I almost say What are they saying? just to watch him squirm, but that would be a dick move too, so I don’t.
What they’re saying: He came to see her, and she sent him away at the race. He looked angry. She sent him away, he was upset, and he crashed. He drowned.
It’s the precipitating event. There’s no logic to it, but it’s the simplest explanation. All I’d said was, Please hold this for me. Please be careful. But it was too far for anyone to hear, so the words become anything, become everything.
What they believe: Caleb had come to ask for my forgiveness (one rumor), or to try again (another rumor), or to confess he was still in love with me (uncorroborated, but a nice sentiment), and I’d said no. Something I did caused him to leave angry, and he wasn’t paying close enough attention, and then he died. Cause. Effect.
“I mean, he wasn’t this perfect guy,” Terrance continues, filling the silence. “It’s not your fault, right?”
“I never sent him away,” I say. I hadn’t told anyone this before—first, because I was in shock, then because I wondered if it was true, and now because it didn’t matter anymore what I said: it was too late. But something about Terrance in my foyer, a stranger giving me secrets—I was a sucker for them. “I asked him to hold my necklace. He disappeared. That was it. He didn’t say anything. I don’t know why he left. I don’t know where he was going.” It was another student and a parent who gave that account—who both said they saw him standing in the crowd after, that he looked upset. With nothing else to go on, the story filled in around it.
Terrance nods, unsure what to do with the information, whether to believe me or not—then seems to decide on something. “Okay, there’s one more thing.”
“What is it?”
“Someone came looking for him that weekend, at my dorm room.”
I flash to the letter in his book. An image of the girl in the ski gear. The blond braid, highlighted even in the winter. Ashlyn, he’d said.
“Tall, skinny dude,” he says, and I can’t reconcile the image in my head with his words. “I don’t know what he wanted with him. But he showed up while Caleb was gone. Said he wanted to leave a package for him. I said sorry, that I had no idea who he was talking about, because that seemed like the right thing to say. Guy kind of freaked me out a little. And I’m not holding some package in my room for anyone else, sorry.”
He hadn’t been answering my calls. I’d imagined Caleb drinking, at a party with girls, living it up. Not dealing with some guy with a package for him. Not coming back with a headache because of some other reason. The whole event that precipitated our breakup was not what I’d thought it had been.
“Anyway,” he says, taking a step closer. “I’ve been meaning to get this to you.” He pulls something from his pocket.
“What is that?” I say.
Terrance holds a white plastic bag, wrapped up in his fist. “He left it behind. I was going to call your brother, but then I saw you yesterday. I just didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t find it until I was packing to come home for the weekend. I think it was for you.”
“We broke up,” I say, staring at the bag. As if I am no longer entitled to its contents. I don’t reach for it, at first.
“When?” he asks.
“After. Right after.”
“I didn’t know that,” he says. He lifts his hand toward me. “I don’t know if this will make it better or worse.”
I stare at his closed fist. In his hand is the bag from the school gift shop, wrapped up around something small. I take it from his grip, letting it unravel, and I peer inside.
“That’s your name? Your full name?” Terrance asks, and I nod.
“Thank you,” I say, trying not to choke on the words. I’m shaking by the time I shut the door behind him.
Inside is a keychain, with the logo of the school mascot. But that’s not what has me frozen.
In my hand is a gift he had bought me, and never given. We were always on the lookout for my name on magnets or keychains or ornaments. It was an obsession of mine, because I could never find it. And there in my hand, the letters glittering in the light of the foyer, is the word Jessamyn.
I’m trying to imagine if there might’ve been a different sequence of events if he’d brought this out of his pocket that Monday morning when he returned. If the conversation would’ve steered out of dangerous territory. I’m trying to imagine a different string of events than what really happened that day.
—
We were standing in a row of lockers in the student center the Monday morning after his visit, our voices carrying no matter how low we spoke.
“What were you doing, that you were too busy to call?” I wanted to know. We were already there, on the edge. It had gnawed at me all summer, this something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. But it was such a big step, such a big leap to make over nothing. Undoing everything we had become, over nothing more than a feeling.
I wanted a reason. Something to cause the final split. But instead we hovered around it. I wanted to say he had done something, something to give voice to the feeling.
“You don’t trust me,” he said.
“Should I?”
He didn’t answer. The silence was worse than anything he could’ve said.
“If you don’t, then you don’t. Nothing I say or don’t say will change that,” he said. He had adopted this air of condescension, affected a level of maturity I had presumably yet to reach.
It was his tone that pushed me to it. “I guess I don’t then,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
He slammed his locker shut, spun the numbers on the lock. “Well, then I guess that settles it.” Like we were in turmoil, and now the pieces were settling after a storm, onto opposite sides of the line.
Except it wasn’t settled yet. He found me after practice that day, forcing the point. Making it a moment impossible to come back from.
“Just say it,” he said. His hands were up in the air, out to the side, as if he were bracing himself.
You don’t love me.
I don’t love you.
It’s over.
