The Grave with My Name on It
My name was on the headstone.
Not a name like mine. Not something close. My name. Jesica Eleanor Hale. Spelled with one “s,” the way my mother always insisted on spelling it, the way that made every teacher and every barista get it wrong for twenty-eight years.
Under it was my birth date. March 14, 1998.
And under that, carved a little smaller, was the date I died.
March 17, 1998.
Three days.
I stood there on the wet grass in my black funeral dress, holding a program with my best friend’s face printed on the front, and I read it again. Then again. My brain kept trying to make it into something else. A cousin. A coincidence. A joke. But the stone didn’t change. It just sat there, gray and old and patient, with a little ring of moss creeping along the bottom edge.
Beneath the dates, there was one more line.
Held for three days. Loved forever.
My hands were cold. Not cold like a chilly morning. Cold like someone had opened a door inside me and let the winter in.
I took out my phone. My fingers were shaking so badly that the first picture came out blurry. I took another one. And another. I didn’t know why. I think some part of me already knew nobody was going to believe me. Maybe I wasn’t going to believe me either, once I got back to my car.
There were white roses lying at the base of the stone. Old ones, dried and brown at the edges, but still holding their shape. Someone had put them there. Someone came here.
Behind me, far off, I could hear car doors closing. People leaving Jason’s burial. Someone laughing softly, the way people do at funerals when they’re too tired to cry anymore.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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