The alleyway was dark. I sat on its dusty sidewalk in my baggy jeans, with dirt infiltrating the space between my fingernails as I gripped the edge of the cement. I had been sitting for hours that I had lost track of and the moon glinted bright white under the darkening purple-black sky. I breathed in another puff of cigarette smoke and the smell of tobacco swirled around my head in wisps of ashen clouds. As I looked upward with my head on my knees, I breathed a sigh. I was finally alone. Away from the head-banging nauseating cacophony that was my household I finally found myself in what some may judge to be a pathetic semblance of peace. Away in this dark corner, finally away from the grip of the world’s chaos, I had found a temporary respite of nirvana. WIth the burning cigarette between my fingertips and the sound of the city around me muffled by the walls of mossy bricks, this was my solace. I hummed a tune to myself. The damp air of the alley made my voice carry in ringing notes that I relaxed into. I did not want to leave. I had no intention of such. I leaned against the wall behind me and closed my eyes. I let the bare sound of the city wrap around my head and settled into my position. Minutes passed by but they felt much longer. I was close to falling asleep when a sudden noise startled me. The sound of a notebook opening quietly, the pages rustling and waiting to be ruined.
I opened my eyes. There in front of me sat a girl. Her eyes were hidden behind round cookie-like eyeglasses that rested on top of a freckled nose. Her makeup was heavy and dark and beneath the dark shadows of layers on her face I could make out an expression of worry and anger. She wore a knitted sweatshirt over jeans that almost surpassed mine in how ill-fitting they were. She sat on the sidewalk opposite to mine in my alleyway and held my gaze with almost piercing ferocity. She didn’t say a word. Instead she pulled out a pencil from the depths of her jeans pocket and began to sketch. From the way she looked up and then at the book I had more than a strong inkling that she was drawing me. I subconsciously shifted, turning my face slightly away from her to ensure she was at least drawing my good angle. I stared at the wall near the dead-end of the alleyway, keeping absolutely still as to not ruin her portrait study. After pausing to look back at her, she was gone. I hid my surprise and got up to the place where she sat. In her place was a sketch of me illuminated by the fluorescent yellow of the only streetlight above me. I sat a marble statue and in her deft hands I watched myself a charcoal figure in the smudged page I held. I folded the page and placed the same gingerly into my pocket. I walked back home, wondering if I would see her the next day. Hoping she would draw me staring off into the alleyway, muse as she dreamed of.
The next day I sat quietly in my alleyway. THe sun had begun to set, casting bruise colored shadows over the sidewalk. I pulled out my sketchbook. With my oil pastels I blurred the inky colors of the sky onto my white page, careful to not lift my head up from the drawing. I let it carry me away. When I was done with the hued mess of color over my page I lifted my eyes to see the same girl staring back at me. A different colored sweatshirt, but heavy black makeup nonetheless that barely masked the spatter of freckles under her glasses. She had her sketchbook in her lap. She was staring at me intently and I matched her gaze with what I felt was matched intensity. I wanted to introduce myself, to say hello. But I was stuck, quiet and reserved in my own world and she in hers. I could feel a wall between the two of us asking me to shatter it with a nod of acknowledgement. Yet I sat worthless and astounded by the way her hands moved across the page even in the dark of the night. I watched her watching me for what seemed like hours. Each minute I sat I felt myself moving closer past the impenetrable wall of imaginary glass that stood between us. FInally she cleared her throat. She got up, dusting her baggy jeans and walked over to my side of the alleyway. She paused before me, tilting her head to look at me in a quizzical way. She held out the page that she had drawn me on and I felt the wall between us break into a million pieces. I sat blurred and chalky on her page, a figure amidst the flowing light of the only streetlight in her charcoal rendition. “I’m June.” she said quietly.
“I’m Sage” I replied.
She nodded her head, turned on her heel and left.
