by Jeff Zentner
Her mom gave her a canny squint. “Just curious, huh?”
Mental note: be more slick. Lydia refused eye contact. “Can’t I be interested in the process that led to my existence?”
Her mom set down her wine glass. “Honey, I was born in the morning, but not yesterday morning.”
“Fine. Busted. Good job,” Lydia muttered.
“Hey, it didn’t take a master detective.”
The electric guitar fell silent. A few seconds later, her dad opened the front door and poked his head out. “There’re my girls. What are—”
“In,” Lydia commanded, pointing. “Back inside.”
He gave Lydia a wounded look. “That’s a nice way to—”
“In. Side.”
“Denny, darling,” her mom said gently. “Girl talk.”
Her dad raised both hands in surrender and backtracked. “Okay, okay. I’m retreating. I’m making no sudden movements. Don’t hurt me. Glad you made it home safe, Lyd.”
Her mom waited until she was sure Lydia’s dad was gone. “So? How long?”
Lydia picked at the chipped polish on her toes. “About a month. Since Dill’s all-nighter applying to college.”
“I knew it. You two thought you were being so sly with your knock-knock jokes.”
“Well.”
“You have some timing.”
Lydia sighed. “No shit.”
Her mother made a little sound of disgust. “Lydia. Come on with the language. At least try.”
“Sorry. Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Yeah. Timing. Bad. I know,” Lydia said. “It’s not like we planned this. It just sorta seemed like the right thing to do. I mean, I don’t regret it, but leaving was supposed to be easier than this. I don’t know what to do.”
Her mom picked up her glass of wine and took a sip. “What can you do? Enjoy your time together. Let it—whatever it is—be beautiful while you have it. Maybe you won’t end up together forever and that’s okay. But the heart wants what the heart wants. When it wants it.”
“The heart sucks.”
“He’s your first boyfriend, isn’t he?”
“Of course. Who else was I going to date here?”
They rocked for a while. “Dill’s a good first boyfriend. He’s liked you as more than a friend for a long time,” her mom said.
“Really? How do you know?”
“Oh sweetie. It was plain as day. Did you really not know?”
“I had my suspicions I guess. But I knew I was leaving so I never really thought about it as a thing that could happen. I just…couldn’t.” Lydia slumped down in the rocker. “What if you’d known that you and Dad would be separated? Would you have jumped in anyway?”
“Of course. Life is short, sweetie. I’m sorry you’ve had to see that firsthand. You can’t live with your heart locked up in a safe.”
He was still ringing with the day’s excitement when his mother arrived home. He had told himself that he would wait until closer to the start of school to tell her, but as he made dinner, he began to doubt his resolve.
He drained the spaghetti and put some on a plate. He spooned some of the canned sauce heating on a saucepan on the stove over it. He handed his mother the plate.
“Thanks. You seem to be in a good mood.”
He served himself some spaghetti. “I am.”
“I’m glad you’re doing better lately,” she said between bites. “The Lord hears prayers.”
“Yeah, he does.”
“How was work today?”
“Fine.” A stab of guilt. You have to tell her.
“When do you—”
“No, wait. Hang on a sec, Mom. I didn’t go to work today. There’s something I need to tell you.”
She put down her fork and fixed her exhausted eyes on him. The air grew still.
“I visited MTSU today with Lydia.”
Her face hardened. “Why?”
Tell her you just did it for fun. Harmless fun. But then he saw himself standing on the stage at the talent competition. He saw himself kissing Lydia. And he knew he couldn’t betray who he was now. He was more now. “Because I’m going there next year. I got in.”
“We agreed you weren’t going to do that.” Her voice was soft, but not like a pillow. Like a pile of fine metal shavings or powdered glass.
“You agreed. I didn’t. I just didn’t disagree. But now I do. I’m going.”
“We cannot afford this, Dillard. You will bankrupt us.” She spoke slowly and carefully, like she was explaining to a toddler not to touch a hot stove.
