And then, on the highway in front of me, a car races by, and the whole sculpture vibrates, sound waves moving through the metal and coming out like a groan that’s haunting. I smile up at it, goose bumps rising on my arms.
It makes me think of Amy. I’m not even sure why. Maybe because everything makes me think of Amy.
I walk back to my dad and nudge him awake. He groans and swats my hand away. I shove him. “Dad, you gotta sit up.”
Like me, my father is tall and thin, much too heavy for me to attempt to drag him back to the truck. I’d probably need a dolly for that. My father gets to his feet, but I have to throw one of his arms over my shoulders to get him to stagger his way to my truck, which is parked illegally against a curb. Almost as soon as I get him in the passenger seat, he falls asleep, and I strap him in like a two-year-old.
I make my way out of the city, stopping at a red light just as we pass from Kansas City into Independence. I sigh and set my head against the seat. The music coming through my speakers is enough to almost put me to sleep. It’s an album that I’m thinking about loaning to Amy, a Norwegian pop singer that she might love enough to give up the contest.
I glance out the passenger side window at an old church. I guess I’ve never noticed it before. The sign out front proclaims it’s a Catholic church. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the light turn green, but there’s no one behind me, so I stay where I am, trying to make out the images in the shadow-covered stained-glass windows.
“What is this shit?” I hear Dad grumble, and then I hear the sound of tires squealing behind me before something hits us.
MARCH
OLIVER
IT’S ALMOST ALL worth it when Amy sees my cast. Maybe that’s a horrible thing to think. After all, we did (ironically) get rear-ended by a drunk driver in the middle of the night, but I can’t help being mildly thankful when Amy walks into the shop that night, her eyes finding me like they always do when she comes to work, and then going wide when she sees the cast on my arm.
“What happened?” She takes my plastered arm in her hands gently, like she might injure it further with the slightest pressure. “Did you slip on the ice? How long have you lived here? Don’t you know how to maneuver a February snowstorm?” She isn’t even looking at me. She’s running the tip of her finger over the elephant and the kitten Brooke and Lauren drew on it while I was at their place last night.
“Not quite. Car accident.”
Her mouth opens in horror. She hasn’t let go of my arm, and I can feel my whole body starting to quiver slightly. She’s standing so close to me.
“A car accident? Oh my God.”
“Amy, I’m okay.”
When she looks at me, I feel my stomach flip. Even though Amy and I are friends, and even though I knew before now that she cares about me, I didn’t really get that she cares about me. That maybe if something happened to me, it might actually mean something to her.
I can smell the floral scent of her shampoo when she pushes up on her toes to hug me, and I can feel the warmth of her along my body. I wrap my good arm around her, pressing my fingertips into her spine, gently.
She finally lets me go, and we both look down at the cast on my arm. She doesn’t say anything, but I know she’s waiting for the explanation.
“I went to pick up my dad. He was sort of … passed out.” I leave it at that.
“Again?” she hisses.
Something inside me cracks open when she says that. I can’t even really say why. Maybe it’s because she was paying attention. When was the last time someone paid attention? And I don’t mean Brooke noticing that I have feelings for Amy. No, it’s more than that. I never told Amy specifically about my dad, but she gets it anyway. She saw him in the back seat that night. She figured out what was going on.
Because she cares.
“Do you want to go for a drive tonight?”
She sends me a wary look. “Is your car okay to drive?”
“Oh. Yeah. The bumper’s a little ugly, but it’s fine.”
She smiles and nods. “Okay. New music for the competition?”
“There’s something I want to show you.”
She blinks up at me, and something flashes across her face, something that makes me feel like maybe I’ve said something wrong. But then her smile comes back.
“Sounds great. I could use a stress reliever.”
I feel my good mood deflate slightly. “Everything okay?”
She looks away from me, and she doesn’t have to answer. I can see it, the way you can see the rain clouds coming from miles away to cover up what’s left of the sunshine.
“Your ex?”
A part of me is hoping she’ll say no, of course not, not her ex. It’s that damn calculus, it’s her family getting on her nerves, it’s the unbearable wait to hear from Stanford, anything but her ex, but when she looks up at me, I know I’ve guessed right.
“He’s seeing someone,” she says quietly.
I know the right things to say. Things like, Man that sucks or How does that make you feel? But instead, I say, “Amy, you deserve better.”
Her dark eyes meet mine, and I can see that they’re a little teary. I’m surprised at the way seeing her like this makes my chest ache, makes me want to hold her. Her chin starts to tremble, and I reach out and press my thumb there, feel her smooth skin under mine.
“Can someone tell me where the bathroom is?”
I pull my hand away from Amy’s face and we both look over to see a teenage girl leaning across the counter, wiggling madly.
“It’s in the back corner behind the posters,” Amy says, pointing in the direction of the large restroom sign hanging from the ceiling. When the girl is gone, Amy looks back at me. “I should clock in,” she says.
As soon as she’s gone, Brooke saunters over. I pretend to be recording damages. “I’m starting to think you broke that arm on purpose,” she says.
