This Is What I Want to Tell You

by Heather Duffy Stone

  That’s where I was the night Keeley came in. She brushed through a break in the trees and then she was just standing there, like she’d been standing there all along, a long heavy brown sweater wrapped around her. The sweater was thick and old, but inside it she looked leaner and smoother and—different—like someone I was just meeting for the first time. She smiled. She held her hand out then she dropped it.

  Hi, she said.

  Hi. I took a step forward.

  How was your summer?

  I looked at her. It took me a minute to realize she’d said something. It took me longer to realize what it was. A piece of hair fell over her eyes, longer and lighter than I remembered.

  Oh, it was good. Fine.

  She smiled. Her smile was always easy. She pulled her hands inside her sleeves.

  Which?

  Which what?

  Good or fine?

  Was she being funny? I tried to smile.

  Good. Good, I said.

  She pushed her hair behind her ears. She moved closer, sitting down slowly on the stone wall. I turned. I was standing over her now.

  And Noelle? she asked.

  You haven’t seen her yet?

  Well, I came to see her. She gestured behind her without looking. But then I saw you.

  She paused.

  And I wanted to say hi.

  She couldn’t have seen me. It was dark. I was deep into the orchard. But I didn’t want to think about that.

  Oh, she’s good. She’s … she’ll be really happy to see you. I’m not sure where she is but, you know, she’s really good. She’s been working at the ice cream place.

  I couldn’t sit down. I pressed my foot back and forth, heel toe, pushing the mud down.

  I could tell Keeley didn’t believe me.

  Will you sit down with me? She patted the wall next to her.

  Okay, I said. I sat.

  You look good. She looked at me sideways. What did you do all summer?

  Oh, I ran.

  There was something about her voice. It was like she’d gone away and then she’d come back with some completely other person inside her skin.

  She smiled, laughing a little with her lips closed.

  From what?

  Oh no, I—I stopped.

  She was making a joke. She was joking. What was wrong with me?

  Me too, she said. I ran every morning—there are all of these fields in Oxford, grazing cows and everything. It made me feel less homesick. Maybe we can run together some time?

  How was your summer? I’d forgotten to ask.

  She turned away and brought her sleeves up to her face. She stood up and walked back to the line of trees.

  It was summer.

  Suddenly, I didn’t want her that far away. It was like the air between us was getting thinner and thinner. All of my muscles and joints were heavy, burrowing into the mud, my skin didn’t fit, I couldn’t move. Suddenly, I couldn’t move.

  She turned around.

  Are you coming back up to the house?

  I could feel the mud around my feet. My hands on the cold wall.

  She tilted her head.

  Nadio?

  I couldn’t move.

  She looked at me for another second. Then she came back toward me. She knelt down in front of me and pushed her hands down on my thighs. She leaned in. This was a girl I didn’t know. Who was she? She pressed on my thighs until I could feel my feet and started to move them. She kept pressing until my feet and legs and hands came back to life. She kept pressing and looking at me with her hair over her eyes. I lifted my hands up and put them on either side of her face. She breathed against my hands and closed her eyes. I leaned in and kissed her.

  I don’t know what happened with my brother that summer. I wish I could explain it. It was like, from the very day Keeley left, we didn’t know what to do with each other.

  Do you want to do the Snake Mountain hike? he asked me at the beginning of the summer, the Saturday after she left. We always did the Snake Mountain hike. Lace would pack us granola bars and Keeley would make mozzarella sandwiches and Nadio would carry it all in his backpack.

  But I didn’t. I didn’t feel like hiking.

  So we rode our bikes into town and got iced coffees and drank them on the porch of the Coyote Café, but we didn’t have anything to say. We sat on the porch, our legs hanging over the edge, plastic cups sweating in our hands, and I looked down: four feet encased in black Converse, and all of a sudden his feet were bigger, his feet were unfamiliar.

  I’m gonna see about getting a job at the Cree-Mee stand, I said. I’d never thought about getting a job but right then I knew I needed one.

  Okay, he said.

  He looked over at our bikes, tied to the post office fence. It looked funny, two bikes tangled awkwardly. We were too old for bikes anyway. Young for our grade, we had to wait until we turned sixteen in October to take our driving test, but we were still too old for bikes.

  I’m gonna go for a run, he said.

  He kicked his feet to the ground and started toward his bike. He turned around. I was still sitting on the porch.

  Hey, Nole. Tonight let’s go get a pizza.

  Okay, I said. I felt relieved.

  But we never got a pizza. I got a job at the Cree-Mee stand that morning and started work right away. After work, Jessica Marino invited me to get a pizza. Then she gave me a ride home. We left my bike tied to the post office fence.

  The night Keeley came home, I know part of me felt like it wasn’t fair that she’d left me and had this whole life. Now I’m sorry I wasn’t there. But I’m not sorry I met Parker.

  By the time I came back from the party that night, everyone was asleep. There were no lights on in our house or hers, and I was floating on the feeling of Parker’s fingertips on my thigh.

