by Amber Smith
“Hi,” I echoed. “And thanks for the PSA.” I gestured toward the ducks and geese.
He glanced over his shoulder as he walked away, and waved, calling out, “Anytime!”
I looked back at my friends, and they appeared so small in the distance, sitting there together, probably discussing me and my outburst, deciding if keeping our trio intact was still worth all the effort it took to be my friend lately.
I started walking, and without having a clear idea in my mind of what I was doing, I walked right past my friends.
I followed Chris.
CHRIS
I WOVE BETWEEN THE GROUPS of people standing around talking, sitting in circles of lawn chairs, spread out on blankets, the smells of food swirling in the air. Then I heard my name being called.
“Chris? Chris!” I turned around and saw Maia jogging up behind me. “Wait up,” she said.
I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jeans as I stood there, unsure of what she was going to say. I prepared myself for something insignificant, like Oh, you dropped this, and she’d be holding out an old receipt. But I really hoped it was going to be something more meaningful, like I’m glad you’re here. Do you wanna hang out?
“Hey, so I was just wondering—” she began, but stopped short, slightly out of breath.
“Yeah?”
“Did you really have your heart set on staying to watch the fireworks?” she finished.
“I kind of hate fireworks, actually,” I admitted, feeling something light and fuzzy bouncing around inside my chest. “So not really, no.”
“Hatred of fireworks—you really aren’t from around here, are you?”
A tiny spark of shame flickered in my chest. Was there something inherently manly about watching things explode in the air that I just didn’t get? “Do you want to stay for them?” I asked.
She made a face like I had missed the entire joke. “It’s either going to be the same bang-pop show the fire department has been knocking off for the past decade, or boys from my school with their pop rockets and shells smuggled over from South Carolina, just waiting to see who will be the first to lose a finger.”
“So, no fireworks?”
“No,” she said, and then cocked her head as if she was thinking about something. “I guess I grew out of fireworks. What if I took you up on the bike offer instead?” she asked.
“Now?”
“Yeah. I mean, unless you don’t want—”
“No, I do!” I cringed at how excited I sounded, but then she smiled and it lit up the air around her.
We walked toward the huge field behind the church parking lot, and I was so damn happy that the hospital had called Isobel into work. When she told me she couldn’t come along tonight, I almost didn’t leave the house. Part of me worried about running into Neil. Part of me also worried about running into Maia, and an even bigger part worried about not running into her.
Walking next to her now, I was glad I’d taken the risk. I was glad I’d come alone. And I was really glad I had clicked on that stupid article about bread and waterfowl.
• • •
We sat in my car outside Bargain Mart and watched exactly three videos on how to replace a bike tire.
“Well, it looks pretty easy,” I offered, refocusing on the video instead of the way I could feel the heat coming off her body.
“Yeah, but everything looks easy when you watch it online.”
“True,” I agreed. I thought about all those videos I’d watched when I was laid up in my bedroom back home. It did look easy, the solution so clear, right there in front of my face. When I was watching those videos of all those people who had become who they were meant to be, it looked like the only obstacle I had to overcome in order to be myself was me.
Yeah right.
She picked her bag up off the floor and began rooting around inside it, clearly searching for something in particular. Finally she pulled out a pen—one of those felt-tip-marker type pens—explaining as she did so, “I like lists.”
She uncapped the pen with her teeth, and wrote the supplies we’d need on the palm of her hand, numbering them as she wrote:
1. bike levers
2. tubes
3. air pump
4. extra patches
She whispered each item as she pressed the pen against her skin. Something about that made my heart pound, made my mind run away with this crazy fantasy of her writing those words on my hand instead. And the second I thought it, I couldn’t stop wishing it was actually happening. I redirected my gaze out the window.
I’d lived so much of my life in a constant state of wishing and waiting; sometimes it was hard to stop these thoughts in my head from running wild.
She took a deep breath, looking over at the building, and said, “It’s weird. I used to come to Bargain Mart all the time before I worked there. It was sort of the thing to do around here, believe it or not. Now I can’t stand it.”
“Let’s be quick, then. We’ll just get what we need and go.” I opened my door, prepared to get out, but she still sat there with her seat belt fastened.
“Okay,” she agreed, but she kept her fingers clutched around the door handle for a moment before she opened it.
“Hey, I just thought of something.” I closed my door, and she looked over at me. “I remember seeing this little bicycle shop the other day when I was driving through New Pines.”
“New Pines?” she repeated. “That’s an hour away.”
I nodded as I stuck the key back into the ignition. “You game?”
She was quiet for a second, and then a slow smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Really, though,” she said. “You don’t mind driving all the way out there?”
“Are you kidding?” I started the car up. “I love driving.”
She closed her door. “Okay. Yeah, let’s do it.”
I pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward the edge of town. Once we crossed over the train tracks and passed the stoplight, I accelerated. Maia rolled her window down all the way and let her arm fly out, catching the wind. I allowed myself tiny glances, just enough so I could still watch the road, but I managed to see the way she fanned her fingertips in the oncoming breeze, like she was caressing the air, how her eyes half closed, how she fell into the comfort of a drive much in the same way I did.
