Kali’s hands were goosepimply, but whether from the cold or the cemetery, she wasn’t sure.  They started shaking as she pondered that, and she quickly shoved them into her armpits before Chris could notice.

“You’re not scared, are you Kay?”

She shook her head vehemently, shoving her fingers deeper into the thick fleece beneath the joints of her arms, her arms wrapped tightly around herself in a hug.  Chris’s brown eyes danced laughingly, his pale face glowing white in the lantern light, peering at her over his shoulder.

“I am not.”  Sidestepping a large tombstone and avoiding the eyes of an archangel perched on a smaller monstrosity across the aisle, she hurried to catch up to him.  “I’m just trying to figure out what we’re doing in a graveyard at two in the morning…”

Chris laughed.  His soft voice rolled over the grave markers with a silent echo, dying off with a sad note.  “You know why, Kay.”

She sighed heavily, ducking her nose into the collar of her sweatshirt.  Her mother had bought it for her after the funeral, on sale from Old Navy.  Kali hated it; she hated the pink fleece with a passion.  But she’d had to sneak out of the house tonight, and it was the only thing she could find that was warm enough.

“Listen, Kay…about—”

“Do you really have to leave?  I mean…you could stay—my brother’s moving out so you could have his room, or—or the attic…”

The footsteps ahead of her slowed to a stop as Chris tried to find words.  Kali looked up just in time to avoid running into him, moving around him to see his face.

He needed a hair cut.  The mass of stringy brown hair that hung into his eyes and over his ears reminded her of some pedigree dog’s fur, the kind of dog that you’d see in dog shows with it’s fur clipped back with a barrette or tied with a pink ribbon.  She couldn’t remember the breed.

“Look, Kali, there’s no avoiding it.  You know it as well as I do.”

“Yeah, but Chris—”

“I never should have come back in the first place.”

She avoided his eyes, looking dejectedly at the sheen on his leather shoes.  He seemed like the type to wander through graveyards on a normal basis, day or night.  Black shoes, black pants, black shirt.  And there she stood in a pink fleece sweater with torn Levi’s and Vans.

Out of place next to him, as she’d always been.

“You’ll write this time, right?  You won’t just go away forever…and never look back…”

Chris was quiet for a long time, and after several long heartbeats she chanced a peek at his face.  He smiled at her warmly.

“’Course I will.  I promise.”

She eyed him suspiciously.  “You said that last time, and you didn’t write then…”

“I also got into a car accident, Kay.  Hadn’t exactly planned on that.”

Her breath was frosty as she exhaled, pushing her nose back under the collar of her sweater.  The silence of the graveyard deafened her, the presence of so many bodies pressing on them, but in a way that was almost comforting.  A field full of peaceful eavesdroppers, who meant her no harm.

“This time I will.  I mean it this time.”

She glanced back up at him from beneath the patch of white hair that grew over her left eye.  The doctor’s had told her it was from the shock.  She’d tried dying it red again, but the color hadn’t taken.  Chris smiled broadly at her, reaching around her to tuck the handle of the lantern into fingers just visible under her arm.  He managed it quickly and professionally; she wondered if she’d been holding it the whole time—her fingers were certainly cold and tired and numb enough that she wouldn’t have been surprised.

“You still have my address, right?”

Chris nodded and turned to look behind them as a figure with a flashlight moved towards them on the path they had taken.  Kali looked in turn and shivered.  She hoped it was security, come to investigate the lantern light.  Her companion’s footsteps moved away, and she frowned, watching the flashlight bounce down a side trail, probably towards Old Man Swenson’s tomb.  Another goth’n’go from Hot Topic out to try and commune with the dead, most likely.

“Chris—you still have my…”

She trailed off as she turned back to him.  He was gone, no sign of him in the pool of light she stood at the center of, no more echoing footsteps.  Kali sighed, dropping her gaze.

“It doesn’t matter.  I know you won’t write,” she mumbled to herself, crouching down and hugging her knees, setting the lantern down in the hard packed dirt she stood on.  Her nose was cold enough to burn as she pushed it into the fold of her arms, leaning back to sit on her haunches.  The tombstone in front of her was new; his family must have finally had it erected.  Or the mortician or someone else had.  Kali had no clue who dealt with these things.

She just knew that the presence of the stone was a welcome comfort.

She didn’t feel so alone now, in the empty cemetery.

There was her, the gothic by Swenson’s tomb, and Chris…in some weird way.

With another sigh, she dropped her legs to her sides and leaned forward, pressing her forehead against Chris’s headstone.

“Just like I know you aren’t coming back.”