The Truth About You & Me

by Amanda Grace

“I know, and he struggled enough when he thought I was eighteen. We never would have—” I cut myself off and blushed. “I mean, we didn’t actually do anything—”

  “I call bullshit on that,” he said. “I wasn’t born yesterday. Or fifty years ago like Mom and Dad, when maybe people were a little more naïve and innocent like life is like on Leave It to Beaver or I Love Lucy or whatever lame-ass show is set in the decade they were teenagers.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “No, really, we didn’t—”

  “Mom and Dad almost believe that, but it’s because they want to believe that. You stayed the night with him, Madd. If it walks like a duck … ”

  I rolled my eyes but stopped trying to lie, instead opting for silence. I couldn’t tell him, not without risking your world, if anything was left of it.

  “Are you okay though, really? This all seems kinda … drastic.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I don’t know what’s going to happen to him and I’m freaking out about it. Mom and Dad won’t tell me anything. He’s probably sitting in jail or something.”

  “He’s not,” my brother said, and my heart squeezed. You weren’t in jail, like I’d been imagining for the past two days? And if that was the case, why did the guilt still seep from me?

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “I may have eavesdropped,” he said, not sounding the least bit guilty.

  “On who?” My heart raced. I’d been desperate for information but too afraid to ask, not that anyone was around to tell me anything anyway. I was on house arrest, period, and they’d talk to me again when they weren’t so upset (Mom) and angry (Dad).

  “Mom and the cop who came by this morning. You were still sleeping. They sat on the front porch just below my bedroom window.”

  “And?” Geez, he needed to just spit it out already!

  “They never formally arrested him. They brought him in for questioning. The cop told Mom that these cases are really tricky and you would have to want to press charges for it to become anything. Technically, it was illegal, but he said they don’t try to prosecute stuff like this unless they think they’ve got an iron-clad case, because they don’t like to drag victims—”

  “I’m not a victim,” I said abruptly. I wasn’t. Victim was an ugly word. I was in love. You’d made me feel things for the first time, and that didn’t make me a victim.

  He sighed, annoyed. “They don’t like to drag girls like you through the process unless they’re confident they can win.”

  Girls like me? What was I, if something other than a girl who’d fallen in love with a guy who wasn’t allowed to fall in love back?

  “So Mom and Dad can’t be the one to press charges? You’re sure about that?” I asked, still scared. “They seemed like they wanted to nail him to the wall.”

  “No, I guess it doesn’t really work that way. Like I said, it’s gotta be you to push the issue, and since you both claim nothing happened and you refused to go to the hospital, they have no evidence. He won’t have any charges brought against him.”

  The relief was strong and swift, and my brother must have seen it on my face. “Don’t celebrate yet. He’s not really out of the woods.”

  I stared, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  He played with the strings on his hoodie. “I may have also eavesdropped on a phone call … ”

  “And?”

  “Mom called GRCC. I think he’s going to be in very big trouble.”

  I knocked my head back into the wall a few times in frustration, wishing someone would come save me from the never-ending waves of guilt. Of course. We may have waited all that time to kiss, but it was irrelevant if they knew we’d been … fraternizing while he was my professor.

  “I see,” I said, feeling more hollow than ever.

  “Pretty sure it’s going to cost him his job,” my brother said. “I mean, I didn’t hear the other side of the conversation, but Mom was pretty convincing and I don’t see why they’d want to defend him.”

  My heart wrenched at that. You loved your job. You were so good at it. I’d watched you grade papers, I’d stared while you were lost in lectures, seen the way you guided the not-so-gifted students during labs. Your job was your passion, your identity, your life, all wrapped into one.

  It was me who’d cost you your job. Me. I was just as guilty as a robber who stole in during the night and took your riches, except what I’d taken was priceless.

  “Oh,” I finally said, because there was nothing else to say, nothing to defend.

  “You have to have seen that one coming,” my brother said. “A guy like that can’t be—”

  “He’s not like that.”

  “He fooled around with a sixteen-year-old student.” My brother shuddered then, almost theatrically, and it got under my skin. No one would understand who you were to me, the kind of guy you’d been. They simply wanted to see you as a monster.

  “I told you, he thought I was eighteen. And it wasn’t fooling around. We spent the whole time just talking. Non-stop talking. He listened.”

  “What do you need him for, anyway? He’s ten years older than you, so I kind of doubt he identifies with teenage-girl problems. And besides, I’m your brother. I know you better. I’ll listen,” he offered. “I’ve got a whole lot of free time on my hands these days. And considering I told Mom and Dad about failing out of Harvard about two hours before Hurricane Maddie hit, I probably owe you one for making me look like the golden child for once.”

