the rest is destiny
Chapter One: the girl and the boy
She was The Girl Whose Heart Never Broke.
After all, she was too busy giving it all away to feel any pain. Pieces of herself shoved down other people’s throats. Jammed into their open palms. Force-fed like broccoli to a baby. That was the point, wasn’t it? Give it all away so there’s nothing left to feel. Nothing bad, anyways. Don’t worry, though. We won’t really have to deal too much with that sorrow. She tucks it away too deeply for anyone to really find it. So, we’ll move on to other aspects.
Like her name. It was quite controversial. Her given name was Unspoken unless you were her mother. Then it was Spoken Always, all the time. Over and over again. But if you asked anyone else, even her own father, they’d cock their head at you curiously and ask, Who? Then you’d feel a quick rush of crimson fly to your cheeks and you’d shake your head, feeling quite foolish. Because getting someone’s name wrong is the gravest of errors.
There’s nothing more sacred than a name.
And so thought The Girl Whose Heart Never Broke. That’s why she decided to name herself. After all, why should her mother get the final say? Her mother named her when she didn’t even know her daughter. It was arbitrary, and now the Girl was just supposed to nod her head passively as if nothing was wrong?
No.
Not our Girl.
So she changed. Or, if you ask her, she blossomed into what was always her name. Her mother was just too foolish to recognize it.
Delphinium.
Delphi to most.
Rylie Terrace to her mother.
The Girl Whose Heart Never Broke to Us.
Delphi had spent every day in this small town of hers, wishing that someone would break her heart. It was quite a confusing tale. Little Delphi, often seen perched inside her window seat that overlooked her front lawn, a longing look in her eye. As if she was watching everything she had ever wanted saunter by on her house’s uneven sidewalk.
The willow tree out front would wave to her a friendly hello. It bent this way and that, reminding her of all the times she had so carefully climbed its trusty limbs.
When she was freshly nine years old, Delphi decided to climb higher than she had ever gone before. She was determined to touch a cloud. She thought that was what all nine-year-olds did. So, naturally, she was inclined to do so, as well.
As she stretched her hand higher and higher into the blue abyss that awaited her sweet embrace, every fiber in her little body seemed to burn with ambition and excitement. Her thighs groaned, tired from carrying the weight of this child for so long. Her ribs expanded more and more as her breaths came quicker and shallower. Even her tiny toes seemed to cry out in protest at this futile attempt for contact with the sky. Every part of her body seemed to recognize how foolish it all was. Every part except for Her Mind.
It wasn’t until her father called, Delphi! Delphi!, that The Girl Whose Heart Never Broke finally looked down.
“Delphi!” Her father hollered. “What are you doing up there? You can’t die on your ninth birthday! Your mother and I already bought the cake and there’s no way we spent $12 just to waste it!”
Other children in the neighborhood started to peek their heads out of their respective windows and doors, and many were shocked to see the sight that beheld them: sweet, crazy Delphi in a tree and her father shouting up at her about $12 cakes. But Delphi took no offense to her father’s comment. She found it quite practical and decided to listen to him. She couldn’t let $12 go down the drain, either.
Delphi climbed down from the tree. And she made her way inside. Back into the house that used to be a home.
Their house used to be bright. At least that’s what her mother told Delphi. There had been daffodils in the windowsills. Periwinkle walls instead of gray. Various blankets on every couch. Marks on the doorframe that mapped the growth of blossoming humans.
Delphi would fly through the wide hallways, her arms spread out as wide as could be. Her dark hair whipped across her face. Her cheeks burned as thin strands smacked against them. Her feet hit the wooden floorboards with loud thumps. Her little brother ran after her. His chubby fingers reached out towards her. Their collection of squeals of joy carried throughout every inch of this home.
That was all Before, of course.
Before Delphi became The Girl Whose Heart Never Broke. Before everything else around her shattered like a glass vase falling off of a bookshelf.
Before the Beautiful Melancholy that came with the After coated every inch of the house. Before the periwinkle walls turned gray. Before her tenth birthday, where she did not try to climb the willow tree again. Before she could no longer look at the willow tree, for all the memories it held became too painful in the After.
❧
He was The Boy Who Loved the Broken Parts.
