Apparently I’m not the only one awake early with time to kill. He’s just added a new album entitled Going Big. I smile and open it, curious. It’s all snowboarding photos, which makes sense. He’s carved out his own path in the snow since he got here, one that’ll take him around the world for competitions after we graduate.
In the first one he’s in his race uniform, leaning hard into the mountain to make a turn at an obviously ridiculous speed. Following that is a shot of him holding up a trophy, eyes bright and cheeks red from the cold. I click on the next one and it literally takes my breath away.
It’s of him impossibly high in the air, back arched against the blue of the sky, hand grasping his board behind him. The photo itself is impressive, but that’s not what gets me. It’s the expression on his face, a mix of intensity and pure love for what he’s doing at that moment. It makes me wonder if I ever look like that doing anything. It really is impressive, and it’s no wonder he’s got sponsors lining up. And girls, for that matter. I click away quickly at the thought, like if I stay too long, he might be able to tell I’ve been there looking. Thinking about him.
I close the computer and sit back on the couch, restless. I don’t know what to do with today, let alone my one wild and precious life.
Julianna seemed to, though.
I get up and climb the stairs to my room, justifying what I’m about to do with every step. And this time, when I sit on my bed with her journal in my hands, it’s surprisingly easy to open it up.
May 22
Mr. Kinney said he wants us to write about who we’ll be in life, starting with who we are right now. Honestly, that seems like an impossible thing to do. I don’t know if you can ever truly see yourself in the present. It’s too close. It’s easier to see who you were in the past. If I look back, I can see exactly who I was four years ago, before I met Shane.
I showed up here beyond shy, not trusting anyone, and scared of everything—from all the kids who seemed like they’d always known each other to having to start over when life as I knew it had just ended. I was an outsider in this school, with what felt like no chance of fitting in. The first day was the worst of my life at that point. I learned what it meant to feel like I was utterly alone, to go an entire day without talking to anyone, to feel invisible. It’s crazy to think, but I might’ve stayed that way, become a totally different person than I am now, if Shane hadn’t seen me the next day. That was when I learned what it felt like to walk down the hallway with him by my side, and that changed everything.
I was late to school that day. He was too, and we met in the office. He asked if I was all right (I’d been crying), I said I was fine, he said I was a liar, and it made me smile. He walked me to class and I didn’t protest, but I didn’t speak, either, because he was so perfect. I didn’t want to ruin it. When we got to the door, I didn’t want to go in, and I could tell he didn’t want to leave, but he said he’d find me at break, and he did. He was waiting for me outside of my next class, and we had our first date in the school cafeteria over undercooked cinnamon rolls and lukewarm hot chocolate.
He claims our first date was actually a few days later, when he brought me to the top of the mountain in a gondola and we ate Chinese food out of cartons and watched the lights from town twinkle below us while the stars spread out like tiny lights far above us. I remember that night too, because I felt like someone different. Better than who I was before.
But that first day we met is one of those things you look back on, and see, so clearly, that it was meant to be. He saved me from being lost and out of place, and that’s what he’s been doing ever since. I showed up here in pieces. He put me back together.
He was the first person to really see me, and he’s been my first everything since then.
My first kiss—in the rain, under an umbrella of pine trees, with the smell of the rain rising around us. My first “I love you,” whispered soft as the snowflakes that fell all around a few months later. He’s the first person I’ve given every bit of myself to, and the only person I’ve ever truly loved.
After four years we know each other’s hearts and souls. We’ve grown and loved and fought and everything in between, which is why, to talk about who I am, I have to start with him. The person I am now, and who I want to be in the future, is wrapped up tight in Shane, and in us together.
I can’t imagine it, or me, any other way.
I close the journal, but the last line lingers. I can’t imagine it any other way either, not at all. It’s impossible to picture her the way she described herself before Shane, so scared and alone. I wonder, for a second, the same thing she did. Who would she have been if she hadn’t met him that day? Would her name have been one in the box that I passed over without a second glance? The things she wrote about in her journal, her entire life, might have been different. She might never have been any of the things she was with Shane. They might both still be alive instead of ghosts in our town.
As tragic as the end of their story is, I’m glad it started out this way. A real-life, meant-to-be love story. I don’t want to stop reading. I flip through the pages, decide I could definitely finish it in a day, and make myself a deal: I can read it, but when I finish, I’ll seal it back up and take it to Summit Lake. Back to Julianna, like I’d decided before. I won’t talk about or show it to anyone. I’ll act like it never existed.
7.
“I shall set forth for somewhere,