Manhattan

by Steiner, Kandi

  And the feeling of nothing changing after high school graduation continued.

  Kylie

  I fell in love with Michael Becker at the ripe old age of eight years old.

  Of course, no one knew that fact except for me, because Mikey and I had always been in the proverbial land known as “The Friend Zone.” But, it was true. I fell for that kid like a penny off the Empire State Building — fast and silently and unbeknownst to anyone other than the poor concrete that I hit and dented when I crashed to the ground.

  And me.

  I would never forget the way I fell for him, not in all the years I lived. And no matter how I tried to unfall for him, it was useless. Something about that boy had me wound up tight — breath shallow, heart beating a little too fast, eyes wide and child-like. Maybe that was why I hadn’t batted an eye at us becoming friends, at him eventually telling me I was his best friend, at stepping up and taking that role with pride — like first best friend was somehow a sure stepping stone to first true love.

  It had been the longest summer of my life, the summer after second grade, because I’d watched my mother wither away like a flower starved of water in just six short weeks. The day after school, she was completely fine. We went camping — her, my father, and me — just like we did every year when school let out. It was a celebration of summer, a weekend full of s’mores and swimming and Dad attempting to teach me how to fish.

  But the day we got back home, Mom got sick.

  And she never got better.

  The doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong, and the specialists they referred us to were just as lost. Mom suffered from chronic headaches so bad she couldn’t leave the dark bedroom — a room that I remembered smelling like dirty laundry and dust. She couldn’t keep anything down, and even when we moved her to the hospital so they could administer fluids, her body rejected them.

  A mysterious disease, they said.

  Perhaps a tick or mosquito gave it to her, they guessed.

  Nothing we can do, they admitted with sad eyes.

  Six weeks. That was all it took for me to lose the mother who was supposed to be there for me always, and for how it took my father down, he might as well have died along with her.

  So, when I went back to school on that first day of third grade, I didn’t know who I was or what to feel or who to turn to or what to do. The first day of school had always been fun for me — new clothes, new supplies, new backpack, new classroom, new teacher, new friends. I loved to learn, loved to discover, loved to read, even loved homework and tests and all the things that most kids hated.

  But I couldn’t love anything — not after that summer.

  At least, that’s what I thought — until Michael Becker sat next to me on the playground.

  He had the same miserable look about him, his eyes on his shoes, arms wrapped around his knees. He’d sat down on the other side of the tree trunk where I was hiding, watching the other kids play, wishing I wanted to play, too.

  “Hi,” I said tentatively.

  “Hi,” he barely murmured back.

  Silence.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  I nodded, drawing a circle in the dirt with my finger. “Me either.”

  “My dad died,” he said, simply and without emotion, like he was telling me what his favorite color was.

  Something in me changed then — right in that moment — because I looked at Michael Becker over my shoulder, and for the first time, I really saw him.

  We’d been in the same class in first grade, but I hadn’t seen him then. We’d played on the playground a few times in second grade, but again, I hadn’t seen him then, either.

  It was only then, on the playground the first day of third grade, that I truly saw the boy with the dead eyes and the perpetual frown.

  “My momma died, too.”

  He looked up at me, his shaggy brown hair blowing in the wind, and then he scooted over — once, twice — and reached out his hand for mine.

  And that was it.

  That one, seemingly insignificant exchange between two eight-year-olds was what did me in. Michael Becker grabbed my hand, and we somehow found a friendship in the hollow darkness of the pain we both shared.

  The rest was history.

  I didn’t mind being friend zoned — mostly because, when I was younger, I didn’t know that was what was happening. All I knew was that Michael and I were spending every recess together, and every afternoon after school, and every weekend. All I knew was that his three rambunctious older brothers and angel of a mother felt like they were mine, and my father loved Mikey like he was his own, and we knew more about each other than anyone else.

  It wasn’t until the end of middle school that I realized I was ready for more, that I wanted to cross over that friend line into something that might involve more hand-holding, and maybe some kissing, and definitely a different title.

  I wanted to go from best friend to girlfriend, and the way I saw it, there was no way it wouldn’t happen.

  Mikey loved me, even if he didn’t realize it. He so effortlessly knew what I needed and when I needed it, we hung out every single day, he told me things he didn’t tell anyone else. All I needed was for him to open his dumb boy eyes and see that I was, in fact, a girl — with boobs and everything.

  Okay, so maybe my boobs didn’t come in until junior year, but still.

  I was ready. And I was patient. I had faith that the day would come when he’d look at me and see me in a different light.

  But all of that went to hell at our sophomore homecoming — because Bailey freaking Baker asked Mikey to dance, and from that moment on, my best friend was a stupid, pathetic, love-sick teenage boy.

  And not over me.

  I watched the boy I’d loved my whole life fall in love with someone else, and I’d somehow smiled through it all.

  I’d been there to offer advice when he wasn’t sure how to ask her on a date, to help him dress for said first date, and to listen to him gush and freak out after said first date. I was there the day he asked her to be his girlfriend, the day they had their first make-out session, and the day they got into their first fight.