After all, he had spent his entire life being shown that broken things were worthy of love, too. His mother was gentle, and kind, and all the things a good mother should be. She kissed his knees when he fell down on the sidewalk and then told him to stand up and try again. Their house often smelled of freshly baked cookies. He knew that he could come home and be safe. That kind of privilege changes a child’s development.
It certainly changed The Boy’s.
Benji didn’t know his dad, and that was for the best. It was another way that Benji’s Mother protected him.
❧
Benji was six months away from being born when his mother found out she was pregnant. She was at a sleepover with her best friend in the whole world, Camila. They had known each other for eight years. They were now sixteen. Benji’s Mother had known Benji’s father for eight months.
Camila knew that something had to be wrong when Benji’s Mother didn’t come out of the bathroom for twenty-seven minutes. That’s how long it took for Benji’s Mother’s entire life to change.
Twenty-seven minutes.
Benji’s Mother placed one shaky hand on her still-flat stomach and one shaky hand over her mouth to quiet her crying.
She’s now ashamed to say that the first emotion that overtook her was grief. She mourned the person she was planning to become. She grieved the death of that woman who never got a chance to be. She cried over the death of someone who never got to truly live. Who was still alive. The tears fell and fell and fell. And they kept falling right until they stopped.
Minute twenty-five.
Benji’s Mother wiped her wet cheeks and the smallest glimmer of hope sparked in her chest. This child would need a mother who wanted them. This child would need a parent who didn’t treat them like a mistake. They would need the parent that she never had.
Benji’s Mother gave herself twenty-five minutes to process the truth that the tiny stick that lay in front of her would mean. She gave herself two minutes to recover from processing. Then she took the grief, folded it up neatly, and stuck it in the very back pocket of her soul.
She hasn’t touched it since.
She hasn’t let herself.
When Benji’s Mother exited the bathroom with the pregnancy test, Camila’s face fell. But Camila didn’t fall apart. She knew that her best friend deserved more than that. So Camila hugged Benji’s Mother and asked her what she was going to do.
“I’m going to be a mother,” Benji’s Mother replied. And so she was. From that point forward, nothing in her life was as important as being Benji’s Mother. And it was enough. So long as she didn’t touch the grief in her back pocket. It was enough.
Benji was enough.
❧
Chapter Two: some people can’t help but stay
Benji’s Mother bought the house across the street from Delphi when Benji was eight weeks away from being born. She could only afford the house because her parents paid her to move out and therefore save them from the current shadow her shame was casting across their family.
That’s the beginning of how Benji started to love Delphi. He would come to love her in the same way that the moon loves the sun. The way that grass loves spring rain. How a traveler loves a compass. Or a poet loves a blank page.
But before Benji and Delphi even had a chance to fall in love, they fell into friendship. That turned out to be even more beautiful.
❧
Benji only turned one once. And therefore it was a very special occasion, one Benji’s Mother took it upon herself to plan an elaborate party that, as a barely eighteen-year-old, she had no business nor any time to plan. And thank goodness it was going to be such a terrible disaster because it forced her to walk across the street to her neighbors with the periwinkle walls and knock on their front door.
A woman with an impeccable manicure opens the door. Her hair is thrown up in a perfectly messy bun. She wears an apron over her business-casual clothes. She looks as though she’s stepped right out of a New York City highrise and somehow found her way into suburbia.
Benji’s Mother would soon come to find out that that’s just how Delphi’s mother always dressed. Sharp stilettos. Flowy, expensive blouses. Kind eyes that told you she wasn’t nearly as intimidating as she wanted to look.
“Hi!” Delphi’s mother chirps. She has a smiley, giggly baby perched on her hip. “Can I help you?”
Benji’s Mother immediately feels silly. What is she doing here? How can she ask a total stranger to help her plan a birthday party? But before Benji’s Mother can get another word out, Delphi’s mother speaks again. She points a slender finger at the baby strapped to Benji’s Mother’s chest. He looks at Delphi with wide, curious eyes.
“Your little one has a birthday coming up soon, doesn’t he?”
And the rest is history.
The rest is destiny.