  The next morning Keeley came down the hill for breakfast. When I came downstairs, she was already sitting at the table with Lace and Nadio. Lace was standing over her slicing a peach into her cereal bowl, one sliver at a time, like she did when we were kids, like Keeley couldn’t hold a knife herself. Nadio was sitting on the other side of the table with his chin on his hands. Nadio and Lace were both staring at Keeley like she’d said something amazing. Both of their eyes were fixed on her. No one heard me come in. I don’t even think anyone was talking.

  Hi, I said.

  Keeley looked up. She was wearing her running shorts and a man’s T-shirt and her hair was in a ponytail. It looked blonder—she looked blonder. I mean she was lighter somehow. I can’t explain it.

  She stared at me for a second and then she jumped up.

  Noelle!

  She hugged me. I could already feel there was something there, something like cold air between us. I hugged her back and then we both pulled away and looked at each other. Lace and Nadio watched us.

  Well? I said.

  Where were you last night? she said at the same time.

  I was out. I’m sorry. I just totally forgot last night was the night …

  I sent you like three texts before I got on the plane, she said.

  I know, my phone—but I couldn’t even finish.

  Nadio was glaring at me.

  It’s okay. I’m just happy to see you.

  I can drive you all into town, Lace said quietly. To buy—what do you need for school?

  Thanks, Mom, Nadio said.

  It felt strange, everybody involved in Keeley’s coming home. She was my best friend. Now everybody was standing around, watching us, trying to make plans for us.

  I need a new bag, I said.

  Keeley looked relieved.

  Wait, she said. I can drive!

  Keeley had gotten her license just before she
went to Oxford. But she’d never had a chance to drive us anywhere. I felt like something was left out of this moment—that the feeling of us driving somewhere, not being driven, should have felt bigger than it did.

  Okay, I said.

  Great, she said. Lemme just go get some money from my parents.

  I’m gonna get dressed, I said.

  Nadio stood up.

  I’ll go get my wallet, he said.

  We all turned.

  What? he said. I need notebooks.

  I should have known then. We did stuff together, always had. But not shopping. Not on Keeley’s first day back.

  In the car, Nadio sat in the back seat and I sat in the front with Keeley. I watched her hands. She looked like she’d always been driving. That was how she was, I thought then, everything was natural for her. It was that way when Lace taught us how to ride bikes. Lace taught us all those things when we were little and Keeley’s parents were working and Keeley, some days, would have breakfast, lunch and dinner at our house. One day after peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches, we all followed Lace out to the dirt driveway. There was one bike, it must have been Keeley’s, and I pedaled, terrified and wobbling, Lace gripping the back of the seat, and when she let go I just crashed onto my side. But with Keeley, Lace never even held on to the seat. She steadied the bike and Keeley clamped her feet on the pedals and suddenly she was moving, away from us. The three of us watched her pumping her legs up the driveway, upright, no hands, no training wheels. Natural.

  Keeley was wearing brown boots and a loose white skirt. I’d never seen her wear anything like that before.

  You never wrote back to any of my emails, she whispered. Then she giggled.

  I know, I said. I could never sit down long enough to type—you know I was working.

  I know, she said. She looked straight ahead.

  I turned up the radio.

  I tried to go online, I said. Every time I went on, you weren’t there.

  The time difference … Her voice trailed off.

  She blinked and looked at me, smiling, and quickly turned back to the road.

  Anyway, now I’m back! Something in her voice seemed wrong.

  What did you DO all summer? she whispered.

  Nothing, hung out. You know.

  I couldn’t figure out why I felt mad at her.

  I left before anyone was up. I left Lace a note and I left Noelle the last bowl of cereal and I biked to school. Lace would quietly fold up the note and save it somewhere, in a drawer or a box of hideous handmade Christmas ornaments or something labeled Boo’s first day of school notes.

  She calls me Boo.

  She says I was scared of everything until I was five years old. The truth is, I still let her call me Boo as long as no one else is around.

  Noelle won’t even know I left her the last bowl of cereal. She won’t know I ate the end piece of a stale loaf of bread. But I feel better anyway. I know what it is I feel guilty about, but if something as little as cereal helps, well, whatever works.

  It took me just under twenty minutes to bike to school, and it was still cool enough that the wind felt good on my face and my fingertips got chilled. At school the sun burned an early morning hole just over the track, where I tied my bike to the fence and ran exactly nine laps. By the time I was done, my sweat felt like a second skin. It was all I could do to breathe. It wasn’t so cool anymore. It was straight up, middle-of-summer hot. With every lap I took I’d tried to make what I was thinking about be anything other than Keeley. Than my sister. Than both of them in the same brain. It was just too weird.

  I started writing to him in my head that morning, before I put ink to paper.

