Questions I Want to Ask You

by Michelle Falkoff

  I love this reversal of what we normally do, with her asking permission instead of me. I’ll still know what she wants, which is the most important thing. “You’re in charge,” I say.

  “You’ll do whatever I say?”

  “Anything you want.”

  “Arms stay where they are,” she says, and I comply. She kisses my lips, then my neck, then starts moving down, and though she keeps giving me orders, or asking for what she wants, I pretty much lose the power of speech.

  8

  Maddie and I don’t make it to the senior brunch, a decision I can’t imagine ever regretting. Something about that shift in our dynamic, with Maddie taking charge, makes me feel like everything’s changed. I’m not nearly as worried about the fall, which makes the prospect of graduation far more sweet than bitter.

  My friends all decided that we would wear bathing suits under our gowns, and though Dad’s not super impressed, he doesn’t stop me. “Step one in learning to be a real adult is making your own choices, even when they’re stupid,” he says when he sees my hairy legs sticking out from under the hem of my gown. I nod and smile and put on my cap, where we painted our graduation year in glitter nail polish. Being with Dad is still a little awkward for me—I don’t know what to think about what I found in the box, but I’m not about to ruin my own graduation day worrying about it. Especially not after last night with Maddie.

  Dad has the last laugh when we get to Brooksby High and realize that at some point on the ride over, the weather has completely changed. The day started out sunny and beautiful and warm, but now the wind is whipping so hard, chairs are toppling over, and the temperature’s dropped twenty degrees as the sky grows dark. “Might get ugly out there,” he says. “Better grab a seat near the aisle in case you need to run.”

  Dad knows full well the seniors are seated alphabetically and that I’m in the middle of a row of Wallaces and Welches. “The cap will protect me,” I say as Dad chooses a seat conspicuously next to the exit. He saves the seat next to him for Tom, his plus-one—we all got four tickets so people could bring their parents and siblings or grandparents or whoever, but I just have Dad. I’d always assumed my only other living relative is his father, my grandfather, and they don’t get along, so I don’t see him much. I wasn’t about to invite him to graduation, that’s for sure. It made more sense to invite Tom. He was super flattered and got the day off work and everything.

  Maddie’s nowhere near me, since her last name is all the way up in the Bs, but we find each other quickly before we have to take our seats. As the sky begins to clear and the temperature creeps back up, I discover I’m happier than I expected to be on a day I’d otherwise been dreading. Graduation seems like the end of something, but now I wonder if maybe it’s just the beginning. Last night felt like the beginning of a new stage for Maddie and me, and I’m into it.

  The valedictorian, a brainy guy who also was head of the track team, gives a boring speech about hurtling toward the future, and the crowd gets restless and starts sending beach balls around. Lauren is salutatorian, and thankfully her speech is sharp and funny and personal. She talks about how lucky she was to find herself in high school, how that gave her the confidence to try new things and go on new adventures, like leaving Brooksby to go to school in Colorado. She ends with a joke about things that are legal in Colorado that aren’t in Massachusetts, which I’m sure the school would never have allowed her to say if they knew what she was planning, but I’m still stuck on all the stuff about finding herself, about the adventures. She sounds like a next-level version of Maddie, whose idea of leaving starts with smaller steps. It makes me wonder whether I’m the only person who doesn’t have those kinds of dreams. I know that’s not true—lots of kids are staying close to home—but I’m starting to see that the interesting people want more than what they have here. Does wanting to stay mean I’m boring?

  I’ve got a little too much time to think about it during the endless diploma conga line, but finally my name is called and I’m able to shut off my brain for a while. Next up is the afternoon of barbecues. The first one is Maddie’s, a family event in her backyard. Dad’s met her parents before, and I was impressed that he never seemed annoyed at how they talked down to him once they learned he was a cop. I don’t know what makes Maddie’s mom think interior design is so much higher up the evolutionary food chain than protecting people, but whatever. Dad’s a better man than I am. If I were him I’d never want to see them again, but he has no problem going over there for the party. He even wears a shirt with a collar and offers to man the grill when Maddie’s dad struggles with the charcoal, though what that really means is getting it lit and then leaving me there with the marinated chicken and Fenway Franks while he tracks down the good beer.

