“Oh, I haven’t. Nor have I forgotten rearranging the universe—”
“—with their bodies—”
“—which last time I checked is a pretty big accomplishment. I mean, not just anyone can do that.”
“Apparently not me,” he says. “Or else Ryan wouldn’t have had to trade me in for his erotic poet.”
“Nope,” I say. “No time for self-pity this morning. You have some rescuing to do. Which house?”
“The blue one.”
I pull over. I turn off the Jeep and turn to Mark.
“He sounds like shit,” I say. “It sounds serious. I’m gonna be right here. Let me know if you need me.”
Mark takes a breath. Shakes his head. I can tell he really doesn’t want to do this, but he gets out of the Jeep anyway. I expect him to knock, but he turns the knob and lets himself into the house, and yeah, that makes sense. Because up until a few days ago, nothing was wrong between them—not on the surface, anyway. A few days ago, Mark was a quiet kid in my math class, a blur of motion in the outfield at the one baseball game I ever attended. So much can change in a few days, even in a few hours. I’ve brought him here to face the change head-on and I know I’m going to have to face it, too.
I’m not running away from anything anymore.
It’s a promise I’m making to myself.
You can keep doing what you’re supposed to, what you’re expected to, and tell yourself it’s what you want. Sit with the same people at lunch, pretending you still have things in common. Read the shiny college brochures, go on the tours, buy into the myth that one of them is meant for you. Believe, at eighteen, that you know what your life will hold and how to prepare for it.
But if you don’t really believe it, if all that time you’re harboring a doubt so deep it creeps into even your best moments, and you break the rules and step away, then there’s going to be a reckoning. You are going to have to explain yourself.
As I sit in the driveway and wait, last night rushes back, takes me over. I’m sitting in that uncomfortable chair, already wrecked by Quinn’s poem, by Ryan’s exit, by Mark’s defeat. And now here’s Lehna.
“I don’t usually write poetry,” she says. “But I had this in my journal from the other night and I figured, I don’t know, why not.”
She blinks against the lights into the audience. “Go, Lehna!” Violet shouts. June and Uma wave with great enthusiasm. But I just watch her, bracing myself for what might come.
“Okay,” she says. “Here it goes.”
We were swimming downstream, always.
We were all scales and fins,
all gleaming in the sun,
all carefree and careless.
We never had to try hard
or even try at all.
You and me,
me and you,
and the water,
and the sun.
Or, no.
What we really were,
were twins.
The kind that feel it
when the other is cold.
The kind that always hears
two heartbeats
instead of one.
Pinch me
and you’d say
ouch.
Or maybe
I imagined all of it:
the water,
the sun,
even our scales and fins.
Maybe it was just circumstance
and nothing profound
or anomalous
or even
unusual,
the way you’d eat a strawberry
and I’d say
yum.
Because all it took
was for you to step away
for me to hear
a single heartbeat.
It was always
just me.
It was always
just you.
We thought we were special,
but we were always
the subjects
of two separate
sentences.
“Okay,” she said. “That’s it.”
And I know things happened after that. The rise of applause, everyone’s teary eyes. Mark leaning over to me, saying, “Wow. So she is human.” Violet’s questioning look and whatever it is I must have told her. But everything that happened after, it was a blur, because all I remember is Lehna, blinking into the bright light, and the way it sank into me, burrowing, festering: Whatever this is that’s happening between us, it’s another part of the tower that I have to burn down.
19
MARK
I dare you.
Why do we think this is okay? Why do we always feel the need to push and push and push? Don’t we know that pushing is never a way to get a person to come closer?
And yet.
There is something powerful about the shedding of comfort. There is something intense about feeling that person push, knowing that the force behind it is the force of their caring, of their genuine belief that the push will get you to a better place.
I’m not ready.
As I’m walking up the stairs to Ryan’s room, I’m thinking the only real response to this statement could be:
Who is?
* * *
He’s still in his pajamas. Which isn’t fair, because in Ryan’s case pajamas means boxers and a ratty old Queen Amidala T-shirt that is much sexier than any late-nineties relic should ever be.
But that’s not what’s being drawn into my focus. What I’m seeing is a boy so lost in the world that he can’t get himself out of bed. The tiredness from lack of sleep, the tiredness of too many thoughts without hitting on the right one. He looks like a balloon that once touched the ceiling brightly but now, weeks later, stumbles along the floor.