OLIVER
IN THE PASSENGER seat of my car, Amy uncaps a black Sharpie with a pop. “Okay, hand it over,” she says.
I roll my eyes but gladly set my arm on the console between our seats. Amy immediately bends over it with a smile. As she moves from one side of the cast to the other, her fingers brush the sensitive skin on the inside of my arm, and I hold in the gasp that rises up in my throat. She’s writing quickly and doesn’t notice what she’s doing to me.
I’ve got big, big plans but I can see them slipping through.
“‘Maps’?” I ask, recognizing the lyrics from one of the Front Bottoms’s more popular songs.
Amy shrugs. “I like it. Besides, the cast covers your tattoo.”
After a minute of listening to Walk the Moon (Amy says they’re fine, but definitely not worth admitting that I’m the greater musical genius) sing between us, she says, “So where are we going anyway?”
“Just something I saw the other day. Made me think of you.” I know that by saying this, I’m probably revealing too much.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see her look at me, but I keep my eyes on the road because if I look over at her now, I’m going to tell her that the moment I met her was the moment I came alive, and I think that just might ruin our night.
“Oli, what’s going on with your dad?”
Finally, she’s asking me. I don’t even hesitate. I’ve spent so many years trying to only share parts of myself with people, the parts I think they can handle, but I want Amy to know all my parts.
“He’s an alcoholic. My parents split a few years ago, but Dad was drinking well before that. He got arrested a couple months ago for a bar fight and got sentenced to about a thousand hours of community service. I just feel like I don’t really know what to do about him. I don’t want to cut him out of my life, but I also don’t want to be his babysitter. And I definitely don’t want to end up like him.”
I can feel her looking at me while I drive. Clumsily, thanks to my cast. “That might be the most I’ve ever heard you say at one time,” she says, and
I laugh.
AMY
OLIVER PARKS DOWNTOWN, in a no-parking zone, but it’s after ten, and I don’t think we’re going to get a ticket. It’s just cold enough that when we get out of the truck, the wind makes me shiver hard, and I pull my coat close around me.
While I’m busy worrying about how cold I am, Oliver has led me into a courtyard. There’s fresh snow covering every inch of it, including the benches. It’s like we’ve stepped into a painting, our footsteps leaving ruts in the canvas.
And at first, I think this is all it is. Surely Oliver brought me to this quiet place, surrounded by stone buildings, because it’s peaceful, and he knows just how desperate I am for peace lately. But then I hear a quiet sound, like the ringing of large bells in a clock tower in the distance. I stop, and beside me, Oliver stops, too.
“You hear it?” he asks. He points at something directly in the center of the courtyard. From where I stand, I can make out the shape of it, a rusty statue made up of half-moon shapes, pointed up at the sky, spooned on top of one another, like stacked shields.
“What is it?” I ask, taking a hesitant step toward it.
It shouldn’t really startle me when Oliver grabs my hand, wrapping his long fingers around mine and pulling me toward the statue, but something about the way his hand seems to envelope the entirety of mine makes my heart pound loud in my cold ears.
When we’re closer, the sound of our feet in the snow, the sound of my heart pounding loud in my head, is covered by a different sound. It’s a moaning sound, like a choir singing out the cry of tortured souls. Snow has collected on some of the parts of the metal slabs that curve slightly, creating ledges.
“What is it?” I ask. “Where’s the sound coming from?”
Oliver nods toward a plaque that sits low to the ground beneath the statue. “It’s some sort of scientific explanation about how it creates sound waves from the air around us. I’m not much of a science brain, so I don’t really understand it, but I think it’s pretty cool.”
I reach out and touch it, feel the way the metal vibrates under my fingertips, until my skin is humming along with it. After a minute, my arm goes numb, and I finally take my hand off it. We stand for a moment, listening to the way the sound seems to explode from inside the curves, sound overlapping itself.
I turn and look up at Oliver, but he doesn’t look back, and I’m thankful for it because for just a moment, it’s nice to look at him without him looking back. To see the way the snow falls in large flakes into his red hair, the parts of his ears that stick out just a little too far, mixing in with the freckles along his cheeks. Oliver is beautiful, a fact I’ve been very aware of, but now, watching him close his eyes and listen to the notes coming from the installation, like if he listens hard enough the notes will evolve into words, he’s something more than beautiful.
“Tell me something,” I say, and watch as his eyes pop open and find me. “This feels like the place for secrets. Tell me something about you.” Something no one else knows, I want to add, but I don’t want to push him. I don’t want to break whatever we’re doing here.
He looks at me for a long time. If we were back in the shop, maybe this could be a joke. Maybe this could be something we did with half smiles on our faces. Maybe he could answer with something silly. But we’re here, and sometime in the last few seconds, a heaviness has settled between us, a heaviness that’s drawing me toward him.
“I can’t,” he says then, his eyes falling away from me. “It’ll change things.”
I don’t know what that means, but I’m not ready for this Oliver I’ve never met before, serious and unguarded, to vanish. I take a desperate step toward him. “You can trust me,” I say, and he looks up at me, his eyes wide like I’ve startled him. So, I say it again. “You can trust me, Oliver. I promise.” I want him to feel what I feel right here, in this cold courtyard, surrounded by falling snow and the kind of quiet only winter can bring on its back.