  The afternoon goes way better than I hoped. By the time I finish grilling, Dad’s bonded with Maddie’s father over their mutual love for the Sox and the Patriots, and they’re laughing like old friends. Maddie’s mom doesn’t even look annoyed. It’s easy to picture years of weekends like this, maybe even with little kids running around that look like me and Maddie (more like Maddie, if there’s any justice in the world). Even Maddie isn’t letting her mom get on her nerves, though the only food is meat, vegetables, and fruit. “I get the message,” Maddie whispers to me, “but just because she wants to ‘help me keep up the good work,’ as she puts it, doesn’t mean she has to make everyone else suffer.” She chews on a celery stick so loudly it almost seems like she’s trying to hurt the celery.

  “Don’t worry,” I whisper back, “the next party will definitely have cake.”

  “You’re going to eat cake?” she asks, in mock surprise.

  I shrug. I’m not planning on having any, but I want her to know I listened when she said we should loosen up.

  She laughs, then checks her phone to see what time it is. “Okay, then. Let the countdown to cake begin. It’s six o’clock. We wind this party down in T-minus-sixty minutes.” She even sets an alarm.

  We spend the hour entertaining Maddie’s various relatives. I can’t believe how many cousins she has, and they all seem to know each other so well, telling stories about games they played together when they were little. For the first time I wonder whether I have any family besides my mother. Is Regina Russo from the yearbook my aunt? Does she have a husband, kids? Do I have grandparents I’ve never even met? It’s weird that the only people I consider family (besides Dad) aren’t even related to me—Tom and his wife and their three kids are here too. Which is perfect—they’ll keep Dad company when it’s time for me and Maddie to go.

  Once the clock strikes seven, Maddie and I keep our promise and move on to the next party, at Lauren’s house. I’m right about the cake, an enormous vanilla full-sheet monstrosity from Market Basket, with frosting flowers in our school colors. Maddie scarfs down a small piece while I look around for something I can eat. The food table is covered with pizza and potato chips and soda, so I’ll be going hungry for a while. Good thing I filled up on chicken and fruit salad at Maddie’s house.

  “The cake was totally worth it,” Maddie says. “One little piece won’t kill you.”

  “That would be the gateway drug for one bigger piece, which would lead to two bigger pieces, and then it wouldn’t really matter if I had some chips and a little Pepsi, and then tomorrow I’ll still be having sugar cravings, and since I was so bad the day before, I might as well enjoy being off Paleo for a while, and then it won’t be worth going back until next Monday, because new habits are always better when you start on Monday, but maybe next Monday it will be someone’s birthday, and there’ll be cake, and . . .”

  “Okay, okay, I get it.” Maddie holds up her hands. “God forbid you do one different thing. Everything could change. And that would be so horrible.” Her voice is light, but somehow we’ve landed back on the topic of how terrible it is that I want things to stay the same.

  “Kind of harsh, don’t you think?”

  “Sorry,” she says, but I hear a
silent “not sorry,” too. “I’m going to go say hi to Lauren and her mom and thank them for the party. I’ll let you know if I see a vegetable tray anywhere.”

  I wander around the party alone, trying and failing to distract myself from thinking about what’s going on with us. I’ve gone from worrying we were breaking up to thinking we were better than ever, but now I’m back to worrying. I know I shouldn’t overanalyze her comments over a piece of cake, but I know Maddie better than I know anyone, and something is definitely wrong.

  As night falls, the party changes; Lauren’s parents go out and the rest of the parents leave, and the boys bring over a keg and set it up on the porch. Graduation day is over, and graduation night means the start of a summer of freedom.

