by Mindy Mejia
“What are you talking about? Did your shift get changed or something?”
“No.” I kept my voice steady. “I want to break up.”
I could feel him pulling back, retreating to his side of the cab. It was a minute before he asked why.
“Because we’re going different places. It’s not going to work out.”
“It’s because of the sex stuff, isn’t it? Look, I’m sorry. I won’t do it anymore. I promise.”
If he wanted to play it that way, fine. It wouldn’t be a lie. “You know how I feel about it. You were just starting to make me really uncomfortable all the time. On the defensive, you know?”
“Okay, all right? I won’t bring it up again, not even at prom.”
“Prom?” The word totally threw me, like it wasn’t even in English. I’d been so consumed with the play and Peter, I hadn’t given prom a single thought.
Glittery dresses, slow dances, standing in front of the house while Mom and Dad took pictures. It seemed so . . . high school.
“We’ll go with the whole gang. The guys are talking about renting a limo and everything.”
“I’m not going to prom.”
“Everyone’s going.” He said it like that was the only argument he needed to make. If only he knew how I felt about everyone.
“Not me.” I couldn’t even imagine how awful it would be. Dancing in the gym with Tommy, trying to keep his hands from drifting, while Peter stood in the corner with the chaperones, miserable. I’d spend the whole night trying to think of ways to talk to him and he’d hate it, afraid one of us would say too much, look too long.
I hung my head in my hands. “Some girls aren’t meant to go to prom, Tommy.”
The seat dipped as he slid my way again. As soon as I felt his thick fingers rubbing into my back, I sat up quickly. His face was a shadow full of hesitation and hurt.
“Get back, Tommy.”
“What did I do, Hattie? What did I do that was so wrong?”
His voice broke and I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing in the glow from the parking lot light. I couldn’t stand it anymore, couldn’t sit here listening to him cry for a girl who didn’t even exist.
I yanked open the door, grabbed my purse, and jumped out.
“Where are you going?”
“Anywhere I want.”
His expression turned bitter. “Everybody told me not to go out with you, that you were just a freak who wouldn’t give it up. I guess they were right.”
“Then go find someone else to take to prom, Tommy. I’m sure there’s some little junior out there who’ll be happy to let you fuck her.”
I slammed the door and headed to the dark edge of the parking lot, where the trees were waiting to swallow me from sight. I heard a window open behind me.
“Where the hell are you going?”
“New York,” I yelled, without turning around. “Get lost, Tommy.”
I ran into the weeds and found the trail, then waited until the truck’s engine fired up and spun out of the parking lot, gravel flying from the tires. My stomach was rolling from yelling at him and being so mean, but it was better this way. He wouldn’t try to make up with me on Monday now. He would tell Derek and all the other football guys what a bitch I was and they’d trash me and feed Tommy some beers and that would be that.
As the roar of the truck faded, I started noticing other noises. The first of the spring frogs sang in the lake. Last year’s dead weeds rustled in the breeze and somewhere not far off an owl was hooting. It might have been coming from the barn. As the night settled in around me, the bad feelings all disappeared and I realized I was free, finally done with that awful role I’d created for myself.
I floated down the trail as the moonlight bounced off the water, guiding my way. The stars were out and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I’d miss this. You probably couldn’t see the stars in New York City, not even from Central Park, but here—where the only interference was the tiny glow from the parking lot behind me—I felt like I was standing on the edge of the solar system. There were thousands of lights, winking and shining, pulsing in the night. I could see satellites and planets and the only thing breaking the horizon was the barn in front of me. It was spectacular, a feast of light, the whole universe laid open, and I felt the way I’d always felt looking up at it, like I was huge and tiny at the same time. Yes, I would miss the stars.
Inside the barn I lit the lantern I’d left in the corner and checked the time.
10:17. Still early. Peter could be just locking up the school now.
I didn’t mind waiting: it gave me the chance to rehearse what I was going to say. I wasn’t playing a part anymore—I was all done with that—but it didn’t hurt to be prepared, to know that the words coming out of my mouth were exactly the ones I wanted to say. The last time I’d tried being open and honest with Peter, everything had come out wrong and I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. Not when this was our last chance.
After I finished rehearsing, I started dancing around the floor, partly to stay warm, because I hadn’t brought a sweater to put on over my sundress, and partly because Tommy had put that prom idea in my head. What would it be like to go to a formal dance—not the Pine Valley High School prom in the gymnasium—but a real one in a ballroom, with a beautiful dress to wear, escorted by a man in a tuxedo? I started waltzing, holding my arms out around an invisible partner, one-two-three, one-two-three, just like Dad taught me in the living room after we saw The Nutcracker when I was ten years old.
I got so caught up in the thought, watching my shadow twirl and shift along the walls, that I almost screamed when I turned toward the broken window and saw the outline of a person.
My heart raced and I dropped my arms, tripping over a loose floorboard. After a pause, the figure drew forward, and I saw it was Peter. He stared at me with the strangest expression. I would have thought he’d laugh to see me acting so silly and young, but his face was transfixed. He walked out of sight and came around to the door, stepping just inside. Our eyes locked and held.