Because being here with Oliver, being anywhere with Oliver, makes me feel safe in a way I’ve never felt before. Like I can close my eyes and breathe and no one is going to laugh or tell me I’m doing it wrong.
I feel a scared kind of dread in my stomach when I think he’ll shut down now, never open up to me, never tell me something that can only be whispered. I wait for him to shake his head and walk away from me, for his wall to go back up.
Instead, he says, “I don’t want to go to college.”
I don’t say anything at first. I’m not sure what I was expecting. I guess I thought it would be worse, bigger, truly the kind of secret that changes everything. But this secret feels like something else entirely. Why is this something that had to wait until this moment to be spoken aloud?
“Why would that change things?” I ask when I can finally find the words to speak again. “What would it change?”
I see the way his jaw works beneath his skin as he regards me, and I sense it again, his internal battle about whether or not to shut me out again.
Finally he sighs, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “People like you, valedictorians and people with four-point-oh’s, they don’t hang out with people like me, who have no clue what they want to do with their lives. Your only goal in life is to go to college, and I couldn’t give a shit about college. Where does that leave us?”
I blink at him. Is that how the world works in his mind? “Oliver, I don’t care if you don’t want to go to college.”
His eyes land on me. “You don’t?”
I throw my hands up. “Of course not. Just because I want to go to college doesn’t mean I expect everyone to. If we were all the same, that would make us pretty boring.”
He bites his lip, and I find myself staring at the spot, dark pink where his teeth have released it. I watch his mouth curve into a smile. “I guess I imagined you sitting with all your Top-Ten-Percent friends, talking about the stupid boy you work with, who doesn’t even want to go to college because he’s such a waste of space.”
I just stare at him, his words shock me so much. Is it the fact that he imagined me hanging out with other people like me, even though I’ve told him I don’t have any friends at all? Is it that he thinks not wanting to go to college is such a crime that he assumes I’ll feel the need to berate him to other people? Or is it that he can somehow deem himself a waste of space based on something so insignificant?
I want to tell him that he’s anything but a waste of space. That in the last two months he’s made me feel like my life will be emptier without him, without Sprits, without the way I feel when I’m there.
But I don’t say that. Instead, I say, “Do you want me to tell you a secret?”
His eyes shift back and forth between my own and then he nods.
“I’ve never in my life felt like I belonged anywhere. I’m moving to California because I’m hoping I’ll belong there.”
A crease appears between his eyebrows, like a question mark.
“I’ve never felt like my home was really my home. Not after my dad left, not after my mom had my brothers and sisters. Kansas City has always felt like this place that I endure.”
His lips part, his breath escaping in a cloud of steam, before he says, “That’s it. That’s the feeling. Like there’s no such thing as home.”
I just nod, too. He understands. He gets it. He feels it, too. Of course he does.
His hand comes up, slowly, and I think maybe he’ll touch me, a hand on my arm or a fingertip across my cheek. But he doesn’t. His hand falls to his side again, and I shiver, like he’s taken the heat away without giving it to me in the first place.
“Let me play you something,” he says, and it feels strange in this moment, bringing up our stupid contest when the air around us feels heavy with earnestness. But I don’t stop him. He takes out his phone and picks a song, and I wonder if he chose it before we came here or if it’s a spur of the moment decision.
Maybe it should be awkward, standing right here, with the moan coming off the stat
ue still loud beneath the careful chords of the music coming out of Oliver’s phone, which he holds up between us, flat on his palm. But it isn’t awkward. It’s lovely.
I don’t tell him that I already know the band, Nothing But Thieves, and that I’ve listened to this song on a dozen different occasions. Because standing here with him, the cold turning the tip of my nose numb, I’m certain I’ve never heard it like this.
The song is short, only two and a half minutes, and when the singer’s voice cracks with desperation, I feel an odd urge to cry. I press my hand to the sculpture again, and somehow, it feels like it’s vibrating with the song. When I look up at Oliver, I could swear his eyes are watery, too, but I’m certain it’s from the bite of the cold wind.
When the song is over, I smile up at Oliver. “You’re not going to win tonight.”
He laughs and tucks his phone back into his pocket. “I should take you home,” he says, his voice a whisper, and then we’re slipping our way back to his truck, and even though his secret isn’t the scar he thinks it is, he’s right. It changes things.
OLIVER
I JERK AWAKE on Friday morning when I hear someone knocking on the front door. The sun is up, but I can tell by the odd way that it’s slanted into my room that it’s way too early for someone to be visiting.
And yet, they knock again.
I climb out of bed and stumble into the living room. The house is cold and silent, Mom’s bedroom door shut. She worked another night shift at the hospital, and I can’t remember when her shift ended so I can’t tell if she’s asleep or if she hasn’t made it home yet.
I should have known when I heard the banging exactly who it is. The apartment I share with my mom never sees visitors. No girls, no friends, no coworkers. I’m not even positive that anyone knows where I live. And so, I should have known exactly who it is.
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