But instead I shook my head, the words too foreign. A year together. Our existences too wrapped up in each other.
We were standing on the grassy hill after practice. He was in jeans. He’d been waiting for me. He’d been watching. I was sweaty and thirsty and the muscles in my legs burned, and I felt outside myself, like I always did after a long run—that I was overdosed on air. My hands started shaking.
Caleb looked over his shoulder once. Like even this part didn’t require his undivided attention. He was split in two places, even then, already gone—already ten minutes from then, a day, a week. This just an item on one of his to-do lists that needed to be crossed off.
“Just go,” I said.
Caleb narrowed his eyes, the muscles in his face hardening. “That’s it? That’s everything? That’s all you have to say?”
But didn’t he get it? I didn’t want to give any more of myself away. I’d given everything, and now it was time to take it back. To hold on to the mystery, and leave him wanting instead.
“Yeah, Caleb. That’s it.”
He looked at me like he was surprised to suddenly realize he didn’t know this person standing before him at all.
“Wow. Well, what can I say, I’m so glad we did this, Jessa.”
I’m so glad we did this. His words rang in my ears. This. This conversation? This breakup? The entire last year?
I turned to go, walking down the hill to the water cooler, where everyone was still gathered, stretching after practice. Watching. “Hope you’re happy,” he called after me.
I didn’t turn to look, but I knew when he left because everyone shifted their focus from him to me.
I felt their eyes on me, and I knew I needed to say something, that the rumors would begin whether I said it or not. “Turns out I could use a ride home,” I said.
Hailey took a step closer, an
d Max was still staring at the empty spot where Caleb had just been.
“What a jerk,” Hailey said, because that was what I would say to her if our places were switched. She placed a hand on my shoulder, squeezed, then said, “Oh, crap, guess I’m going to need a ride home, too.” Then she let out the slightest giggle.
And then I was laughing too, both of us, a fit of inappropriate laughter, to mask the moment, to mask the tears.
I knew Max would wait for us, after we got changed. I knew in a way that didn’t make me have to ask him, or him have to say it, even though his allegiance was to Caleb in that moment. But I knew, because of how he once pushed back through the crowd for me, how he said You just left her, to him after.
We dropped Hailey off first, on the way, and we were almost to my place when he said, “Want to talk about it?”
But I just stared out the window, resting my head against it. I felt the reality filter in, all the changes. I wouldn’t take out my phone to text Caleb as soon as I was alone in my room. He wouldn’t pick me up tomorrow. I’d have to ask my parents if I could use Julian’s car for school. They’d have to ask why. I’d have to say it. All this talk, and now I just wanted silence.
“No,” I said. He pulled up at my house, and I grabbed my bag from the backseat. “Max?” I said. “Thank you for the ride home.”
He nodded once, his face stoic.
I went to close the door, and he called my name. I turned back. “We’re friends, too. Whether you’re with him or not. We were friends before.” I’d known him forever, it was true, but the last year with Caleb had really cemented our friendship.
I nodded and looked quickly away, feeling the knot in my throat, the burn in my eyes.
Max’s words were both true and not. We could be friends at practice. He could give me a ride home if I needed one. But we couldn’t just pick up the phone, or meet up at the beach, or fight over riding shotgun.
All of this changes, too.
The car is mine alone again, now that Julian’s gone. I park in the far lot, with the rest of the juniors who have their licenses. My eyes scan the lot for Caleb’s preferred spot from last year—under the tree, facing the athletic fields. Not the most convenient spot for morning class, but the best location for leaving at the end of the day. Caleb was like that, always planning for the parts that came later.
I grab whatever spot I come across first, ready for another day of the places Caleb does not exist. The combination lock has been permanently removed from his empty locker. I won’t hear his voice in the hall, his laughter around the corner, or see the top of his head in a crowd, his eyes locking with mine over the people between us. All empty spaces, a gap in the world as I know it.
But something’s different today, and I think it’s from spending so much time in his room. Now I’m seeing him everywhere. Not just the emptiness, but the things he’s left behind, instead.
Now I see the paint scratched off his locker, from the lacrosse stick, and the memory flickers through my mind: Caleb spinning around too fast when I whisper Boo in his ear, the stick hooked through the bag on his back scratching the metal. In first period I pass the open door of his class and see his seat, now occupied by another guy from his team—but at first it’s Caleb waving his hands over his head, recounting a story. Sitting in math class before lunch, staring out the glass window of the wooden door, my eyes are drawn to the remnants of glue, a corner of adhesive—and I see Caleb biting his lip, scrubbing at it as I walk by.
—
As part of school spirit week last year, the lacrosse team had plastered our school flags to each classroom window. Which probably would’ve been fine, but they’d added a line in black marker, about their opponent. Specifically, referring to how badly, and what, they sucked.
Which was why the team was back out in the hallway after school with buckets of water and sponges and soap, scraping the glued signs off with their fingernails, or using the ice scrapers from their cars.
Sitting in math now, I imagine him there on the other side of the door, working at the window along with the rest of his teammates as I walked by.
