Meet Me Here

by Bryan Bliss

  DEDICATION

  FOR NORTH CAROLINA,

  WHICH IS IN MY BONES

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Bryan Bliss

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER ONE

  This is supposed to be the best night of my life. That’s what all the cards say, what every person at this party believes as they yell and raise their hands in the air, high-fiving while some cover band tunes their instruments in the corner of the living room. And when people come up to say hello—to wax nostalgic—of course I smile. I clink the beer I’m not going to drink against their red cups, nodding intently as they wish me the best—when they ask me about my brother.

  These are the final hours. And nothing—not graduation, or Jake, or even a natural disaster—can stop me from getting in my truck and disappearing once the sun comes up.

  No answers, no hesitation—just gone.

  Another well-wisher is strolling toward me when the entire room gasps, one collective mouth yelling, “Daaaammmmn!” I turn with everyone else, just catching Mallory Carlson’s hand coming back and her boyfriend holding his nose, looking like he’s going to cry.

  The entire party stops moving. We’re all waiting to see if he’ll really start bawling or maybe if she’ll drop him with another right. His lip is wavering and her fist is still cocked and everybody—every single person at this party—is certain of one thing: Mallory’s going to put him down. Instead, she looks around the room, skimming from face to face until she finds mine.

  Mallory doesn’t hesitate. Walks right up to me, hands still fists, looking ready to punch me, too.

  “Do you have your truck?”

  I stare at her.

  She thumps me on the chest once, ignoring the yells and the laughter, focusing on me and speaking slow. Like I’m stupid and she didn’t just try to KO her boyfriend.

  “Your truck, Thomas. I need you to drive me home.”

  This girl’s a ghost, a legend I used to believe in; if I were to reach out and touch her, there wouldn’t be anything there.

  She sighs.

  I was six and she wanted my swing; that’s how it started. When I went home, my dad almost looked proud that I’d gotten into a fight. He held my face in his hands, studying the only black eye I’ve ever had. I didn’t tell him it was a girl, and we spent the night in the driveway, practicing how to throw and, in my case, dodge a punch. That next day I tried to avoid her, but Mallory came marching up to me on the playground. I had my hands up, protecting my face like Dad showed me. All she did was shake her head.

  People laugh. Somebody yells, “Watch out, Bennett, you’re next!” I expect her to whip around, offering both middle fingers to the party—to steer an already grand graduation story into legendary territory. Maybe drop a few more bodies in the process, anyone unlucky enough to be close.

  She closes her eyes and says, “Please, Thomas.”

  That’s it. No explanation for why she just hit Will or why she can’t get any of her other friends to take her home. Why she decided to talk to me tonight for the first time in seven years. Just “Please.”

  I used to live for every half-cocked idea that came off her lips. When we were kids, it was me and her and nothing else. My dad always said it wasn’t right for a boy to be playing with a girl that much, and what were we even doing anyway? It didn’t help that I could never account for those hours. How the day would end and we never saw it coming, running home as fast as we could, cackling like mad.

  But how many chances like this have we explicitly avoided? How many times has she walked by me in the hallways, suddenly becoming really interested in the lockers or a phantom stain on her jeans? And fine, people move on. Things change. It still doesn’t explain why she’s here in front of me now.

  Before I can say a word, she holds up a hand and says, “Whatever. I’m sorry I asked.”

  And then she’s gone.

  It takes one second for me to feel like an asshole. Two more before my feet move, trying to catch Mallory as she slips through the crowd.

  The catcalls start—“Get it! Yeah, boy!”—and I want to stop the music, the chatter, get the attention of the entire party and explain how inseparable she and I used to be, how there was a time before high school, before middle school, when the idea that we wouldn’t talk for a day—let alone seven years—would be inconceivable.

  How do you describe a constant companion? A person who knows everything about you, no matter how big or small? As she disappears out the door, I wish I still believed that fundamental parts of your life couldn’t change in a moment.

  When I finally get outside, she’s halfway across the yard, cussing loudly and pulling off her shoes. I jog to catch up, calling her name. When she sees me, I expect her to tell me to get lost. Call me an asshole or worse. She reaches down, barely stopping to rub her heel.

  “These shoes suck,” she says, hopping once before starting back down the driveway.

  Sounds of the party fill the night, bouncing off trees and car windows as I follow her toward the dark road. Mallory tiptoes around a broken bottle, detouring into the grass. I tiptoe around our history, everything else.

  “I wasn’t trying to be a prick,” I say. “You surprised me.”

  “Well, isn’t that the story of the night? Everybody’s surprised. Listen, all I need is a ride home. If you can do that for me, great. If you can’t, then fine. I’ll walk.”

  She bends over to rub her heel again, cussing even louder. When she stands up, she faces me. “Thomas, I’m sorry. I just—I can give you gas money if you want.”

  “It’s like five miles. I don’t need gas money.”

