Summertime Sadness

by Dylan Heart

  His lips purse, his head pulls back. This is normally the part where he’d scratch his head. “I thought you just said you wanted to leave.”

  I shake my head, pursing my own lips along with him. “Have you already forgotten? Home isn’t in Lakeside.” I grab his hand and place it to my chest. “It’s right here. Always here.”

  “I fucking love you.”

  He pulls me into a passionate kiss. Every part of him sinks into me, his lips so perfect against mine. It’s only been a few hours since the last time we were so close together, but it feels like a lifetime.

  I press against his chest, pulling back, taking a breath, and speaking all at once. “I think we should go.”

  He nods and pulls me into him again. We melt together, unfazed by the sirens closing in on us. “Yeah, we should probably go.”

  When he pulls back and grabs my hand, preparing to sprint to the Jeep, I pull him tight against me, needing to taste every bit of him to know that I’m making the right decision.

  I am.

  The sun rises over the trees as we hop into the Jeep, ready to leave this life behind and start anew somewhere else. We peel out against the asphalt, leaving tracks of evidence behind, but I’m positive Blue couldn’t care less. The moment his foot hit the pedal, we all became fugitives. Well, he’s already a fugitive, but my point should be clear.

  It doesn’t matter where we go. We’ll never be homesick again.

  Epilogue

  CHARLIE

  I lost everything but my heart. It’s fragile, always one heartbreak away from shattering, but it’s there. I know this because every time Blue touches me—or even looks at me—it skips a beat. All these months later, and everything still feels brand new. Freud would say that’s something else entirely, but he’s also dead, so what does he know?

  The carnival closed about two hours ago and the rest of the crew has long gone to sleep, preparing to rise again in less than seven hours. I should be in bed too, but I’ve come to understand what Blue meant that night we sat on the porch discussing his troubling sleeping patterns. I’d rather be awake while the rest of the world dreams because, in the stillness of silence, life becomes more vivid than any closed-eye fantasy.

  Blue, ever the gentleman, loaded me into the trenches of the Ferris wheel and sent me to the top of the world. Then he shut the power off because it’s not exactly within company guidelines to play with the machinery after closing.

  A hand folds around the edge of the bucket as Blue pulls himself into the rocking seat and my heart skips a beat. See, I told you. Every damn time. It’s peculiar how this particular ride has come to soothe me after years spent dreading the revolver of death.

  Blue sits down, hands me a beer, and wraps his arm around me. I rest my head on his shoulder and take a swig. Every Friday night, it seems to be the same thing. Blue and I ascend the heights of the tallest carnival ride, meditating in silent love because we know it’s the two of us against the world. Or at least the two of us against the law.

  Someday, maybe soon, we’ll have to leave the life of the carnival behind. Our past will catch up to us. There was already a close call a few weeks back when a detective came knocking. We’re both fugitives of both the law and of our own pasts. We can’t change either, but regret isn’t an option. That’s a dangerous path to go down.

  Now, I can’t begin to explain the whirlwind. I wouldn’t know where to start. The only thing I know is that during these past few months of moving from temporary home to temporary home, one thing has remained consistent—my love for him. It’s undying, it’s beautiful, and it’s everything I never knew I was missing.

  The pain fades but the wounds remain. I’m not the same girl who walked into the Hart County fair last August. I’m not the same girl who flipped a car going sixty miles an hour in a reckless bid to save the man I love. I’m always changing. Always evolving. I’ll return home someday and pray I’m able to pick up the pieces of my broken life.

  For better or worse, Jimmy Clay changed my life—because he’s a fucking liar. And I thank him every day because, without him, the chances that I would’ve met Blue are slim. But the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that chance isn’t the same thing as fate. It’s something more akin to a carnival ride.

  Yeah, life is just like a carnival ride.

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  White Lies Preview

  COMING AUGUST 2018

  White Lies, Prologue

  I was young when I fell in love for the first time. Back then, my sanity and happiness depended on the one thing the deepest aches within my bones told me I couldn’t live without.

  Love.

  I loved Brock Hamilton the way we all loved someone when we were young—when we were naïve. But our relationship was different; that’s what we told ourselves. That’s what we believed. We spent years together, living a life painted under a blinding tapestry of blissful ignorance. We never saw it coming, but there was one obstacle we could never overcome.

  After college, we moved back to our hometown and everything fell apart.

  What—and who—I once lived for became the shackles holding me under while I fought to kick my way to the surface, if only to scream. And as each Friday night faded into Saturday hangovers where the temporary high of winning unmasked our pain once more, I fell further down the rabbit hole of loathing and despair.

  I was trapped in a loveless marriage, of which the man I had once loved transformed into a vision in my imagination of what a monster looks like. There was no discernible reason for our own disconnect, but I resented him for dragging back into that same small town I clawed myself away from.

  I was supposed to be somebody, and instead I became just another typical nobody. There was no way out, and just when I thought of pulling the proverbial trigger, he appeared to me.

  And he saved me.

  He was the student…

  And I was his teacher.

