by Leah Johnson
She walks off in the direction of the Core, and I fall back into a chair that she hasn’t packed up yet.
Imani would never leave without me, so I know her threat is empty. But the fact that she would even say it, that she would even throw it out there, makes me pause. Is she really that annoyed with me? Is she really that jealous because of this misplaced belief that she’s been demoted by Toni somehow? Have we really grown apart that much?
SUNDAY MORNING
I grab my guitar out of the case and sit on top of the cooler. I think about playing here with Olivia the other night, about how much clarity the act of being back in touch with the music gave me. Maybe it’ll unveil another kind of Truth to me. I try to strum some of the chords to “The Argonauts,” but there’s no finesse. No magic. The notes are right, but everything feels stilted, mechanical. It’s like it was eight months ago all over again, and I hate it.
I try again. And again. And the results are all the same. I’m frustrated at myself and my acoustic and this stupid festival and I can’t do it. I can’t do any of this.
Peter is still sleeping, or at least I think he must be. He hasn’t crawled out of the tent, and that’s usually a pretty sure sign that he isn’t yet in the land of the living. I’m glad to be alone for a second, even in my anger.
For just a moment before performing yesterday, I had such clarity about my life, but none of it had to do with a career. It had to do with a feeling, and that feeling had everything to do with Olivia. But last night as Olivia was telling me about her ex, I felt the niggling sensation in the back of my head that I’ve felt so many times before. The voice that whispers not to go any further, not to get any closer. Because if we do, one of us was going to end up broken by the other.
Because that’s just what happens when you care too much: You shatter and shatter until there’s nothing left of your pieces but dust.
I’ve been trying to recapture the feeling from our kiss and from that electric moment on stage ever since they happened, and they’re all-consuming—flames licking up my skin and burning everything in their wake. I can feel it already, the insatiability that my dad must have felt all the time. To want something so much that it eclipses all else. I came here to find a plan for my life, something that could make my mom proud and give me purpose. But for a few hours as I was tangled up in Olivia, I forgot that. And that’s dangerous.
Neither of us needs more danger in our lives. We need a love more stable than what we’re used to. And that’s when I know. I only have one choice, and it’s going to hurt like hell.
When Olivia walks over, her braids down and swinging behind her as she moves, I tap into the old Toni. Ardsley Academy Toni, the queen of the North Pole. It takes all my energy not to launch myself at her, kiss her, and tell her that I’m sorry. That I wish I had a better solution than this. But there isn’t one. I don’t want to hurt her, so I have to let her go.
She looks like I feel, a type of urgency on her face I’ve never seen before. I set my guitar back into the case and stand up to meet her. She immediately wraps her arms around my waist, and I pull her closer to me even though I know I shouldn’t.
“Toni.” She says my name like a prayer, softly, reverently. A balloon inflates in my chest and I can barely breathe. I want to keep holding her, forever maybe. She leans her forehead against my shoulder. “I’m so glad I have you.”
I convince myself that it’s not just for my sake. That this is good for her in the long run too. She doesn’t know, really, the kind of person I am. The kind who goes cold on a dime and doesn’t share her feelings and holds people at arm’s length. She doesn’t know what’s in my very DNA—that I am the spitting image of a man who chose the music over the people he loved at every turn, that given the chance one day I might do the very same thing.
I place my hands on her shoulders and hold her away from me. When she looks at me I see everything in those eyes. Every possible future. Every inevitable heartbreak.
I see my mom pretending not to cry on anniversaries spent alone. I see pictures of me at piano recitals with only one smiling parent instead of two. I see my dad, sweeping into town and charming us into forgetting how long he’d been away and how soon he intended to leave. I see myself starting college in a few days, and being the adult my dad never was.
I’m going to choose the safe thing, the stable thing, like I was always supposed to. “Olivia,” I say. “We need to talk.”
