Read There Will Come a Time for Free Online

weeks after that.
    Hanna reads the list. “ ‘One: Train and run in a 5K. Two: Go bungee jumping. Three: Learn to surf. Four: Perform spoken word at a club. Five: Hike to the top of a mountain and watch the sunrise.’ ”
    I’m not completely surprised by the list. I know Grace wanted to run. She started a couple of months before she passed. I thought it was because of River, though, this guy she was dating. He was a runner at her school, and I teased her about trying to impress him. But I can’t see Grace standing in front of a mic reading her poetry. She was terrified to speak in front of people. She also hated the ocean. And bungee jump? She was scared of heights.
    The list makes me wonder what else Grace kept from me, and I feel a twinge of betrayal that quickly morphs into sadness because she died before getting to do any of these things.
    The night of the accident, Grace was pressing me for my own kind of wish list. I told her I don’t think like that. I take life as it comes. She didn’t believe me.
    â€œYou’re way too driven, Mark,” Grace said. “Come on, what’s something you wish you could do, but you haven’t yet?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œTell me,” she whined.
    I let out a secret because it was Grace and Grace was good with secrets. She was also the one I wanted to tell first. Sharing things with Grace made them real. “I want to go to Berklee.”
    â€œIn Boston?” Her tone was serious, as if she were thinking through the implications.
    â€œYep.”
    She was quiet, and I drummed along to the music on the steering wheel. She was processing. Boston was three thousand miles away. We’d never been that far apart before.
    â€œDo it!” she said suddenly. The words came out in a rush. “You totally need to do it. I could go to Harvard, and we could be roommates.”
    â€œHarvard’s in Boston?”
    â€œYes, Mark.” She laughed at me like I should know these things.
    â€œI don’t think I should live with my sister in college. You’ll scare away all the ladies.”
    She laughed even louder. “Yeah, right. Besides, what about Hanna?” She poked me in the ribs.
    I stopped drumming and shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “What about her?”
    â€œOh please, she’s, like, at the top of your wish list.” She leaned her head against the passenger window and smiled.
    â€œI don’t have a wish list.”
    â€œMaybe not number one, but for sure, she’s number two,” Graces said right before I decided to take the route that led us to the bridge.
    Usually I would have taken the freeway, but I knew how much she loved that bridge and how it was all lit up at night. I turned right.
    The decision took less than a second. The neurons fired in my brain and my hands turned the wheel; that’s how long it took. One small decision. But if I could take it back, I would.
    â€œMark?” Hanna asks.
    I look at her in confusion because my thoughts are still with Grace. I stare at Grace’s belongings on the porch and try to pull some meaning from them. On their own, they’re insignificant: loose change, a matchless shoe, ID. When I try to string them together, they shout the glaring truth—that Grace is gone. I’m still here. And no matter how I try to arrange the fragments that Grace left behind, they’ll never add up to anything whole again.
    â€œI know it’s crazy, but I think we should do it,” Hanna says.
    â€œDo what?”
    â€œThe list.” She places her hand on the journal. “Grace’s list.”
    I suck in my anger, wanting to control it because I know Hanna isn’t trying to hurt me. “I don’t know,” I say, letting the air out slowly and counting to ten in my head.
    â€œI know we were all supposed to say good-bye to Grace at the memorial when everyone said what they loved about her, but