Believe

On a brick wall a block away from our home, was spray painted the word, “Believe!”

No context, no explanation, simply “Believe!” graffitied on an otherwise unadorned brick wall.

Becky and I walked past it every day, and every day I could tell there was something she wasn’t telling me. Something she found troubling about the graffiti. But I didn’t ask and she wouldn’t share.

One day, on the way home from the pub, both of us with a few drinks in us, she stopped dead, staring at what should have, by that point, become a commonplace sight to us both.

She just stood there. Swaying, as though transfixed. I waited a moment for her to catch up, but she never did.

“Becky?” I called to her, and she seemed not to hear me. She just stood at the spray painted wall, lost in her own thoughts, for a minute or two. Eventually, she went to the wall we’d both walked by so many times, and placed her hands upon it.

And fell right through, the wall opening up and closing behind her.

I ran to the wall to see what the hell happened, but by the time I got there, it was solid brick again.

Or maybe it always had been.

Or maybe it never was.

Or something in between.

I’ll never know.

Because, though I went back to try and find her every day for two months, the wall was always there and I never saw her again.

Eventually I left Vancouver. Once she was gone, I didn’t have much reason to stay.

I still wonder what was behind that wall for her, where she went. What adventures she was on now.

But I suppose I’ll never know.

Kind of makes me wish I believed…