I didn’t say anything, didn’t want to break the spell. I walked over to him and reached out, drawing one of his hands to my waist and lifting the other in the air beside us. I circled my free hand over his shoulder, leaving a proper distance of space between our bodies. We almost matched up, practically eye to eye. I could see his objection coming, could feel the magic leaving him, so I pulled him gently toward me, starting the steps. One-two-three. One-two-three. And, like a miracle, he began waltzing.
Our pace was slower than mine had been. He moved me deliberately around the room, skirting the edge of the lake, never looking away from me. Neither of us smiled. I could feel my blood pumping warmer and faster, creating that reaction in the pit of my stomach that always happened whenever Peter touched me. I could tell he felt it, too.
After circling the dry half of the barn for what felt like an eternity, we moved to the middle and broke out of the waltz. Peter let go of my waist and spun me, slowly, one, two, three times from the length of his arm and stepped back, until only his fingertips brushed the edges of mine and then were gone. He let his arm fall to his side and we stood apart, breathing heavily.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
“You’re dancing with me.” I tried to keep it simple, even though Peter never let anything be simple. He sighed and I knew complications were coming; they were climbing up his throat right now. I stepped forward and held my hand up. “Just wait. Wait.” I took a deep breath, remembering what I wanted to say.
“You’re going to be a shitty father.”
Peter opened his mouth. Closed it. Then said, “Thanks.”
“I’ve thought this all through. I know you, Peter. I know you think you have to do what’s right for the baby and stay with Mary, but she’s never going to leave Pine Valley. So you’re either going to be trapped here forever, hating every minute of it, or you’re going to eventually get divorced anyway and drag the kid thr
ough some awful custody battle, making him believe it’s his fault Mommy and Daddy hate each other, and leave him—or her—psychologically scarred for life.
“Then what? You’ll move back to Minneapolis to try to start over, alone, never seeing your kid anyway because you’re too far away for the every-other-weekend deal that most dads get. And by then I’ll be in my twenties or thirties, probably married to some Wall Street guy that I only liked in the first place because he kind of looked like you, hating him because he doesn’t understand me at all, and having his children, which I’m pretty sure I don’t want.”
Peter was trying not to smile. “What’s his name?”
“Barry.” I shook my head like I’d said it a million times, and it was stuck to me like chewing gum on my shoe. “His name is Barry. Can you believe it?”
“Yes, I can. Don’t forget that Barry has a good job. You probably have a time share in the Hamptons. Barry can give you the kind of life that you deserve.”
“Barry is an asshole.”
Peter burst out laughing and I plowed ahead, acting like the put-out wife.
“He never helps with the kids and stays out at happy hours with his friends all the time. When do you think was the last time he even took me to see a play, much less let me audition for one?”
Peter’s laugh trailed off and he shook his head at me, smiling. “God, I don’t think there’s a Barry in the world who can stop you.”
I walked over to my purse and pulled out a small, black-handled locker key, then came back and put it in his hand.
“Here’s your money. Kind of.”
As he stared at it, his forehead crinkled up the way I loved. “What’s this?”
“Our future.”
“We”—he emphasized the word as all the amusement drained from his expression—“don’t have a future, so what the hell is this?”
“Greyhound station, locker number twenty-four. Our tickets are inside.”
He made a strangled noise and spun away from me, balling the key into his fist. The barn floor shrieked as he paced too close to the water. I kept talking, careful to keep my voice neutral.
“We leave the week after graduation and I’ve reserved space in a hostel for a few weeks until we find a room to rent. With the rest of your money and my savings, we’ve got enough for a down payment and two months’ rent. I can transfer to three different CVS locations that have openings while you figure out your New York teaching license, but I think in the meantime you should work at one of the publishing houses.”
He swung back around, as angry as I’d ever seen him. “You’re delusional.”
“I prefer the term go-getter.”
“You lied to me. You said you wanted to return the money and say goodbye.”
“I do.” I stepped forward. “I want us to say goodbye together, to this barn, to this town, to this crappy situation. It doesn’t have to end this way, with both of us miserable and apart. We can escape. We can start our life together.”
“You want to start a life with a man who would abandon his wife and unborn child?”
“I want you, Peter. Just you. Not the labels you keep trying to put on us. I haven’t thought about anything except us in weeks. Here’s what I know.” I put my hand on his arm and, even though his muscles were tensed and rigid, he didn’t pull away.
“I know that when I met you I was untouchable. No one affected me. No one made me want to laugh or cry. I felt like I was above it all, but beneath it, too. Does that make sense? I was like a shell of a person. And you were this light that gave me the courage to see inside myself for the first time. But I didn’t know that you were broken, too. You made all the wrong choices, all the choices I might have made if I hadn’t ever found myself. You needed someone to save you just as much as I did. And now that we have, now that we’ve found each other, we can’t turn away from it. I can’t live the rest of my life knowing I had you and gave you up.”
I felt the tears running down my face and saw them in Peter’s eyes, too. He had trouble speaking, and swallowed.
“But Mary. How can I leave her like this?”
“How can you stay with her when you’re in love with me?”