SUNDAY MORNING
Anyone who’s ever said all heartbreak is created equal has clearly never had their heart broken by Toni Foster.
A coldness hits me like a wave as I walk away from her campsite, goose bumps covering my arms even though it’s warmer already than it was yesterday. I’m shaking, my arms wrapped around myself barely enough to keep my entire body from coming apart at the seams. I text Imani that I need her—that Toni and me are done—the same way I always do. Just like the script lays out. But I’m met with radio silence on the other end. I wander back to my nonexistent campsite in a daze, not even in tears. I think I’m in disbelief.
How is it that one person can be so massively wrong so consistently? What is it about me that’s wired incorrectly? That makes my judgment so bad and my love so easy to reject?
It’s always me who drives people away. It’s always something I’ve done or said. It doesn’t matter whether I’m myself from the beginning, or playing a character—this is how it’ll always end up for me. This is who I am.
A familiar restlessness bubbles up inside me. An urgency to run and go and do.
I’ll never be like Nia with her perfect relationship and grades and looks. I’ll never be the kind of girl who people look at and think, Wow, she’s really got it all together, huh? Some people are the ones who get left, and some people are the ones who do the leaving. There’s no question about which side of the equation I fall on now, if there ever was before.
I run my hands over my face haphazardly, I straighten my back. I know what character I have to play to fix this.
The first thing I do is take a much-needed shower.
I’m covered in a layer of grime from two days of sweat and dirt. Not even another morning using those handy bath wipes the message board suggested is enough to get it off. I grab my flip-flops, towels, and soap and walk to the bank of showers. I slip some quarters in the shower to activate the water before slipping inside. I take extra care scrubbing every bit of dust from my skin. I rub my arms until they’re practically raw. I settle into the ritual of washing away the pieces of myself that I’ll no longer hold on to.
It’s what I did with Troy, with Aaron, Jessie, Kai—the list goes on. As I wash, I try to feel relief at the thought of the person I’ve been this weekend circling the drain, but all I can summon up is a deep, buzzing tension like a rubber band getting ready to snap. I know this feeling though. I greet it like an old frenemy. I want it gone, but I crave its familiarity. At least when I metamorphize like this, I know exactly what to expect. I know what I have to lose in order to gain what I want.
That’s where I screwed up with Toni, I think. I was in uncharted territory. I lost my footing. I slipped up, but didn’t even know I was slipping. It won’t happen again.
I stay in the shower until the water runs cold and then I stay a little longer. I shut off the water and the way the towel rubs against my freshly scrubbed skin chafes. I march back to camp and pull on my outfit in the back seat of the car. I spend an inordinately long time putting on makeup in the rearview mirror. I’ll wear this uniform like armor.
I’ll apologize to Toni. I don’t know what I’d be apologizing for, exactly, but it’s not like I haven’t done it before. I can say sorry for whatever I did to make her run this morning. I can retreat a little, I can become a little different, box up the parts of myself that made things too much for her to handle.
I can’t be fixed, but I can fix this.
I don’t want to feel this way anymore. I brace myself. I slip into a new skin.
&n
bsp; I walk over to Peter’s and Toni’s camp.
“Olivia.” Peter is leaning against the truck when I arrive. His hair is wet and disheveled like he’s just gotten done with a shower of his own, but he’s dressed in his usual: dirty black Vans, what used to be skinny jeans cut into jorts, and a cropped blue-and-green tie-dye Bowie T-shirt. “Toni’s not here.”
My heart drops. Of course Toni wouldn’t still be here. She’s probably in the Core already, going about her life. Peter should be with her though. I notice his voice lacks its usual glowing enthusiasm.
“What’s going on?” I ask, trying to keep my voice neutral.
He holds up the phone in his hand and shakes it. “Imani’s pretty pissed with the way I acted last night. Texted me, said you guys were leaving and that I shouldn’t reach out again … You know how it goes.” He slides down the side of the truck and lands in a heap in the grass. He looks up at me with a frown. “I overheard you and T this morning, by the way. I’m sorry.”
