by Jennifer Yu
Kevin must take my speechlessness as hesitation, because he adds, “I mean, the good part of the pep rally is pretty much over. Unless you really want to know who makes it onto the Homecoming Court, I guess.”
“Right,” I repeat weakly.
“Plus...” Kevin says. He lowers his voice so that it’s almost a whisper and leans into my ear. “It’ll be an adventure...”
The last time I was this close to a guy was when I ended up making out with Titus Liu in the middle of Katie’s living room at her ill-fated house party last spring. And let me tell you: the quarter-cup of vodka that robbed me of my better judgment that night has nothing on the hormones currently staging a coup in my brain.
“That sounds like it might be fun,” I say, swallowing hard. “And also like it might be totally against the rules. But...that’s fine. That’s cool. I’m cool. I’m totally cool. What are rules, anyway? Ha. Ha, ha.”
Kevin laughs. The nicest thing, I think, is that even when I’ve said something completely idiotic, Kevin still doesn’t laugh like he’s laughing at me. He laughs like he’s inviting me in on my own joke.
“It’s Homecoming,” Kevin says. “No one is going to notice.”
“Lin,” I manage to say. And then, ever the picture of eloquence: “Katie.” And then: “Yago?”
“You know, I feel like they’re the type of friends who would tell you to go,” Kevin says.
“My parents will kill me if they find out.”
“They won’t find out,” Kevin says.
“You sound like you’ve done this before,” I say, narrowing my eyes.
“Bridgemont has a lot of pep rallies,” Kevin responds. He doesn’t sound the least bit guilty. In fact, he’s smirking.
“Aren’t you worried that your parents will find out?”
Kevin rolls his eyes. “My mom doesn’t care if I go to Homecoming, Stella. It’s Homecoming.”
“Oh,” I say.
“They’ve got bigger fish to fry,” Kevin says grimly.
“Oh,” I say again. I wait for him to elaborate but he just shrugs.
“You in?” he says.
I take a deep breath and consider my options.
Option A: I tell Kevin that it’s really important to me to be there for Jennie von Haller’s big moment of being crowned homecoming queen even though we’ve never shared a single conversation and she probably doesn’t know who I am. I endure abuse from Katie for the rest of the year—no, the rest of my life—for passing up what may well be my only opportunity to have a cutesy chick-lit moment. Lin refrains from commenting out of politeness but makes that face that she makes every time Katie and I blow off her desperate attempts to get us to read East of Eden.
Option B: I leave with Kevin. We go who-knows-where and do who-knows-what. If I’m lucky, no one at Bridgemont notices that two delinquent teenagers have gone AWOL and calls my parents. If I’m somewhat lucky but also kind of unlucky, my parents do find out but wait to murder me until after I tell Katie that I’ve finally done something exciting with my life, so that at least my best friend can attend my funeral with pride. If I’m not lucky at all, I get home this afternoon to find my mom mainlining black tea and my dad pacing back and forth and, well, that’s the end. But in that scenario, I get out of taking my calculus test next Friday, so really, it’s a win/win/win situation.
“All right,” I say. “Let’s do it.”
15.
Kevin drives a gray sedan so beat up that it gives Lin’s Ford a run for its money. First of all, there’s a dent the size of a basketball above the right back wheel. The hood is freckled with so many paint chips that, from a distance, the car resembles a gray-and-white mosaic, sparkling underneath the afternoon sun. I have to slam the passenger door three times before it latches shut, rattling in protest the entire time.
Needless to say, I start to have serious reservations about Kevin’s driving ability.
“Don’t worry,” he says, before I’ve even said a word. “I didn’t do all that. The car’s a hand-me-down from my cousin Brett. And Brett—as you can see—is a real shit driver.”
Kevin slides the key into the ignition and the engine hums awake, deceptively strong underneath the scratched-up exterior.
“Was my fear that obvious?” I ask.
“The look of terror on your face was a bit of a dead giveaway, yeah,” Kevin says, smirking. He reaches for the parking brake like he’s going to take the car out of Park, then drums his fingers on it a few times and seems to change his mind.
“So,” Kevin says, turning to face me. He places his elbow on the center console between our two seats, and leans in.
And in.
And even farther in.
And then, in a tone of voice so transparently flirtatious that it takes me a solid ten seconds to process the actual words: “Where to, Miss Canavas?”
Here’s the thing: normally, I consider myself a fairly eloquent person. I mean, I’m no Dr. Mulland, and Katie could talk circles around me any day of the week, but I don’t often find myself at a loss for words. If anything, my problem is that I always seem to have too many words.
The point is, I should have something to say right now. I should be able to parry Kevin’s low, suggestive “Where to, Miss Canavas?” with something equally disarming, something that would leave him wordless and fighting down a blush. But it’s not just his words that my brain is suddenly struggling to process—it’s also everything about his physical presence: the way his clothes smell like fresh, still-warm laundry; the way the blue of his eyes is darker on the outside of his irises than near the pupils; the way I can almost, almost, almost feel his hand, so close to my arm, resting between our two seats. It’s like all of my senses have gone into overdrive at the same time, leaving me—well, senseless.