❧
Benji holds Delphi’s hand as she weeps. The sky cries with her: a soft, steady rain pouring down all around them. But the black umbrella that Benji holds with his other hand protects them from that. If only he could protect her from everything else that is happening around them. But he can’t.
So, instead, he just holds this umbrella as the sky and Delphi shed their tears. And Benji sends up a silent prayer to a God he doesn’t believe exists. He asks for everything to stop crying. If even just for a minute.
❧
Benji’s Mother absolutely remembered when she met Henry. It was the summer before senior year. June. The air was dry and hot. The pool was cool and refreshing. Everyone was enjoying the first taste of fresh summer. Then Henry emerged from the water.
Benji’s Mother thought she knew everyone who came to the neighborhood pool. She thought that she knew everyone in her neighborhood.
And she would come to find out that Henry didn’t even really live here, he was just visiting his aunt while his parents took a cross-country trip that he wasn’t invited on. So as of right now, he was just The Mysterious Boy, alluring and dripping with cool chlorine water. Their eyes immediately locked.
They would spend the next eight months falling madly in love with each other. Or maybe just falling mad. They had the kind of love that made someone crazy. The push. The pull. It was all so confusing and fast, like a tornado whipping through an innocent small town that didn’t have the means to prepare against such a storm.
Benji’s Mother had no way to prepare for Benji’s father.
He tore through her like a tornado. And then one day he was gone. Leaving Benji’s Mother with nothing but the ghostly quietness that follows tragedy.
But she wasn’t the Kind of Woman to hold onto resentment, either towards herself or other people. She wouldn’t ever regret Henry; he gave her Benji. And Benji was everything to her. So luckily Benji’s Mother wasn’t spending her short time Earthside harboring bitterness. She didn’t do it before she became a mother and she certainly didn’t do it now.
But she would always regret those hardships that Benji faced due to his father’s shortcomings. Maybe if Benji’s Mother’s mother had even an ounce of human decency, she would have hugged Benji’s Mother and told her that it wasn’t her fault. Yes, they were still kids themselves when Benji was born. But Benji’s Mother rose to the occasion. Why didn’t Henry?
❧
“I do not want to be here.” Delphi hiccups, her tear-stained face sending a sharp pang of sadness straight through Benji’s chest. “How did we get here?”
Benji doesn’t have any words of comfort. He knows that Delphi isn’t expecting him to give her any. But it still breaks his heart to not be able to say anything, anything at all, that can possibly make this situation better.
So he does the only thing that he knows to do. He lets her cry into his shoulder. He hugs her tightly. His strong embrace reminds Delphi that even though some people can’t help but leave, others can’t help but stay.
“I can still hear him. See him. Smell him.” Delphi’s voice is muffled as she speaks into Benji’s second-hand sports coat. “I’m so scared that one day I won’t be able to anymore. I’m so scared that even that will be taken from me.”
❧
Chapter Three: Falling
The cool air here is the only reprieve from the sweltering August sun. The sun seeps into every aspect of the world: the cracks in the sidewalk, the houses with air conditioning at full blast, and every inch of thirteen-year-old Benji’s skin.
But it is cool Up Here.
The wind whips around Benji. His steps are steady, which is strange considering the conditions. Left, right, left. His stride is as if he’s on a tightrope. Toe to heel. Toe to heel. The actual path he’s on, if one could even call it a path, is about two feet wide. Concrete. With whipping wind and cool air.
But Benji hardly notices any of that. Left, right, left. 180-degree turn. Left, right, left. His mind is Somewhere Else. His mind is certainly not here. It does not notice the whipping wind or the cool air. It does not notice Delphi, who is slowly approaching Benji as if he is an easily spooked animal. It saw none of that. It is not Up Here.
Benji’s father came to visit him on his thirteenth birthday, which was exactly two weeks ago today. Henry had decided that enough was enough, and Benji ought to have a proper relationship with his father. Henry decided all of this as though it was innocent Benji’s fault he never had a relationship with his father.
It wasn’t that Henry is what caused Benji to be Up Here right now. It’s more as though Henry was the catalyst for it all. Benji had been struggling for a long time. Simply put, it’s quite a heavy load to always love broken things and feel as though no one is there loving you back. And for The Boy Who Loved the Broken Parts, Benji was constantly giving his precious little heart away as though it was nothing important or special. And that finally got too much to bear.