  Which just so happened to be because of me.

  Bailey didn’t like him hanging out with me all the time, and she definitely didn’t like the fact that I was a girl — although, that was still a fact that Michael was completely oblivious to.

  And so, I’d smiled and assured him it was okay, that I understood, that of course we could cut back on hanging out after school and on the weekends. We always had school, right? We always had each other, right?

  Wrong.

  Day by day, week by week, month by month, we talked less and less, and my best friend became a stranger.

  And still, I loved him.

  Maybe that was why I was double-checking the list I’d stayed up making all night, reading over each bullet point, fine-tooth combing through it like it was a college application and not a silly last-ditch effort to keep Michael Becker from moving across the country.

  When Bailey broke up with him and left Stratford for Nashville, it was me who was here to pick up the pieces. For the first time in two years, that piece of me that had been missing was back — even if he was a battered, bruised, and broody version of the boy I knew before.

  Now, he wanted to leave.

  And the simple fact of it was that I refused to accept that.

  I wasn’t ready to lose my best friend — not when I’d just got him back.

  “In case you missed the news, school is out. You did it. You graduated. You don’t have to study anymore,” Dad said on a chuckle, taking the seat across from me at our small dining room table.

  It was a piece of junk we bought when we moved into the tiny, two-bedroom apartment in the complex at the edge of town after Mom died. I sat at it every morning wishing we’d stayed in our old house so I could sit where Mom used to at our old dining room table — the one
built by her dad, with a big leaf we’d put in the middle for holidays.

  I made a face at his joke, which made him laugh again, and then my attention was right back on the notebook in my hands. “Got to keep sharp during this gap year, Pops.”

  “Maybe, but you know, a gap year is made for you to have fun — discover yourself, travel, forget about school for a while.”

  I cocked a brow. “Do you even know me? All I do is school.”

  He tipped his coffee mug at me. “Fair enough. You know, I think I still have your mom’s journal from her gap year. I could dig it out for you,” he offered. “Maybe it’d give you some ideas.”

  Something in my stomach twisted at the mention of Mom, the way it always had since she’d passed on. It felt a little like a hug from her and a little like a knife between the ribs all at once. “Really?”

  Dad nodded. “She is the reason you’re taking the gap year, after all,” he said on a shrug. “Maybe you could see some of the same places she did.”

  I smiled, reaching over to squeeze Dad’s hand with mine. “I’d love that.”

  When I pulled my attention back to the list in my hands, my stomach was fluttering for a completely different reason. Even though I’d known it was coming, high school graduation had somehow snuck up on me, and now, here I was, without a single plan on what was to come next.

  It made absolutely zero sense, seeing as how I loved school and knew without a doubt that I wanted to go to college. But I hadn’t submitted even a single application.

  My memories with my mother were foggy, faded, similar to the dream that graduation had felt like yesterday. But one thing I remembered, when I sat in her lap one evening when we were camping, the fire crackling in front of us and the katydids chirping loudly in the trees, was how fondly she talked about her gap year.

  I was only seven, and yet I could still remember her animated eyes as she told me about the road trip she’d taken, the places she had seen, the weird hotels she’d stayed in and the many car breakdowns she’d had along the way. She told me that was the year she’d found herself, the year she’d known she wanted to dance not just as a hobby, but as a career, and — eventually — she wanted to teach others to dance, too.

  When she’d passed, I’d made a vow to do my own gap year in her honor, to take the year off after high school to find myself.

  Now that it was here, it felt more scary than it did exhilarating, and I packed that fear away, focusing instead on the more pressing task at hand.

  Dad frowned, peering at my notebook as he reached out a finger, trying to drag it toward him. “What are you working on, anyway?”

  I snatched it out of his grasp before he could sneak a peek. “A list of places to travel, of course.”

  “You’ve always been the worst liar, Smiley.”

  I smiled at the nickname, one Mom had given me when I was younger on account of me having a smile the size of my face — even if it was full of crooked teeth at that time.

  “My Smiley Kylie,” she’d always cooed.

  “It’s nothing really, just something for Mikey.”

  “Ah,” Dad said, sipping his coffee before he opened the Civil War book he was reading he was no longer interested. “You still upset about his big news from last night?”

  Dad asked the question like it wasn’t a big deal, like it was casual and he already knew I was fine, but we both knew otherwise.

  “I’m fine,” I lied. “I’m happy for him.”

  Neither of us said another word, but Dad reached for my hand, giving it a squeeze before he left me alone to work on my list while he read.

  My father was the spitting image of Hugh Jackman — except a little older, a little grayer, and maybe a little pudgier around the middle. I used to joke with him when the X-Men movies came out that he was my real-life Wolverine — hairy knuckles and all.

  But, the point was that my father was handsome — even in his old age. Every single woman over the age of forty had tried at one point or another to be his next wife after Mom had died, but he’d showed no interest. Your mom was my one and only, and that’s just that, he’d say.