June and I saw each other every evening following that. There was a mutual understanding between the two of us to always be there at dusk at the alleyway, drawing supplies at the ready. For an eternity we would draw the world around us. She would always draw me. And I would always draw everything but her. No matter what angle I held my pencil, no matter how many colors I threw onto the page I knew that there was absolutely no world in which I could capture the way she looked in the evening light. So I decided not to. But June would capture me in a few short strokes, smudged charcoal and lines making up the positions I lay sprawled on the sidewalk across from her. It took us a week of our silent drawing before either of us decided to say another word to each other. June stopped drawing and upon hearing the pause in her movement I looked up.
“How long have you been drawing?” she asked me. I looked at her, noticing that my heart was suddenly hammering in my chest and that my throat had dried. I looked down again, not trusting myself to make eye contact
“Uh, since I was a kid. Basically since I was – um – I think six.” I looked back at her and she stared at me through her glasses. I wanted to continue the conversation. “What about you?” I questioned nervously.
June laughed. “Six months ago. It’s a new skill. I’m trying it out. I always loved art but I had never really tried it for myself. Finally decided it was time to.” She grinned at me and I returned a small smile back. She stood up and walked over to my side of the alleyway and sat by my side. My breathing quickened. She leaned towards me. “Life is too short to not try things you always wanted to.” she whispered.
“Why do you say that?” I asked. She smiled at me
“That’s a story for tomorrow. Bye Sage.” Getting up, she let the drawing she drew of me flutter into my lap. She had added lines of yellow and white pastel around my feet. I looked like I was floating in the clouds. When I looked at her to tell her I liked it, she was gone.
The next day June was late. When she arrived, I stared at her expectantly as she sauntered over to my side of the alleyway. As she sat next to me I said quickly. “You said you were gonna tell me something today.” She laughed.
“And I will. But give it time. Can’t expect me to tell you my life’s story within our first conversation can you?”
“I guess not.” I replied. She laughed again.
“You seem disappointed. I’ll tell you the main details if that would make you happy. My name is June, but you knew that already. I am 16 years old. I’m homeschooled. I like art, reading and watching the sunset. Good enough an introduction?” I stared at her agape while she giggled. She was always laughing, and I liked it.
“It’s your turn” she encouraged
“Right.” I started. “Well, um, I’m Sage. I’m also 16 and I go to a trashy public school down Sixth Main. I like art and being alone.” I stopped.
“That’s it?” she asked
“Pretty much.” She laughed again.
“Well, Sage. It’s very nice to meet you. You said you liked art and being alone, yeah? How come you come to draw with me everyday then?”
“You draw me. It’s hard not to like you. You feed into my narcissistic tendencies.” She giggled again.
“Pleased I can be of assistance.” She teased.
I smiled at her. She smiled at me. “Why do you like art, Sage?” she suddenly asked me. I was taken aback but responded quietly under my breath as soon as I realized. “I like art because it makes you realize that the world isn’t so complicated. When you can draw the depths of the world with brustrokes it kinda makes you realize that we live in a simple world really. A simple, beautiful world. Which, um, I think is – really cool.”
June tilted her head at me again. She seemed to mull over my answer before she responded to my answer. “I like that.” she mumbled. “I like that a lot.”
“What about you, June? Why do you like art?”
“I like art because you get to say something. And no one has to really know what you were trying to say but everyone knows that something was important. And – I don’t know. I guess I like the idea of being able to leave something important to say to the rest of the world in whatever way you can.”
I smiled softly at her. “I like that too. But, you sound like an old man when you phrase it like that.”
She cackled at me and then said. “You have no idea Sage. It’s so important to know how to speak to the rest of the world without saying a thing. And you can do that with art. Forever.”
She left after that, leaving a charcoal sketch of my side profile. I barely even saw her draw while we spoke. Today I was surrounded by cross-hatching that seemed to make me lift out of the paper. I placed the drawing in my pocket and walked back home in the night air.
The next day June was sitting there before I was. I looked at her in surprise as she motioned me over to come sit next to her. Obliging, I took a seat to find her twiddling a charcoal stump between her fingers over a blank page. “Hi Sage” she said to me softly.
“Hi June.” I replied.
