With my feet in the wet sand, foamy waves licking my ankles, I pull my iPhone from my pocket, plug in my headphones, and listen to Lightspeed Champion’s song “Salty Water” in memory of Alex.
Alex was more of an idea than a true friend or a lover. We never got the chance to really know each other or test our compatibility over a significant period of time. I see now that he was sick—that maybe he pushed his needle too far away from the middle of the herd. But being with him for a short time helped push my needle just enough to free me from the life I hated, what everyone expected of me. And even though I have no idea what comes next, I’m grateful that I’m not signed up for a life that would make me miserable. I’m glad I got to be with Alex Redmer for a few months.
When the song finishes, the sun is setting behind me and there are hardly any people left. I strip down to my bikini and wade into the ocean, which is flat as a lake tonight—almost like a bed someone else made, pulling the sheets and comforter tight, everything neat and tucked in.
Perfect.
The water is still cold from winter and spring, and so my skin rebels with goose bumps, but I push on anyway until the ocean rises up to my chin, at which point I lean back and allow my toes to poke out, feel the seawater creep up into my hair. I float that way for a long time, thinking about all that has happened.
“You still identify most with Unproductive Ted,” I say to myself, and then stretch out my limbs, lick salt from my lips, and allow the water to fill my ears.
But you’re not Unproductive Ted or Wrigley or any of the other Bubblegum Reaper characters. You are not Booker or Mr. Graves or June or your classmates or your parents or anyone you will meet in your future. You are Nanette O’Hare—and that’s okay, because this existence you’re making your way through is your story and no one else’s.
I wonder where Alex has gone. I pity him a little because his story has ended—or is he here somehow in spirit? I mean—if his dad was telling the truth about the ashes, Alex is literally in the water with me. And who knows for certain whether our story ends when we die here on this planet? Maybe Alex really is somewhere else. But where? These are dizzying thoughts—and so I try to concentrate on the pink-orange glow of the setting sun.
But just where did the rest of Alex go?
His personality?
His laugh?
His wild ideas?
His poetry?
His smile?
His gorgeous mane of hair?
His need for justice?
His concern for the weak?
His humanity?
His tragic stubbornness?
Maybe it all goes on along with me as I make my way through what’s left of my time, I think, and then I have another dizzying thought.
I’ll probably never know why Booker wrote The Bubblegum Reaper, but his writing that novel led to lives being changed and Booker being happy in love now with Sandra Tackett, which he never could have foreseen when he dreamed up Wrigley’s world. And so maybe it isn’t the motivating factors that matter so much as simply participating—thrusting your best true, authentic self into the universe with wild abandon. Maybe yielding to our true nature propels us forward into the great unknown, toward targets that we haven’t even dreamed up yet but exist nonetheless.
I’m waiting for the stars to pop through the black above, waiting for the future to wash over me like so many salty waves—some as turbulent as my thoughts and some as velvety as a good kiss.
What happens to Wrigley when he leaves the water—after the novel ends?
Answering that question really isn’t the point, I decide as I leave the ocean tonight.
I’ve got to find out what happens to Nanette O’Hare.