  LAST AUGUST

  There’s fear in his eyes, because he’s seen a vision of his world crashing down. He’s only seventeen, but he sees this as the end. My heart races, punching against my chest in an escalating dance as his foot presses harder against the accelerator. He doesn’t say a word, but the gentle tears caressing his cheeks are deafening.

  It’s when the lights flash behind us, illuminating our reflections in the rearview mirror in a red and blue disco, that I begin to understand the seriousness of the situation. All the warning signs were there, but I jumped into the car anyway. Because I care too much, some would say with the sharpest of sneers. To which, I’d reply, that’s the fucking point. But as the mile markers fly past us in a blur, the point becomes murkier and murkier, stained with no promise of absolution.

  I turn to him with the presence of fear in my own eyes. I’m mournful for his crushed soul, and the thought of his life being cut short. I’m mournful not because I’m afraid of dying, but because I’m afraid this only ends one way—with the death of my child I haven’t yet told my husband we’re expecting.

  I cradle my palm against my stomach, trying to shield my unborn child from the weight of this world, as if my hand alone would be enough to protect him or her.

  I peer over to the dash of the car and take notice of the speedometer. Ninety miles per hour on a one-way highway, barreling straight toward nothing but pain and sorrow. Straight to hell we go, and the only recourse I have left is basic human reasoning. Emotion. It’s the reason he jumped into the driver’s seat intoxicated. Emotion. It’s the reason I couldn’t let him drive away on his own. Emotion. It’s always fucking emotion.

  “Do you have a game plan?” I question. “Or are you going to let these cops chase you around this city until you either run out of gas, or they outplay you?”

  “The only thing I k
now right now is that I’m not afraid of dying.” He shakes his head, with no intention of taking his eyes off the road ahead. His grip tightens around the wheel. “You shouldn’t have come with me.”

  “You’re right.” I nod my head in agreement. “But I did, and that’s the end of that.” I crane my head to look behind us, and notice a string of police cars joining the first. “Do you care about me?”

  “Yeah,” he mumbles under his breath, and without conviction one way or the other. “I guess.”

  “That’s good enough then, to stop the car, right?”

  “There’s nothing to go home to,” he says lowly, void of hope or promise. From the outside, he’s dead inside—a tragic loss of innocence. The world has ripped his heart from his chest before he’s even crossed the arbitrary threshold separating childhood from adulthood.

  “I know it feels that way right now, and I know why it feels that way.” I close my eyes and swallow a nervous lump in my throat. I grow more and more nauseous with the passing of each mile. “It gets better, not because life is fair, but because you have the power to change the trajectory of your life.”

  “Do you think I’m stupid?” he scoffs at me, with a quick look of disdain before his eyes are shifted back to the dark road ahead. “Naïve?”

  I reach my hand across the gearshift, and place my palm on his thigh. We’re well past the point of teacher-student misconduct, and all he really needs is to know that someone in this world cares for him after he was betrayed by an educator, and his parents threw him out onto the streets—the ultimate betrayal. “I think you’re hurting, and I think nothing else matters.”

  Up ahead, a sign on the side of the road signals a speed limit drop, from sixty to forty-five. Danger beyond that line is more imminent, where cars are lined up behind red lights, waiting to accelerate through intersections that are not safe from the speeding bullet I’ve found myself in.

  “I’m pregnant,” I say deadpan, with no heft to my words. It’s an uneasy revelation that I’ve been too afraid to say out loud for fear of jinxing myself. In the back of my mind, I’ve been afraid that it was a cruel prank. The last time I was pregnant, I lost the baby in the first trimester before I ever had the chance to learn the gender. It’s hard to mourn the loss of someone who never even had a name. “So you need to stop this car, because like you, I can live with dying, but I can’t live with losing another child.”

  Guilt sinks into his eyes like storm clouds rolling against oceanic skies. “Another child?”

  “Yeah,” I nod and purse my lips, straining hard in an effort to hold it all inside. Fucking emotion, I told you. It’s always there, threatening to burst through the seams. “Stop the car,” I plead with him once more.

  He twists his head to look at me and the tears flow, glimmering under the harsh glow of city lights. He nods a slight nod, and we reach a silent understanding as he lowers his foot against the brake.

  My head is thrown back against the seat and I hold on tight to the handle bar as we begin to slow. I close my eyes and heave a short sigh of relief. I don’t know what comes next, but we’re alive.

  This kid doesn’t deserve what’s about to happen to him, but at least he’ll have the chance to heal from the pain. Maybe they’ll go easy on him, considering the circumstances, and give him a few years of probation instead of throwing him in the slammer, and then throwing away the key. Maybe they won’t.

  But he’ll be alive, all because I did what I know I shouldn’t have done. I never should have jumped into his car, knowing he had been drinking—knowing that he was one of my students.

  But I did, and a burden is lifted from my soul. This is why I became a teacher. To matter. To change lives. To save them, the same way a teacher had once saved mine.