“I wanna play a game.” She said lightly. “We have to ask each other questions. I’m tired of sitting here and watching you draw when we could be talking of fantasy worlds of our wildest dreams.”
So we played her question game. She asked me about my family. I told her I live in a family of four. And that my household was so mind-spittingly agonizing that my only respite was drawing with her. I then asked her what her family was like. She told me about how her dad left a few years ago so now it was just her and her mom. Then she asked me about why I liked being alone. I told her it was because it let me figure out the world without judgment. Then I asked her why she didn’t like being alone. She told me it was because she loved love. And she loved feeling loved. Then she asked me if I had ever been in love. I said no. I asked her the same. She shook her head. On and on our game went and we talked about everything in God’s abode and creation. We discussed our fears, our favorite food, our plans for the future. We talked about the sun and the stars and the beach and the forest. We talked about art and its meaning to us. We talked about how much we hated sports. She would ask me a deeply probing question and I would ask her the same because I never had any interesting ones. Not like hers.Not like her mind-altering, soul-baring inquiries that stripped me raw before her. Where there was once a glass wall between us now we stood bare and vulnerable to each other’s whims. It was terrifying, but it was beautiful. I never wanted this conversation to end. I wanted to shatter the glass wall once and for all.
“Can I ask you something?”
“That’s the point of the game.”
“Yesterday when you said that art could speak to the rest of the world, you said that it could do that forever. And then the other day you said that life is too short to not try things. You keep bringing up life. Forevermore. Lasting, philosophy. All of that stuff. Why?” I asked
June sighed.”I think it’s time I told you then.” I looked at her in her amber eyes and I could see them fluttering shut like she was floating to a distant fantasy, a new dream. When she finally opened her eyes, they were brimming with tears and she looked as if she held Pandora’s box itself behind her lips.
“I told you I started art 6 months ago? I’m going to tell you why now. 6 months ago I went to the doctor. And he talked in his fancy doctor jargon to explain to me in rather complicated terms that I was going to die. But we all are, right? Except I’m going to die in a year and a half. At the ripe old age of 17. And it was honestly terrifying. I couldn’t breathe when he told me. My mom was crying. I was crying. Nothing like being told your life is going to end before it even starts. I barely understood why. He explained that something was wrong with my heart, my head, my whole body. I was not functioning the way I was supposed to. My body was giving up on me before I even had the chance to do what I intended it to. It was a blow to my life in more ways than one. I was so scared then, Sage. But the one thing I remember is not being ready to die. I was not ready for my life to end. There were so many things I hadn’t done. Hadn’t experienced. I haven’t fallen in love. Haven’t gone paragliding. I haven’t tried Korean food. I was barely a whole person and here the world was telling me I never would be. That’s when I decided to become all philosophical and spiritual and live a life I was proud of. That’s why I started art. I started singing. I started reading books that I said I would read later. I tried a world of new things that I had always wanted to do because if not now, when? I didn’t have tomorrow. I didn’t have some other time. I don’t know what I was waiting for my entire life because everything was waiting right in front of me to try. And here I am, finally doing them. Basically, I wanted to be a person I was proud of. I wanted to make a mark on life and live one that I was okay to leave. I realized that…I didn’t want to live a life of regrets and what-ifs. If I wasn’t happy with my life ending because it wasn’t the life I would be proud of, then why was I living it? I know it sounds really old-school philosophy and David Hume would be proud of me. But – over time, at least – I’ve come to terms with it. I’m going to die, Sage. And slowly, I feel like I’m coming to terms with that. I can now say that I’m okay with dying. Because there aren’t any more what-ifs for me. And if they are, I’m going to answer them.”
I stared at her agape after her monologue. Disbelieving of the information she had so uncannily dropped on me, I sat in silence. I was taken aback. But I was in awe. I wanted to know more. I needed to understand more. I asked her again. “So, you’ve done everything you ever wanted to?”
“Well. Almost everything. I tried everything in life that I had always wanted to. Every goal I wanted to achieve. Everything I said I would do, I did. Except one thing.”