  I got a mix of the two of them, my mom and dad — Dad’s wide smile and chocolate brown eyes, Mom’s heavy and straight-as-straw hair, Dad’s narrow frame, Mom’s petite height, and somehow, the perfect mix of their skin color, which meant I was white as snow in the winter, and dark as mud in the summer.

  In theory, it sounded like a beautiful mixture of two perfect specimens, but I had somehow managed to be just completely average looking my entire life. In fact, I’d cried when I got my braces off because they were the only thing that brought a little spunk to my appearance. I was the classic, country, girl-next-door, slightly-nerdy and not at all girly wallflower of Stratford, Tennessee, who tutored the delinquents and made sandwiches for the homeless — because, as my father always loved to point out, helping others was in my blood, just like it had been in my mother’s.

  Sometimes, Dad would argue that I took care of him more than he took care of me.

  But, I’d argue right back.

  My father was a quiet man, but he was also a hard-working man, and — though it pained me to admit — he was also a different man than the one I’d had as a father before Mom passed away. She took a part of him when she went, and the piece of him left behind smiled a little less, laughed a little softer, worried a little more.

  Dad worked fifty hours a week as a forklift operator at the Scooter Whiskey Distillery. He’d been in that job for as long as I could remember, with no intention of moving up or out. Work was just that to him — a job, a way to make ends meet. For him, it was the life outside of work that made a man. And outside of work, my father liked to study, investigate, and relive the Civil War. Three times a year, he would get all dressed up in his Union soldier attire to reenact some of the bloodiest wars in Tennessee, and it was during those times that I wondered if my father had lived a past life, one where he really was a soldier on those fields, because he came to life more with that uniform on than he ever did in a Scooter Whiskey t-shirt.

  I stared for a long moment at the hand he’d squeezed before I pulled my attention back to the notebook I’d been scribbling in all night. I knew I only had one shot to convince Mikey to listen to me, because as much as any other Becker boy, he was stubborn as all get out.

  From the way he spoke last night, he’d already made up his mind.

  It was New York City or bust.

  But when we were eight years old, that boy wrapped his pinky around mine and he made a promise to me that he would always listen to me, no matter what.

  I could only hope he’d follow through on that promise all these years later.

  Michael

  The outrageous line at Blondies was the first sign that summer had finally arrived.

  Blondies was the one and only ice cream shop in town, and during the off-season, a small line would form in front of the window — mostly after school or right after the public pool shut down. But in the summer, that line curled its way around the entire building and into the parking lot.

  I smirked at my best friend — who was still at the window, even though we’d already been given our cones and cashed out — while licking swirls around the top of my pistachio brittle masterpiece. I watched Kylie’s exchange with the mom of three who had been in line behind us, both of them animated and smiling before the mom wrapped Kylie up in a big hug. Then, she was on her way over to the table I’d snagged us, blush shading her cheeks.

  “Tell me you didn’t just pay for that woman’s ice cream,” I said when Kylie took her seat across from me.

  She avoided my eyes guiltily, licking the top of her strawberry cone littered with sprinkles.

  “Ky…”

  “What?” she asked, gesturing toward the mom still in line like there was no other option. “You heard her when we were talking in line. She’s new to town, a single mom of three. Three, Mikey. Can you even imagine?” Kylie shrugged. “It was the
least I could do. A little pay-it-forward action.”

  I shook my head, taking another bite off my cone in lieu of responding to her reasoning. That was just who Kylie was. She’d bend over backward and lay her body as a bridge over muddy water if it meant saving a family of ducks or helping a fellow human.

  Kylie still somehow looked like the girl I’d met in third grade, and sitting across from her now, at our favorite place in town, I felt an uncomfortable ache in my chest for a past life, a past version of myself — one who hadn’t experienced heartbreak or lost himself completely. It seemed like simpler times when it was just me and Ky hanging out after school, playing video games or hiding out in the treehouse my father had built.

  Again, all of that was B.B.L.

  When Kylie came up and sat with me at lunch a couple weeks after Bailey was gone, I didn’t even know what to say. Sure, we’d still texted every now and then, but for the most part, I’d lost touch with my best friend over the two years I’d dated Bailey. And still, when she saw me hurting, Kylie was the first one there and ready to help.

  It was in her DNA, and I was thankful for it.

  I was still a miserable, lost soul all these months later, but at least I had someone there for me. And when we were together, the pain was a little more subdued.

  “So,” I said, licking around the melting edges of my ice cream. “Now that you’ve got me buttered up with my favorite ice cream, are you going to tell me what you want?”

  Kylie frowned, a strand of her long, thick hair falling in front of her face before she swiped it back behind her ear. We used to joke that her hair was thick and long enough to strangle someone, should we ever be attacked. In all the time I’d known her, she’d worn it at the same length, just past her shoulder blades, and in the same style, straight and parted down the middle. It was, perhaps, what I loved most about Ky.

  She never changed.

  She was the one thing in my life that always remained a constant.

  “I never said I wanted anything,” she pointed out defensively. “I said I have something to talk to you about, and that it’s important.”