We drove for a while and it was quiet, but unlike before, it didn’t feel uncomfortable. As we passed a sign on the side of the road that said COUNTY LINE, she finally spoke.
“Do you know I can’t even remember the last time I crossed the county line?”
“Seriously?” I asked, suddenly realizing how confining it must be to live in Carson, not just visiting for a couple of months, but to be there for years on end. And then I found myself thinking about my parents, about Isobel. “Have you always lived in Carson?”
“Most people who live in Carson have always lived in Carson.”
“I don’t know how you do it,” I said, but then I quickly added, “I mean, no offense.”
“None taken.” She laughed. “It sucks.”
“It doesn’t suck. It’s just—I don’t know. It’s nice in some ways, but I’ve only been here two weeks, and I feel like if I didn’t get out of there every couple of days, I would go crazy.”
“I know the feeling. I could’ve gone to the beach with my friends a couple of weeks ago, but—” She stopped in the middle of her sentence, and right as I was about to ask her to finish, she continued. “Things have been kinda weird with us lately.”
“How come?”
She waited before answering—I’d never met anyone who would actually think before speaking. Her thoughtfulness was intriguing, fresh. “I don’t really know.” She looked at me and stifled another laugh. “I also don’t know why I just told you that.”
“If it makes you feel any better, the same thing is happening with me and my best friend.”
“Why?”
I thought about it. I had lots of theories
that mostly revolved around me changing, but it seemed too complicated to explain out loud, in words that would make sense. “I guess I don’t really know either,” I told her instead.
She nodded.
A few minutes passed before she spoke again. “Can I ask you something?”
“Okay,” I replied.
“So what are you really doing in Carson? Is it punishment or something?”
“No,” I told her, laughing. “I actually wanted to come here.”
“What?” she shouted, her face twisting in confusion.
“See, my parents have kinda had me on house arrest for a while now,” I explained. “Like seriously, home school and everything. So, it’s just nice to be away.”
“Why?” she asked, drawing out the word, her voice still tinged with shock. “What did you do?”
I debated what I could actually tell her. Not much. So I settled on, “It’s complicated.”
She narrowed her eyes for a moment, studying me, and I was sure she was going to ask more questions, but then she nodded and said, “Understood.”
“I just needed some freedom, even if I had to exile myself to the middle of nowhere to get it,” I told her, adding once again, “No offense.”
“No, I know what you mean.” She repositioned herself in the seat, tucking one of her legs under the other, facing me slightly. “It’s sort of like my bike is my only freedom. I can’t really go any farther than my legs and daylight will take me, but at least it’s something. It’s not really the same thing, I guess.”
“No, it is,” I said.
“Maybe that’s why these last few days without my bike have been such torture,” she mused. She inhaled sharply, like a tiny gasp, as if just realizing. “I guess that was the point.”
“So what happened to your bike, anyway?”
She smiled in this nonsmile, ironic way. “If I had to guess,” she began, looking up into the sky, “I’d say Neil happened.”
“Helmet head Neil. Right.” That was what I had suspected, but I hadn’t wanted to come out and ask. “ ’Cause of the whole history thing?”
“Yep, the history.”
“Can I ask, why did he freak out on you anyway?”
“Ugh,” she groaned, shaking her head slowly back and forth. “Also complicated.”
“Understood,” I said, echoing her previous response to me. Only, she didn’t actually understand, and neither did I, any further than understanding the fact that neither of us wanted to explain what the real deal was with our situations. I waited to say anything else because I didn’t want to push it, but I had a legitimate concern I needed to lay to rest, one way or another. “One last question, and then I’ll never bring him up again.”
“Oh-kay.”
“Is it complicated, as in he’s a giant, jealous ex-boyfriend who’s going to beat me up for hanging out with you kind of complicated?”
“No,” she said, laughing. “Just plain, nonjealous, non-ex-boyfriend complicated.”
“Got it.” I made like I was zipping my mouth shut, and she laughed again.
Okay, I could admit it: I liked her.
Liked her, because even though we had not been on speaking terms for nearly half of the short time we’d known each other, and we didn’t even really know each other to begin with, it felt like we were starting over. Some people won’t let you start over—like my mom, the way she couldn’t let go of the past. I respected Maia for that. I enjoyed being this close to her. I liked that she wrote stuff on her hand, that I could make her laugh. I even liked that she seemed a little defensive sometimes. But the thing I really liked was that she treated me like I was just a regular person, that I was just me.
The silence that followed was all right, but a subject change was in order. My dad was always big on subject changes whenever things got even slightly uncomfortable. I think it was because he was shy but didn’t want people to know. He’d been taught that men aren’t supposed to be shy, but that was always one of the things I liked about my dad.
“Are you still in school?” I asked. There, that was a good topic.
“One more year,” she said with a sigh.
“Me too.”
“Yeah? Then what, college?” she asked. “You look like the college type.”
“Ouch. Why did that feel a little like an insult? Yes, college. Is that not cool?”