She stared at me. “This is the part where you ask what that one thing is.” she suppressed a giggle.
“What is the one thing, June?” I whispered to her.
“I wanted to leave a mark on this world, Sage. It sounds corny and ridiculous and quite awfully preachy, but I mean it with all my heart. I want the world to have some way to remember me. And when I say world I don’t mean you or my mom or my friends. I mean everyone. I want to leave this world with something they can’t forget. Send them a message that said y’know – I was here. I was here, and I lived my life and I loved it and it was beautiful and you should do the same. I want a way to say that to the rest of the world. But I don’t know how to. I don’t want to write a book. I don’t know how to communicate very well. I don’t want to give a speech to a bunch of people because that is quite frankly terrifying. I don’t want someone to write a biography about me because that’s incredibly self-indulgent. I don’t want my mom to write a heart-wrenching eulogy of my love for life that is only heard by, like, 20 people. I want something good. Something better.”
I sat by her in the moonlight. I looked at her eyes once again and rested my head on my knees in thought. June had a story that needed to be told. But how was she going to tell it? And more importantly, how was I going to help her tell it? All these days that she had made me feel less alone in this chaotic world around me, I owed it in my heart to live a life just as she had done without any regrets. And I knew that I would regret never helping her in fulfilling her death wish, so to speak. I needed to find a way to get June’s voice heard. Someway that she would feel that her masterpiece would be forever remembered. June’s story had pulled three of my heartstrings and now they all twisted into a knot that left my throat dry and heart hammering for respite. Ideas dawned on me like the start of the new morning and I looked at her with the light of sunrise. I smiled. She smiled at me.
“What are you thinking of, Sage?” she asked coyly.
“I – I think I know what you could do.” I said to her quietly. I quickly touched my head to her forehead and for a second we sat, foreheads touching, eyes bright and hearts racing with a realm of possibilities the two of us were too enamored to understand. Time stopped. I breathed out softly. “I have an idea, June.” I murmured.
“Tell me the idea, Sage.” she responded just as quietly. I smiled at her.
“Tomorrow.” I said instead. She looked at me with fury and longing but she kept quiet. I got up from our position so close on that alleyway sidewalk and began to walk away, keeping my eyes on her amber ones all the while. Before I could leave she yelled out to me. “Check your jacket pocket!”
Reaching into my jacket pocket I found a small page from her notebook. There she had drawn the two of us, staring into each other’s eyes as the world faded to hues of purple and blue around us. The world had paused under her hands and we looked at each other as stars did in the galaxy we sat in, stopped for time, and looked down on the world around us knowing that there was nothing but the two of us together evermore and a forever of what could be.
The next day I met June at the alleyway after the sun had passed behind the evening clouds. I had brought a bag of chalk, spray paint and acrylic tubs of paint that mirrored the colors of the sky. As I waited for her on my side of the alleyway I imagined the look on her face as I told her my idea for the two of us. June arrived moments later in an old raggedy t-shirt and sweatpants, and from the way she had tied her hair in a messy knot on the top of her head, I felt as if she had already understood my plan. “Hi June!” I called out to her as she began to walk towards me. She waved her hands in response and I got up from the sidewalk to the dead end of the alleyway. The street ended in a large brick wall of old red terracotta. The wall was visible from the entrance from the main street, which is why no one came down this lane to the dead end. It was large and worn, sanded and weathered down by time and the wind. It was ideal to stare at through the end of time, as June and I had done so many times. It also made the perfect canvas.
June greeted me with a hug, an unnerving display of affection that nearly knocked me off my position on the sidewalk’s edge. “Sage. I’ve been thinking all night about yesterday. You said you knew what to do. What is it?”.
I smiled at her, a face splitting grin that was contagious, and June laughed at the look on my face. “You gonna tell me?” She asked.
