The Truth About You & Me

by Amanda Grace

  Others had left all kinds of things, nice messages like Halfway through seeing the world! or Wow! Worth the hike! and stupid things like 420 forever.

  I wanted my words to mean something.

  I settled for An unforgettable moment, because that was the closest I could come to what I felt, and then I closed the notebook and gave you your pen back.

  You put the notebook back where it belonged, so that someone else could hike up and find it and leave their mark on the world, and then you sat back down and unzipped your bag.

  You brought food and drinks, Bennett. Do you remember what we ate?

  Peanut-butter and jelly never tasted so good.

  You brought only one big bottle of water, and as we passed it back and forth, it felt like it meant something. I’d shared pop and water with friends a million times, but with you, I imagined it implied something, a certain sort of intimacy.

  “I can’t believe how gorgeous this is,” I said. “I wish we could stay here forever.”

  You nodded. “I always wanted to see the sunset from this spot, but there’s no way I could hike down in the dark, and it must be cold as hell up here at night.”

  I agreed, because even in the full sun and all zipped up and wearing gloves, the cold was permeating me. Maybe in July or August, it would be warmer, but we were in October now, three weeks into the fall quarter. I shivered, and you took that moment to reach out, put your arm around me, and squeeze.

  You rubbed my back softly as we stared out at the soaring mountains and plunging valleys, at that view that could never be topped.

  When I turned to look at you, we were sitting so close, and the air around us so magical—so damned magical—I did something.

  I leaned in to kiss you.

  You leaned toward me, too, and my heart climbed into my throat, afraid to believe this was really happening, and at the last second—the last possible second—you turned your head just slightly and pursed your eyes shut, as if anguished, and you said two tiny words:

  “I can’t.”

  They came out on a whisper, almost too soft to hear, and yet those two words ruined me, crushed my heart right into my spine.

  You didn’t get up, didn’t push me away, though. You just rested your forehead against mine and looked me right in the eyes, and we were so close I thought that if we blinked at the same time, our eyelashes would touch.

  All those hours spent dreaming of being this close to you and there we were, so close, and yet I knew it was still too far away.

  “I’m sorry,” you whispered. “But I can’t do this.”

  I felt sick in that moment, like the air up there was too thin and there wasn’t enough of it to support my heart.

  We both turned and stared at the vista spread out before us. The silence hung all around, and I wished we were still touching, in more places than our arms, our thighs, our knees. I wanted to lean my temple against your shoulder and feel your arm around me, and it ached to know it would never happen.

  And then finally you said, “Twelve weeks.”

  I blinked and looked at you, and said, “Twelve weeks what?”

  “A quarter is twelve weeks,” you said. “And we have nine left.”

  I blinked again. I wanted you to be saying what I thought you were, but I was afraid it was too good to be true. I was afraid you were really saying, “At least we only need to see each other for nine more weeks, and then we can forget all about it.” If that was what you meant, I didn’t think I could stand it.

  “And?” is all I said. It was all I could manage around the lump in my throat, because I’d wanted so desperately to kiss you and I’d lost the chance.

  “And on December 13th, when those nine weeks are up, I will kiss you.” Your eyes bored into mine, with all the intensity of the wildfires that were once seen from that cabin. “But if I kiss you right now, I might never stop.”

  I couldn’t seem to say anything to that, so I just leaned forward and laid my head against your shoulder. You put your arm around me, just like I’d wanted, and we looked back out at that pretty, sweeping, breathtaking view and I let my heartbeat return to normal.

  You wanted me. You wanted me and you had to wait nine weeks.

  I could wait nine weeks for you, because you’d told me everything I’d wanted to hear. Everything I existed for.

  I hope, when they read this, they focus on this moment, the moment where you did the right thing with all the information you had.

  Because you thought the only thing keeping us apart was your job, and you were willing to wait until that one thing wasn’t there anymore. And that means if you’d known I was sixteen—that I’d still be sixteen in nine more weeks—none of this would have happened.

  That’s why this is all my fault, Bennett. That’s why I can’t understand how no one blames me for all this.

  Because you’re a good guy, and if you’d known what I was holding back, you would have held back too. You proved you could, that day up at High Rock.

  You proved you were good enough.

  And all I proved was that I would do anything to be with you.

  Whew. I had to take a break from writing for a few hours. Hours in which I did little more than lie in my bed and stare outward, watching the streaks of rain streaming down my windows. I know you might be waiting on this letter—might need it. See, the thing is, as I write this, I don’t know where you are for sure. My parents will hardly let me out of my room, let alone the house, and I’m desperate to know what’s happening to you. That’s why I’m writing as fast as I can.

  But I had to take a break, because thinking of that day at High Rock nearly undid me. I had to stop, stare at the rain, and finally take a shower to clear my head, a shower so long that the water turned cold. Because that was the turning point. The point of no return, the moment when I looked at you and jumped off the cliff, knowing I could never go back, could never reel in my feelings for you.

  I know this is all my fault, and it’s hard for me to bear.

