets! And of course you know me and candy---my worst vice, mom always said..
     There was so much to choose from, it nearly drove me crazy! Then, of course, I passed the fruit stands and saw a Guava fruit smoothie---which I had to get. Remember the time Aunt Sally first brought home Guava juice? And they were selling star fruit, and I've always wondered just how that tasted, so I got some of that, too. I think I'm spending more money on food here than anything else…
      I also visited Gaudi's Cathedral----they've been building this thing for 100 years! You'd like it, being the big engineering geek and all. Even I can tell the architecture is pretty crazy neat.
     Then, Dylan went on to talk about his time in England, and how the Buckingham guards really never moved, even if you made fun of their ridiculous hats, and how the French really knew how to cook. He made fun of the oxymoronic signs in Turkey that advertised “Genuine Fake Rolexes.” Nostalgic, he told me of the market in Holland that sold the most beautiful figurines and statues he had ever seen, and how when he saw the little heart-box, decorated with roses, he just had to get it for me.  He praised the grandeur of the pyramids in Egypt and bragged about how much Arabic he had learned while in Cairo. For a moment, reading his letter, I envied him, wishing fervently that I had accepted his plea to come along, instead of taking up the engineering internship with a professor at Illinois Institute of Technology.

Then I reached the part that made me chew my lip and frown. “I will be coming home in September,” he wrote. “I’m stopping in Boston to see Marie, and then catching a flight back to LA. Hope to see you then!” That was another eight months! I set his letter down, frustrated, wondering what was so great about Barcelona.

On September 7th, he called. He was with his sister Marie in Boston, and would be catching a flight to Los Angeles sometime during the next week to see his parents. After that, he asked when I would be free, so he could come to Chicago and tell me everything, and do some much-needed catching up. We agreed on the fifteenth of September, and I hung up, feeling childishly excited.

I am still standing in my living room, still looking aimlessly out at the snow, the small heart pressed in my palms, stabbing my flesh with its pointed end. My eyes sting, and I clutch the heart tighter.

It was about ten o’clock on a relatively clear September day. I was working with Professor Nadeem in the office, and we were in the middle of a conversation about the aesthetic appeal of a new design we had come up with, when Paulie, the architect we were working with, came in to the office, ashen faced. Charlie, the co-worker from my apartment, was with us too, also working on Professor Nadeem’s team, and when he saw Paulie, he stood up hastily and crossed over to the young architect.

“Paulie? What’s the matter?” Charlie asked, eyeing the other man in concern. “Has something gone wrong?”

Wordlessly, Paulie walked over to the television set and switched it on. Fox News was on, reporting live from New York. When we saw the destroyed buildings in the background, the room went silent.

We watched in horror as they replayed scenes of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center in New York City, and then I choked, spraying coffee everywhere, as they announced which planes had been hijacked. The first had been American Airlines flight 11, flying from East Boston to Los Angeles. The second had been United Airlines flight 222, flying the same route, seventeen minutes later. The others barely glanced at me, but when I stood and excused myself, Professor Nadeem stopped me. “Annie? Do you know anyone in New York?” he guessed, evidently seeing my panic.

I shook my head, and then managed to say, “My cousin. He was flying to LA. From Boston.” The others looked stunned as I turned and left, fumbling for my cell phone. I dialed my aunt and uncle’s house, hand shaking.

“Hello?” A tearful sob broke the words on the end of the line. My worst fears, it had seemed, were already confirmed.

“Aunt May?” I questioned hesitantly.

Another broken sob, and then, “Oh, Annie….have you heard?”

My throat closed up as I nodded, then, remembering she couldn’t see me, replied, “Yeah…I. I heard. Was Dylan…was he on one of those planes?”

“Yes. The second. He…we haven’t heard…they think no one survived from the plane.”  There was a long pause. “We’ll call you if we hear anything else.”  I thanked her quietly and hung up, turning to go back to Nadeem’s office. Halfway there, I could contain my tears no longer, and had to duck into the women’s room. There, I leaned against the wall and let out a choked cry. I slid down to sit on the tiled floor, curling my legs up to my chest, my head buried in my arms, and sobbed, tears that wracked my body, muffled by my sleeves. I could feel the cold, smooth tile under my hands, its texture registering in some small section of my mind. What an obscure thing to remember, in the midst of all the chaos. Funny, what makes an impression on you at the time.

I can’t remember much of the rest of that day. I stayed in the bathroom for ten
minutes or so, bawling as the most insignificant details of my childhood with Dylan resurfaced. Then, I had struggled to my feet, dabbed my eyes with a wet paper towel, took a few deep breaths, burst into tears again, had to repeat the process, and then returned to Nadeem’s office, where the entire team had gathered around the small television set. Charlie had come over to me as I entered and wordlessly slipped his hand into mine, squeezing it comfortingly. Nadeem stood, and offered me his seat, and I collapsed into it, staring dumbly at the screen. No work would be done that day, we all knew, so we left early. Charlie and I went home together, and he seemed reluctant to leave my side, rightfully so, as in my dazed state I recall nearly getting run over as we made our way to the L.

The family gathered a week later in LA for a memorial service. I allowed myself to be comforted by my parents, had held hands with Marie as tears ran down both our faces, and then had gone back to my hotel and stared out dimly at the Los Angeles lights, my mind numb, feeling restless and empty and unable to sleep, but not wanting to sleep.

Seven years later, I still have not recovered. I am still working on Nadeem’s team, and still have the same apartment, same life, but after Dylan died, everything seems different. Now, Charlie and I are engaged, and excited though I am, I never thought that on my wedding day, Dylan would not be there. He would not see me as I walked down the aisle, never toast me at the reception. He would never be there to help raise kids, to be the jovial and easy-going nomad uncle. Every day, I think of him, in his tacky Hawaiian shirts and blond California surfer hair cut. I can picture him in Barcelona, gazing adoringly at stalls of brightly colored sweets in La Boqueria, his green eyes sparkling childishly.

Something stirs within me at this memory. This, I think, is the first time in seven years I have ever really remembered Dylan, remembered him with such clarity that I see him, standing right next to me, his face reflected next to mine in the tinted window of my apartment. “What are you doing?” his eyes seem to ask me. “Standing here, feeling sorry for yourself.” He shakes his head. “You’re pathetic!” the not-really-there Dylan exclaims. “You’re wallowing. It’s been seven years. You’re going to get married soon! You have a life, Annie! Live it.”

I know that Dylan is not really standing next to me. I know I was not just lectured to by a dead man. But I also know that if Dylan really were here now, that was exactly what he would have said. I feel guilty, for honoring Dylan’s memory so poorly by staying stuck in the past. Because that’s what I’d been doing. I had been stuck in the past, refusing to move on, unable to move on, without Dylan. I had forgotten to live my life. How disappointed Dylan would be with me if he could see me now!

That very day, I call a travel agency and book a one-way ticket to Spain, and then call Charlie and explain, as best I can. He says he understands, although I don’t think he does. He says he’ll miss me, and I know it’s true. I say I’ll miss him too, which is also true, but this is something I know I have to do, if I ever want to let go of the memories.

It is now New Year’s Eve. The day my flight leaves. Suitcases are piled into the back of a taxi that takes me to O’Hare airport. As the plane flies out of Chicago, taking me to adventure and excitement and away from the mundane, I smile, because I know this is what Dylan would have wanted.

I look one last time at the Windy City, seeing the John Hancock building and the Sears tower disappear into the sunset, and then take out a small smooth object from my pocket. It is the porcelain heart, with Dylan’s letter.

”Carpe diem,” I whisper to myself. “You’re only young once.”