  I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t quite have it in me. “So that’s the silver lining, huh? You fail the Ivies and the parents don’t care because I fucked up worse?”

  “Two cusswords in one day! I think I like the new Maddie.”

  I did laugh then, just a short, sad laugh, one that hurt because a few days ago I’d been laughing so much, with you by my side, feeling like I wasn’t just on top of the mountain but the world.

  I leaned forward and rubbed my face with my hands, weary. “Why am I so selfish?”

  “Everyone is selfish, Maddie. It’s part of being human.”

  “Why do you sound like the Chinese guy from Karate Kid?” I asked, looking up.

  He mimed the wax-on, wax-off thing, then shrugged. “I’ve spent the last few weeks with too much time on my hands.”

  “So what are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t know. I’m thinking UW. It’s gotta be easier to crack than Harvard. I only have a couple more years to go, but they’ll be the hardest classes. Maybe a lighter load each semester or something. It will take longer, but if I have less classes, I’ll have more time to study for each of them, and I could always hire a tutor, since the tuition is so much cheaper … ”

  “So you’re still going for it? The whole engineering thing?”

  He nodded. “I told you. I love it. Just because I suck at it doesn’t mean I don’t love it.”

  “Life is weird,” I said, sinking back onto the mattress and staring upward, again, my eyes finding that familiar pattern.

  “You said it,” my brother said, and I could tell by the creaking noise of the bean-bag chair that he had stood up.

  “Anyway, when you’re finally ready to talk, I have a feeling I’m going to be just a thin wall away … for a long time.”

  “Oh joy,” I said, listening as he retreated, listening as his door clicked open and shut, listening as his television crackled to life.

  A single tear escaped before I squeezed my eyes shut.

  My brother wanted engineering, but in that moment, all I wanted was you.

  God I missed you.

  It was another day before I officially found out what had happened to you.

  After questioning you that day, they let you go and you went home. I don’t know exactly what they said to you, but my imagination went wild, filling in all the blanks thanks to th
ose CSIs and NCIS shows.

  I imagined they made thinly veiled threats, said stuff like don’t leave town and we have our eye on you. They’d make you feel like a bad guy, like someone everyone should be worried about, like you’d go after their daughters too if they weren’t careful.

  I found out you were free because the cops stopped by to talk to me again, giving me one last chance to press charges. They asked leading questions, pulling me in circles, confusing me, trying to make me accuse you. I guess small-town cops don’t have much to do but talk.

  Finally I told them I was done, that I just wanted to move on. I told them I’d never see you again anyway, that the class was over, and I think that helped.

  But once they said they’d close the case and left, the sound of the door slamming was shockingly loud, echoing in my heart.

  The case was done. Just like our relationship.

  And now I don’t know what else to write.

  I started writing to you a month ago, back when I thought you were in jail. I thought maybe my letter would help get you released, because they’d see this was all my fault, and they’d see that fake ending where we didn’t have sex. I’d write it all down, and then they’d know the way it all happened.

  But I didn’t end up sending it, of course, and every day it sits in my room, this giant reminder of us. I have every last page, up to the fake-out cabin evening, in the bottom drawer of my desk. The rest is hidden under my mattress, because I’m freaked out Mom is going to raid my room like she did while we were at to the cabin, even though things have died down now and she hasn’t done anything like that since she realized I was okay.

  They still eyeball me sometimes, study me, like they’re trying to figure out how they hadn’t seen it all coming. Like maybe there’s going to be some evidence on my skin, or deep in my eyes, something to give them the answer they’ll never really understand.

  But in the end they’re all so happy to just move on, believe I’m okay. So here I am, still stuck on you as the world spins around me, forgetting about us.

  I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with these hundreds of pages, because I guess I don’t need them to keep you out of legal trouble.

  But somehow I still want you to have them, want you to see why I did what I did. I don’t know what you’ve been thinking these last few weeks while we’ve been apart. If you hate me, or miss me like I miss you. If you remember the conversations we had, the moments we spent together when we let down our walls, shared our secrets.

  If you do read this, I hope you don’t hate me for some of the things I included. It was because I thought being honest and sharing a little bit would help them believe we didn’t go all the way, and the almost-kiss at High Rock … I wasn’t sure if that was okay but I thought that, if anything, it showed you had restraint, it showed you were relying on what I’d told you and making appropriate decisions based on that, and that you would have done the same if I’d told you I was sixteen.