  In any case, I’m ready to tell the rest. Because the day at High Rock was only the beginning of us, not the end, like I’d feared in that heart-pounding moment when you pulled away before we could kiss.

  Our hike was on Saturday, and I spent the next morning staring at your Facebook page, hoping somehow you’d update it, allude to an amazing weekend. I lost count of how many times my fingers hovered over the Add Friend button.

  I knew I couldn’t do it. Knew we had to hide whatever we were becoming, but God I wanted some kind of contact with you and we still hadn’t swapped phone numbers, so all I could do was wait out that agonizing day of dreaming and thinking and wishing I could see you.

  I thought about sitting at the foot of Mt. Peak all day long just in hopes of catching a glimpse of you, but I knew you wouldn’t go, knew that High Rock was your big hike of the weekend.

  So, after Facebook stalking you, I just lay on my bed and stared upward at the silly posters I’d tacked to the ceiling before freshman year, day-dreaming of you and frowning at the immaturity of the boy band featured on the poster.

  And after three hours, I could no longer stand looking at their six packs, at their silly fireman costumes. So I grabbed my computer chair and stood precariously on the turning, rolling thing, yanking out the pins and watching as the first poster fluttered to the floor. It made a satisfying whooshing noise as it hit the ground.

  Then I rolled my chair right over top of it, crumpling it, and climbed back on, pulling down the next poster.

  And then the next.

  And then I went around the room and took down the dried-up homecoming corsage I’d received sophomore year, when I went with my lab partner and it was the most epically boring evening of my life. That was just last year. And then I pulled down the little movie stubs dating back five years, back to when I saw Cars 2 with my brother.

/>   Cars 2, Bennett. It seems weird to think of it now, but it wasn’t so long ago that I’d gone to an animated movie targeted at kids not that much younger than me.

  I dashed out of my room, took the stairs two by two, fished a garbage bag out from under the sink, and returned. I stuffed all those silly childhood things into the bag, one shred at a time. I wasn’t a kid anymore, and this room was like a museum to my childhood. It didn’t match who I was becoming. Who I was with you.

  Then I turned to my closet. I still had my hoodie from sixth grade camp, even though it barely fit me, shoved into the back somewhere. And my middle-school PE uniform. Three pairs of too-small sneakers, one set of them with pink glitter and light-ups. Yeah, I’d been too old for those even when Mom bought them for me, but the fact that they were still buried in my closet was somehow even more embarrassing than it had felt when I wore them.

  By the time I was done, I was sweaty and dirty.

  Sweaty and dirty and free. Free to become who I wanted to be when you were around. I still didn’t know how to be that person, outside of my time with you, but somehow I had to figure it out.

  I shuffled the boxes around on the new, more spacious closet shelves, but one of them slid over too far and tumbled to the ground, bursting open and revealing stacks of photos.

  I groaned, sunk to my knees, and righted the box, reaching for the first stack of pictures. I paused, my fingers leaving oily smudges on the sheen of the top photo. It was of me and my brother, both of us squinting into the harsh light reflecting from the snow all around us. I was eight, my hair in two long braids over my shoulders, a stocking cap with one of those big fluffy balls on the top pulled low over my ears, my cheeks pink with the cold, or maybe it was from the exhilaration of sledding.

  We were at the golf course and a sled was shooting behind us in a colorful blur of red and blue. My brother’s arm was draped casually over my shoulder, his other hand fisted to teasingly punch me in the stomach, something he’d do in a goofy way, never for real.

  I was about to put the picture back into the box when something else caught my attention and I leaned in farther, my finger sliding over the spot below his eye.

  The spot where a dark cloud seemed to hang, grow.

  I swallowed, blinking, staring.

  And then a memory came rushing back:

  Me, reaching the top of the hill, huffing and puffing, pulling my little pink saucer up behind me.

  My brother, halfway up, following my path.

  When I got to the top, two boys—probably sixteen, a full eight years older than me—pelted me with snowballs, one of them crashing straight into my face and exploding in my eye like a thousand tiny pinpricks.

  I dropped to the ground in an instant, the string in my hands disappearing as my sled skidded down the hill behind me, and I burst into tears.

  My brother, who had seemed so far behind me, was suddenly beside me, then past me, the snow crunching under his feet as he flew forward after the two boys, both of whom towered over him.

  And one of whom punched him square in the eye, while the other laughed and told us we matched. Then they hopped onto their sleds and slid down the mountain, and the world fell silent again.

  My brother sniffled, just once, before he returned to my side and pulled me to my feet.

  “You okay?”

  And as he hugged me, I knew I was okay, knew my brother would protect me against anything. Anyone. Just like when he read me a chapter of Harry Potter before bed because Mom was at yet another conference in yet another city and Dad didn’t do the voices right. Just like the way he gave me his own lunch on the bus when I burst into tears because I’d realized I’d left mine at home on the counter.

  I blinked away the memory and tucked the photo more carefully back into the box.

  Trevor and I had been close. A long time ago. Now he was consumed with pleasing Mom and Dad, in that same way that had once been so important to me yet now seemed meaningless. He’d moved away and forgotten me.