“I got need-based financial aid. I’ll get loans that I’m responsible for to take care of the rest. But I’m doing this.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“I’m not asking you for permission. I’m telling you because I love you. This is happening. Maybe someday I’ll explain exactly why this needed to happen. But not now. Now all you need to know is that it’s happening.”
She breathed deeply, deliberately. The air rattled in her throat. She looked away and closed her eyes as if praying. Not as if. Of course she’s praying. For what? The words to persuade me? The grace to accept my decision?
She stood and pushed away her half-eaten plate of spaghetti, almost daintily. She turned and walked to her bedroom. She shut the door carefully, slowly. As if she knew Dill wished she would slam it.
Dill sat in the hush, listening to their clattering refrigerator. It felt like the moment between when he finished his song at the talent competition and the lukewarm applause that followed; like when he first kissed Lydia—like every time he kissed Lydia; when he knew he had done something painful, brave, and beautiful. And if you’re going to live, you might as well do painful, brave, and beautiful things.
Lydia and Dill sat in their corner of the cafeteria, which was abuzz with talk about prom in a week, at the beginning of May. Nobody bothered them anymore. Not after Travis died. But whether that was the product of some sense of decency or their classmates simply having moved on after so long, Lydia couldn’t say.
Dill had out his laptop and was reading up on which classes to take at MTSU next year. “So are we hanging out on prom night?” he asked while typing.
Lydia didn’t look up from her Djuna Barnes novel. “Sorry, Dill, I’m going to senior prom in a yellow Hummer H2 limo with my hunky football player boyfriend. We’ll have seven seconds of frenzied, grunting sex in the backseat. I’ll get pregnant and we’ll get married. He’ll get a job selling used cars and—okay, this joke is starting to depress me.”
Dill closed his computer. “No, seriously.”
“Seriously. Sure.” She snapped into a hummus-covered carrot, still not looking up.
“I think you should go to prom with me.” He said it with his alluring new confidence.
She finally set down her book and gave Dill a coy eyebrow raise. “Oh you do?”
“Yes. And I have an idea of how we can make it not suck.”
“I’m all ears.”
He leaned in. “Pathetic Prom. We set out to intentionally have the most pathetic prom night imaginable.”
Lydia let the idea sink in. “The kind that anyone who thinks about us would expect us to have.”
“Exactly. We throw this high school a big middle finger.” He extended his middle finger at the cafeteria for emphasis. No one noticed.
“The sort of thing that not only we’d have let Travis take his staff to, we’d have insisted on it.”
“Exactly.”
Lydia raised her hand for a high five. “I’m so mad I didn’t think of this first.”
Dill wore the suit he had worn to Travis’s funeral (it wasn’t like he had many to choose from). Lydia pulled up and honked. Dill jumped off his porch.
“Okay, I didn’t get you a corsage, as you insisted,” Dill said as he got in the car.
“Excellent,” she said, handing him a dead rose and a binder clip. “Clip this on my dress.” She wore a gaudy, red-sequined, 1980s vintage prom dress.
Dill complied, and Lydia binder-clipped a dandelion to Dill’s lapel.
“Wait,” she said. “Hop out. We need lots of selfies. And by the way, you’ve gotten enough mileage out of my pretending not to know you on my blog. After your hundreds of thousands of video views, you’ll be fine if people think I’m being nepotistic. So this is all going on the blog. Pretend you’re having fun with me.”
Dill laughed when he saw Lydia standing. She had gotten just her right leg and just her left arm spray tanned.
Lydia struck a pose. “They didn’t want to do it at first. They finally caved after I paid for a whole-body spray tan.”
She also had ridiculous, garish makeup caked on her face, and an elaborate, upswept hairdo. She had long, neon-pink fake nails.
“You look insane,” Dill said.
“I was going for pageant contestant made over by a truck-stop prostitute. Or vice versa.”
“Nailed it. You do actually look pretty, though.”
Don’t blush. “Oh shut up. Come stand over here.”
