by John Cariani
And she took Dave’s hand.
And held it tight so she’d have something to hold onto just in case she did.
11
As Ginette passed Rhonda Rideout’s, she wondered if Rhonda and Dave were together or going out or something. She knew her mom didn’t like it when she wondered about things that were none of her business, but everyone in Almost had been wondering about Rhonda and Dave lately. So why couldn’t she?
And all the wondering that people were doing about Dave and Rhonda made Ginette wonder if people had been wondering if she and Pete were together or going out or something. Because they had been hanging out a lot lately, too.
And then Ginette hoped people weren’t wondering about her and Pete, because there was nothing to wonder about.
Because Ginette and Pete weren’t together. And they weren’t going out.
And they were not “something.”
They were nothing.
Because of Pete and his stupid theory of closeness.
Ginette wondered what Rhonda would have done if Dave had ever said something like what Pete had said to her earlier—about being as far away from someone as you can possibly be when you’re sitting as close to them as you can possibly be.
And then she realized it didn’t matter what Rhonda would have done, because Dave would never had said anything so convoluted. Because Dave wasn’t a convoluted person.
But Pete obviously was.
And Ginette was done with his convolutedness.
And she was done with the strange notions that meandered through his mind. Notions like … that you can be far away from someone when you’re sitting right next to them.
And she walked faster as if she were trying to distance herself from Pete and his nonsensical notions.
But then she suddenly stopped and ached and almost gasped and realized she wasn’t ready to be done with Pete’s convolutedness.
And she wasn’t ready to be done with the strange, nonsensical notions that meandered through his mind.
This latest one, though—well, she just didn’t understand it. She understood its meaning—she just didn’t understand why Pete had shared it when he had.
And she wondered if maybe she should go back to the observatory at Skyview Park and see if Pete was still there and ask him to explain himself—and his bad timing.
But—no, she thought. He needed to come and find her if he was going to explain himself.
She would not be going to him.
So she continued on her way to Nowhere.
But she stopped again after a few steps. Because she had the strangest, strongest feeling that Pete was coming after her—because he wanted to explain himself. She whirled around and shone her flashlight down the Road to Somewhere, half expecting and half hoping that she’d see Pete running toward her, maybe in slow motion—like in a dumb movie—with his arms outstretched, apologizing all over the place for ruining the best evening that either of them had ever had.
But she didn’t see him.
Because he wasn’t running toward her.
He was probably still just sitting on the bench, nerding out over his theory, she thought.
* * *
But that was not, in fact, what Pete was doing. At least not just yet.
He had finally overcome the heaviness that had paralyzed him when Ginette left. And he had stood up. And was now staring off in the direction Ginette had headed when she left Skyview Park.
And he wasn’t nerding out over his theory. He was worrying that he had made a big mistake by sharing it with Ginette. Because Ginette was gone. Long gone. She had left him at 7:45. And it was just about 9 p.m.
And then he started wondering if Ginette had taken his theory literally. He certainly hadn’t intended for her to. He was just musing. About geography. And the distance between two points. And the enormity of love.
But what if Ginette had taken his musings seriously? What if she was walking around the world to get close to him again?
She couldn’t possibly have been attempting to do something so Herculean.
She was probably just heading home.
But—she was the most remarkable person he had ever met.
And he wouldn’t have put it past her to try to do something so Herculean.
And that was when he started nerding out over his theory. And he tried to figure out how long it would take for Ginette to return to him—and be (actually) close to him again—if she were to keep walking west and go all the way around the world.
The Earth, he knew, has a circumference of 24,902 miles at the equator.
And say Ginette walked at a pace of three miles per hour.
And say she walked eight hours a day.
That’d be twenty-four miles a day she could cover.
And 24,902 miles divided by 24 miles per day equals—Pete rummaged through his bag and pulled out a calculator and discovered the answer: 1,038.
1,038 days.
That’s how long it would take for Ginette to circumambulate the globe.
That was almost … Pete divided 1,038 days by 365 days in a year, and his calculator revealed an answer of 2.84 years.
Pete didn’t know if he could be without Ginette for 2.84 years.
But maybe it didn’t have to be 2.84 years, because, he bet, some days Ginette would be able to put in ten- or twelve-hour days walking.
Plus, she walked fast, so she could probably cover more than three miles in an hour.
And she’d be able to run sometimes.
So maybe her pace would be more like three and a half miles an hour.
Okay. So if she walked at a rate of three and a half miles an hour for an average of ten hours a day, that would mean she’d cover thirty-five miles a day.
And 24,902 miles divided by 35 miles per day equals 711 days.
And that, his calculator told him, was not even … 1.94 years!
Which was still a long time to be without the girl he had just confessed his love to.