When Henry visited, he stayed for twenty-seven hours. That’s how long it took him to decide that Benji wasn’t worth getting to know, after all. At least, that’s how Benji saw it. That was when Benji realized that he was, in fact, desperately alone in this world.
And so he finds himself Up Here, with the whipping wind and the cool air.
Delphi, on the other hand, has just had an argument with her mother.
“If I had wanted to call you Delphinium, I would have named you Delphinium!” her mother screamed. Delphi could swear that every single house in their Suffocatingly Suburban neighborhood could hear every word that she hollered.
“A name is sacred!” Delphi shouted back. “Why shouldn’t I get the honor of naming myself? I know myself better than you!”
“I’m done with this nonsense! It’s been five years of your incessant combativeness! You are and forever will be Riley!”
Those words stung harder than any slap in the face could. Delphi was heartbroken that her mother was refusing to try to understand. She felt as though no one understood. But then she remembered Benji. He knew her better than anyone else. Sometimes Delphi was convinced that he knew Delphi better than she knew herself.
Delphi slammed the door to their house with a ringing finality. She had every intention of just walking across the street to Benji’s home when she saw Benji get his bike out from his front yard and start pedaling down the road.
This was strange for numerous reasons. One is that Delphi was sure Benji had said just yesterday that his bike’s gears weren’t working right and made his bike terribly annoying to ride. Why was he riding his terribly annoying bike? If he couldn’t walk to his destination, why didn’t Benji just ask to borrow Delphi’s bike?
Second, Benji always told Delphi where he was going. It started when Benji’s Mother had a twenty-four-hour shift at the hospital and she wanted to make sure Benji stayed safe. She made him check in with Delphi and her family every hour, on the hour.
That routine simply stuck. It was as beneficial to Benji as it was comforting to Delphi. That’s why when a strange coat of discomfort began to spread across Delphi’s entire body, she knew she had to follow him.
Which is how we’re here. Or more specifically, Up Here.
Left, right, left.
Benji’s brown hair is messy. It’s not usually messy. Benji’s cheeks, with their lines from how often he smiles, are stained with tears. Delphi’s never seen Benji cry before. Benji’s shirt is whipping in the wind. It suddenly occurs to Delphi just how high up they are.
“Benji.” Her voice is gentle. She doesn’t want to startle him. “Benji, why are we on this roof? Why are we up here?”
“We weren’t supposed to be.” Benji’s voice is so quiet, that the wind almost steals it away before it reaches Delphi’s ears. He emphasizes that we as though Delphi is interrupting something terribly important. Something that Benji must do alone.
“I’m sorry.” Delphi doesn’t know why she’s apologizing.
“It’s okay.” Benji pauses for a moment. Left, right, left. “Can you go now?”
Delphi hesitates. “What are you doing up here? Why do you want me to leave?”
Benji shrugs. A tear rolls down his cheek. Left, right, left. His gaze is downwards. He doesn’t look up at Delphi. He doesn’t look over the edge of the roof.
“Benji.” Delphi says his name in such a way that Benji stops walking. He still looks at his feet. Delphi is beginning to grow desperate. She isn’t quite sure why. Tension is building up from the very pit of her stomach like a tsunami wave about to crash onto a sandy shore.
“I want to tell you.” Benji’s voice cracks. “But I c-cannot. My lips can’t form the words. My voice will not speak it.”
“That’s alright. You don’t have to tell me anything. You just have to get down, now. Alright? Can you do that for me?”
Delphi is thirteen here.
She is desperately young.
She is desperate.
❧
Delphi hates that she had every inch of this gravestone memorized. Each curve of every letter. Every number etched in stone. Even the moss that is starting to climb up from the fertile ground. She hates that the ground is so alive. It’s mocking her. Reminding her of everything, or everyone, who isn’t.
It wasn’t just Beautiful Melancholy that haunts her dreams anymore.
The only thing still tethering Delphi to reality is Benji. The soft touch of his hand in hers keeps her rooted in this moment. It stops her from falling six feet under and joining the living dead. It almost quiets the Beautiful Melancholy that sings her name.