  I look at him with adoration, silently praising his strength even after the rug was ripped out from under him. And then my eyes drift to the yellow light ahead of us, while we’re still speeding too fast to stop.

  Red light.

  Screeching tires.

  Blinding lights.

  A collision.

  Metal torn like paper.

  Sirens.

  Silence.

  Blurred vision.

  Bright lights.

  Hospital room.

  A painful scream. Not from injury, but from heartbreak.

  White Lies, Chapter One

  Friday nights in a small town carry with them the heft of the only thing that seems to matter—winning. Score a touchdown? Winning. Score an interception? Winning. Tackle the opponent’s quarterback? Winning.

  Always winning. It’s what this town does, even if it’s only on Friday nights. Half of the crowd goes wild—the half that engulfs me on the chilly steel blenchers in the home section. A sea of familiar faces are lost in the conformity of purple and white as the shadows of the dying sun brush against each and every one of us.

  Screaming. Chanting. Winning. I pretend as if I’m invested in the game and cheer along, but inside I’m screaming because I don’t remember what it feels like to win. I can’t begin to pinpoint the exact moment when it all began, but it seems as if I’m always losing.

  I’m stuck in place, with the precarious addendum that I’m able to move my feet. I should run. I want to run, and perhaps never look back. But I can’t. There’s a pool of emotional quicksand at my feet.

  My eyes scan out to the field where the coach has his best players huddled into a circle. They’re planning their next play, and I remember when I used to look down on that damn field with admiration and adoration in my eyes. I don’t remember the exact moment those feelings vanished either.

  The players and the coach break from their huddle and the crowd goes wild. For what? Don’t know. Don’t particularly care.

  I look to the scoreboard, not knowing how long I’ve been standing out here in the chilly autumn weather, but hoping the night will be over soon. I let out a loud yawn and my eyes shift to the concession stand on the other side of the field. I take one last glance at the scoreboard before standing to my feet.

  Home: 14

  Away: 7

  Quarter: 2

  Clock: 4:17

  I reach the end of the line of the concession stand that’s about fourteen people deep and stand in place with my arms folded against each other, trying to warm my body. I should go grab my jacket from the truck, but I know if I leave the field, I’ll fall asleep in the cab.

  Mr. Coach wouldn’t be happy about that. What would it look like if his prized wife should disappear in the middle of a game? Everyone would talk. That’s what people do in small town, USA—Ridgefield, Ohio, to be exact. They talk and talk until they can talk no more, but the damage is always already done.

  Gossip is dangerous. It’s deadly when slipping from the lips of people who haven’t a clue what they’re talking about. I remember the whispers after the wreck. If it weren’t for my celebrity husband, I would have been dragged out into the town center and stoned to death, while a crow of rednecks stoned me, screaming whore. But he stood beside me, like good husbands do.

  That was a public façade. Behind closed doors, everything has fallen apart. And why wouldn’t it? A healthy marriage isn’t built on lies and malice, which is exactly what the foundation of our once ironclad love has become. Cracks in the floor beneath us, holes in the walls around us, and a crumbling roof above us. We stand in a house of broken hearts, but it beats being out in the cold.

  That’s what I used to believe. I’m not so certain anymore, about that or anything else.

  I am certain however that the two soccer moms standing behind me should learn to mind their own business. They think I can’t see them. They think I can’t hear them.

  I can.

  I see them turn to each other, and hear them whisper. “That’s her,” the brunette says.

  The blonde-haired one shushes her friend, and then without skipping a beat, their eyes are narrowed in on me, burning holes of judgment through my back. Somehow, I’m to blame for w
hat happened that night last fall. Facts don’t matter much in the court of public opinion, which is the reason I remain tight-lipped about what really happened that night.

  “Next,” a grating voice calls out and I groan to myself, but slap a stupid-wide smile on my face. “One creamer and one sugar?” she questions as she reaches for a foam cup.

  “That’s just the remedy.”

  “Isn’t it always?” She fills the cup and pushes it across the counter.

  I dig into my back pocket and retrieve a twenty. Before I can even slap the bill on the counter, she’s nodding her head. “That’s not necessary.”

  I’m not a fan of receiving preferential treatment, but when it comes to someone like Wendy Carr, I’ll take what I can get. To her, I’m the mistrusted wife of the coach who may or may not have been banging one of her students. To me, she’s a status-obsessed mean girl who never left high school. Fitting then, that she spends her weekends slinging coffee and hot dogs made of rubber.

  Nobody escapes this town. I did, once. But we’re all pulled back into its abyss at one point or another.

  My head begins to throb with short pauses between rhythmic punches. There’s aspirin in the truck, but once again, I know how that story ends—with me slumped over the seat, snoozing until awakened from a peaceful slumber by an enraged husband.

  I maneuver around the back of the home bleachers, where an open field of grass is hidden from the revelry of the game. A dark shadow hangs over the field, while the other half is engulfed in the burning light of the game lights above.

  I take a short sip of my coffee. Still too hot, it burns my tongue. I overreact, as I sometimes tend to do, and the cup slips out of my hand and onto the damp autumn ground.