  It stung, once. Now I simply accepted it as fact.

  Once all the photos were back in the box, I stood, shoving it back onto the shelf.

  Then I stepped back and surveyed the room, and my lips curled up. It was better. Much better. A room that suited who I was now.

  As I left my bedroom again, heading down the hall to the bathroom for a hot, relaxing shower, my brother left his room and we collided.

  “Oh!” I jumped back. “I didn’t know you were home.”

  He shrugged, moving to step past me.

  “Wait. Why are you home?”

  He glanced back at me just before turning to take the stairs. “I have a few more days before I start the internship.

  I raised an eyebrow. “What kind of an Ivy League school allows a sophomore to bail on classes?”

  He pulled his phone out, glanced at the time, and then shoved it back in his pocket. “It’s a pilot internship program for engineering students. The directors are Harvard alums and teachers themselves, and it’s aimed at getting students directly into jobs after graduation. Which is a big deal, thanks to the job market or whatever.”

  “Lucky you,” I said.

  “Yep. Anyway, I’m gonna go play ball. See ya!”

  And then, like that, he was gone.

  And now that I’d cleaned my room, I was going to focus on another transformation. One I was hoping would catch your notice.

  On my way to class on Tuesday, the radio hummed though I was hardly listening. I’d get to see in you in a few hours—for the first time since I’d added bright blond streaks to my hair—and I couldn’t wait, couldn’t stop the butterflies from racing in circles in my stomach. I wanted you to notice me in a new way, wanted your eyes to sweep over me. I’d never been particularly fond of the ugly dishwater color of my hair, and yet I had never changed it.

  Until now. Because you changed me on the inside, and now I couldn’t help but want everything else to reflect that. We were something. We had something. And I couldn’t wait to see you again so we could figure out just what that something was.

  As I clicked on my blinker and turned into the big lot—the western lot surrounded by all those soaring old cedar trees—three words from the radio echoed in my ears:

  “Age of consent.”

  I had no idea what they were talking about … or why, in that moment, I reached out and turned the volume up.

  A woman’s voice blared across the speakers. “I don’t care what you say, a sixteen-year-old and a forty-year-old is gross.”

  “But again,” a guy responded, “the age of consent in that state is sixteen. It might be gross, but it’s not illegal.”

  “Yeah … but … ew,” she said. There was a pause, and I frowned as the woman continued. “Anyway, moving on,” she said, “today’s big story out of Atlanta: a college volleyball player has become infected with a rare flesh eating—”

  I furrowed my brow as I clicked the radio off, pulling into a parking space and putting the car into park.

  Age of consent.

  Those three words rattled around in my head for a minute, feeling like a muffled, distant noise, until a moment of clarity—and hope, like a balloon lifting me from fear, from worry—sprung forth.

  What if it wasn’t about being a legal adult … what if there was another age that mattered? What if the “age of consent” wasn’t eighteen after all, but something else?

  If that girl could be sixteen and be with a forty-year-old and it wasn’t illegal …

  I jerked my seat belt, yanking it so hard it snapped upward and the buckle slapped against the window with a big clang. I grabbed my backpack from the back seat and slung it over my shoulder as I slammed the car door behind me and scurried across the parking lot, my feet lighter than they’d been for days.

  Why hadn’t I thought to research it? Why hadn’t
I checked to see if it was legal for you and me to be together? I’d just assumed, somehow, that I had to be a legal adult—eighteen years old—or anything we’d do would be illegal.

  But maybe your line of thinking was right. Maybe once you weren’t my professor, and that non-fraternization policy didn’t stand between us … maybe it would all be okay, maybe I could tell you the truth.

  It was a ten-minute walk from the far flung edges of the parking lot to the library, but I don’t remember any of it—not the winding concrete pathways and certainly not the dew-covered shrubs I must have brushed into, given that my sleeves and jeans were tinged with water by the time I slipped through the glass doors of the library, walked across the wide expanse of floor, and made my way up the curving staircase to where the computers were.

  I was supposed be in English class in three and a half minutes, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. It was like I was staring at my dream as it dangled low on the branch … and I was about to find out if I was allowed to grab it.

  I walked past the first several bays of computers and around the corner, to where things were quieter and only three students were at the dozen or more terminals.

  I chose the computer farthest from the other students and plunked down in the chair, dropping my backpack on the floor and wiggling the mouse to bring up the login screen. My fingers trembled a bit as I typed, and I had to backspace and put in my correct password. After three attempts, I logged in and the computer booted up.

  Glancing around again, I popped open the web browser, typing in Washington State Age of Consent. I scanned the results, clicking on the third link. My eyes roved the page, looking for the answer I so desperately sought, feeling my face flush as everything in me strained with hope and fear.

  Sixteen.

  That was the number that leapt from the screen. A one and a six sitting there, blaring back at me as if they were glittering in neon lights. In that moment, I think I could have floated, flown, across the room. Or at least exhibited superhuman strength, like lifting a car or something. We could be together. On December 13th, we could be together and you wouldn’t be in trouble.