Her sneakers glistened with fresh morning dew as she strode over the lawns. A breeze puffed through, the carpet of grass blades whispering and twinkling as she passed, her curtain of dark hair swirling around her. The air smelled fresh like spring earth: it was as if the atmosphere had been stripped away and replaced with a brand new one. She sucked in a cool breath of it, her lungs shivering. Kuki pulled her sweater around her, her every nerve pulsing with life.

Birds twittered as she threw her gaze out over the meadows, the rolling hills that seemed to stretch for miles before her. Bursts of reflected sunlight dazzled from the grass around her, searing bright geometric shapes into her eyelids. She blinked and the imprints flashed neon pink, her vision smattered with tears. With her sleeve she wiped them away, crouching to squint down at the long rows of grave markers winding away from her, marching along the hills like soldiers in formation. They glimmered on the meadow, rectangular pools of dark marble, their smooth faces etched with names and dates. Kuki didn't recognize any of the names, but looking at them still she felt sadness slide like a stone into her stomach. She imagined the endless rows of people sleeping in the earth beneath her feet. Thousands of blind faces turned up at her, their eyes smothered with soil.

Kuki was drenched in a sudden terror. She felt like she shouldn't be there, like she was the most terrible kind of trespasser. For a second she longed to sprint away, to tear her feet away from the lawns of Running Meadows and run far out of sight. But no. She stiffened her lip and straightened her spine. On the hills below her she saw others, bright splotches of color swimming in the sea of sparkling green. There were adults. There were children. They held bright bouquets and blankets, wreathing the graves with garlands of flowers. They sang. They cried. They smiled and Kuki smiled along with them. Gathering her spirits, she turned on the sweet grass and trod on. It was another few minutes until she found what she was looking for.

She knelt down before it, breathing. In the gravestone's polished surface she saw her own face, reflected as if she was peering into water instead of stone. The name on it stood out somberly before her.

Wallabee Beetles.

"WAAAAAALLY!" she screamed, tilting her head to the sky. "I FOUND it!"

He came scrambling over the hill to join her.

"Eim comin', eim comin'!" Wally wheezed, clutching at his sides as he hobbled over the grass with his short legs. "Geez, yeh don't haft'a yell at me like that!"

He staggered into Kuki's shoulder, his knees trembling and his golden head crowned with sunshine. She opened her mouth but he cut her short.

"Eim fine…" he puffed, closing his eyes. Kuki looked at him and for a moment she saw that ghost of a boy recovering in his hospital bed—the one who hadn't even been able to turn over without taking on the pallor of death itself. So she took his arm, just to be safe. Wally's throat closed, his cheeks rosy in the morning sun. In the corner of his eye loomed the gravestone, and despite himself he turned to look at it. Her hand on his elbow, Kuki turned along with him.

Wallabee Beetles.

The silence weighed like concrete upon them. The grass whipped in the wind. Voices floated over the meadow. An airplane ripped through the sky. The tide of traffic hushed past. In the sun Wally's gravestone glimmered like beckoning death.

Wally wanted to speak, but his words turned to ash on his tongue. Terror froze his guts and his mind sagged. Part of him regretted the decision to come and see his gravestone. Another part of him cursed the grave-people for not taking it out yet. With it glaring at him it was almost as if the coma had actually taken him. As if he had actually died.

He became aware that he was kneeling, his jeans damp through the knees from the wet earth. He felt the touch of sun on his back, the tickle of his bangs in the breeze, and Kuki's arm on his. He felt the planet turn around him. Even with his own deathbed sitting mere inches before him he'd never felt so blissfully alive. Wally sucked in a deep breath and found himself suddenly smothered in Kuki's sweater.

His heart could have leapt a skyscraper. His face against her shoulder was burning so fiercely that he half expected her to feel it through her clothes. Her tears dripped down his neck. Her heart thumped against his skin. Her arms were strong around him. Wally shoved the gravestone out of his mind and clutched her long sleeves, his brain popping with butterflies. Swallowing his terror, he coughed, clearing the silence from his parched throat. It was now or never.

"K…Kuki?" he managed, his voice barely a whisper on his lips. "Since I...well, 'cause eim not dead...I wanna tell you somethin'…somethin' that I should'a told yeh a long time ago and…"

Helplessly he looked up. She seemed to loom above him, her eyes shimmering and her hair billowing in the breeze.

He might as well have been talking to God Himself.

In horror Wally tore himself away, crumpling and burying his face in his hands.

"CRUD, I CAN'T DO IT!" he howled, teardrops glittering from his fingers. "EV'RY TIME I TRY I JUST CAN'T! I CAN'T DO IT! I CAN'T I CAN'T I CAN'T! CRUD!"

Blinking, Kuki stared at him. She'd never seen him cry.

Wally's forehead sagged into the grass, his fists pounding the ground and his tears dripping from underneath his bangs.

"EIM JUST TOO DUMB!" he bellowed, his voice thick with agony. "AND THIS CHANCE IS NEVEH GONN'A COME AGAIN AND EV'RY TIME I TRY IT JUST COMES OUT ALL WRONG AND SOMETHIN' ALWAYS GETS IN MY WAY AND I DON'T KNOW WHY AND I DON'T UNDERSTAND AND…" He swallowed. "…Why can't I just tell yeh that I love y-"

Wally felt his lungs collapse in his chest cavity; it was as if the universe itself had collapsed on top of him. Kuki's mouth fell open. Wally wished that lightning would suddenly appear to strike him dead (hopefully that grave was more comfortable than it looked). His eyes streaming with humiliation he scrabbled upright, only to be yanked back down into the grass again. Kuki's hand was on his wrist. He opened his mouth to speak but his sentence was stillborn.

Kuki beamed over him.

"Yay, say it again!" she sang, a light kindling in the jewels of her eyes. Her smile was like the sun over him. She didn't specify but he knew exactly what she wanted him to say.

"I…l-love you," Wally stammered, unable to wrench his gaze away from her. Kuki let out a little squeal and pulled him in, her mouth touching his forehead in a quick peck.

"I love you too!"

Her arms looped back around him and he found himself tumbled on her lap, blushing red and thoroughly robbed of speech.

Neither of them knew exactly how long they sat like that, holding each other, the sun radiating over them and the birds twittering. They watched the clouds billow across the sky. They watched the cars scream down the highway. They watched the grass hissing and waving in the wind like some kind of green ocean. They watched the shadows creeping from underneath the shrubs.

For a long while they were in the woods instead of in the Running Meadows.

But even entwined in her arms, Wally couldn't forget. The grave markers gleamed at him like eyes in the earth. And there was still his own grave, sunken with shadow and staring at him. His gaze hovered over it and he could feel cheated death, an icy claw twisting in his stomach. He blinked and found his cheeks dripping with saltwater. Against his will his body trembled from head to toe. Kuki held him close, stopping his heart with a kiss to the top of his head.

"Don't be scared, Wally," she whispered, mopping his tears with her sleeve. He tried to protest but could only cough. She gathered his small hand in hers and pulled him to his feet, steering him away from the grave. She wanted him as far away from it as possible.

"Let's just go home," she said, squeezing him. "I've got some stuff for you to read."

Wally looked up at her with a crooked smile, his eyes dewy in the dappled sun.

"Not more cruddy homework, is it?"

"No." She grinned. "I wrote this stuff for you myself."

-END-