  What else can I say? I’ve seen her at school, of course. We were even assigned a group project during junior year. But Wayne was in the group, and he’s loud enough that I could sit there, not saying a word, listening and laughing as he flirted and carried on with every girl in the group, Mallory included. When we finally gave the presentation and I was back sitting in my seat, I swear it was the first time I took a breath in two weeks. Things went back to normal, both of us pretending the other didn’t exist.

  Behind us, a voice calls Mallory’s name. Will is still wearing his graduation hat, the shirt and tie. All of it askew. One of his buddies follows him, stumbling down the driveway, a laughing shadow. Mallory starts walking. “Go back to the party, Will.”

  He brushes past me and tries to grab Mallory’s hand. “Talk to me.”

  “I did; you didn’t listen.”

  “All I want is for you to explain it to me. Please.”

  He sounds desperate, almost scared. The way my mom sounded a year ago, when she learned Jake’s unit had been attacked. Like there was nothing she could do, least of all understand what the army officer was telling her about her son. Injured in action. A hospital in Germany. Lucky to be alive.

  The first day I saw Jake after he was wounded, he didn’t look much different. Skinnier maybe. He’d been shot in the shoulder, but there were no missing limbs, no visible s
cars. When he walked into our house—the way he had thousands of times before—I was so damn happy. But he was messed up worse than any of us could have ever imagined. We just didn’t see it yet.

  “Let’s go,” Mallory says.

  At first I don’t realize she’s talking to me, that we can see my truck now, the same one she rode in as a kid. My dad was still driving it then. We’d hop in the back any chance we got, even if it meant suffering through a trip to the hardware store and my dad’s constant looks in the rearview mirror.

  She grabs my arm and pulls me across the road, Will following.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asks.

  “Maybe you should talk to him,” I say, but Mallory ignores both of us, only letting go of my arm when we’re next to the truck. She climbs up into the passenger seat, ignoring Will, who starts beating on the window and calling Mallory’s name. When I walk around to the driver’s side, Will meets me at the door. There’s a shadow of a bruise on his face, but it’s the way he scrambles toward me that really makes him look broken.

  All he says is “Thomas, c’mon. I’ll talk to Mallory. You can go back to the party.”

  That’s the smartest option. Get Mallory out of my truck and go back to the party, back to pretending that this is the best night of my life and in fact my brother—my entire future—hasn’t gone up in flames. But how long does that last? An hour? Maybe two? I still have to go home, still have to see Jake sitting there cold and empty. I still have to face tomorrow morning, when I finally don’t show up at the recruiter’s office. The moment everybody I’ve ever known will mark me as a liar and a coward.

  I’m tired of pretending tomorrow isn’t a reckoning. That I’m not scared to death about what I have to do. Every last ounce of pretending inside me is gone.

  Will couldn’t know this, of course. Couldn’t know that maybe the only thing he could say that would make me get in the middle of a lovers’ quarrel tonight is “You can go back to the party.”

  “Sorry, man.”

  I push past him and jump in the truck. He starts banging on my window, telling me he’s going to do all sorts of things to me—that I’ll regret this. Threats without teeth, because as soon as I turn the ignition, his voice pitches up an octave.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  Will walks with us as I put the truck in gear and slowly pull onto the road. He even runs beside us for a few steps before I get out of first gear. But soon we’re moving too fast and he can’t keep up.

  And then it’s just me and Mallory once again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  These roads are in my blood, and that’s how I drive them: fast, with the windows rolled down. Letting the early-summer air crash into the cab as we pick up speed. I know every turn, every pebble.

  And seeing Mallory in the passenger seat, biting the side of her thumb, kicks something alive in my stomach, a strange expectation. It’s hearing your favorite song come on the radio or that first day of summer vacation. This is what our friendship could’ve become. Riding around with the windows down and the radio turned up. I shake my head, trying to focus.

  “I shouldn’t have hit him,” she finally says. “That was a mistake.”

  “He looked pretty upset,” I say.

  She turns to face me, worried. “Like how upset? If you had to rate him from one to ten, what would he be? A five maybe?”

  “Five sounds about right,” I say, turning back to the road. But Will was an easy ten, and maybe higher. Whatever she said had him freaked. She nods once, twice.

  “Yeah, he’ll be fine,” she says. “He’ll be fine.”

  We’re next to my grandpa’s field, minutes from both our houses, when the headlights first appear behind us, just pinpricks. The car is riding my ass in seconds, then whipping into the left lane. Another dude living out his NASCAR fantasy, I think, slowing down to let him pass. But it’s Will hanging out the window, gesturing wildly and yelling into the wind.

  I glance at Mallory. “Do you want me to stop?”

  She shakes her head, and I hit the gas; but his friend Jeremy’s new Mustang keeps pace with us easily. Will keeps rising up out of the window, eyeing the truck’s bed like he’s thinking of taking a chance, so I slow down, make the angle more problematic. Every time Will yells for her, Mallory shrinks farther down in the seat.

  An oncoming car forces Will and his friend to slingshot behind us. They give me the high beams, ride my bumper. And then he’s right back next to us, tossing out insults at me, my truck. Begging Mallory to hear him.

