by Emily Henry
And then it ends, as quickly as it started.
My stomach drops back down. The school flickers back into place. The buffalo wink out of existence. Matt’s in front of me again, the corrugated truck bed firm beneath my feet. The sounds of the world rush back in, my classmates hooting and laughing and talking all around me, leaning on their horns and driving Rachel insane as she tries to get everyone moving. “SCREW YOU,” she’s screaming. “Seriously, Tony, screw you!”
“Nat?” Matt says. “It was just a joke. I don’t really think we’re getting married. You know that, right?”
I nod, distracted.
“I mean, unless you want to get married, in which case—”
“Matt,” I warn, immediately alert again.
“Don’t do that, Nat. Don’t say my name like you’re about to deliver crushing news. It was just a joke.”
“I care about you,” I tell him. “You’re a good person.”
“But,” he says flatly.
But I’m still reeling from the fact that you disappeared a second ago.
But I’m too busy trying to figure out what’s happening to me to have this conversation again.
But I’m worried that I started liking you because you made me feel normal, in the most Union sense of the word.
But you can’t stop trying to turn me back into the Natalie you fell in love with, the one who tried desperately to be the quintessential prom queen instead of the girl with two mothers, two fathers, and two nations.
“But I’m moving to Rhode Island, for one thing,” I settle on.
“Why does it have to be Rhode Island?” he says.
“I don’t know. Maybe it just can’t be Kentucky.”
He laughs harshly. “What, you need to make sure there’s nothing else better out there?”
“I’m not going to college to look for a boyfriend, Matt. I’m going to figure out who I am and what I want to do. Why are you allowed to figure those things out, and I’m not?”
“Oh, right, I’m sexist. I forgot,” he throws back.
“Well, I didn’t hear you offering to go to school in Rhode Island,” I shout. “You’re so convinced you know exactly how your perfect life should unfold that you haven’t noticed it’s not what I want and that I’m not who you want. You like me despite the things I care about—can you imagine how bad that feels?”
For a moment we’re both silent, staring. I wonder if either of us really sees the other clearly anymore or if we’re stuck looking at the frozen images of who we used to be. It’s the only explanation I can think of for why Matt would still want to be with me when we’ve grown to disagree on approximately everything.
The Rachel and Tony disagreement has been resolved, and the front truck has jolted to life, to the applause of all except for us.
But while everyone else is cheering and hollering, flipping off younger teammates and shouting proclamations of love at a disapproving Ms. Perez, I’m watching Matt turn away from me toward the place where minutes ago I watched buffalo grazing.
I’m feeling cold and lonely, and still I’m looking at a puzzle whose pieces don’t make sense.
Buffalo and unlit hallways, mysterious boys on the football field, and Grandmother’s stories. A warning and a ticking clock. A painful hollow in my stomach. What is Grandmother trying to tell me?
6
At eight P.M. on Thursday night, we arrive at the school in our pajamas. We check in at the front doors where Mr. Jackson, Officer Delvin, and a slew of parents glance in our bags and make sure we’ve brought our signed waivers before sending us downstairs to the cafeteria, where pizza and pop await.
At ten o’clock, they project a Nicholas Sparks movie in the gym, which seems like asking someone in a nostalgic, sensitive, emotionally heightened state to get impregnated in a bathroom stall, but hell! It’s only rated PG-13, and we’re graduating! I spend those two hours like I spend every hour lately: miserably checking for e-mails or missed calls from Dr. Alice Chan.
After the movie, it’s back to the cafeteria for more sugar, in the form of an ice cream sundae bar. While Megan and I are in line to make our ice cream mountains, she nudges me and points to the corner table where Matt and Rachel are waiting for Derek to get back with the bathroom pass. Rachel, Matt, and Derek are among a coterie who have clearly had a few too many tiny, smuggled-in tequila bottles, and the bathroom passes have become a hot commodity as the football players and their girlfriends start to fall like dominoes to Jose Cuervo.
Rachel’s slumped against Matt’s shoulder, her mouth smushed open and her head dropping as she nods off every few seconds. As his glossy eyes find mine, I see that Matt doesn’t look so great himself.
“You’re going to have to talk to him eventually,” Megan says, as if reading my mind.
“I know,” I say. We haven’t shared a single word since our fight on the float, which might make this the longest stretch we’ve ever gone without talking. My chest feels like it’s tied into knots. Even when I’m not thinking about it, my body feels the wrongness of being at odds with him. I never wanted it to be like this—half the point of breaking up was avoiding getting to a point where we hate each other, and now it feels like we’re teetering on that line.
“Sooner might be better,” Megan says.
“Maybe.”
“Like, ideally by Saturday night.”
“Ugh, his birthday party,” I groan, remembering. “I was thinking I might skip it and do something fun, like dust my entire house, instead.”
“Nat,” she says gently. “I leave for training at Georgetown in, like, sixteen days. I don’t want you to be alone all summer.”
“How dare you initiate a countdown,” I say sullenly. “I’m doing my best to stay in denial.”
She frowns and gives me a hug. “Me too.”
