The silence was sad. It plucked at my chest. I could only feed the silence with more fear and uncertainty.

I had met Jack when I was five, and he was six. It was after one of my dad's religious institutional gatherings and Jack had brought horses made of sticks. And we and the other kids played cops and robbers. I took a liking to him instantly. Bang Bang! As the song goes. My baby shot me down.

I'm just glad I'd gotten the chance to love him for as long as I did before I lost him.

I wonder what he must think of me. I wonder if he hates me for disappearing with Craig and George. I wonder if he thinks I meant to leave him, that it was my choice.

He probably already thought I was selfish. I had cheated on him with Craig, I had broken his trust.

I know Jack had loved me with all his heart. The only thing I had to be jealous of him was his love for writing books. Writing transcended all other passions in Jack's world. I wish I had bought him that cardboard box so he could live in it under the pouring rain in a dark alleyway in Europe with only a pen and infinite scroll of paper so he could write to his heart's desire. I smiled now at the memory of that quote. It was that quote that had made me really fall in love with him. He had said that on our first date, at that place called Sicily's when we had the Cioppino's.

Gosh he loved writing. And I loved him.

I thought about him slowly and articulately, just as I climbed slowly and articulately up the stairs before searching the third floor for Jack.

I was thinking about funerals. I was thinking about whether all the people who died would have their funerals. IF they already had their funerals. I wondered if Travis would have his. I wondered if his parents already lost hope and had the ceremony upon his disappearance.

I wondered if Craig, and George had their funerals already. I wonder if Brett was still alive, and I wonder if his family already had his funeral.

And then I stopped midway toward the room where Jack and I used to sleep on the third floor, and noticed the bedroom door was closed. I wonder if Jack was still alive. And wondered if his parents already thought he was dead. And if I had missed his funeral.

I walked to the door, my fingers touching the golden knob. I looked into my warped reflection in the round knob, and wondered if my parent's thought I was dead. How much they must have cried, how much they must have spent on my funeral, where they must have had it. Maybe at the church, maybe at the temple, maybe on a boat, maybe on a mountaintop. I wonder if it was a closed casket, it must have been. It didn't matter. I wonder if all the pretty flowers at my funeral were dead and black now. . .

And as I turned the knob to mine and Jack's room, I saw across the way, through the bathroom door—an open medicine cabinet.

I stopped silently in the door way, my hand still gripping the knob—I could not let go.

Through the bathroom archway, by the sink, under the open medicine cabinet, I saw open orange pill bottles with the white caps popped off, and they were all empty. The sink was filled with water, and some pills had no doubt clogged the drain.

But a fear, and a terrible sadness trenched within me, and gravity was swallowing me whole. As I gripped the knob tighter with both hands, and my face contorted in hot pain, I turned my eyes to the nightstand right beside me by the wall. . . and what I found hurt me like a cracking whip. . .

A stack of papers, with Jack's author name in bold letters, and a cover title reading SWIM, laid as a finished manuscript, a finished book, on that nightstand beside me. A subtitle: Based on a true story—was written under the title. And a yellow note, To whom it may concern, was taped on top of the book.

Wiping my eyes, unable to make a sound as my hands trembled, I picked up the note and read it with the utmost sadness.

To whom it may concern,

I have written this book with the purpose that it may survive. That it will live on longer than I ever could. That it will be widespread and make me immortal, as all great art is made to do for its author.

My greatest fear is death. I have tried religion, and I have tried love, but both have failed me unexpectedly. All I have, all I will ever have, for the eternity of this work's existence, is the intrinsic art that keeps me motivated, to keep on creating, and to keep on living. . .

Please, if you find us, me and this book, please take this book back home, take it to a publisher, and have it spread. For profit or for free. I do not care. You can even erase my name, and replace it with yours.

I just want a little piece of me to go on living forever. And if it does, its eternal read, will forever complete me.

Thank you for saving this book. . . Thank you for saving me.

With Love,

Jack

The piece of paper slipped out of my hands, and I turned finally to what had been haunting the corner of my eye this entire time I read the sad note. I could hear a piano playing, the same one that played at my great aunt's funeral years ago. . .

In that bed Jack and I used to sleep in, was a big black blanket lying over all the sheets and covering all the pillows. Underneath the black blanket, was the curvature, of a beautiful human body, it's face and nose pointed up to heaven.

That was Jack's body under that blanket. And while it could be appropriate to run over, embrace Jack, peel open the blanket to reveal and kiss his lips, with only the hopes to magically bring Jack back to life, my hand never let go of the golden door knob, and I merely picked the note I had dropped from the floor and placed back on Jack's beloved book.

I gave the black blanket and the body under it one last look, and suffered the fact that it was not moving. I left, and did not even bother to close the door.

I walked out along the hall, and returned to the stairs.

I could return to the boat and try to make my way back to land. But now, I realize, that if I was to not make it back, I would suffer dying by dehydration and starvation in that boat with George's dead corpse.

I made my way up the stairs. Up to the fourth floor. And then I made my way to the roof, and found a pleasant ledge to over look the world that was becoming less gray as time went on. But the moans of the world were still strong and I cried heavily and screamed in my mind, Oh, Jack. . . Why Jack. Why didn't you just wait. Why couldn't you just wait. I was coming back for you. Didn't you know I was coming back for you?

Everyone was dead, I knew. My town was probably dead, too. Brett and that family we deserted were probably withered to nothingness as well. And I thought to myself, it must be better to die by choice, just like those pills and Jack's note assume. I wanted to die with JAck. I wanted to have a family, grow old and pass on from this world with Jack. And maybe now. . . I could.

I looked around at this big, bad world, wet and drowned with the flood, and I climbed up onto the slippery, wet ledge, and closed my eyes. I wondered what Jack must have been thinking before he did it. Before he passed on.

And I pretended, in my heart and in my imagination, that he was standing beside me, and holding each other's hands, we open our eyes and look down, at the water and the debris four stories down. . .

And realize--

Love never dies. . .