  But I haven’t seen Maddie for a while, so I decide to check and see if she’s still mad at me. I weave my way through the growing crowd looking for her. She’s not in the kitchen, which is filling up with people trying to get to the keg on the back porch. She’s not in the living room, where a game of I Never is underway. I finally find her downstairs in the rec room, where a bunch of guys are watching baseball. She’s wedged on the couch between them, which doesn’t make sense until I see Colin. He just won’t give up.

  Maddie jumps to her feet when she sees me. “You found me! I thought I lost you there.”

  She makes it sound like she’s been looking for me, but she seemed pretty comfortable on that couch. “I’ll always find you,” I say. Colin rolls his eyes. “You got a problem with that?”

  “Nah, man, no problem here.” He holds up his hands like he thinks I’m about to hit him.

  “Pack, let’s take a walk.” Maddie grabs my hand and pulls me away from the couch. She is definitely not happy.

  “Anything for you, babe,” I say, making sure Colin can hear.

  “Outside.” She digs her nails into my palm. I am definitely in trouble.

  Though lots of kids are hanging out on the porch, the party hasn’t yet spilled into the rest of the backyard, which is small but fenced in so Lauren’s dog can run around outside. The dog is tiny and yappy and gets very excited when it sees Maddie and me coming, so we throw around some tennis balls that we find lying in the grass until we’ve exhausted the dog and the tennis balls are covered in its drool. The three of us collapse on the ground, the dog putting its head in Maddie’s lap. I’m not a dog person, but it’s pretty cute.

  The dog keeps Maddie from yelling at me right away, too, which is a plus. She rubs its head until it practically purrs like a cat, and then turns to me. “What is wrong with you?”

  I expected her to sound angry, but instead she sounds resigned, which is way scarier. “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t play dumb, Pack.” She stops petting the dog and looks me right in the eyes. “I’ve told you a million times there’s nothing going on with Colin, and yet you’re still a nightmare around him. You don’t know him, so you have no reason not to like him unless you think he’s some sort of threat to you. And for you to believe that means you don’t trust me.”

  “Of course I trust you. I just don’t trust him.” The dog runs away, like it knows things are about to get ugly.

  “And you think you’re somehow going to save me from him? Like I need your help? Or do you think I’ll be so overwhelmed by your protectiveness that I’ll just decide to blow off college and stay here with you?” She makes little air quotes around the word “protectiveness” and I know I’m in even bigger trouble than I thought. If there’s one thing Maddie hates, it’s when I—or anyone else—tries to help her with a problem she can solve herself.

  “It’s not like that,” I say.

  “It’s not? Why don’t you tell me what it is like, then?”

  “It’s not about Colin. I just thought things were different now. That we were going to be okay. And then I saw you with him, and it made me feel like I was wrong.”

  “What do you mean, different? Than when?” She looks genuinely confused.

  “Last night. After prom. Things were . . . different. It felt like something changed, and I thought maybe I didn’t need to be nervous about the fall.”

  “Last night was amazing,” Maddie says. “But I’m not sure I get what you mean by different. I’m still going to college this fall. That’s not changing.”

  “I get it. You’re going to college, and I’m not. But why are you acting like you’re getting on a spaceship and colonizing Mars? You’re moving two hours away.”

  Maddie runs her hands through her hair and looks off to the side. “It’s so strange how the things you like most about someone can also be the things that create the biggest problems,” she says, not making eye contact with me. “You’re a very literal guy, Pack. I bet you’ve calculated the mileage between here and Amherst and mapped out the best routes depending on traffic.”

  I totally have. “Is that such a bad thing?”

  “Of course not. I love that about you. I’ve never had to worry about what you were thinking, or whether you were being honest with me. I’ve always trusted you.”

  “Past tense much?” She isn’t exactly making me feel better.

