Any Place But Here

by Sarah Van Name

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Well, fuck you too, I guess.”

  I pushed open the door. From behind me, muffled through the wall, I could hear him calling me back.

  “June, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. June, come on. Come back! You left all your paper!”

  * * *

  He didn’t call me. I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to. I responded to all the texts from Kitty and Claire that evening: some variation of fine, just tired or I had a lot of work to do. And I didn’t call Jess, though I did text her hope you got home okay, to no response. I knew I would have to reckon with all of them tomorrow, but after I got home, I couldn’t even face Oma for dinner. I said I was feeling sick and went to my room. I lay in the dark and replayed the kiss with Sam over and over again. I regretted it. I wanted to do it again. I was grateful when I felt all the exhaustion of the last two weeks finally hit me in an accumulated wave, letting me sleep, a white noise machine humming inside my head.

  I managed to avoid my friends all through the next day—a feat, given that most of our class periods were now study halls that we’d normally spend together. I accomplished this by returning to the darkroom for lunch and every empty period, and in doing so, I finally finished the print of Ethan. I could have gone all Monday without seeing Kitty and Claire were it not for physics, one of the few classes that still had a final exam to come. I arrived right at the bell and left as soon as class was dismissed, pretending I had ignored their increasingly concerned glances and notes, but I could not escape them forever. They cornered me by my locker.

  “What in the world is going on with you?” Claire didn’t sound angry, just worried. I hoped that meant Sam hadn’t told her about the kiss.

  “Nothing. I just have a lot of work to do on my photo project.”

  “Are you okay?” Kitty was looking at me skeptically. “Did something go wrong with Jess?”

  “She was fine.” I could hear but couldn’t stop the aggressiveness in my voice. I didn’t know where it was coming from. “You were at lunch on Saturday. She seemed fine then, right?”

  They exchanged glances. “Yeah,” Kitty said slowly. “She seemed…fine.”

  “You didn’t like her, did you?”

  Claire looked genuinely bewildered. “I liked her. It didn’t seem like we had a lot in common, but—”

  “I have to go,” I interrupted. “Oma wants me back home early today.”

  “Why?” Kitty asked before I could turn away. “Did you get in trouble?”

  “We didn’t get in trouble!” Kitty took a step back, and I knew it was wrong to raise my voice, but it felt so good to finally lash out. “Jesus, we were fine. I followed all the rules.”

  Claire put an arm around Kitty protectively. “Okay, that’s not what—”

  “I know what she meant. Jess is a bad influence, right? That’s what my parents think. That’s what everyone thinks. I should’ve known you wouldn’t like her. And guess what? She didn’t like you, either. She thinks you’re boring. And I fucking agree.”

  “June, what the hell,” Kitty protested, even as Claire’s eyes widened, but I turned and fled. I felt all my horrible words trailing behind me, but I couldn’t turn around, couldn’t stop. I weaved my way through the groups of loud, laughing girls until I got to the doors, and then I ran until my shoulders started to hurt from the bouncing of my bag. Claire and Kitty didn’t follow.

  Once I was finally free of the campus, I stopped, breathing hard. I felt a buzz in my pocket, and I pulled it out, but it wasn’t Jess. It was just Candace, asking do you know what day you’re going to be home for the summer yet? I didn’t respond. I looked at the condo building. Oma wouldn’t be there, I knew, but I still didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to sit at the table doing my physics homework, didn’t want to pace around the rooms where Jess had stood only a few days before. And I certainly didn’t want to go back to the darkroom. Instead, I turned left and walked aimlessly for ten minutes, twenty, thirty, and then I stopped at my favorite park bench and sat down. I took out the book I had been trying to read, but the words were illegible, written in a different language.