“I’ll hate myself if I leave.” When he tried to pull his arm away, I grabbed his shirt with both hands.
“You’ll hate yourself more if you stay.” I backed him into a dry corner of the barn; our shadows got smaller and smaller. “And she’ll hate you, too, because she’ll know. Girls always know. She’ll know you see someone else every time you make love to her.”
“Hattie—”
“And your kid will hate you for making his mother unhappy.” I pushed him until his back hit the wall and he grabbed my wrists to try and force me off. But I just got louder and stronger.
“And the school will hate you because you don’t fit in there. Because you’re better and smarter than them and you know it. And this town will hate you because you’ll never be one of them. You’ll shrivel away into nothing here. You’ll be an old, bitter, useless—”
He lunged at me, stopping my mouth with his own, kissing me brutally, boxing my head in his hands. I gasped at the force and he spun me around and slammed me into the wall. I cried out, but he didn’t stop. Thank you, God.
“Peter.” I chanted his name as he wound my hair in his hands, wedged his knee between mine, and drove me up.
“Is this what you want?”
“Yes.” I found his belt and unfastened the buckle. “Yes, always.”
He moaned my name, like it was being ripped out of him, and then there was no more talking. We fell onto the floor, not even bothering to undress, desperate for each other. It was hard and fast and rough and when it was over he collapsed and pulled me to his side, holding me tight.
We lay quietly for a while, letting our breathing return to normal. Then I pushed myself up to an elbow and smiled at him.
“I should have insulted you a long time ago.”
“I’m amazed you ever found anything positive to say to me.”
“I’m very creative.”
He smiled, but it was like a shadow passing over his face. I laid my palm along his jaw, so gently, and stared down at him.
“Come to New York with me.”
He mirrored my move, reaching up and stroking my face. “I don’t think I can.”
Then he closed his eyes and dropped his hand to cover them. “But, God, I don’t think . . .”—my heart dropped—“I can leave you.”
“Wh-what?”
He sat up suddenly, pulling me with him as everything was confusion, then he took me by both arms and gazed at me, swallowing.
“I love you, Hattie Hoffman.”
“I love you, too.” My chest was pounding now, harder than it had all night. All my cards were on the table. There was nothing left to say, nothing left I could do. It was his decision.
“I don’t have much money,” he said.
“Neither do I.”
“I’ll have even less after paying for child support.”
“That’s fine.”
“I don’t know what I can do for work before I get my New York license.”
“You’ll work in publishing, LitGeek.”
“We’d have to tell your parents before we go.”
That stopped me.
“I’m serious, Hattie. I can’t live a half-life anymore. We do it all the way, or we don’t do it at all.”
It was my turn to swallow. “My father will kill you.”
“Then I’ll die with a clear conscience.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay. We’ll tell them together. After I lock the gun cabinet.”
“I’ll tell Mary by myself. When school is over.”
We stared at each other, smiles slowly lighting up our faces. My breath came fast and shallow, the excitement bubbling up.
“You’re coming to New York with me?”
He looked jubilant, and all of a sudden I saw how he must have been as a kid. His face open and h
opeful, not weathered by unhappiness.
“I’m coming to New York with you.”
I screamed and launched myself at him, grabbing him close and laughing as we tumbled over each other on the floor. I planted kisses all over his head until he found my wandering mouth and kissed me long and deep. I don’t think anyone had ever been as happy as I was at that moment. It felt like I couldn’t even contain it, it wouldn’t all fit inside of me, it was spilling out my fingers and eyes and chest, pouring light into the darkest corners of this wretched barn.
“I love you, I love you,” I kept saying, until a noise outside made us break apart and turn toward the window, but there wasn’t anything there except the wind, which made me shiver. Peter rubbed a hand over my goose bumps and sighed.
“It’s getting late.”
“No, it’s early.” I smiled, loving that I would get to contradict him for the rest of our lives.
“And you’re cold.” He rubbed his way up to my shoulders. “Why don’t you have a coat?”
“Farm girls are tough.”
“They’d better be, because the hard part is next. Telling everyone. Breaking ties.”
I looped my arms around his neck. “Then I’d better have some more of the kissing part, to get ready.”
After a few more minutes, he broke away again. “We really should go. Are you going to be okay getting back to your car?”
I almost forgot I didn’t have a car here, but I didn’t mention it. I wasn’t going to start our new life by becoming helpless. I’d just call Portia and have her pick me up at the parking lot. She was probably still at Dairy Queen with the rest of the cast and crew.
“You go on. I need to do something first.” I grabbed my purse.
“What about this?” He picked up the locker key that must have fallen on the floor at some point.
“Keep it. I told you I was giving you your money back tonight.”
“And you’re just a model of truth and honesty.” He walked over to me and wrapped his arms around my waist, grinning.
“Just like you. We make a great couple.”
He gave me one last kiss to tide us both over until we could meet again and then he left. I started to reach for my phone, but became overwhelmed by euphoria. Everything flashed through my head, each moment and decision over the past year that had led me to this point in my life. I spun around a few more times, hugging myself, and then dug the camcorder out of my purse, eager to recount every last second of the miracle that just happened.