But wait! Pete just realized something! She wouldn’t be walking at the equator. She’d start out walking along the Road to Nowhere, which was at the forty-seventh parallel north. And if she followed the forty-seventh parallel north, that would make for a shorter distance than she’d be walking if she were at the equator.
And Pete had learned—for fun, while he was working on his map projection project for science class—that the circumference of the Earth at any particular latitude could be calculated by using the formula 2πr(cos θ), where r is the radius of the Earth at the equator—or 3,963 miles—and θ is the relevant degree of latitude, in this case, 47. And the math revealed that the circumference of the Earth at the forty-seventh parallel was 17,622 miles.
And 17,622 miles divided by 35 miles per day, his calculator told him, equals 503.
Which is 1.38 years.
Which is still a long time to go without the girl you love.
But better than 1.94 years.
And better than 2.84 years.
Heartened, Pete imagined what Ginette’s trip along the forty-seventh parallel north would be like. She’d start out on the Road to Nowhere and head into the North Maine Woods and into the Allagash Wilderness and into Canada and through Quebec City and maybe she could just pick up the Trans-Canada Highway when she got there and hitch rides from time to time.
No—probably not the safest thing.
She could just walk.
Along the Trans-Canada.
All the way across Canada.
And when she got to the Pacific Ocean, she could keep walking and go north along the coast of British Columbia and into Alaska—which she had to see, because Pete’s dad had worked on a fishing boat there once and said Alaska was like a supersize version of Maine.
And once she crossed Alaska, she could take a boat across the Bering Strait and then she’d be in Russia. On the continent of Asia.
Wow.
She’d be up by the Arctic Circle by then, so that would really shorten the journe
y, because that would be the sixty-sixth parallel north—and maybe she’d be there in the summer and it’d be light all the time and she could really rack up the miles—because she could walk all day.
And then, eventually, she’d get to Europe where she could visit all the great cities and cathedrals and monuments that Mr. Smith had taught them about in seventh grade, and then maybe she could hop a boat to Great Britain, and then hop another one to Ireland, and then hop another one to Iceland.
Oh! Iceland! Pete had read about—and seen pictures—of Iceland in his National Geographics and he’d want to hear all about the geysers and the hot springs and the glaciers.
And then, after Iceland, she could take a boat to Greenland, and then a boat down to Labrador, and into Quebec again. And then she’d need to catch a boat across the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gaspe Peninsula, where his mom and dad had taken him and his sister, Gwen, camping once when they were little.
And then she’d go through New Brunswick, and before she knew it, she’d be back in Maine again.
And in Almost.
And at Skyview Park.
At the observatory.
On the bench.
And she’d be close to Pete again.
Hopefully.
But then he remembered it would take Ginette 1.38 years to make such a journey—at best.
And he didn’t want to be without Ginette for 1.38 years.
He didn’t want to be without her for even 1.38 days.
Or 1.38 hours.
Pete stared off to the west toward down-township Almost, Maine, and into the wilderness of northwestern Maine.
And he wondered if he had lost her.
And if he’d ever see her again.
And there Pete was, looking to the west for Ginette.
And there Ginette was, looking to the east for Pete.
And they didn’t know this—because they were over two and a half miles apart—but, at that moment, they were facing one other.
And they were both wondering how they could make right what seemed to have gone so wrong.
Pete thought about running after Ginette and catching up with her so he could explain his theory on what it means to be close—and tell her why he had shared it with her.
It was an epiphany—one that had come to him because Ginette had told him that she loved him. When she told him that, Pete felt like he had been whooshed away from her all of a sudden. And he felt farther away from her than he had ever felt—but also closer to her than he had ever felt, both at the same time.
And when he told Ginette that he loved her, he felt like he had been whooshed even farther away from her. But he also felt even closer to her than he had ever felt.
He wondered if maybe he should have just said that—that, after they had professed their love to each other, he felt farther away from her—and closer to her—than he had ever felt.
She probably would have understood that.
And she probably would have stayed, if he had said that.
But that wasn’t what he had said.
Instead, he had said—when Ginette was sitting right next to him with her head upon his shoulder—that she wasn’t actually close to him at all; that she was actually about as far away from him as she could possibly be.
And that seemed to have driven her away.
Which was understandable.
Pete shook his head sadly and sighed and checked his watch. It was a Timex. With a Twist-O-Flex band. It used to be his dad’s.
It said 8:43.
Ginette had left him just over an hour ago.
She was home for sure.
Pete thought about going home himself.
But then that strange lightness filled up his insides again and seemed to compel him to stay where he was.
So he sat back down on the bench. And stayed.
Even though he knew he wouldn’t be able to sit there for 1.38 years.
And Ginette turned around and kept walking, annoyed that she had let herself hope she’d see Pete rushing toward her to explain himself and his kooky theory.