  So, now that I have nothing else to write, I’ve decided …

  I’m going to try to give you all these pages.

  Tonight.

  I’ve tried to figure out another way to do it—a way to get these letters to you without possibly complicating things because I’m not supposed to see you ever again. But hand-delivery is the only option. I can’t risk mailing it, and I can’t just leave it on your porch. If someone intercepts this, it’s all over for you.

  It’s been a month, Bennett. A month of biding my time and waiting for things to die down so that when I sneak to your house, no one will notice. But I can’t wait anymore. I have to see you and apologize to your face, and if you won’t speak to me, I’ll just give you all this. The rest of our story.

  Maybe you’ll read it someday and understand.

  Until then,

  Madelyn

  You’re gone.

  I went to your house and I knocked on the door and no one was there. I wanted to go back later. I thought that maybe your class hours were different in the new quarter and you were still on campus, or that maybe, if they really did fire you, you were working somewhere else now, teaching night classes, and you’d be home soon.

  The thing was, the gate on your driveway had been shut when I’d arrived, which I figured meant you didn’t want visitors. I’d parked near the road and then slipped through the gate to go to your house. After you didn’t answer, I went back to my car and stood there, one hand on the door, reluctant to leave without seeing you, and your neighbor saw me.

  And without so much as a hello, he said two words that shattered everything I’d hoped for:

  “He moved.”

  I froze there on the gravel drive, the rain sprinkling down around me, darkening the surface, and said simply, “Huh?”

  The guy, a little overweight with a goatee and a newsboy cap, shrugged. “Up and moved to Brooklyn or Baltimore or something. A big U-Haul arrived a couple weeks ago and I haven’t seen him since.”

  “Well, which is it?”

  He shrugged again and kept walking, up the little steps to his house.

  “Wait! How do I find him?” I asked.

  He turned around. “Dunno. Moved out in a real hurry. Sorry.”

  Then he pushed open his back door and slipped inside.

  And that was it, Bennett.

  I would never see you again.

  I miss you.

  I don’t like being alone.

  I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. This hurts more than I expected.

  Dear Bennett,

  I’ve kept these pages for two years. Two long years. I haven’t read them in months, but today everything changed.

  Because I saw you today. December 13th, two years from that night at the cabin.

  It’s funny, because that first year after you left you were all I could think about, and this past year I’ve been trying so hard to move on that I somehow blocked it all.

  But I guess my subconscious was thinking of you, because I was drawn to that mountain, to taking that once-familiar hike. And that’s what brought us back together.

  Your hair is shorter now, and when our eyes met for the first time in two years, the look you gave me was more guarded than joyous. But it was you, and my heart stopped so completely I felt as though the oxygen in my blood had disappeared, and I had to put a hand on a nearby tree to keep from falling to the ground.

  That must sound melodramatic, but it’s the truth. I thought I’d never see you again, and I’d resigned myself to that. It started with me handling it one day a
t a time—so much like climbing the mountain, one step a time.

  I was standing at the top of Mt. Peak, my jacket zipped up to my chin to ward off the cold. I don’t know why I hiked up there that day. The wintery air made my lungs hurt, but it was a good sort of pain.

  I was staring down at the Enumclaw Plateau, the farmlands dotted with cows, my old high school stretched out in the distance, Mt. Rainier at my back. When I heard someone on the trail, I turned to look, just a glance, and then did a double take.

  You. In one instant—that moment our eyes met—a swirl of memories spun around me, and the strongest image was of you that night in your cabin, that instant your eyes darkened to match the winter night.

  You froze there, one foot on the top of the mountain, the other still on the trail, and stared back at me, and I wondered if you might spin around and bolt, or maybe stride right over and yell at me, really scream, say the things you must have thought these last two years.

  Two years, Bennett. That makes me eighteen now. Legal. I don’t expect that to matter anymore, but I do wonder if I even look different, if I think differently, if I am different. It’s impossible not to wonder these things, because two years was supposed to mean everything.

  I turned around and stared at you, and you took that last step, until you were standing at the top also. Like you planned to stay. We were dozens of feet apart, but neither of us moved or spoke, and the whole winter could have passed us by and I don’t think I would have noticed, because to me the world had stopped turning.

  “I’m sorry,” I finally said. The two words I wanted you to hear more than any others. You could bolt in the next instant but you’d finally know that I was sorry, and that would be enough.

  It would have to be enough.

  Your jaw tensed but you nodded, and I waited for anger to swim into your eyes, but it didn’t.

  “I thought I’d never see you again,” I said.

  “My parents still live around here. I’m in town for the holidays,” you said.