  I hated this, all of it. My guilt about Sam, about fighting with my friends, was an overwhelming wave. But the worst part was fighting with Jess. It required muscles I had never used. Hard as it was to believe, we had not fought before; we had been annoyed with each other, but we had never had real problems, never stopped talking. Back in North Carolina, we were around each other so constantly that any frustrations were worn smooth by proximity, like sandpaper on the splintered edge of a table. She had never looked away from me like she had on Sunday. I had never felt like I absolutely could not talk to her. And I was adrift.

  My phone buzzed again, Candace asking hellooooo? Irritation flashed through me. not sure, I responded. ask Mom. She didn’t reply, and I could feel—or was I imagining it?—the hurt in her silence. I sat there for a long time, rereading the same page of my book over and over again, while the trees and their fresh new leaves whispered unintelligibly around me.

  * * *

  When I was drunk with Jess, there was always a fraction of my brain that stayed reasonable. The more I drank, the smaller it got, but it was always there, my sober, sensible self. I would be about to do or say something stupid, and that part of me would speak up: Don’t do that. Come on. If it was early in the night or if the stakes were high enough, I would listen. The words would stay put on my tongue; the dare would be laughed off, untaken; the shot would be a single, not a double. That voice was the reason I had never blacked out, or gotten into a car with a drunk driver, or told Jess how I loved her.

  But other times—later nights, lower stakes—I heard the voice and shoved it away. You know better, that voice would say, and I would tell myself, It’s fine. It doesn’t matter, and do it anyway. I always regretted it later. In the moment, though, the mistake held a rich, electrifying satisfaction. Fuck you, said my sober self; fuck you, said my drunk self. And the two halves met in mutual loathing.

  I’d had this exchange before, so it wasn’t wholly shocking that over the next two weeks, that rational, reasonable voice spoke up over and over again in the back of my head. Every time I turned around in the hallway to avoid Claire or Kitty, it asked, When are you going to apologize? When I brushed off Sam’s questions in photo class and ignored his texts, when he called and left a message, asking, “June, can we please talk?” and I didn’t call back, it said, You’re about to lose something important. And as I went day after day speaking only the bare minimum to Oma, it said, Why are you locking her out?

  I quashed it down, every time. I moved through each day feeling smaller and smaller with the effort of being horrible, handling chores and homework with the hopeless efficiency of someone with nothing better to do. I did not talk to Jess. I talked to my parents only long enough to take my portrait of them, their two pixelated faces pressed together in the phone screen propped on the windowsill.

  The sun shone yellow and sweet outside, and I tucked myself away in the darkroom every day until dinner. I finished, mounted, and framed every portrait, attempting as I did so to focus on the technical work—the grain of the image, the crisp white mat—rather than the subjects themselves.

  * * *

  For two weeks, I ignored everyone I loved and skipped every school event, with one exception. Claire’s piano recital was on a Saturday, marked with a clumsy drawing of a few musical notes on the calendar in the kitchen. Every time Oma brought it up, I shrugged or changed the subject. I spent the day of the recital curled in bed napping and reading. At 5:30, Oma knocked on the door.

  “Yes?”

  She opened it, stuck her head in. “I’m going to Claire’s piano recital. Do you want to come?”

  I bit my lip. Despite my best attempts to not think about it, it had been on my mind all day. Claire had spent so many hours learning and practicing and me
morizing; when she told me pianists had to memorize all the music they played in recitals, I had hardly believed it, it sounded like so much work. She had done it, and she was about to show it off. But…

  “I’m not feeling well,” I said. “Sorry.”

  I turned away from her as she hovered in the doorway. For a few seconds, I thought she was going to push back, tell me, correctly, that I was being a horrible friend. But she just sighed sadly and said, “Well, June, I hope you feel better soon.” I heard her leave, and the room was quiet.

  It was better for everyone, I told myself, that I wasn’t there. I had only been friends with Claire and Kitty for a few months, and I had hurt them, and if I came, they would probably assume I was there to hurt them again. This was Claire’s big night, the culmination of a whole year of work. It was, she had told me, the first recital she was holding entirely by herself. I didn’t want to distract from that.