“We’re gonna make a mark, June. Just like you said. We’re gonna make a mural.” I dumped out the contents of my bag onto the sidewalk and waited for her reaction. The spray cans glinted in the setting sun and the chalk had splintered into pieces on the floor. The tubs of paint sat haphazardly on the street and June stared at the mess of art supplies with an incomprehensible look on her face. FInally, she started laughing. It was a sound of light and joy, not jest. She threw her head back and the strands of her from her bun came loose and fell onto her back as she continued to smile and giggle. “God, Sage. Why didn’t I think of that? It’s perfect. It’s absolutely perfect. It’s. – exactly the kind of thing I had been dreaming of. I have so many questions. I – god. When do we start?” She asked me. I mirrored the look of joy on her face and replied, “Right now.”. Pulling out the worn sketchbook from the contents of my jacket I bore the blank pages to her as an invitation to create something that we would make sure the world would remember forever. If not the whole world, then maybe this city. And that was more than enough for now. Unsaid promises to be each other’s footing in a world of chaos were thrown between us, a world that had taken life from us, had taken love. We sketched drawings and doodles of beings and creatures and scenes we couldn’t explain and filled in the gaps with the oil pastels in Junes’ pocket. “Sage, what are we doing? What are we going to draw on the mural?” she asked. I looked at her and said “Whatever we want to. It’s our mural. IT’s our story. We can tell the world about life. Everything that you always wanted to say to the rest of the world. So what do you want to say June?”
June sat quietly to think. She didn’t respond until a few seconds later. Her eyes shone as she explained her vision to me, an excitement that I had only prayed she would find at the prospect of our plan. “I want to tell the world that I was here. That I loved my life. That I was proud of it. That I made a difference that was – I don’t know. Beautiful? I want to tell the world that it’s possible to live a life of color and no regrets because, god, don’t we all want to do that? I want to make the best mural this city has ever seen, one that makes them walk down this alleyway and stop and stare to think about their life and the choices they’ve made, the possibilities it could hold. I don’t know how I’m gonna do that, but I do know that this is going to be the best decision we ever made. That you thought of, rather. We’re going to tell the world that life is worth loving. And no one could ever disagree. That’s what I want to say, Sage. And whether abstract, realist, or shapes the world can’t decipher, we’re going to find a way to make that possible.” June laughed. “Sage, everything is going to be perfect. This is going to be my legacy. Our legacy. I cant even- I can’t wait to start.” She smiled again. I smiled back at her, and felt my heart swell with a warmth only June brought out in this world of madness and regret. I was going to find a way to take the light she brought and splatter it in our mural and tell the rest of the world around us that we lived, and that no one was ever going to take that away from us.
We began the next day after sketching for hours that night of the details of what our mural would entail. We drew June’s mother, smiling over her in a ghostly depiction. We drew alleyways and winding roads that led to a beautiful place of nowhere. We drew ramen and abstract shapes of heart-bursting love that June felt she had maybe experienced. We drew the world spinning madly around us in blurs in blue and green, mixed with faces of people we never knew but would someday know us. We created figures of laughter and joy, cradling life like a newborn above a possibility of regret and hindrance looming like shadows of dark in the background. We drew and we drew and we drea until our hands were tired and our palms were caked with charcoal dust. “Sage,” June started. “This is it. This is what we draw. A mess of color and life and everything it holds. Something you understand but don’t, something you look back on to think with existentialism in your belly and hope in your heart. This is our mural. This is our legacy.” She took my hand and planted a small kiss on the tips of my fingers. I smiled at her and cupped her face in my hands, the feeling of which sent spirals down my back and into my heart. “Then what are we waiting for?” I asked. “Let’s start this. And finish it. Together.” Pulling the materials from the contents of my bag once more, I handed her the chalk with fragile hands, knowing that together we held a world of possibilities in our fingertips. She turned to the decayed wall with its sanded surface and drew an arc through the center of the wall. Again, she stretched her elbow to create a curved arc and I could see the beginnings of a circle starting to form. She stepped back and looked at me. “For something special.” she murmured. “The highlight of our mural, so to speak.” I nodded at her in quiet acknowledgement and together we began our masterpiece.”