I take that as a sign to sit down next to him. If I hadn’t been dumped on a moving float in front of all the sophomore class officers during the homecoming parade once, the fact that I was broken up with in hearing distance of another person would probably embarrass me more. But I must be at the stage of breakup grief where I skyrocket straight past humiliation, because all I can say is:
“I came to get her back.”
Peter huffs. He looks down at his phone but doesn’t say anything for a long time.
“Sometimes the best thing you can give someone is their space, you know?” he says, shrugging. “Goodbye can be the right answer, even if it doesn’t feel like it.”
Peter, who knows her better than anyone, says it’s over.
My chest tightens in the worst, most familiar way. I know what it sounds like to be told to give up. To be told that it’s never gonna happen, it’s time to move on, that I wasn’t good enough in the first place. I want to run. I want to do something reckless. I want to chase away this feeling.
I clench and unclench my fists, trying to ground myself. I try to slow my thoughts, but I can’t. They’re racing. Everything is moving too quick.
Peter runs his hands through his hair again. It’s a nervous habit, I know, but I think absently how it makes him look like Twitter’s crush of the month. Peter with his wide smile and puppy-dog eyes and heart on his sleeve. He’s … cute. I run through a checklist of Peter’s qualities without even meaning to. He’s smart—smart enough to keep up with Imani, even. Funny. Nice. And above all, he’s transparent.
There’s no guessing game with Peter. You know where you stand with him at all times. If he wants you, you’ll know it—you’ll become the sun in his solar system.
All at once, my spine straightens. My vision feels sharper, renewed. This is familiar too. More familiar, even, than the rejection. It comes over me so quickly I almost don’t realize what’s happening.
“So, Peter,” I start, laying a hand gently on his forearm where it rests in his lap. My voice pitches higher, just slightly, just enough. “Remind me. What did you say was the problem with Odd One’s live performance yesterday?”
He brightens immediately. His eyes light up as they lock on mine. He’s enthusiastic, and where there’s enthusiasm, there’s pliability.
I don’t know how long we sit next to each other, talking about these things I don’t care about, but I allow myself to fall into it. I allow it to wash over me. Every time he laughs at something I say or looks at me while I’m speaking without breaking eye contact, I get that same thrill I used to get when I locked into a new target. The knot in my chest begins to loosen.
Peter’s arm is pressed against mine as we lean against the side of the truck, and I can feel the way the sun has warmed his skin. He rumbles with laughter at some joke I barely realize I’m making and bumps his shoulder into mine on purpose. I remember him saying that pop punk is his favorite genre, so I dig up everything I know about it.
I reference basement shows I’ve seen of up-and-coming pop punk artists in the Midwest. I mention a fact I gleaned from an old essay on Fall Out Boy about how they sold out after their third album, but I say it with such authority I know it makes me sound like I really care. Like I’ve listened to them faithfully for years, even though I couldn’t tell you the name of any song of theirs besides “Dance, Dance,” and that’s only because people used it in a dance challenge on Confidential last year.
Sitting next to Peter—weaving this narrative of Olivia Brooks as a Pop Punk Princess for him—is like picking up an instrument after a little while away. All it takes is a few minutes of practice and I’m playing like a pro again.
This is good, I tell myself. This is nice. Peter is a good guy. I don’t know why Imani didn’t jump on her chance with him this weekend. Peter is funny and smart and handsome and harmless. He’s great.
He’s the type of person I should be with. I’ve spent all weekend with Toni, when maybe this is what I should’ve been doing instead. Peter wouldn’t dump me after I bared my ugly past to him, even though he said I deserved better than that. Peter wouldn’t push me away because it’d be too much trouble to know me after this festival was over.
I’ve found a soft place to land.
