Andrew Klavan - If We Survive

I stopped there. We all stopped. We all waited, watching Meredith.

And Meredith—she just sort of gazed off into the flickering shadows, her features still, her eyes set on something far away we couldn’t see.

Finally, not turning to us, not even talking to us it seemed, but just talking into the darkness around us, she said quietly, “I had a sister. Her name was Anne. She was five years older than me. I think she was… the single sweetest, gentlest, kindest person I’ve ever met in my life. I never saw her get angry. I never heard her say an unkind word. Really. I’m not just, you know, exaggerating or something. She really wasn’t like other people. She was better.

“And, of course, I worshipped her. You know, little-sister style. She was nine, I was four. She was twelve, I was seven. She was sixteen and I was eleven. And I just wanted to do whatever she did, follow her around everywhere she went. And nine out of ten times, she let me. She let me tag along—to the mall, to get pizza, to the movies—even when it annoyed her friends, which was, like, always. She would tell them, ‘Oh, let her come, she won’t bother anyone.’ Which almost certainly wasn’t true. I must’ve been a terrible pain in the neck to her, but she never let it show. Really. Never once.”

I saw the light gleam red on Meredith’s cheek and I felt my throat get tight as I realized that she had started crying. It was a strange kind of crying. Her expression didn’t change at all, the way it does with most people when they cry. Her features remained still, distant, sort of serene. Even the calm tone of her voice remained the same. The tears just streamed steadily down her cheeks as she talked. Now and then she moved her hand to wipe them away or she sniffed a little.

“When I was really little?” she said. “I used to think sometimes that she was secretly an angel. I really did. She would come into my room at night, when it was time for me to say my prayers. And she would tell me, ‘Kneel down, and put your hands together, and point your soul toward the light of God.’ And I would sort of steal glances at her while we were praying and she’d have her face lifted up, and her expression would be so still and peaceful, I would think: She’s going off to the angel place . You know? Silly. I must’ve been three or four. You know the way little kids think.”

The tears kept streaming down her face in the heaterlight. But her voice continued quiet and unshaken.

“I was fourteen when she got sick. She had to come home from college. She’d been gone a year, and in that time I’d become this sort of… awful teenager. Always grim and complaining about everything. Nothing was any good. Everything was a ‘bore’ or a ‘disaster’ or a ‘waste of time.’”

I had a hard time picturing Meredith ever being like that, but if she said she was, I guess she was.

“Whenever I could, I’d go online and chat with Anne about… you know, whatever was upsetting me that day. She was busy with school and her new life, her new friends, studying and all that, but she’d still make time for me. She was the only one who knew how to make me feel better. In fact, when she got ill and came home from school, I was, like, ‘Oh good, now I’ll have her around again until she gets better.’ I didn’t realize how bad it was. I didn’t realize she wasn’t going to get better, not ever.”

She drew her sleeve across her face, drying her tears, wiping her nose.

“But she knew. Anne knew. And she never changed. The whole time the sickness ate away at her, she was the same as she always was. They had to give her chemo. She lost her hair—her beautiful, beautiful red hair. She got so thin… so thin and gray… but the way she was—that never changed. She was still Anne the whole time. Still my same sweet Anne.”

Meredith turned and looked at us in the red glow of the heater. The light shone on her wet cheeks.

“That’s what she said to me at the hospital, in fact… She had to go into the hospital at the end. And the very last time I visited her there, she said to me, ‘Don’t be afraid. Nothing has changed. I’m still who I am.’ A few hours after that, she was dead.”

Meredith shook her head as if to clear the old images from her mind.

“You think it makes no difference to me how things work out for us?” she asked. “That’s not true. It makes a big difference to me. I don’t want to die in this horrible place. I want to go home just like the rest of you. I want to see my mom and dad again. I want to meet my husband and get married and live in a big rambling house in the middle of nowhere and have more children than you’d think anyone would. That’s what my sister wanted too. I just know that… the things you want don’t always happen… sometimes terrible things happen instead… I’ve seen that with my own eyes… And you’re right: since Anne died, I’m somehow not afraid of it anymore. I don’t know exactly why. I can’t explain it really…”

Her voice trailed off. She leaned back against the wall and looked off into the surrounding dark again.

“I don’t get it,” said Jim after a moment. “I mean, when you see something like that happen… like what happened to your sister… shouldn’t that make you more afraid?”

“Maybe…,” Meredith said. “Maybe it should. But it didn’t. I’m just telling you how it is.”

Jim leaned forward over his own crossed legs, like a student asking a teacher a question. “Is it because you’ve seen the worst that can happen and it’s not so bad?”

Meredith shook her head. “No. No, it’s not that. It was bad. Losing Anne broke my heart. It still breaks my heart.”

“Is it because she’s in heaven?” Nicki asked. “I mean, are you not afraid because you know, if you die, you’ll see Anne again in heaven?”

Meredith took another swipe at her damp cheeks. “Well… I do know that. But no—no, that’s not it exactly either… Like I said, I want to live a full life before I die just like anyone.”

“Well then, I don’t get it,” said Jim again. “I don’t understand why seeing your sister die would make you fearless.”

But I did. I didn’t say anything, but I understood. I thought back to those terrible seconds when we were being taken out to face the firing squad. I remembered how I had looked at Meredith—and at Nicki—and at Jim—and even at the gunmen who were going to kill us—and I had thought how beautiful they all were, how beautiful they were all meant to be. Maybe not the rebel who was going to pull the trigger and snuff out an innocent life, but the man inside him who wanted to fight for justice and be a hero to his people. Maybe not the Jim who thought that fancy ideas and good intentions were the same as true goodness, but the Jim who wanted to think great thoughts and make the world better with them. Maybe not the Nicki who was vain and silly and weak, but the woman inside her who was so full of kindness and practically exploding with the joy of being pretty and alive. Those were the beautiful parts of them.

Their souls, I mean. I think in those moments, when I was so close to death, I was seeing their souls, the souls God had given them. And their souls were beautiful. And what Meredith knew, what Meredith had learned when her sister died, what her sister had taught her when she was dying, was that good things might happen to you in life or bad things might happen, sometimes terrible things, but no matter what happens, your soul is your own. It’s in your power to point your soul toward the light of God, and no one and nothing— not even a man with a gun, not even death, not even the devil from hell himself—can stop you.

That’s why Meredith was fearless. Because as long as she remembered what her sister had shown her, nothing that happened could ever hurt the most important part of her, nothing that happened outside herself could ever make her less than what God had meant for her to be.