And together, day-by-day, we did just that. We went slowly at first, carefully deciding which color should go where and which drawing should be placed at what size. Everything was a painstakingly long process of perfection that lasted hours we didn’t have. Stencils plastered to the wall held the beginnings of drawings that conveyed deeper meaning than just scenes from June’s life. As we fell into rhythm, our mural became frenzied, more spontaneous. We drew onto the wall with unsteady chalk lines that were soon filled with splatters of pastel paints. Bare sketches turned into redrawn outlines turned to picturebook, photograph-clicked colors of saturated hues. We drew the pages from our sketchbook in flashes of glistening memories, ones that stayed like a dream never forgotten. Our mural was more than just our legacy now. It was a representation of June and I, the fun we had side by side, hand in hand, creating something for the world to see. Our partnership was visible in the strokes on the wall, the gradient of tones that bled from cool blues to fiery reds. This canvas was filled with rainbows of shades, it was filled with gorgeous streaks of the evening sun draped across memories of an imagination lost. We drew as one, our hands dancing over the brick expanse like the art flowed through our veins, the pinnacle always out of reach. We spun around each other, twisted our hands around one another and locked limbs with each other in our whirlwind of creation. A performance of laughter and thought, we marched to the song of our hearts that we poured onto this wall. It shone with its colors and images like a diary of a life of technicolor that we were the writers of. June and I had begun creating something that was far beyond the both of us. We had created something beyond what the world had ever known was possible.
And as days passed and hours grew to days, we found ourselves nearing the end of our mural. The strokes grew softer and more controlled and laughter ceased all the while.
“Sage.” said June one day, as I painted the last strokes of her hair onto the wall. “Yes, June.” I replied nonchalantly.
“I think we’re done.” She murmured, taking a step back to admire the work we had spent so long on. The product of a month’s work lay in front of us, still wet with the paint we had applied only moments ago. I stepped back with her, taking steps backwards until I was at the entrance of the alleyway.
“JUNE!” I shouted. “COME HERE!” June rushed over to my side and together we stared at our mural from across the alleyway marveling in light of our creation. Even from afar it drew the eye to its colors and shapes, a mess of life-changing flashbacks and meanings that begged us to inch closer to our masterpiece. And walking closer to it, we were brought down to the wholes of ourselves, staring us back on the bricked wall, now awash with colors. Our creation shone in the sun that set over the clouds, glinting with the images of a life lost but loved. I had one final touch to add. I stuck every drawing she ever gave me onto the mural as a keepsake of her memory. The wall was now dotted with silver slip paintings of me sitting on the sidewalk tinged with the weather’s whims. The mural stared back at us as a story of youth and perspective, screaming in its freedom and color in the sunset.
I held June’s hand and looked her in the eyes. “It’s done, June.” I whispered. “We finished it.”
“Then why am I so sad, Sage?” she asked. We stared at the wall in response, the link of our hands the only message of our twin flame burning ever bright.
June died a year later. Her death was quiet and sweet, just as she had been. Her funeral was in the alleyway of the mural we had created. In the center stood our mural, ablaze with all its color and life, every bit as soul-piercing as June would have wanted. The procession was solemn but heartfelt, yet I noticed everyone’s eyes drawn to the mural on the back wall of her coffin. It spoke of the joy and the zest in which June lived her life, a beautiful retelling and heart wrenching tale of what could have been and what was. June lay in peace by our brick-wall art, but the world would forever remember it as art that touched hearts. And as I watched the sun set over the alleyway as I had done so many times with June, I was reminded of a time where we drew together of many.
“Sage.” she had said to me that day. “Do you believe in life after death?” she asked.
“Yes, I do.” I replied. “You live on as memories in the hearts of you who you loved and the souls of those you touched.”
“Do you think I will live after death?” she asked again.
“Of course, June. A life in color like yours does not turn gray when set in stone.”
She had no words to say after that. Instead she rested her head against my shoulder and we stared at the brick wall of the alleyway, complete with the musings of our mural masterpiece.