“No, it is. I just—I don’t know. . . .” She trailed off, and right as I was about to ask her to finish, she started talking. “It just seems like lately everyone has it all figured out except for me.”
“Believe me, the college part is the only thing I have figured out.”
I glanced over at her. She was squinting, studying me like she was trying to decide whether or not she believed me.
“Well, what about you?” I asked, because I didn’t know how I could ever begin to describe all the things I didn’t have figured out. “What do you want? Isn’t there some dream you have?”
I was beginning to recognize the way she would stare out the window and get quiet. She was thinking. I waited, biting down on the inside of my cheek to stop myself from speaking again until she answered.
MAIA
I COULD ALMOST SEE A line drawing itself between us. But it was a different kind of line than the one that stood between me and my parents, me and my friends, me and Mallory, even. This line was curving, closing in on me, stretching at the ends like arms reaching around. It was trying to become a circle instead of a line, a circle without ends and limits, a circle that was making my world smaller and smaller, crushing me with each breath I took.
Somehow, I knew if I let that line close around me, I’d never be able to escape its boundaries. As I looked out across it, there he was, looking at me, waiting for an answer. And so the words just spilled out of my mouth, smooth like butter, one after another, as if I’d rehearsed them a million times, as if they were really mine:
“I want to take pictures,” I lied.
If only I could’ve stopped myself there.
“I want to travel the world and take photos on every continent,” my voice said. “I want to work for National Geographic someday. I want to see my work in art galleries. I want to do something special. I want to be someone.” I could hear the passion in the words, feel the emotion like a lump in my throat, heat simmering in my chest.
Except all that fire—it didn’t belong to me.
These were Mallory’s words. I’d heard them before, me sitting in our barn, her standing there emoting, dreaming, sermonizing, that vinegar-floral-sulfur scent of her makeshift closet darkroom chemicals still disintegrating into the air, making my head fuzzy. I would sit and listen as the photographs dried out, the breeze whipping them against the strings they were pinned to, thwap thwaping like the beat that underpinned her future. I knew the tune so well, it was easy to repeat.
When I glanced over at him, he was looking at me the way people always looked at Mallory, like they were in awe, under a spell, so I quickly added, “I mean, I just want to get outta here. Like everyone else.”
“No, that’s—that’s not like everyone else at all. That’s a real dream.”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged, the relief and guilt tugging at me with even force, rocking my mind back and forth. I tried to convince myself that Mallory might actually be okay with me borrowing her dream for a little while. “All right, well, now you have to tell me yours. What’s your college dream?”
“It’s going to seem so bland in comparison.”
“No, it won’t,” I assured him. “Tell me.”
“Okay,” he began. “Well, I’ve always loved space. Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve wanted to know everything I could about astronomy and the universe and stars and planets and black holes. I’ve never wanted to do anything else. So that’s what I’m going to go to school for.”
“What are you talking about? You want to be, like, an astronaut or something; that’s way cooler than what I said.”
He sta
rted laughing. “I’m not sure I’d ever want to actually leave Earth, but something in astrophysics or aerospace would be pretty cool. Sometimes I think I’d like to teach. Be a professor.”
“Wow, you must be really smart, then.”
“I don’t know about that.” He looked straight ahead at the road, but I could tell he was trying hard not to smile, which was pretty irresistible. He cleared his throat and added, “I’m just a geek.”
Mile by mile, the endless fields began to give way, houses popping up sparsely at first, then with more volume. A few businesses entered the mix, until the ratio flipped and it was more businesses than houses. When we entered New Pines proper, Chris slowed the car down to precisely thirty-five miles per hour, like the speed limit sign demanded.
And just like that, I felt something of Mallory stirring in the space around me. I glanced over my shoulder into the backseat. So did Chris, although he didn’t know what we were looking for. Had she been sitting there, right in the middle grinning at us, one arm hanging over each of our seats, it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least. I wished even for a flicker of a second she had been there. But, of course, the backseat was empty.
“You know, I’ve driven through New Pines a lot,” I said, because he was expecting me to say something. “But I’ve only ever stopped here once before. When we were kids. We were on our way to the beach—I think that was the first and last family vacation we ever took.”
New Pines is halfway between Carson and the coast. It’s probably the size of Carson, but it’s one of those small towns that has somehow been able to turn its history of decline around and transform itself into a funky, hip, crunchy little touristy place where people stop on their way out to the beach, whereas Carson just slowly fizzled out.
“Who’s ‘we’?” he asked.
Had I said “we” out loud? I wondered.
“My family and I,” I said, deliberately omitting the specifics. It was years ago when we came here, back when our parents were still together. I was nine, so Mallory was maybe ten or eleven.
A montage of images flooded my brain: pink ice cream—strawberry—dripping down the side of a giant waffle cone onto her arm, her tongue licking the trail it left behind; her arm reaching across the table, tipping my ice cream cone into my face, mashing it into my nostrils. It was birthday-cake flavored, I remember that, with swirls of sky-blue frosting and specks of multicolored sprinkles mixed in. That used to be my favorite, although now I can barely remember what it tasted like.