And that strange lightness inside her compelled her to keep going west—even though her mind kept telling her to stop and go home.
* * *
It was a little before 9 p.m. when the potato field she was walking beside gave way to the woods.
A homemade sign welcomed her to the wilderness: PAVEMENT ENDS. FUN BEGINS.
Ginette had always wanted to meet whoever had made that sign.
And she left the well-plowed, paved road behind.
And went into the woods.
As she did, she was overwhelmed by the lightness inside her, which was still compelling her to go west.
She walked for a while through a tunnel of evergreens. Fir, spruce, cedar, pine, and tamarack trees stood sentry along the Road to Nowhere, as if they were escorting her to wherever she was going.
It was so dark in the tree tunnel.
She looked up and saw a narrow swath of night sky above, the Milky Way perfectly framed by the treetops.
A few steps later, her flashlight died, which was really annoying, because she couldn’t see a thing. She clicked the flashlight’s switch to the off position and then waited a few seconds and clicked it on again. The flashlight tried to beam—but couldn’t. Its batteries were dead, Ginette figured. Which was an easy enough fix. She always carried a couple of extra D batteries in her backpack, which she swung off her shoulders and onto the snowy ground. She felt for the zippers that opened the main compartment, opened the pack and rummaged through its contents and felt her space blanket and the granola bars and the matches and the utility tool and the water filter straw and the mini first-aid kit and the thermos of water.
But no batteries. Because there weren’t any in her pack. Because her mom had borrowed them a couple of weeks ago for her own flashlight—because the battery drawer at home was all out of size D batteries. And her mom had replenished the drawer with a twelve-pack last Sunday after she had done her Walmart run in Presque Isle after she hit the craft fair at the Methodist church. But she had forgotten to replenish her daughter’s backpack with her backups.
In all fairness, Ginette had forgotten, too, and now, there she was in the woods, all alone on a Friday night with no flashlight. She cursed herself for not being prepared—and maybe cursed her mom a little, too, for forgetting to replace her backups. And started to panic for a second because she really couldn’t see anything without her flashlight.
But her pupils were dilating, allowing her eyes to take in what little light there was from the stars above. As they did, she was able to make out the road in front of her and the bluish glow of the snowbanks that rose up next to her and the black silhouettes of the trees that were watching over her.
Ginette felt like her ears were dilating, too, as they tried to take in as much information as possible now that her eyes had become less useful. But there wasn’t much for them to hear in the silent night—except the sound of her own breathing.
And then she wondered if she was scared.
And decided that she wasn’t.
The forest is a dark place. And bad things can happen in the dark.
But bad things can happen in the light, too.
And she bet that far fewer bad things happened in the darkness of the woods of northern Maine than in the bright lights of cities like Montreal and New York and Los Angeles.
Maybe because there aren’t very many people where she was.
And there might just be too many people in those places. Which may have something to do with why the bad things happen in them.
Ginette stood still in the darkness for a moment.
And felt a great peace overcome her.
And then felt that strange lightness fill up her insides again.
And it seemed to force her to look skyward.
And she did.
And when she did, she saw the narrow swath of stars framed by the pointy treetops.
And—she saw the no
rthern lights.
Which were what she had told Pete she wanted to see after they had shown his parents what they were doing their science projects on.
And she was in awe as she watched the aurora dance in the sky—yellow, red, white, and green. And even blue and purple.
And then the lightness inside her—which seemed to be one and the same as the lightness above her—compelled her to continue on her way to wherever she was going.
And when she redirected her focus from the sky to continue on her way—she realized that she wasn’t where she had just been.
She wasn’t in the woods anymore.
She was in a snowfield.
Facing the observatory.
At Skyview Park.
And she was on the trail that she and Pete had taken when Ginette had taken Pete to Skyview Park to see if they could see the northern lights—after Pete had held her hand in front of his parents.
And she wondered how this was possible.
A tesseract, maybe.
Or a wormhole.
Or some other sort of bending of time and space.
Whatever the case—Ginette had moved through space and time in an extraordinary way.
And she was back at the observatory.
And she didn’t quite understand how that was possible.
But she didn’t care that she didn’t quite understand.
Because she realized that now she could go and see Pete and get the explanation she was looking for.
If he was still there.
She looked toward the observatory platform. And, against the bluish glow of the wide-open snowfield, she could make out the silhouette of the bench—and the silhouette of a person sitting on the bench.
It was Pete—she hoped.
He was still there—she hoped.
Ginette started walking toward the bench.
And wondered how long she had been gone.
It felt like forever.
And a moment.
Both at the same time.
As she approached the bench, the northern lights continued to hover above.
And Pete, who was, indeed, still sitting on the bench, saw them.
And watched them dance and shimmer in the sky above.