  Now she turns to face me, and I see that resignation again. It’s still worse than anger. “You’re right that I’m only going to be two hours away. But I’m not a literal thinker like you are. Two hours isn’t much in terms of time, but it’s not just about the two hours. It’s about me not living in my parents’ house anymore. Me taking care of myself, making my own choices about where I want to be and what I want to do. Picking classes, thinking about my future, thinking about whether two hours is a good test run for four hours, or six, or even more than that. Two hours is the first step on my way out, Pack. I’m not coming back here. And you never want to leave.”

  I can’t do anything but look at her for a solid minute. This is new to me. I assumed she’d go to college but then come back, that my challenge was just trying to make it work until she returned. Whatever she wants to do with her life she can do in Boston, and Brooksby is a great commuter town. In truth, I have our lives mapped out already, as surely as I have figured out the fastest route to UMass from my driveway. We have something real, I know it, so I don’t see the point of having to go out in the world to find something else when what we need is right at home. But Maddie clearly doesn’t feel the same way. “Ever?”

  “Most likely,” she says.

  “So you’re going to college, I’m staying here, and we spend the summer pretending it doesn’t matter? Do you even want me to visit when you leave?”

  She pauses, and I feel sick. “Pack, we have time to talk about this.”

  “You mean during our epic last summer together? Maybe we shouldn’t bother.” I say it as sharply as I can, hoping it’s the verbal equivalent of a slap.

  It’s not. For a second Maddie looks relieved, I think. “Is that what you want?”

  “Of course it’s not what I want.” My voice is getting louder, but I try not to yell. “I want you. I’ve never wanted anyone but you. I want our one last great summer and I want it to be so amazing you change your mind about college and stay here with me forever. Why is that such a horrible thing?”

  “It’s not horrible. It’s flattering and it’s lovely and in some ways it’s also my nightmare.”

  Now I’m the one who got slapped. She’s way better at this than me.

  “I’m so, so sorry to have to say it like this but you haven’t been hearing me.” Maddie puts her hand on my knee, and her touch feels good even as I pull my leg away. “All I want is to leave here, and all you want is to stay. It’s not that I don’t see a future for us—it’s hard to imagine a future without you. But I can’t imagine that future here, and you won’t imagine it anywhere else. So we only have one choice to make, really: do we enjoy the summer together or not?”

  I shouldn’t feel so blindsided. It’s not like she hasn’t been hinting at this for ages. But I never believed she really meant it, and even if she did, I thought she’d change her
mind. Or I could help her change it. If that’s not going to happen, what’s the point of spending the summer together if it will only make us more miserable at the end? She doesn’t want me to come visit; she wants to leave and start over like Brooksby doesn’t exist, and I’m part of Brooksby.

  Fuck that.

  “Not,” I say.

  “What?”

  “You asked if we should enjoy the summer together or not. I vote not. You can plan your new exciting life without me distracting you, and I’ll—” I have no idea what I’ll do. “I’ll work more hours at the gym and figure out what I want to do with my life, which will have nothing to do with you.”

  “Pack—”

  I’m not done. “You’ll promise not to go to the morning class and I won’t go to the one at noon. You’re working nights anyway, so it won’t be hard. Are we good now?” I stand up and wipe the grass off my shorts. The little dog comes running back across the lawn at the sight of movement, collar tags clicking. Not what I want to deal with right now.

  “Come on, sit back down.” Maddie pats the space next to her. The dog takes that as a cue and replaces me in the dented grass. “We need to talk about this.”

  “No we don’t,” I say. “You’ve known all along this was coming; it was just a question of when. Well, since you got to decide the big stuff, I’ll be the one to decide this part. I don’t want a summer of pretending with you, and I don’t think there’s anything left to say.”

  “Nice, Pack. Way to respect the last few years.” Maddie’s voice shakes a little, and I don’t know whether she’s reached my level of anger or whether she’s crying.

  I don’t care.

  I turn around and walk away.

  9

  My plan is to spend the whole day after graduation in bed. It’s not like I have anything else to do. I don’t start work until next week, I don’t feel like going to the gym, and everyone who isn’t starting their summer jobs today is too hungover to go to the beach. Nothing matters now that there’s no more Maddie.