Marissa Hughes is a lonely 16 year old brown haired blue eyed girl. Marissa lies on the moss covered ground. For a moment she sits up to lean against the gigantic Oak Tree. With tears in her eyes she rubs her hand on the rough surface of the Oak’s bark. Her hand desperately searches for the mark for comfort. There! She found it. The only thing is, the heart shaped carving filled with two sets of initials, fills her heart with sorrow instead. Thinking that there’s something left of him that will be forever her’s. Makes the tears flow harder and harder down her cheeks.
After a while she calmed down and looks at her surroundings. Marissa sees the different colors of the trees and the forest’s floor. Those colors used to give her meaning to life when he was by her side, but now they form an awful color…gray.
Marissa sighs. She stands up and wipes the dirt from her worn out blue jeans. As she’s walking she hugs her coat more closely to her skin to keep warm. Not only is it freezing outside, but her heart is also freezing.
Marissa stops at her backdoor. She winces as she’s going to dread to walk in the lonely hallways of her house tonight. When her parents are out and enjoying themselves, she’s going to be on her bed weeping and wondering if there is any hope to end her misery.
A month goes by when she finally has enough courage to enter the woods again. She follows the normal dirt-covered path for a while. Until she comes to a weed covered path and takes it. Marissa takes right turns and left turns until she stops dead cold. There right in front of her is the object of her misery. A half tattered rope, hanging on a sturdy branch above the river that ended his life. Tear strung her eyes as she took the rope in her hand. Marissa held it there for a while as she remembered that awful day.
Ever since Marissa and Nathan were together he would take her to other side of that river for some roses. He did this for her every anniversary Marissa and Nathan would make. Sometimes they would cross the river on the stony path, when it was low. When it was high they would have to climb a very steep hill.
One year Marissa broke her ankle while climbing the hill. So Nathan thought it was easier, if he just took the rope from his ford pickup truck and ties it to a branch. To swing to the other side and get the roses.
Marissa tried to persuade him otherwise, but with no prevail. Nathan jumped on the rope and swung himself across the river. He got halfway there when the rope snapped. He fell straight into the water and hit his head hard on the bolder beneath the river. When Nathan didn’t come up and gasp for air and gave her that winning smile of his and told her that he was okay. She started to panic. Despite the cold and her broken ankle she dove into the water for him.
She searched high and low in the murky brown water for as long as her screaming lungs could allow her. But alas she couldn’t find him for the current was too strong. So with an agonizing scream she jumped out of the river towards her house. She ran through the lonely hallways of her house soaking wet. She ran her fingers onto the telephone’s number pad. After a few minutes the search and rescue team arrived. They searched for Nathan, while Marissa kept telling herself over and over that this can’t be happening. They ended the search by nine p.m. with no Nathan. Marissa was devastated. They had begun the search bright and early the next morning. Two hours later, they finally found his lifeless body at the bottom of the river.
The day of the funeral Marissa immediately ran through the crowd, to be at Nathan’s side. When she was alone for a couple of minutes with Nathan, she began to weep. She wanted to tell him how much she loved him and was begging to see his clear baby blue eyes once again, just for a moment. When they begun to close the casket she wanted to protest against it, but the words died on her lips. She watched them close the lid on that beautiful face. And for a moment it looked like he smiled his winner smile of his, for the last time for only Marissa to see. As Marissa came back to the present, she laid a single rose, on the cold hard ground.
Marissa ran from that awful place of sadness. When she got to the tree, she sat in a daze saying only if only, while looking at the world filled with the color of gray.