Golden

by Jessi Kirby

  “Well. You should call him tonight with your good news. Maybe it’ll inspire him somehow to know that you’ve accomplished what you set out to do.”

  She speaks the words lightly, but they’re laced together with sarcasm. It doesn’t seem to matter to her that he’s now teaching writing at a school in New York, which most people would consider a successful endeavor. But not her. At any mention of it, she’s more than happy to discuss her opinion that he’s hiding behind helping other people with their writing because he can’t do it himself anymore. I change the subject. “Can I go out with Kat for a little while tonight, to celebrate?”

  She shakes her head—a reflex she can’t help when Kat is involved. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You still have a speech to write. Besides, isn’t that what we’re doing right now? Celebrating?” She gestures at the spread of sushi in front of us.

  “Yeah . . . but she wants to take me out for coffee or dessert or something. Just for a little while?” I watch her perfectly made-up face for a sign of compromise, but get only the inflexibility I expect.

  “It’s a school night, Parker. And you already had coffee.”

  “What?”

  “Debbie Monroe said you and Kat were at Kismet today, and that she wasn’t exactly being polite.” She stabs a piece of salmon with her chopsticks. “You know, that girl really needs to be more aware of how she acts in public.”

  I literally have to bite my tongue to keep from answering back the way I really want to. Kat has been “that girl” to my mother for as long as we’ve been friends, and the way she says it never fails to remind me just what she thinks of her.

  “Mom, Debbie Monroe thinks everyone under the age of twenty is either on drugs or involved in some other ‘illicit teenage activities.’ She actually said that. In line at the grocery store, and she wasn’t joking.” I stir up the cloud of miso that’s settled in the bottom of my bowl. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Kat wasn’t doing anything wrong; she was just excited for me.”

  My mother doesn’t say anything. Just pinches another slice of salmon roll between her chopsticks and adjusts her glasses, and there’s my answer.

  “Fine,” I say into my soup. It’s useless to argue. Even more useless to think that she could bend, just a little, or trust me for once. I’ve never given her reason not to—but then again, I’ve never had the opportunity either.

  My mother lets out a heavy sigh. “Parker, soon. Soon enough you’ll be making your own choices. Humor me in the meantime, okay?”

  I look at her, hair pulled back sleek and tight, smile to match, and decide to see if I can finish my celebratory dinner without saying anything else. It’s surprisingly easy. While she goes on about the rigors (and cost) of Stanford, all of which I’m well aware of, thank you, I think about what Kat said and try to decide what worthwhile, unexpected thing I could do. I would love, more than anything, to have the guts to stand up right here and tell my mom to just lay off it all—the expectations, the pressure, the constant judging—all of it. A tiny part of me would love to just tell her to forget it. To say never mind, I don’t want any of it. But that’s not what Kat meant.

  She meant I should do something unexpected that would leave me with something I could keep and remember. An experience instead of a goal. And I get what she means. She’s right about me not having very many of those to show for four years of high school. But it seems to me that the experiences that stay with you, the things you’ll always remember, aren’t the ones you can force, or go looking for. I’ve always thought of those things as the ones that somehow find you.

  5.

  “Love and a Question”

  —1913

  By the time we get home my mom has outlined how she thinks my entire speech should go, including all the keywords I should include to ensure that I’m the foundation’s obvious choice. I’m actually thankful because as soon as we walk through the door, it gives me the perfect excuse to head upstairs and “get started right away.”

  “That’s my girl,” she says, smiling at my unfailing dedication. “Strike while the iron is hot and the inspiration is fresh.”

  I stop at the top of the stairs and do my best to smile back. Then I walk into my room and close the door behind me. I need a moment. A moment to breathe, because the combination of expectation and good intentions feels especially suffocating tonight. In the quiet of my room, I drop my bag to the floor, flop onto the bed, and exhale. Finally.

  Like a reflex my eyes travel up to the ceiling above me, where in ninth grade, in a small act of rebellion, I pinned a poster I’d made for English. My final project for Romeo and Juliet. My mom had just had the house painted after my dad moved out, and she decreed there would be no more pin holes in my walls. But she didn’t say anything about the ceiling, so I put it up—a collage of images: the sun and moon and stars, a rose, a balcony, a kiss in silhouette, and a tiny glass vial, all under the glittery caption, IT WAS WRITTEN IN THE STARS. It wasn’t a masterpiece by any means, and I didn’t even get the top score, but it meant something to me. I was in love with the idea of it all—the stars, and fate, and these two people who loved each other enough to want to die without the other. My parents didn’t love each other enough to even make eye contact anymore.

  It took my mom awhile to notice what I’d done, and she was angry when she did, but too distracted to follow through on making me take it down. Divorce will do that. I don’t think she even realizes it’s there anymore. It’s easy to forget to look up when all you do is focus on the road straight ahead. Which is what I should be doing right now. Actually getting started on my speech. But the thought of sitting down to a blank page is so daunting, I don’t move. I lie there instead, looking up at love idealized and wondering what it would be like to feel that way. And then, all in one motion, I do move. Up and across the room to where my bag leans against the wall.