  But I felt so sad and so lonely, curled alone in my bed. I wanted to hear the music.

  I looked at my phone. If I left right now, I would be able to sneak in just before it started. Claire had told us she expected a big crowd—not because of her talent but because every music student had to attend at least two other students’ recitals, and Claire’s was the very last one of the semester. There would be plenty of folks to hide me; I didn’t have to be a distraction. I didn’t have to talk to anyone. No one even had to know I was there.

  I jumped up, startling Ellie at the foot of the bed, and threw on a black dress that could pass for formal. I hadn’t shaved my legs in too long and my hair looked awful, but no one was supposed to see me anyway. I got to the auditorium, out of breath, at 6:02, and snuck in the door at the back of a small group of girls who were similarly late. As Claire’s piano teacher introduced her and described the pieces she’d be playing, I found a seat in the far back corner. I spotted Oma in the middle next to a few other teachers, and Kitty and Sam together in the very front row.

  “And now,” the piano teacher said, beaming, “the young woman you’re all here to see: Claire Isaac!”

  Claire walked onstage and waved with uncharacteristic shyness as the crowd applauded. She looked stunning. When I last talked to her, she had been debating between a blue floor-length gown and a silver cocktail dress. She had chosen the blue, and she looked nothing short of regal, a gold headband nestled in her hair and a thin gold necklace resting on her collarbones. She sat down and rested her hands on the keys. The crowd quieted. She took a breath and started to play.

  I didn’t know anything about classical music. Or anything about the piano. But thirty seconds in, I knew Claire was good. Under her hands, the music soared and thundered, whimpered and wept. I heard triumph and heartbreak and sorrow and joy, and I saw the same emotions move her body, the slight jerks of her head, her body leaning toward the instrument and away. She filled the room. I sat captivated for the entire hour, and when she finally rose, glowing, from the bench, I slipped out the door.

  I got home before Oma and changed out of my dress, got in bed again. I sat holding my knees close to my chest and looked out the window for a long time.

  I wanted to text Claire congratulations!!!!!, to run back to campus and tell her in person how in awe of her I was, to celebrate. The music had moved something inside me. For the first time in weeks, I felt restless.

  I had burned a bridge with Claire. She and Kitty wouldn’t want to see me. But even if I had lost them, maybe I didn’t have to lose everyone.

  Two weeks was the longest time I had ever gone without talking to Jess. Before I fell asleep that night, I resolved: I would text Jess in the morning. I would do my best to cross the river between us and find her on the other side. If there was nothing left, at least I would know I had tried.

  * * *

  But as it turned out, Jess texted me first.

  The text was a picture of a large McDonald’s iced coffee, cream swirling down into its depths, and the words can’t wait until you’re back, summer coffee = best coffee.

  It was morning and I was still in bed, too warm under the covers, my tongue dry from sleep. I curled on my side, away from the window, holding my phone in front of me. When I had seen her name pop up, I’d almost jumped to a reply right away. It was a casual message. She was asking me to forget that weekend and go back to normal, making it as easy as she could, and I was tempted.

  But it was the coward’s way out, and I was tired of not being brave.

  I texted her: can’t wait for McDonald’s with you. can I call?

  It took a few minutes before she responded, long enough that I thought maybe she would go back to silence. That this had been a fluke or meant for someone else. In the end, though, she called me.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi,” she said—and with that one syllable, oh, how I had missed her.

  “How’s the coffee?”

  “Perfect. As always.”

  “Are you out with Patrick?”

  “Nah.” A pause, and in the distance behind her, the white noise of traffic. “I just walked to the one near my house. Now I’m headed back.”

  “Oh. Cool.”

  Silence for a moment. “So—”

  “How have your last few weeks been?” I interrupted accidentally, but I didn’t apologize. I wanted to acknowledge that we hadn’t talked.

  “Pretty shitty,” she said frankly.

  “Me too.”