Delphi saved Benji once. And now Benji is saving her.
The Girl and the Boy.
❧
“My feet will not move.”
“Well, that’s okay, too. Then don’t move. Don’t move an inch.”
“No. They will not move in that direction.” Benji jerks his head towards Delphi. Towards solid ground. Towards safety. Benji still looks at his feet. He looks down as though they are not his own. “They will only move me in that direction.” Benji gestures towards the other side of the ledge. Towards the ground that is far, far away. Delphi decides that she does not like it Up Here.
“Why?” Delphi’s voice is a whisper. “Why do you think they will only move you in that direction?”
Left, right, left. “Because I have nowhere else to go.”
“That is not true.” Delphi steps further to Benji. She must be only three feet away from the ledge now. “You have me. It’s me. Delphi. Come to me.”
Benji shakes his head. “I don’t think I can.”
“Your feet are awfully stubborn.”
Benji smiles the smallest of smiles. But it fades as quickly as a setting sun when he remembers where he is. He’s not just up here with Delphi. He is Up Here. Where his feet will not take him where he wants to go and his mind is a lonely, lonely place.
“You are not alone up here.” Delphi seems to be reading his thoughts. “I promise you, you are not alone.”
Benji meets Delphi’s eyes. “I feel alone. I feel all alone.”
“I know.” Delphi fights back her tears. She cannot cry now. She will not. “But what we feel and what is fact are not always the same.” Delphi pauses for a moment. “My mother still refuses to call me Delphinium. She doesn’t understand.”
Benji holds Delphi’s gaze. He understands. “The birth flower for July.”
“The birth flower for July.” A terrible thought occurs to Delphi. She wishes she had never thought it, but now it’s there. “I need you to get off the ledge now. Having to change my name to ‘Gladiolus’ just doesn’t quite roll off the tongue as well, don’t you think?”
“Gladiolus?”
“The birth flower for August.”
Benji feels his heart give a tug. The littlest of pulls in Delphi’s direction. For the first time, he starts to understand that maybe someone is capable of loving him, if only he could let them. Because here is Delphi, standing Up Here even though she could be anywhere in the world right now. But Here she is, choosing to be with The Boy Who Loved the Broken Parts.
She is choosing to be with Benji.
And Delphi, in her own way, is telling Benji that he means as much to her as Someone Else. Delphi is telling Benji that she loves him in the same way that she loved that Someone Else. The Someone that she lost.
❧
Benji knows this anniversary is not just difficult. It is impossible. Every year, this sorrow coming to remind Delphi of what she has lost. His fingers brush against her chin, gently lifting it up to meet his gaze. He whispers, “Loving harder, stronger, deeper… it means we open ourselves up to lose even more. The pain is even more difficult to bear. The grief buries itself even deeper inside ourselves. But that pain? It becomes proof we had the privilege to love at all. It’s proof we had the privilege to truly live.”
❧
As Benji takes a shaky step off the ledge, he falls into Delphi’s awaiting embrace. Their bodies collide into a tight hug that communicates a thousand different things.
Delphi realizes in that split moment that this is more than just friendship. It started that way, of course. That’s how this all began: with twenty-seven minutes and a desperate situation. But now Delphi is falling into something deeper. Friendship is still there, at the very core of it all.
But now she is falling in love.
Delphi buries her head deeper into Benji’s neck. They cry together. They cry for what almost happened. They cry that Benji was even Up Here in the first place. They cry for all the people who don’t have a Delphi to bring them back down.
The wind is a little quieter now. The air is a little cooler. They allow each other to just be in the moment. Just be together. Then they peel apart and share a soft kiss under the setting sun.
The rest is history.
The rest is destiny.
❧
Epilogue
In Loving Memory of Rowan Terrace
July 15, 2002 – April 30, 2011
Beloved son, brother, and friend
Charlotte Costic is a freshman at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, VA. She is currently pursuing a degree in English, with minors in Leadership Studies and Social Justice & Civic Engagement. She plans to get her Masters degree in Secondary Education and become a high-school English teacher. This is the first time her work has been published. In her rare free time, Charlotte can be found spending time with her friends, rewatching her favorite shows, or working on her novel.
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