SUNDAY MORNING
If I think about the way Olivia’s face looked when I told her I couldn’t do this anymore, I’m positive I’ll fall apart. I try to shut it down. I do what I’ve always done—I welcome the numbness that comes with being alone in the moments I most wish I weren’t.
I decide to take a walk. I don’t know where I’m going or how long I have to walk around before we get word about what’s going to happen next—whether the festival shuts down completely or they try to salvage the pieces that are left—so I decide to just go. As I move through the campgrounds, I’m hit with the strongest wave of nostalgia I’ve ever felt.
No matter what happens from here, this place will never be the same. The lit-up totems with the heads of their favorite TV characters on top, the campsites that are decked out like five-star resorts, the space in front of the stage where I sat on my dad’s shoulders for the first time to watch a concert—there’s no coming back from this. There will likely be another Farmland next year, of course, but this place will never feel quite the same as it used to. Farmland is the place where I thought I might lose my life, and the place where I did lose Olivia.
What was once a place of safety and comfort separate from the world isn’t anymore. Probably wasn’t ever, honestly. But now it’s impossible to ignore.
Once I get closer to the Core, my phone, which has been completely silent since last night—all the people trying to call and text out at the same time making connection almost impossible—buzzes with notification after notification. I have to stop myself from scanning to see if any of them are from Olivia. Even seeing her name right now would probably ruin me. The first one I swipe open is from the official Farmland app: The festival isn’t over. A personal security guard for one of the artists accidentally left the safety off on his gun and it fired at the ground. No one was seriously hurt, though there were a number of minor injuries reported from the stampede.
I let out a slow breath. The notification says they’re not canceling the final day, but security measures are going to be increased. Lines at security will likely be longer, so we need to show up earlier if we want to make it to shows on time.
There’s some other information, stuff about Farmers being stronger together, about us being able to rise above it all, but I don’t read it. I sit where I am, right in a patch of grass near the entrance to the Core. Farmers are walking around; some seem to be breaking down their campsites to leave later tonight and some are driving away already—both options I completely understand.
But there are plenty I can see from where I sit that are dressed and ready for the day. Not packing up, not leaving, just sitting at their campsites eating breakfast like nothing has gone wrong. The normalcy overwhelms me with a fresh rush of sadness. They
look normal because scares like this are normal. We were lucky. Most of the time that’s not the case.
When I realize I have a signal, I dial my mom without looking at any of my other notifications.
“Hey, Mom.” My voice sounds shaky when I speak, so I try again. “Morning.”
“Antonia, I want you to come home right now,” she says in lieu of a real greeting. I can hear her moving around on the other end of the line, no doubt in the kitchen wiping down the countertops until she can see her reflection—the thing she always does when she’s stressed. “I couldn’t reach you all night and then this morning I wake up to news notifications from CNN, Billboard, and Rolling Stone saying someone was at that festival with a gun?”
Of course my mom’s push notifications got to her before I did. She’s probably been reading incomplete updates since last night, worried sick. I shut my eyes tight when I think about what it must have been like. Without meaning to, I’ve caused my mom the same kind of stress my dad did, when that’s the last thing I wanted.
“Toni, are you there? Did you hear me? I want you to come home, okay, baby?”
It’s the sound of her baby that makes me want to cry. So, I do. For the first time since the night my dad died, I cry the kind of tears that would be embarrassing if I weren’t so tired and drained.
Nothing is the way it’s supposed to be. Not this year, not this festival, not what’s coming in the next few months. I have no idea what to do. I don’t want to hurt my mom by pursuing my passion, but I’m not cut out to go to college. I didn’t want to hurt Olivia in the long run, but I hurt her—and myself in the process—by breaking up with her this morning. I didn’t want to allow anyone to get too close to me, but I kept reopening the same wounds from every time my dad walked out the door on his way to another tour.
It’s like everything I do to reduce harm somehow makes things worse. As I sob into the phone, I’m surprised to feel the massive weight on my shoulders lift, just a little.