  “Listen,” she said, “I’m sorry for blowing up at you. It was… I was…” She coughed and the ice in her coffee rattled as she took a sip, swallowed. “It was mean. I’m sorry.”

  I sat up and pushed the covers off me, crossing my legs underneath me. “It’s okay.” It wasn’t, but what else could I say? “I just don’t get it. Why you were mad.”

  She exhaled hard enough for me to hear it like a stiff breeze into the phone. “I recognize it’s not rational. But—okay, again, I am sorry for what I said, just to make sure that’s clear. Especially about your friends. I don’t think I really mesh with them, but they seem wonderful. I’m glad you have them. So if you could apologize to them for me, that’d be great.”

  “I will.” If I ever spoke to them again.

  “Okay, good. But what I was going to say is, some of it is true. You are different now.”

  Thirty seconds passed, maybe a minute.

  “Maybe.” I ran my fingers along the edge of my quilt. “Not in a bad way, though.”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t matter whether it’s a good difference or a bad difference. It’s different.”

  “But you’re different too,” I pointed out, and she laughed, kind of sadly.

  “Honestly? I don’t think I am. I just want everything to stay exactly like it used to be. Perfect. I know you’re coming back for the summer, but it’s not going to be the same. Which I have to be okay with. People grow, I guess. But I don’t have to like it.”

  And I knew two things then. First, that I would never tell her I had loved her, and second, that I didn’t love her anymore. Not like I used to.

  “You’re still my best friend,” I said.

  “Same,” she said.

  We talked for another hour, and slowly the awkward edges fell away and left us with something like our old easy rhythms. We talked about summer jobs and Patrick and parents and school. At the end, I said I love you, and she said I love you, too.

  But after we hung up, after I ducked across the hall into the bathroom, after I started the shower and climbed in, I cried. It had taken me so long to understand that my leaving—no one’s fault but mine and hers—had made a crack in our friendship that let in enough light and dirt and space to finally split us down the middle. The enchantment that had held us together, the love I had sanctified, had finally snapped, and I could see her as she was, gorgeous and ugly and compassionate and lazy and, according to her, straight. We couldn’t h
ave a deeper friendship without my telling her how I felt. So we wouldn’t.

  She could offer an apology, and I could accept. She could explain herself, and I could understand. We could repair ourselves, but Jess was right: I was different. We were different. We wouldn’t be the same again.

  I cried until the water went cold. Then I dried myself off and stared at myself in the mirror, eyes swollen and red, hair dripping onto my shoulders. I took a deep breath, watched my chest rise and fall. If I was different, let me be different. Let me be better.

  Twenty-One

  There was no one way to apologize. No simple place to begin. I got dressed, made two sandwiches, poured two glasses of lemonade, and walked out to the balcony, where Oma was reading. I set the plates and glasses on the glass table beside her—carefully, because I’d tried to carry too much at once—and sat down in the other chair. She looked up from her book in surprise.

  “What’s this?”

  “I thought I’d make us lunch.”

  Oma looked at her watch and smiled, just a little, like she was trying not to. “It’s only eleven.”

  “Oh.”

  “But I’m sure I’ll enjoy this later.” Eleanor Roosevelt stood and sniffed at the table, clearly interested in enjoying it now. “Thank you.”

  “I’m sorry, Oma.” It burst out of me, too loud, and she looked startled again.

  “Why?”

  “I haven’t been talking to you. I’ve been a bitch.”

  She leaned forward to put her hand on my leg, her eyes gentle. “Don’t use that word.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You have not been…unkind,” she said. “It seemed like you were just sad, and you wanted some space. That’s nothing to apologize for.”

  I looked at her hand on my knee, wrinkled and lotioned, the emerald on her ring finger sparkling in the sunlight. At home, when I wanted space, I didn’t get it. The twins were everywhere all the time; Mom always wanted to know what was wrong, wouldn’t stop asking. Dad assumed my mood was due to a mistake I had made, a situation I had mishandled, and it was something we could fix if I would just explain where I had gone wrong.