They took a bunch of pictures, individually and together. As Lydia tweeted and Instagrammed them, Dill smiling in each one, she basked in her relief. Dill is alive. He’s happy. He has a future.
“Okay, time for our Pathetic Prom dinner,” Lydia said. “Which I will be paying for, to make things more pathetic.”
“Nope. Sorry.” Dill reached into his wallet and pulled out a crisp fifty-dollar bill.
“Is that from the talent competition?”
“Yep.”
“Dude. Taking a girl out for a night on the town with your rock-star earnings is like the least pathetic thing ever.”
“Guess I can’t even get Pathetic Prom right; that’s how pathetic I am,” Dill said breezily.
They drove about a half hour to Cookeville. They listened to a positive affirmations self-help CD on the drive. Lydia found herself enjoying it unironically, such was the lightness of her mood. She also found herself unironically enjoying Dill’s hungry glances at her. She might have thrown Dill a few longing glances herself.
“Where are we going?” Dill asked.
“Cracker Barrel.”
“But I like Cracker Barrel.”
“I know. I’m cheating a little here,” Lydia said. “Technically, Krystal would be the most pathetic, followed closely by Waffle House. But remember? We’re so pathetic that we can’t even do Pathetic Prom right, so we’re eating decent food.” The mention of Krystal reminded Lydia of Travis. It doesn’t feel quite right without him.
They drew stares as they walked in. Lydia flipped her hair and flounced past the gawkers. Their matronly server was unfazed both by their getups and the attention they drew.
“Don’t y’all look nice all dressed up. Is it y’all’s prom tonight?” she asked.
“Yes ma’am it is,” Lydia said, with a markedly thicker Southern accent than normal. She trotted it out for special occasions.
Their server bent in close. “Well, I’ll take great care of y’all on your special night.”
Dill played the little peg game at the table while they waited for their Diet Sprites (the most pathetic of all beverages, according to Lydia). Dill was about to win the game when Lydia casually reached out and flicked it onto the floor, scattering the pegs.
“Sorry, Dill,” Lydia said as Dill scrabbled around on the floor to gather the pegs. “Winning the Cracker Barrel peg game is not pathetic. It’s a triumph of the human spirit. Come on. You invented this idea.”
The server returned with their Diet Sprites. “Have y’all decided?”
“Yes,” Lydia said. “I’ll have a bowl of fried chicken livers; a stack of blueberry pancakes with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top; and a piece of Double Chocolate Fudge Coca-Cola Cake, also with vanilla ice cream on top.”
Dill started to speak. “And I’ll have—”
“He’ll have what I’m having.”
The server looked from Dill to Lydia and back.
“I’ll have what she’s having,” Dill said, with happy resignation.
The server gave Lydia an admiring look. “Yes, ma’am. Coming right up.” She shuttled off.
“Look me in the eyes and tell me that isn’t objectively the world’s most pathetic meal I ordered us,” Lydia said.
“What if you got a scoop of ice cream on the chicken livers?”
“Yeah, then we’re entering postfood, performance art territory. Which is not pathetic. I appreciate the thought, but please, follow my lead tonight.”
“This all was my idea.”
“I don’t care.”
“Got it.” He sipped his soda and pointed at one of the pictures hanging on the wall. “You ever think about how many pictures of dead people there are on the walls of Cracker Barrels?”
“I think you’re supposed to say ‘Crackers Barrel’ if you want to be grammatically correct. What if when they hang your photo up at Cracker Barrel, your ghost has to forever haunt Cracker Barrel?”
“We should sneak a framed photo of Travis into a Cracker Barrel and hang it, just in case,” Dill said. “I think Travis would enjoy haunting a Cracker Barrel.”
He and Lydia laughed. She felt a sharp, fleeting twinge. “I miss Travis,” she said. “I wish he were here.”
Dill looked down and toyed with the peg game, suddenly less cheery. “He’d have had a lot of fun tonight. He would’ve asked Amelia.”
“What do you think Travis would have thought of…our current situation?”
“He’d have approved. I know for a fact. We talked about it. He tried to get me to make a move with you before he…” Dill’s voice trailed off.