“I didn’t really have anything in mind,” I manage to say. My voice sounds all wrong in the small, silent car: strangely amplified, too casual, slightly shaky. “Know of any good getaway spots?”
“Are you trying to get away?” Kevin responds softly. The fact that we are sitting in the school parking lot and that anyone—one of my friends, one of his friends, Mr. Tang, Doug from biology class, Principal Holmquist, anyone!—could walk by and see us right now is completely and utterly obliterated from my mental radar as Kevin slides his hand over and runs his thumb down mine.
There is a tiny, tiny corner of my brain that is still online that takes the ensuing silence as an opportunity to shout: That was not that much contact, Stella! Say something clever. Pretend you’re in a dramatic rom-com and this is the scene they’re going to put in the trailer while a string quartet plays in the background.
“Aren’t you?” I say.
Okay, my brain says. I think you may have overshot a bit.
Kevin makes a sound that’s half scoff, half laugh, and breaks our eye contact for the first time in what feels like hours. “Touché,” he says. He shakes his head almost ruefully, then turns back to the wheel and shifts the car into Reverse. The rest of the world comes flooding back, and I feel...well, I don’t know how I feel. Confused? Deflated? Sad? All of the energy that was just crackling between us dissipated all at once, and now the car feels empty.
“Well, I do have somewhere in mind, as a matter of fact,” Kevin says. He takes the car into first, then second, then third gear, the engine revving slightly louder with every change in gear. “It’s not very glamorous, but it’s...nice. Quiet and secluded and nice.”
My brain selects “secluded” from the list of adjectives that Kevin has just provided and latches on to it.
“Lucky for you, I much prefer quiet and secluded and nice to glamorous.”
“You know, I would’ve guessed as much,” Kevin responds. His lips curl into a wry smile. “Although I also would’ve guessed that you’d be the last person to hightail away from Bridgemont during school hours wit
h someone like me. And look at us now.”
“Someone like you?”
“Oh, you know. Strange. Mysterious. Best friends with a drug dealer.”
Kevin pauses, looking very grave, and then adds: “And incorrigibly handsome, of course.”
“Well, I’ll certainly give you ‘strange,’” I say. Kevin laughs—really laughs, his eyes crinkling, the tension flooding out of his body.
“But hey,” I say. “Sorry to defy those expectations of yours.”
“Don’t be sorry. It’s always...”
Kevin trails off. The sound of cars rushing by around us on the highway fills the car. “Well, it’s always nice to be surprised by someone,” he says.
“Yeah, it is,” I say softly.
Kevin smiles and whistles a few notes of a song I don’t recognize under his breath. The sun is directly overhead, a constant reminder that we really should be in school right now. I reach for my phone to see how many times Katie and Lin have texted me—because they’ve definitely texted me by now—but change my mind the second my hand hits the case. Right now, right here, this car feels like its own little universe. A universe with exactly two people: a boy who never thought the girl would be the type of person to ditch school with him on a random Friday, and a girl who never thought the boy would be the type to whistle peacefully to himself while driving. And the truth is, I don’t want to bring anyone else—not even Lin, not even Katie—into the world I’m sitting in right now.
“Can I ask you a question, Kevin?”
“Voltaire once said that it is better to judge a man by his questions than by his answers,” Kevin responds.
“Okay, well, I’m going to take that as a yes,” I say.
“Go for it.”
I take a deep breath and plunge in. “Where were you actually last year? I tried to ask you at Ashley’s party, but you were...evasive.”
Kevin’s been expecting the question. “You really want to talk about this?” he says.
“We don’t have to. I’m just curious, that’s all.”
Kevin takes a sharp right and pulls into a tiny parking lot that’s almost invisible from the road. Describing it as a “lot” is actually generous: there are four spots nestled in a patch of trees, all of which are currently empty.
“Welcome to Prospect Park,” Kevin says. Then, before I can press the question: “Like I said, not very glamorous. It’s one of those locally funded neighborhood parks the state of Connecticut maintains with all that property tax we’re paying. Well—all that property tax our parents are paying, anyway. But, of course, the state of Connecticut forgot to take into account one small detail—no one goes to parks anymore.”
Kevin locks the car behind him as we step out. It’s one of those early fall days when the air is crisp and the temperature is that perfect cool-but-not-cold medium and it’s easy to forget that four and a half months of snow and misery are about to descend upon all of New England. It’s apple-picking weather. Sweater weather. Running weather.
“Do you come here a lot?” I ask, following Kevin up a tree-lined hill that leads into the park. We take a right when we get to the top and then take a path that winds through a field of tall, dandelion-ridden grass. The city noises fade as we walk, and I think that if I had a car I’d come here after school every day—to run, or perhaps just to get away from it all.
“I get out here a couple of times a month when the weather’s nice,” Kevin says. “You know, to read or write or just think. I used to come here a lot more with Yago, but he’s so busy now with college applications and all that shit that we can never find the time. I guess I should be working on college apps, too, but there’s not nearly as much of a rush for me because I’m not applying anywhere early.”
“Not sure how I feel about being a Yago stand-in,” I tease.
