Ben Bedard - The World Without Flags

“I will be,” I say. “Some day.”

Pest looks at me with sympathy and squeezes my shoulder. I can see that he’s searching for something else to say. I can see the thoughts working there behind his eyes. Such adult thoughts on such a young face. But it doesn’t make me feel weird anymore. All of us who’ve had the Worm have this strange disconnect between our hearts and our body. They don’t seem to match exactly. All the weirdness I’ve ever seen in Pest, now I recognize as part of myself too. Pest’s eyes stop searching for something more to say. He’s smart enough to know that sometimes silence is best. I give his hand a squeeze and then turn back to my paper.

My pencil hits the page, but doesn’t move. I bite my lip. It’s not easy. I feel a hand on my shoulder, and I look up. It’s Eric. Tall and strong, wearing new clothes, his blue eyes shining down on me, I can’t see any sign of the Worm on him. Just last week, he let me cut his hair and shave his scraggly beard. He sits down next to me on the boulder. It’s strange to see how quickly he’s recovered, strange and wonderful.

“How’s it going?”

I shrug. Eric looks down at my brief sketch, just light outlines and shapes.

“I like the flowers,” he tells me.

I smile at him, and then I can’t resist putting my head on his shoulder. I feel his hand gently hold me, and, for a moment, I can almost imagine that none of this has happened. Nothing has changed. But when I open my eyes, I know that everything has changed, and not all of it has been bad.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I tell Eric. He knows that I mean to say I love him. Eric looks a little surprised, maybe a little embarrassed. He blushes, but he squeezes me.

“Don’t forget Matt,” he says to me, pointing at the page.

I sit up and go back to the page. I won’t forget any of them. I want to create a record of them, the people we’ve loved and lost. I want to draw them all under this tree with us, so that we remember them, not for some flag that they were buried with, but for who they were and for how much we loved them, how much they will be missed. I imagine them all standing, smiling, posing for me. Artemis pretends to be shy and then laughs. Quiet, strong Cyrus, Amber in Diane’s arms, Crypt and Rebok embracing each other. Patrick and Fiona stop arguing for a moment to hold each other and look toward me. Lucia is there too, smiling and waving. When I look at the tree again, as Pest sits underneath it, reading, I see two figures that I haven’t planned to be there, my tall, kind father, holding my mother, her slender body and long hair like a song. They’re all here. They’re all with me.

I put my pencil to the paper, and, sighing to steady my trembling hand, I begin to draw.