“Maybe we can stay in denial together forever?” I suggest.
“I think I’ll notice the Nat-shaped hole that will form in my heart when I’m not seeing you every day,” she says.
“No, I mean, maybe there’s a town called Denial, and we can literally move there and forget about college.”
“Okay,” she says, pulling free. “That sounds nice. We’ll move to Denial.”
At one A.M., the boys are sent to set up their sleeping bags in the gym, and the girls are banished to the library, where our respective chaperones check off our names and very definitely lock us in. At first the room bubbles with conversation and laughter, but soon we fall into whispers and hushed giggles, until a chorus of deep, measured breathing takes over. One by one, the stragglers drop off into sleep too, and still I lie awake, staring up at the ceiling.
Tonight marks one full week since I last saw Grandmother. That’s one less week I have to save whoever’s in danger, and I haven’t gotten so much as an out-of-office automatic reply from Dr. Alice Chan. I toss and turn all night, worrying about Grandmother and where she went, about who might be in danger and what life will be like without Megan, and Matt, and even Rachel and Derek and everyone else I know.
Finally, hours after the last set of lungs slips into a steady rhythm, I feel myself drifting toward sleep, and my mind swirls away from everything dark and unsettling toward all that is warm and magical. That night on the football field with Beau, and all the enchanting nights that came on that field before it, when the crowd bristled with excitement, voices going hoarse from screaming into the wind as the sun slid down and the stars slid up to replace it on the far side of the sky.
I see the purple of twilight, hear the chorus of cheers punctuated by the whistling of fanatical parents, feel the buzz of people falling in love with each other, with the field full of gnats and lightning bugs, with the nighttime itself.
I’m almost asleep, flat on my back, when my stomach lifts up toward my throat and the world is rearranged once again. The walls, the bookshelves, the c
eiling disappear, leaving behind only a wide night sky.
I sit bolt upright and stare up into the deep blue and the sparkling stars overhead. I look around and find myself alone on top of a grassy hill surrounded by forest. I know where the parking lot should be, where the golf course should begin just beyond a thin range of trees, but neither exists in this place. Instead, at the bottom of the hill, I see a few buffalo lying stretched out in the grass, their thick eyelids soft in sleep. Some are clumped together in twos so that their enormous heads rest on one another; others slumber a few yards off on their own. I hear myself laugh.
It sounds a little bit like I’m being strangled, probably because all the air has left my lungs. I stand and turn in place as all of me is filled with simultaneous dread and awe. My stomach settles and, like that, the library’s back, as if the whole thing never happened. Except that now I’m alone in it. The other girls aren’t there. Neither are the chaperones, the sleeping bags, or any of the duffel bags except for mine.
“What’s happening to me?” I whisper to the empty room.
The clock above the doors reads 4:34 A.M. The library is too dark, too quiet. I’d take the sleeping buffalo over this any day. For a few minutes, I just turn circles, waiting for everyone to snap back into place. Eventually, though, I’m too anxious to sit still any longer. I need to think. I need to figure out what’s going on. I grab my duffel bag and dig through it. Megan had planned on running this morning around six, and I’d brought a sports bra, shorts, and running shoes on the off chance she could convince me to get up with her. Good sleep is so rare for me that, when it comes, it trumps everything. Especially early morning exercise.
I dress as quickly as I can, conscious the whole time that the building could disappear or the people in it could reappear without any notice. Then I slip into the hallway and wander through its emptiness, my footsteps echoing. The front doors are locked from the inside, but Officer Delvin is nowhere in sight, and, squinting through the darkness, I see the parking lot’s empty too. I let myself out, prop open the door with a stopper, and sweep my hair up into a ponytail as I make my way across the asphalt. At the edge of the lot, I break into a jog and turn down the sidewalk toward the football stadium and field houses, momentum carrying me fast past them to the intersecting street beyond. I don’t know where I’m going—whether I’m going to run the six miles home or turn back to the school at some point—but moving has always let me get out of my head a little bit, and when I return, it’s usually clearer.
Dance used to do that for me too: a place where there was nothing to do but be me and let everything else fall away. For a lot of the girls on the team, it was all about the performance, but for me, I think it was always about communication. I know I was supposedly too young to remember those tantrums Dad brought up the other day, but I do. I remember feeling like my throat was closing up. I remember feelings so big and unnamable that all I could do was cry, or sometimes scream. The smallest thing could set me off, anything I thought was unfair or intimidating. When I was a little bit older, I remember fighting to hold those unfocused emotions inside, and sometimes feeling so aimlessly frustrated that I’d shriek into my pillow at night. And then I remember taking my first dance class, a ballet-inspired workshop for kindergarteners, and how everything changed.
For one hour each week, I’d toddle around in a ruffly black leotard and pink tights, skipping across the floor in pre-chassés, spinning around in preludes to chaînés. We imitated animals and growing trees and whirlybirds falling from branches, pantomimed holding beach balls and swimming. We made ourselves as big as we could, and then as small as possible.