I’d passed him in the hall, making a tsk-ing sound, laughing at the look he gave me in return. He ran a soap-streaked hand through his sun-bleached hair and gave me a self-conscious smile. I paused across the hall, my hand on my hip. “You missed a spot,” I said.
One of his teammates said, “Can’t you get your girlfriend to help?”
And he said, “Why would I want to subject my girlfriend to stripping glue from glass? Run, Jessa. Run while you can.”
Everything inside and outside of his room still reminds me of him. I catch my dimmed reflection in the glass of the classroom door, and even that, even the image of me, conjures up Caleb.
Someone calls my name, and it takes me a second to realize it’s the teacher. And by the time I do, by the time I look in my notebook, ready to answer, he has moved on, unsure of what to do with me, either.
—
The bell rings overhead, and the rest of the students leave.
I hear the distinct tread of shoes turn in the hallway, entering the classroom. They’re purple, with a strap and a black heel. She taps one toe beside my bag. “You ready?” she asks.
Hailey has her long dark hair swooped up into a ponytail. She’s trying to make light of this moment, and I suddenly see how lucky I am, because I do remember the last time we spoke. It wasn’t at the service; it was the next day. She’d come by my house, and after my parents let her in, I cut her off with one-word answers and asked her to leave. Her last words: I’m trying to help here.
Yeah, well, you’re not.
Don’t wreck this, too.
Too. That little word. It dug itself under my ribs, and every time I heard her speak, I’d feel them stabbing my heart.
“Hailey,” I say, trying to find the right words to apologize.
“There are french fries,” she cuts in, tapping her toe again. “You know how the line gets on french-fry day. I’m just saying.”
I swing my backpack over my shoulder and give her a grateful smile. “Let’s go,” I say.
On the way to the cafeteria, Hailey tries to lead me in the other direction. She tries to distract me with gossip about her latest date.
“What the hell is that?” I ask, as Hailey pulls me past the display.
But it’s too late. I’ve already seen it.
There’s a pen hanging from poster board, and sheets of paper stapled to it. It’s a petition, I see. A petition to rename Coats Memorial Bridge to Evers-Coats Memorial Bridge. There are at least a hundred names. There’s a photo of Caleb at the top, the same one from his school ID, and beside that, mounted to the wall in a glass frame, is his gray athletic T-shirt, folded into a square, so his name is visible under the logo for our school.
“Where did they get this?” I ask.
“His locker,” Hailey answers. “Come on.” She pulls me by the arm, but I don’t budge.
“When?” I ask.
“His mom came, that first week, when you were…” She trails off. She doesn’t need to say it. When I was in my room, in the dark, not answering my phone or texts or the doorbell. When she showed up and I wouldn’t see her, and I went running late at night, by myself, after everyone was sleeping—sure, at times, that I could hear the rumble of a river in the distance.
“Then why is it here?” I ask. I know Caleb always kept a change of clothes in his locker, the Caleb he would become at three p.m. But something about this piece of him out on display, not in his house with his mother, doesn’t sit right.
She shrugs. “She showed up and wanted to cut the lock, but Max knew the combo, so he was with her when it opened.” She points to the wall. “That’s all that was in there.”
“That’s all?”
“Yeah, other than pencils.”
It’s a T-shirt from a fundraiser for the new athletic center, from the year before. I have the same one. Only mine says Whitworth on the front left
corner, under our school name. His says Evers. We all bought them and wore them on game days, and other times as well.
“She gave it to the school?”
“She gave it to Max. Apparently she changed her mind, and didn’t want the things inside his locker. And Max didn’t know what to do with it, so he gave it to Caleb’s coach, like a tribute or something.”
“And now, here it is,” I say.
“Here it is.”
Here it is, staring me in the face, like the last time I went to his house. The last time I saw his room, until this week.
—
That day on the hill after cross-country practice was not the last time we spoke. I had showed up at Caleb’s house the next day, after the breakup, hating how we left things—the anger in his expression, the nonchalance of his cutting words. Everything we had been, reduced to this.
Mia had let me in, and I climbed the flight of stairs alone.
“What are you doing here, Jessa?” Caleb’s arm blocked the doorway to his room. There was a mess behind him, items scattered across the floor, the room in disarray. Music was playing, something loud and grating, uncharacteristic of the Caleb I thought I knew. And it turned out I did have something to say.
But standing in the stairway, it was impossible to force out the words. It was too dark, and he was too angry. The state of his room seemed to signify that. “I left my project.” It was a report that I’d been working on for the last week, articles cited, all stuffed into a folder and left at the foot of Caleb’s desk the week before. I’d avoided asking for it back, like that alone would be the final break. But I needed it. I needed to turn it in.
He shut the door in my face, but I heard his footsteps moving across the carpet on the other side. He opened the door with the folder in his hand, pushing it toward me.
“Caleb,” I said. A year, just gone. His face impassive. A segment of my life that was forever over, and permanently closed.
“Hey, Mia,” he called, his voice booming off the walls. “Come say goodbye to Jessa.”
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