  Jeremy fires his engine and races in front of me, hitting the brakes as soon as they clear my front end. I cut the wheel as I stop but still nearly put us in the ditch. Will jumps out, holding out his hands like he’s trying to feel his way through the night. I’ve got my seat belt off and the door half open when Mallory grabs my forearm and says, “Please don’t.”

  “Mallory, get out of the truck,” Will says. “You can’t say something like that and then disappear.”

  I expect Mallory to lean out the window and tell him exactly what he can do with himself, but she’s down so low on the seat that I’m not sure she can even see above the dash.

  “What do you want me to do?” I ask. “Run them over?”

  I’m half smiling at the thought of going monster truck on Jeremy’s car. I try to imagine their faces; the stories people would tell when they saw the twin black streaks of rubber across his hood tomorrow morning. What else could you expect from a night with Mallory? But whatever fueled her boxing display has disappeared. She refuses to look at Will or me, shaking her head rapidly back and forth. Smaller by the second.

  Will’s only a few feet away from us when she says, “Go. Please. I can’t do this.”

  Her voice is tiny, frantic, and she’s not looking at me when I nod. When I cut the wheel to the right and climb the small embankment, steering into the dark field. Mallory grabs the Oh Shit! handle above her window as we hit a rut, the entire cab jumping, and roar into the tall grass.

  A few seconds later headlights pour into the darkness behind us.

  “Jesus, they’re really going to follow us. Out here. In that car?” I turn to Mallory. “Your boyfriend’s a real dumbass, you know that, right?” She doesn’t object or say anything, but when I turn my attention back to the field, I swear she nods.

  The Mustang takes the embankment faster than I did, flying into the field. They’re whooping out the windows as Jeremy cuts the wheel left and then right, fishtailing toward us.

  As soon as they’d pulled that shit on the road, nearly wrecking the truck, Jake would’ve been out and in their face, restoring honor to the Bennett name with a few simple but pointed words. Embodying everything I’ve never been able to muster—the duty, the courage—in all my eighteen years. There’d be two choices for Will: get your ass going or get your ass beat.

  But what Jake would’ve done is past tense. The time before he became a blank wall. And that says nothing of Mallory, who is pale as the moon. I cut the wheel hard to the right, hoping I can outrun Will and Jeremy to one of the back roads. As I do, the tires raise a clump of mud high in the air. It lands on the windshield with a thud, and Mallory jumps.

  Mud.

  I hit the wipers, and as they work back-and-forth—Mud.

  “Hold on,” I say.

  I push the truck forward even faster, away from the road and toward the woods, black and toothy in the near distance. Mallory has been here how many times? Has run through this field in her bare feet, getting stuck up to her knees in the mud that’s present no matter what season it is. Does she know where I’m headed now? Does she remember, too?

  Either way, I hit the gas.

  It’s time to end this.

  If you live in North Carolina and own a truck, you know about mud. It’s you and your buddies hopping into the cab with a mind for the sort of aimless joy that is being covered head to toe, bumper to bumper. And this particular field, owned by my grandpa and soon to be passed down to my
dad, is an abyss for any vehicle not jacked up a good ten inches.

  They’re never going to get that Mustang out.

  When we hit the mud, it’s like Moses parting the sea: a shower on both sides of the truck. Or maybe it’s a baptism because as soon as that mud goes flying, Mallory finally comes to life, unleashing a banshee-wildcat howl that nearly pulls my hands from the steering wheel. Mud spits in the window, a thick stripe of it now on her cheek, her dress. She keeps screaming as I push the accelerator, kicking the wet earth up to the sky.

  Will and Jeremy don’t know what’s happening until it’s too late. The ground swallows the front wheels of their car, locking them in place. When it happens, I almost feel bad. The road’s a half mile back, and they’ll look like escaped convicts by the time they make it out. But that doesn’t stop me from circling back one time and covering the Mustang.

  When we’re a hundred yards away, I cut my lights, letting the high moon show me the way across the field, toward the gravel road at the end of the property. I slow down until I can hear my tires rolling over the grass. We’re almost to the road when a train track glints in the darkness, sparking a memory so true, so deep I nearly slam on the brakes.

  The bridge is nothing but concrete and rebar, no different from countless others in this town, but as soon as we pull up on it, I smile. I kill the engine and stare at the overgrown weeds, the dead leaves piled in one corner. The only sound is crickets as Mallory wipes mud from her face and picks a couple of stray clumps from her hair. We could be kids again, still angry that summer was over.

  Mallory brushes another clump from her arm. “Do you remember when your brother came down here and we threw rocks at him?”

  I nod. There hasn’t been a worse beating in my life, first from my dad and then from my brother the next day. “God. What were we thinking?”

  “He wanted to build a skateboard ramp down here—him and his friend. What was his name?”

  “Tony,” I say.

  They haven’t talked since Jake went off to basic training and Tony became a bagger at SuperMart. The few times I saw him, he never asked about Jake—still doesn’t. Every friend Jake ever had acts like he’s a ghost.