  I take the stolen envelope out slowly, feeling every ounce of its weight in my hands, and then I bring it to my desk, sit down, and stare at it until Julianna’s name goes blurry. For half a second I let myself think that maybe it’s not coincidence I found it today. Maybe it found me, for whatever reason. Then I almost laugh at how ridiculous that sounds. I’m reaching. Justifying the thing I want to do.

  I get up. Pace. Slide my window open. The wind has died down outside, but the air that drifts in still has a bite to it that hints at snow. It’s too cold to climb out onto the roof like I sometimes do, so I lean on the windowsill and focus my attention on the sky. On clear winter nights the constellation Orion hangs perfectly framed in my window, and beyond him a backdrop of sky dotted so dense with stars it looks like sugar spilled across the night. But right now I can’t see any of them. Instead, the town lights reflect off the cloud-filled sky and it glows pale white, while fireplaces stream wood smoke into the air, leaving the night hazy around the edges.

  A single snowflake twirls down onto the ledge of my window, and then another, and I watch as they melt almost instantaneously. Flurries like this aren’t unheard of this late into spring. But storms are rare. Like the one Julianna Farnetti and Shane Cruz disappeared into. The way people tell it, that storm came fierce and unexpected, then was gone just as quickly.

  I eye the envelope again and wonder if it started out with a whisper and a single flake, like this right now. I wonder if she wrote about trivial things like the weather in her journal. I probably would have for this assignment. It’d be a safe thing to write about, something that wouldn’t matter if anyone else read it. Or maybe she didn’t worry about that. Maybe she only wrote about Shane and what it was like to be in love. Maybe Julianna took the assignment to heart and put her truest self into words, like Kinney tells his seniors to do.

  It’s hard to guess without ever having known her. She was so much older than me, and lived in the seemingly distant world of high school. But even then I knew of her. She stood out to everyone, including my seven-year-old self. I’d seen her crowned queen at a homecoming foo
tball game, and after that, catching a glimpse of her around town was like seeing a real-life princess. The version of her in my memory is of the kind of girl I wanted to grow up to be. The version the town stories have painted of her is just as perfect—vibrant and full of life, special on her own, but exceptional together with Shane. And then there’s the last version. The tragic one, of youth and innocence lost below the surface of a half-frozen lake. Maybe they’re all true. Or maybe none of them are. People always put their own spin on things, remember what they want to remember, and somewhere in the middle of it all is the truth—the real version—one you could only write yourself if you were willing to.

  I pick up the envelope and turn it over in my hands. This could be the real version right here. The one that might be more than the stories we’ve all heard and the labels she was given: homecoming queen, Shane’s girlfriend, the next Cruz Wife. Perfect. Missing. Tragedy. Really, these are the only things I know about her. But I’m sure there’s more. We’re all more than the person we show to everyone else. At least I hope so. Because I feel like there’s more to me than that. I just haven’t had a chance yet to show it.

  I set the envelope down and run my fingers over her name again. I wonder what things Julianna Farnetti kept for herself. What things she chose to write down or leave out. Maybe things she never had a chance to find out, or do, or be. If I think about it this way, it seems almost honorable to want to know who the real Julianna was. The girl behind the myth. It also gives me a reason to pick up the envelope again and slide my finger beneath the flap and the tape that has sealed it shut for a decade. When I do, the sound of it tearing away from the paper is the only audible thing in my room.

  Carefully, I slide the black-and-white composition book out of the envelope, then turn it over in my hands. The edges of the pages aren’t yellowed, like I expected. There’s no musty smell to it. In fact it looks brand-new. Like it could’ve been written yesterday. The floor creaks on the other side of my closed door and startles me so much I nearly toss the journal out the window. It’s nothing, though. Just my own guilt and the knowledge that if I actually open Julianna’s journal, there’s no undoing that act.

  It makes my chest a little tight when I look down at it in my hands. Her name is written on the cover in the same loopy handwriting as the envelope, but over all the i’s are little spirals instead of dots. I run my fingers over the rounded corners, lift the front cover away from the pages, just barely, then let it fall back into place where it belongs. Then, for the second time today, I feel like what I’m about to do is wrong—but I do it anyway. The first page steals my breath. It’s dated May 20.

  Yesterday, ten years ago.

  May 20

  “Tell me, what is it you plan to do

  with your one wild and precious life?”

  —MARY OLIVER

  I love this. Mr. Kinney had it written on the board this morning when we came in. Once we all sat down, he read the words out loud in his booming voice.

  “Tell me,” he said, looking us over, “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? As seniors, this is relevant to you, isn’t it? You’re about to go out into the world and show it who you really are. What will you live for? Be passionate about? Define yourself by?”

  He threw all of these big, rhetorical questions out, and no one said a thing, but I was thinking about it.

  How do you begin to answer something like that?