Kevin stops so suddenly in front of me that I walk into him. He turns around, and the look on his face is so intense that I reflexively take two steps back. It’s not that he looks angry, or sad, or frustrated—there’s not really any identifiable emotion on his face. He just looks...intense.
“That’s not what I meant,” he says.
“I know,” I say.
“Yago is my best friend,” he says.
“I know,” I repeat.
“But I’m not only hanging out with you because he’s busy this semester. You’re not a stand-in for any other person.”
“Kevin, I know. I was just making a joke. I know I’m not a stand-in for Yago. My name is ‘Stella,’ for God’s sake. Not nearly weird enough. You’d go with, I dunno, Brixa-Marie from Mr. Parker’s homeroom. God, I’m so glad my parents didn’t name me Brixa-Marie.”
“All we have,” Kevin says, ignoring my rambling, “are our words. You know? Everything comes down to the words that we say to each other. And the meaning we try to convey with those words. And the hope that when we convert the meanings that live in our heads to the words that come out of our mouths, the two are close enough so that the person we’re talking to can walk across the gap and arrive at the right conclusion about what we’re trying to say to them.”
Kevin steps toward me and places his hands on my shoulders. He bites his lip. His voice is soft. “I know you aren’t offended and it may not seem like a very big deal—just standard miscommunication, just said the wrong thing when actually I meant something else, whatever. But I am not the type of person who is careless with my words, Stella. And I don’t want you to think that I am.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay,” Kevin repeats. He hesitates, then turns forward again and resumes walking. “We’re almost there, just give it a minute.”
The truth is, I’ve never even thought about the perils of being “careless with words,” much less associated them with specific people, much less associated them with Kevin just because he made an offhand comment about not being able to hang out with Yago at this park after school. And the fact that Kevin just got so dramatic and serious about something that I literally wouldn’t have given a second thought to otherwise is definitely weird. But also, I can’t help but think, kind of hot. As I fall into step next him, my brain replays his “I am not the kind of person who is careless with my words, Stella,” over and over again, soaking in the gravity of his voice, the feeling of his hands, how easy it would have been to kiss him just to shut him up. Then I pull myself out of that daydream, mortified.
“All right,” Kevin says. “This is it.”
We’re standing in front of a concrete pergola in the middle of a garden. Or, more accurately, what probably was once a garden but is now a field of overgrown grass with random flowers spread throughout, waving lazily in the wind. The pergola also looks like it’s been abandoned for many, many years: the stone is worn down and uneven, and the blocks scattered across the ground as makeshift chairs are speckled with dirt.
But what’s really striking about the pergola is the graffiti. Almost every inch of the stone columns is covered in quotes, drawings and random musings scribbled in spray paint, marker and even plain black Sharpie. I imagine roving bands of high schoolers continuing to visit the park long after the groundkeepers and gardeners abandoned it, sneaking out of their house after dark to leave their mark on this strange, crumbling landmark. How many illicit cigarettes have been smoked here by “rebels” all desperately trying to impress their friends? How many nervous first kisses has this garden played host for? How many angsty teenagers have made their way here to write their latest revolutionary thought in hopes that someone else might read it one day and find it profoundly meaningful?
“Wow,” I say.
Kevin sits down on one of cleaner concrete blocks and looks around. “Yeah,” he says. He points at the arch at the center of the back wall, above which three words are etched into the concrete:
Garden of Remembrance
I say the words out loud as I read them
, feel them drift away in the breeze.
“It’s an ironic name for a garden that’s been abandoned,” Kevin murmurs.
“Not just ironic,” I say. I think of someone planning this beautiful garden, someone planting the flowers and laying down the rocks for the pergola, all in the name of remembrance. Only for this, too, to be forgotten. “It’s sad.”
“You’re right,” Kevin says. “It is sad. But I think there’s something about this place that transcends the irony and the sadness of it all. I’ve probably spent hours just reading through all the graffiti, thinking about who all these people were, and why they wrote what they wrote, and when they wrote it. And yeah, some of it is just obnoxious couples scribbling their initials everywhere, and at least another ten percent are lyrics from bad emo songs, but someone wrote that stuff here for a reason. They wrote it because it meant something to them at the time. Something important. And whenever I’m here, I just think about all of those people, all of that emotional energy, all of the heartbreak and euphoria and angst that they’ve put onto the walls because they didn’t know what the hell else to do with it...it makes the place feel alive, you know what I mean?”
“I do,” I say. I keep my voice soft, because we can hear the wind rustling through the leaves of the trees and because to speak too loudly in a place like this feels wrong—sacrilegious, almost.
“This guy wrote, ‘So what if we’re all just machines?’” I say, reading the words on the column in front of me. “That’s deep, right? I kind of like that.”
“It’s interesting because it could go one of two ways, you know?” Kevin says. “He could be saying, ‘So what if we’re all machines?’ As in, could it really be possible that everything about our lives—everything that’s intricate and sublime about the human experience—is just the product of a bunch of biochemical impulses? Or he could be saying, ‘So what if we’re all machines?’ As in, even if we are indeed all slaves to a bunch of biochemical impulses, does that somehow invalidate all that is intricate and sublime of the human experience?”