Margins, Memories, and Ms. Parker
The cemetery was quiet.
The kind of quiet that didn't feel like silence, but presence. Wind drifting through trees. Birds chirping like they were singing to ghosts. Leaves rustling like pages turning themselves.
Ms. Parker walked slowly down the row of headstones, her steps steady but her eyes softer than they had ever been in the classroom.
She stopped in front of them — two graves, side by side.
One read:
David Callahan
He smiled for her. Even when it hurt.
2002–2019
The other:
Amelia Rhodes
She never stopped smiling.
2003–2020
Ms. Parker knelt.
"I watched you two become the greatest scene I've ever directed," she whispered, voice cracking. "And the one I could never save."
She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a folded program. A playbill from a local theater.
The girl who had found their diaries — her name was Eliza — had written and directed her first original production. Not just a reading. Not just a tribute.
A full-fledged story.
Never Stopped Smiling: A Play About the Cost of Loving and the Bravery to Do It Anyway.
Ms. Parker had attended opening night. She'd cried harder than anyone. And afterward, Eliza had found her backstage and handed her something.
Something old.
Something fragile.
A page torn from David's diary.
One he had taped into the very back cover. Folded once. Hidden behind a photograph of Amelia laughing.
On it were scrawled words never meant to be read. The handwriting was rushed. Raw.
> If she's reading this…
It means I'm gone. And I guess it means I finally stopped running.
I've never been good with timing. But I'm good with words. Sometimes.
So here's mine:
Don't mourn me.
Please. Just… live like you used to smile.
Loud. Messy. Brilliant.
Like you believed in things.
You gave me a thousand moments I never thought I'd deserve. That's more than some people get in ten lifetimes.
And if love is pain… I don't regret a second.
You were worth the ache.
Always will be.
Ms. Parker had held that page for days before coming here. Now she gently tucked it into a small waterproof box and placed it between the two graves, weighed down with a smooth river stone she'd painted herself.
On it, she had written:
"Still yours."
She stood.
For a moment, it felt like they were there. Just out of reach. A girl smiling like sunrise. A boy hiding thunder in his chest.
She left them with silence.
But not with sadness.
Not anymore.
---
That night, Eliza sat on her bed, flipping through the two diaries again. She'd read them so many times they'd become part of her bloodstream.
But tonight, she wrote something new.
In a brand-new notebook, on a clean first page.
> For the boy who gave too much of himself.
For the girl who kept smiling through it.
For everyone who's ever loved too quietly or too late.
Your story matters.
And I'll tell it.
Until someone else carries it after me.
She closed the journal.
Tucked the other two beside it.
Looked out the window.
The stars were out.
And somewhere, if the universe was kind, two of them were dancing again.
Smiling.
Together.