But most of all, I remember the great bodily relief I felt as I sank into the passenger seat on the drive home after my first class. I felt empty, in a good way. Like the things I couldn’t find words for had found a way out, and now I could relax. Now I could enjoy the warm, cozy silence between me and Mom.
Probably my favorite thing about that class, and dance in general, was seeing the way the same movements could look so different when performed by different bodies. When I joined the dance team in middle school, I learned how to manipulate my natural inclinations so that I could be exactly in sync with everyone else, but when I lost Grandmother, my talent for blending in began to make me sick. It felt more like hiding than syncing.
As I run, I pass through the fog of memory and back into the sweltering heat and still-dark morning, turning right along the white fence lining Matt’s family’s property and picking up my pace. As my limbs loosen, my muscles heat, my heart rate increases, and my mind slips into its sweet spot: the unequaled silent peace you get from exercise. Somehow I skip the horrible middle part of any workout when my body’s usually screaming and my mind can’t stop repeating I hate this, this sucks, I hate this, and dive straight into the nirvana of being soaked in sweat. Unbothered by the thick clouds of mosquitoes riding the grass around my ankles. Moved by the intense thumbnail of sunrise visible beyond the hills.
I run across the tumbling fields, down to the Kincaids’ big white farmhouse and their junky rental property adjacent, then turn and start climbing back toward the stadium and track as the sun crests the trees. The gates are locked, but I climb the chain-link fence pretty easily and make my way down the bleachers toward the field just as the world—my world—is bathed in rosy light. Except it’s not just my world anymore. Someone else is down there, running on the track.
I lean out over the railing and watch the boy circling the field. He’s tall and broad but fast, too—a football player for sure, I’d guess a running back. At the far end of the field, he curves around the track, and I feel myself smiling involuntarily when he notices me.
“What are you doing, sweating all over my track?” I shout down to him.
He comes to a stop in front of me, resting his hands on his hips as he catches his breath. “Well, nice to see you too, Natalie Cleary.”
7
“Do you live around here?” I ask.
He walks forward to the bleachers and reaches his hands up through the chain link separating me from him. His white T-shirt is worn out and horribly mud- and grass-stained, the sleeves cut off to reveal long stripes of tan skin on either side of his rib cage and stomach. “Not too far,” he says. “What about you?”
“Down off Wetherington,” I tell him. He nods but doesn’t say anything, and his smile is unnerving. I nudge the fencing with my foot. “What’s that look for?”
“Nothin’,” he says. “Those are nice houses.”
“And?”
He looks out across the field, the intense yellow of the rising sun catching his hazel eyes and painting caramel highlights at the tips of his hair. “You dress real nice. I bet you come from a nice family.”
It occurs to me that maybe my calling in life is just to make Beau say nahs as many times as possible. “They’re nice,” I say. The elaborately strapped gray sports bra and moisture-wicking running shorts are also probably the nicest clothes I own. My mom thinks workout gear is sacred, and thus is constantly throwing out my old stained stuff and replenishing my supply. “What about you? You play the piano like Mozart—your family must be all right.”
Beau lets go of the chain link, walks around to the steps, and comes to stand beside me. When he leans out over the railing he eases his arm up against mine, and I’m careful not to move at all, so he won’t either. I want to stay there, touching him. “I live with my brother, Mason, and sometimes my mom,” he says. “She made me take lessons when I was little because she wanted to date the teacher, and now when I wanna play, I come over to the high school.”
“I see.”
“Which one of those guys from the other night was your boyfriend?” he asks.
“Neither.” I feel my blush worsening, and when it’s at peak severity and my whole head might actually be on fire, I add, “I don’t have a boyfriend.” I risk a glance at him. He’s looking at
the field, but the corners of his mouth are turned up, and I like the way his eyelids dip when he smiles.
“So now I know why you haunt the band room,” I say, breaking the silent tension between us. “But why do you run on our track?”
“Our track?” he says. “I thought this was your track.”
“Well, I’m really good at sharing, especially things I hate using.”
His eyes rove over me. “You’re here right now.”
“Yeah,” I say, because I had a vision of you might come off a little too strong.
He pushes his hair back from his face. “Do you wanna come over?”
“What—right now?”
He shrugs. “Whenever. Now. We have cereal.”
I laugh. “What about milk? Do you have milk, Beau?”
“Mason usually just uses beer, but yeah, if you want milk, I can get you milk, Natalie. There’s a gas station right up the road.”
“You know what? I’d try it with beer,” I tell him.
“So you do?” he says. “Wanna come over?”
“I can’t right now.” I wave vaguely toward the school. Beau nods, and I hurry to add, “But some other time, later in the day, would be good.”
“Okay.”
“Do you have your phone with you? I could give you my number.”
He feels his shorts pockets. “Nah.”
I realize then that I left my phone in the school, although I did manage to bring the pepper-spray can Mom attached to my keys, which I self-consciously remember I’m wearing on a wristband. “You could find me online,” I offer helplessly.
“Okay.”
“Or you could find me here again.”
“On your track,” he agrees.
“Yeah.”
“That you never use.”
