A man stands on a beach.He holds a stone in his hands.A black rock,it weighs over eighty pounds.This is a fact and the man is small but he holds the rock in his hands anyway.His hands white with the strain.His face placid,his eyes dual images of the rock.

This world is calm,winter.He stands infront of a lake,on its shore.
Ice is not to be seen attop the water,only ripples from an occasionel breeze.
A breathe.


On the rock is inscribed two words.

Andrew.

Lillie.


Andrew is fifteen today,not a man,only a child.Needing.
Lillie had been younger-
thirteen last year,in the summer.
The past is dead but it isn't past and it echoes sometimes.But mostly it screams.It screams in your ears.

Lillie had been screaming for a year now,and today her voice is
but a whisper.
The last verse of a song.

Lillie had been small for her age and her limbs had been gnarled from a bone condition:osteogenises imperfecta.

She had skipped stones in life.It had been the extent of her athletic ability.

She had been wondefrul at it.She could skip a stone furthur than anyone.

He had always told her that her stones skipped the farthest because she choose them with love and that they loved her for that.



She would just look at him and say.
"The stones choose me."



One day while they skipped stones she found the rock.She said to him when she first saw it.
"I'm going to to skip that stone one day."
They had both carved they're names into it with the boys pocket knife,childish it had been.
It was a week later that she skipped not that stone,but skipped her feet-tripped down stairs-and broke her neck,back and arms.
Death had been instant.

The boy stands and holds the stone.He had held her once and she had been no heavier than this.

He thinks as he runs forward into the icy waters,the stone in his arms.

"You choose me,and the stones choose you,and i am choosen."

He shudders out a sweet soft breathe as he hits the waves.

"I choose to be with you."

---

and he skipped farther



than any stone she had ever-





thrown with her small hands.