  “I want you to ponder these things,” he said. “Don’t just give them a fleeting thought—take a careful look at yourself now. Then think about the question some more: What will you do with this one wild and precious life of yours? There really is only one.”

  He held up a handful of composition books as he went on. “So when the answers and ideas start coming to you, I want you to write them down in these.

  “This is your last assignment in my class. You have from now until graduation day to write about who you are right now, who you want to be, what you want most—all of these things that will make up your one life.”

  He stepped to the first desk in my row and handed Jenna a stack of journals to pass back, then moved on to the next one. “Be idealistic, dream big—now’s your chance. You can write as little or as much as you want. Draw pictures, compose poems, it doesn’t matter. I won’t ever see them, and you won’t earn a grade. But this—this is your most important assignment. It’s for you and nobody else. When you’re finished, you’ll seal your notebooks up, and I’ll pack them away. And ten years from now, the lives you’ve imagined for yourselves will come back to you—in your own words.”

  I got goose bumps when he said that.

  I love the idea of writing all these things down for ourselves to read later, but it’s scary, in a way. How many people have gotten older and forgotten about the things they hoped for and dreamed about when they were young? Or given up without ever taking a chance, or settled in life because it’s easier, or they’re scared, or whatever other excuses? How many people need a reminder of who they once were?

  I don’t ever want to be someone who needs to be reminded. I want to be someone bold, who takes risks and has no regrets. I want to have a life made of beauty and love and chance.

  I can’t know exactly what my life will be ten years from now. But whatever happens, when Kinney sends this journal to me, I hope I recognize myself in it. And that I see the beginning of something wild and precious, not some sad reminder of what could have been.

  I close the book, wanting to take it back, what I’ve just done. This trespass is too sad. Ironic in the worst possible way, because I know how this story ends. I know the answer to her question about where she would be. An image of Julianna and Shane, suspended in the blue of Summit Lake, crystallizes in my mind, her blond hair splayed wide around her, her fingers entwined with his, both of them frozen in time, forever young, just like on the billboard.

  A shiver runs the length of my body, and I shove the journal back into the envelope, then into my backpack. Zip it up tight. Slowly, the idea that I still have a chance to do the right thing untangles the knot of regret in my stomach. I know exactly what to do with her journal now. Tomorrow I will seal it up again and send it back to Julianna, like she was promised ten years ago. I won’t need any address or postage. Just a drive out to Summit Lake and something with enough weight to sink it all the way to the bottom.

  6.

  “On the Heart’s Beginning to Cloud the Mind”

  —1934

  When the phone rings before six a.m., I know there’s no chance I’ll be driving out to Summit Lake. It means last night’s storm brought too much snow, too fast for the plows to have the roads cleared in time for the buses this morning. Which means no school either. I lie in the quiet dark of my room, relieved I don’t have to get up anytime soon.

  Julianna’s words and my own guilt over reading them had run endless circles through my mind all night, keeping me floating in that strange, fitful space between sleep and consciousness. At some point the wind kicked up and the few flakes outside swirled together and multiplied until they became a solid wall of white that blasted my windows for what felt like hours. I took it as a sign that I’d somehow disturbed the balance of nature when I opened up that envelope. That’s how Shakespeare would’ve written it, anyway.

  Now, in the calm of the morning, it feels like everything could’ve been a dream—the scholarship, the envelope with her name on it, and the journal inside. I almost wish it was, so I could pull my covers tight around me and sleep through the day. Or just enjoy it without worrying about anything else.

  When I was little, snow days like this meant pulling on my boots and snowsuit and heading out into the white freedom. While my mom went off to her shop to do inventory or payroll or ordering (because God forbid she take a day off), my dad would switch his computer off and join me outside to build an igloo or sled run or snowman. It never took any coaxing, as he was well into his “writer’s block” stage by then and seemed
to welcome any reason not to sit in front of his computer waiting for words to come to him. On those days we’d stay out in the snow until we were starving and our fingers and toes were numb, then come inside for tomato soup and grilled cheese, his snow day specialty.

  Those days had a magic to them that I think came from him being free from the weight of expectation, and happy to be out in the fresh air with me, soaking up life instead of watching it from his office window. Until my mom would walk back through the door and see that he’d spent the day playing with me instead of writing his next award-winning poetry collection. Then the feeling would dissolve, and her silent disapproval would send him back to his office to “work,” and me up to my room to “read,” and we’d be back to the routine realities of life.

  The knock at my bedroom door does the same thing. Before I can say come in, my mom does, bringing with her a cloud of perfume. Of course she’s already dressed, made up, and accessorized. If you want to sell expensive clothes to tourists, you have to look the part, and she does, all in black with her dark hair pulled back into a low bun. She wears sophistication well.

  “Parker, you awake? No school today. I’m going to walk over to the shop and get some inventory done. You want to come with? We could go over your speech some more. I had a few thoughts—did you get a lot done last night?” She stops talking long enough to take a sip from her leather-bound travel mug, then glances meaningfully at my desk.