  Dear Dario,

  It’s the first day of junior year. Not that this first day is any different from any other. What I mean is, you’ve never been here. The concept of missing you isn’t something I can really say I get. The concept of having a father and then not having one isn’t something I know. But I’ve found myself thinking what it would be like if I could ask you about these things—about Molly from last year or what to do when my mom and sister seem kind of crazy or now—about Keeley. I’m supposed to be a man but I can’t help thinking no one ever showed me what that is supposed to look like. That maybe that is why I ride the middle all the time—never offending anyone, never getting a hard time, but never much standing out either. For a long time we blamed you for anything that seemed bad in our family—my sister and I did. But now I’m starting to think that blame gives you too much credit. Anyway, you’re not here to deny or defend so what’s the point.

  * * *

  I walked my bike into the school lot and locked it to the still-empty rack. I crossed through the basketball court, filling up now with early morning players. I nodded a few greetings and a lot of the faces nodded back. It was the first day of school and there wasn’t anyone I was looking for and there wasn’t anyone I was afraid of. It had always been that way. I kind of slid through the rules, and that was fine with me.

  I found I was all good as long as I stayed on the cross-country team. I could do all of the socially unacceptable academic things I wanted—honor roll and debating and Model U.N. and Literary Mag, slipping under the social radar as long as I was a runner. I could walk that line.

  Plus, you’re good-looking, Noelle said last spring.

  Was I? I believed her. The way it was with Noelle and me, we said what the other couldn’t see or admit—we never bullshitted. We couldn’t. We shared the same instincts.

  After Noelle said that, I started to notice the way some of the girls looked at me, like I could have gone up to any one of them and started talking and maybe even invited her to a movie or whatever and it would be okay. She’d probably say yes and it would all be pretty easy.

  But nothing about that appealed to me. All I’m saying is, I didn’t feel like hanging out with some girl who had nothing to say, who was boring as hell, just because I could.

  The locker room was empty. Anyone who was in school this early was on the basketball court. After I took a shower I left my running clothes in my locker and went out to the courtyard. It was filling up now, a lot of yelling and shrieking and high-fiving and hand-shaking and awkward standing around. I made a beeline for the Class of ’76 oak tree and sat under it and took out my book. I was still reading Walden, which Lace had given me over the summer. The thing is, it bored the hell out of me and half the time I wanted Henry David Thoreau to shut up and relax a little bit. But there were two things that kept me reading.

  1. It was my dad’s book. That’s a long story, but having a book that had been in his hands, that said Dario Avelli in scratchy faded-black ink on the inside cover, a name he’d written when he was maybe just a little bit older than me, inside a book he’d carried around with him and given to maybe the first girl he’d loved, all of that made me unable to stop reading it.

  2. The truth is, even with all the rambling that sometimes drove me to nodding off, I was kind of into the ideas HDT was talking about. The idea of isolating yourself from everything so you could understand it better. That part I could get.

  Hey, you.

  I looked up. Keeley was standing over me. It was hard to see her—the sun came down the back of her, gold where her hair was and green where her sweater was, and the front of her was dark, shadowed.

  Hey. I closed the book.

  You totally left me, Noelle said, standing behind her.

  Hey. I stood up. I’m sorry, I wanted to run before …

  Whatever, Noelle said. Listen, I need to find Jessica. K, are you coming? Do you wanna just see me in Chem?

  Noelle was already walking away.

  Okay, Keeley said. I didn’t know if she was talking to me or Noelle.

  Hi, I said again. I felt ridiculous.

  Noelle is being so
weird with me. It’s like she knows. How could she know?

  Keeley was talking about it out loud now. That made it real. I’d kissed Keeley Shipley.

  She doesn’t know, I said. I wanted to talk about anything else.

  Hey, listen, I said. The activity fair is now, before first period. I want to sign up for Model U.N. Do you wanna come?

  Okay. Keeley finally looked at me. She smiled. God, she was beautiful. How had I never noticed that? Everything about her looked like she just shot out this glow, like without even trying she lit up.

  I saw a flash of Keeley, years of Keeley, little kid Keeley. Taking off on her bike, leaning into my sister’s ear whispering, leaning over a pile of construction paper, scissors, torn magazine pages—she was always making something. A collage, a poster; on her knees over a pile of paper and glue in our kitchen and then her eyes welling up when her parents would come to get her. I don’t wanna go, she never wanted to go. And then she’d gone with them this summer. I hadn’t thought about it. She’d gone this time. And now she was here, glowing.

  The library was packed with tables hawking crap—school T-shirts and pens and last year’s newspapers and promises of popularity if you signed up. Matthew Levitt was manning the M.U.N. table as usual. Damn poor Matthew Levitt. Matthew Levitt was a senior who had a ponytail and drove a vintage Chevy Nova and knew the guidance counselors by their first names and spoke quiet and fierce. I couldn’t help but think that there was a place and time where the intensity and intellect of Matthew Levitt would be really exciting. But it wasn’t here. And sometimes I couldn’t help but be afraid that my slipping under the social radar actually put me closer to Matthew Levitt than I wanted to admit.

  What’s M.U.N.? Keeley whispered. She was right next to me, whispering against my neck. You’re always going to M.U.N. meetings but I have no idea what that means.