I know if I asked he’d give me a journal and let me slip it in with the others so that in a decade I could read the words of my seventeen-year-old self. More than once I’ve thought about it. But every time I do I come back to the same thought—what if ten years from now I got a chance to read about who I’d been, and I regretted it. What if I read it and saw past the accomplishments, straight through to all the things I missed while I was busy chasing them. I might wish I had done things differently.
The envelopes in the box are lined up neatly and sealed with a clear strip of undisturbed tape across each flap. Mr. Kinney’s done this project for so long that even if he did get curious and peek in the beginning, the musings of high school seniors probably didn’t hold his attention for very long.
I grab my first stack, bring them over to the computer station and put in Kinney’s password. Once I’m in the alumni directory, the first few go quickly since they’re in alphabetical order and they’re post office boxes that haven’t changed, according to the computer. It’s not all that surprising, since a lot of people don’t ever really leave town. I vaguely recognize one or two of the names, but wouldn’t be able to put a face to them. It’s small here, but not small enough that you actually know everyone. On the other hand it can feel like everyone you run into somehow knows you. Or your mom, in my case.
I roll through the first few names, and pretty soon I’ve got a rhythm and a system, and I can check addresses and daydream at the same time. Only now Stanford may not qualify as a daydream. It feels infinitely more real since yesterday, when I found the thin envelope from the Cruz Foundation in my mailbox. Much different from the early acceptance letter that came months ago. The excitement and relief that letter brought were all tempered with the knowledge that there are hundreds of thousands of dollars between getting in and actually being able to go. It was why I’d spent every waking moment of my life since then searching for ways to make it happen.
And now I have one in my back pocket. So today, instead of running numbers through my head, or wondering if I should’ve revised the application essays one more time, I let myself replay the morning exchange with Trevor. And I revise that instead. In this new version, when he dangles the keys in front of me, I’m the one who raises an eyebrow, right before I take them from his hand and lead him, dumbfounded, to the art closet.
I’ve never actually been in there, but in my mind’s eye, it’s dimly lit, with tubes of paint and coffee cans full of brushes lining the shelves—things that might go clattering to the floor if I were brave enough to ever meet his eyes longer than a second. And since it’s my daydream, I am, and I do. Trevor smiles in slow motion as he tilts his chin down to kiss me after six years’ worth of missed chances, and then—
The name on the next envelope snaps me back like a rubber band. I stare. Breathe. Stare some more.
Julianna Farnetti.
I look around, chilled. That can’t be right. But it’s right there in front of me, written in black ink with big loopy pen strokes just as gorgeous as she was. My first impulse is to see if anyone else saw. The clock ticks away the seconds on the wall. In one row of stacks are a couple of younger girls whispering and trying to look like they’re looking for books to check out. Ms. Moore’s keeping tabs on them from behind her computer, and the library TA, a tragically nerdy boy named Jake, shoves a book back onto the shelf then straightens out the ones around it for the millionth time. None of them look at me, but I’m nervous all of a sudden because right now it feels like I’m holding in my hands something I shouldn’t be. Like I’ve just brushed my fingers over a ghost. And by all accounts and definitions, I have.
Every town has its stories. Stories that have been told so many times by so many different people they’ve worked themselves into the collective consciousness as truth. Julianna Farnetti is one of Summit Lakes’. Shane Cruz is the other. And theirs—it’s a story of perfection lost on an icy road. They were one of those golden couples, the kind everyone adores and envies at the same time. Meant to be together forever. Teenage dream realized.
And both of them are frozen in time on a billboard at the edge of town for everyone to see. From behind a thick layer of plexiglass that’s replaced every few years, they smile their senior portrait smiles like they don’t know people have stopped looking for them. Somewhere along the line, the words on the billboard changed from MISSING to IN LOVING MEMORY OF, and I can remember thinking how sad that was, but it was bound to happen. Their parents buried empty coffins.
And still, we have the plaque in the gym, with a picture of Shane and Julianna together, his graduation gown arms wrapped tight around her shoulders and her cap crooked on top of her curly blond hair, both of them laughing like life was about to begin. His family started the scholarship in their name. Hers left town. And still, after ten years, they smile those frozen smiles that never age. Trapped behind the glass and the stories we’ve come up with for what happened to them.
I glance down again, read the name to be sure. Here in my hand is Julianna Farnetti’s senior journal. Pages she wrote before all of that, when the world was still at her perfect fingertips. When Mr. Kinney told her to capture herself in words she could read later.
There’s a post office box on the envelope, but it’s worthless. None of her family lives here anymore, and I don’t blame them. For a long time after, people talked. Speculated. Investigated. Eventually, the case closed and she and Shane became another town story that weaves its way back to the surface on stormy winter nights. And of course, before graduation. That’s when the Summit Times runs a tribute to the two of them in the same edition that features the current graduating class. That’s also when the old-timer search-and-rescue guys remember over coffee the fierceness of the storm the night they disappeared. The ones who found Shane’s mangled Jeep at the bottom of the gorge, half-submerged in the icy river, will talk about how their feet were instantly frostbitten as they plunged in for the two teens who were most surely trapped in the car. At this they shake their heads, maybe mutter “Such a shame,” and go back to their regular business, not wanting to linger in the memory of it too long.