Tears flooded Lydia’s eyes and began to fall. It wasn’t only because of Travis. Yes, mainly Travis. But it was Dill too. Specifically, the impending lack of him. It was even a bit that there were no Crackers Barrel in New York City. There’s no way I could have played this night straight. I’m a mess even with the jokey premise.
She reached out her hand. Dill took it. He’d started crying too, right as their server walked up with their food.
She eyed them with concern. “Are y’all okay here? Everything all right?”
“Yes ma’am,” Lydia said, wiping at her eyes gingerly with her ring fingers, taking care not to poke herself with her fake nails. “It’s that we both keep losing the peg game and we’re emotionally fragile.”
“Well, honey, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the game make someone this upset. Maybe y’all should just let it be for a little while if it’s upsetting you, okay?”
Lydia sniffled and laughed.
“Here we are on prom night, crying at a Cracker Barrel in Cookeville, Tennessee. I’d say we’re getting the hang of this Pathetic Prom thing,” Dill said, after the server left.
Lydia wiped her nose with a tissue. “Let’s get a quick selfie while it still looks like we’ve been crying.”
“Good thing it’s a nice night,” Lydia said as they pulled into her driveway.
“I’m afraid to ask,” Dill said.
Lydia gave him a mischievous grin—the one Dill had come to know all too well. “You won’t need to ask. You’ll find out.”
She opened her front door. “Dad?” she called. “Bring the limo around.”
“Sweetie,” he called. “Are you sure about this?”
“Pathetic Prom.”
He sighed.
“We need to head to the dance. Come on.”
“Sweetie, look, I’ll drive you. Having your dad drive you to prom is pretty pathetic. I’ll wear a goofy outfit.”
“As opposed to your many outfits that aren’t goofy? I said bring the limo around.”
Dr. Blankenship shook his head and disappeared around the corner. He returned, wheeling a creaking, rusty, thrift-store Huffy mountain bike.
“Oh man,” Dill said, laughing. “I haven’t ridden a bike since I was a little kid. I’m not sure if I remember how.”
“They say it’s like riding a bike,” Lydi
a said.
“Be careful!” Dr. Blankenship called after them as they tottered away with Lydia perched on the crossbar.
Dill peeked down at Lydia as they rode. She watched the street with a blissful air. She turned and reached up to brush an errant shock of hair from his eyes. I’m really glad I’m here, now, and not lying at the bottom of the Steerkiller River.
They could hear a lawnmower somewhere. The herbaceous smell of cut grass mingled with lilac. The combination smelled like honey in the warm early May air.
“Will any part of you miss this?” Dill asked, as they turned onto Main Street and passed Riverbank Books, waving at Mr. Burson.
“What? Hanging out with you? Or”—she made a sweeping gesture at the town—“this?”
Dill mirrored her gesture as they approached Good News Coffee, the town square with the gazebo, and Forrestville’s abandoned 1920s-era downtown theatre. “This. Of course you’ll miss hanging out with me.”
“Flatter yourself much?” Her tone turned wistful. “Yeah,” she said softly. “I’ll miss this. Now that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, this town doesn’t seem so bad anymore. Good News made a halfway decent Luke Latte. And New York City may have a lot of bookstores, but it doesn’t have Riverbank. How about you?”
“Yeah. A little bit. I’ll miss our trains and the Column.” He allowed a contemplative moment to pass while he pedaled. “I thought I’d live my whole life and die in this town. I don’t know how I existed like that.”
Lydia adjusted her position. “We’re gonna be college kids, Dill.”
“Yeah. We are.”
“Like with classes and stuff.”
“We’ll both have lots of college classes.” The thought of school had never made him excited. But that was Forrestville High.
“We’ll be able to talk about them. Or we could talk about literally anything else that’s more interesting, which is probably everything.”
They laughed.
Lydia leaned back into the hollow of Dill’s body, warm and snug against his chest. Dill leaned down and kissed her on the spot between her ear and her jaw.