“Is that what you want or not? Make up your mind. I can’t tell where you end and your dad begins,” Lucy said, looking at the back of the passenger’s seat. She was angry and sad and emotional, like an inverse of the highs she’d felt earlier. “I know there’s a creative, fun, incredible person deep down in there somewhere, and I keep walking up to that door and knocking. I just hope someday you’ll let him out.”
“Very poetic,” Evan said, and then turned to face her. “You know, I’m really tired of that, by the way. This assumption that I’m somehow not who I am, or not living up to my full potential. This is me, take it or leave it, but don’t think you can just mold me into some optimal Evan.”
Lucy remained quiet, stewing in her own anger, thinking up a rebuttal.
“Just because you’re not satisfied with your life doesn’t mean that it has anything to do with me,” Evan continued. “Maybe your family split up and you’re mad because mine didn’t, or I get good grades so you want me to abandon school and follow art or whatever. But I’m not you. We have different lives and that’s okay. I don’t have to be you.”
“So I’m dragging you down? To my level?” Lucy asked, not expecting an answer. “You think I’m, like, trying to sabotage your life or something? Grow up, Evan.”
“No, you’re the one who needs to grow up,” Evan said. “And I hope you do.”
The police officer told them to quiet down as they approached the station. Lucy thought about all the stuff she had wanted to tell Evan. She thought of all the ways the night could have ended. Or what would have happened if she had just ended the night before the wheatpasting. She thought of only an hour earlier, when they were kissing and happy. She never thought the night would end well and had even planned it not to, but that damn hope came along anyway. Her heart felt so heavy and she wanted to empty it all out, the good, the bad, and the ugly, but now she’d never get to. And they were both thinking such ugly things. There was no turning back.
Lucy sniffled loudly and muttered little sobs. She felt alone.
Evan tried to console her, but Lucy pushed him away. She wasn’t going to be some damsel in distress. And Evan was no knight.
GOD ONLY KNOWS
Dad took Lucy home, and it was a largely silent ride. There were no arguments or loud words or harsh sentiments—he didn’t even seem too surprised. He must have gotten all the anxiety out when she’d caused trouble as a kid, back when he’d yell and punish and ask her Why? and try to figure out what he could do to help her, to make her happy. She had thought back then that she was happy. She had just liked to do what she wanted to do. Maybe she hadn’t been happy, though. Maybe doing dumb things had been her way of saying, “Hey, world, I’m not happy.”
He did say a few words. “We’re together two weeks a year, hon,” he said on the ride home. “Could you save the mischief for your mother to handle?”
“Okay,” Lucy said, and kept to herself how easy he had it. She couldn’t fit any more drama in with her mom if she tried.
When they got home, Dad jiggled the key and opened the door, threw the keys on the hutch, and turned on the light as they walked in. Lucy took off her coat, dropped it on the couch, and stretched.
“You all right if I go to bed?” Dad asked.
“Yeah, sure, Dad,” Lucy said, and Dad went into his room and closed the door.
Lucy decided to do the same and wandered into her own room. She clicked the soft yellow light on, and the white Christmas lights she had strewn about the room a half decade or so ago turned on as well. Nothing in the room had changed much since she was a girl. The same Disney sheets, the flowers on the wallpaper, the yellow book with the smiley face on the cover, the stuffed Totoro doll. When did she like Disney enough to sleep in it? Is this really me? she thought.
Grow up, Evan had told her. And she’d said the same to him. And yet, here she stood in a room that was as childlike as it gets, with cobwebs in the corner and dust on every flat surface. That’s what she was, a child who aged but didn’t change. She thought she wasn’t a kid anymore, but she felt here like the seventeen-year-old nightmare version of her ten-year-old self.
Lucy collapsed on her bed and stared at the ceiling while her head continued to race with thoughts. Her brain was a radio with no off button, just a giant volume knob that only went up. She tried to organize, simplify. She knew she couldn’t see Evan again. She’d ruined his life enough, and he was furious with her anyway. She wondered if she could get an earlier flight back home. She wondered if she could leave right away. She’d have to pack first. It could wait until morning.
Lucy sat up, took off her shoes, and put on her puffy slippers, which were resting beside the bed. She moved her feet back and forth as if her slippers were stuffed animals, two friends playing together. She looked at her room. She tried to look at it through young eyes, when she had to look up to see the posters on the walls. The last posters she’d put up were from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series. She looked at the giant Pikachu doll on the floor by her desk—Evan had won it for her at a carnival one summer. He didn’t win it, actually, but he talked to the man running the game booth and walked away with it somehow. And he gave it to her.
She walked over to it and gave it a little kick. Pikachu fell on his side. On her desk was the drawing Evan gave her for Christmas. Lucy sighed again, trying not to think about the fight they’d just had. It felt like she’d been hopping between alternate universes, one with the perfect loving, creative boyfriend of her dreams and one where everything she touched turned to crap and she had nowhere to go, nowhere she belonged to. She couldn’t decide whether she was sad or angry and was gladly letting nostalgia take her back in time and away from everything. She looked at her closet, opened the door, and reached up on the shelf. She took down a shoe box and brought it over to her bed.
This was her secret box. She cringed at the idea of her dad going into her room and finding it. How embarrassing. If you’re gonna snoop in my room, you could at least get rid of the cobwebs, she thought. She shuffled through all the folded-up papers. Mostly notes she and Evan passed in school. Drawings and comics, maps of Aelysthia. There was a ring Lucy had made for Evan in a jewelry-making class she took and never had the nerve to give him. God, we were such dorks. It’s a wonder we’ve made any other friends.
Under all the pieces of paper was a small diary she’d kept. Lucy opened it up and flipped quickly through the pages. Lots of book talk. Parents fighting. Running away. Evan, Evan, Evan. Wanting to go to New York, Italy, Paris. She really was the same person. The last entry was about four years ago. She’d written in it since her parents divorced and she moved, but mostly as a novelty. Lucy read the last entry, which was a pretty short one compared with the others.
I hate living in Georgia. I don’t have any friends there. I never meet anyone I really like. Thank God for books. I’ve been into J.D. Salinger, and I think I want to write my own short stories. I mentioned that to Evan, and he said if I wrote anything, he’d illustrate it. But the stuff I’m thinking of writing is like personal stuff. Like I would want to write it for a huge audience, but I wouldn’t want Evan to ever see it. Or my mom, or Dad. Or anyone in my school, or my old school. I have this fantasy, though, of writing hundreds of short stories. I want to write the same story over and over but with different faces and different names. And they all end sadly. I know that writing hundreds of short stories is a lot of work, but that’s the fantasy. I just have to start with one. I think that would be a good resolution for me this year. Story number one of an eventual hundreds. Maybe they can be published after my death.
Every time I decide to just give up on boys, seeing Evan again makes me rethink it. Look, if I grow old and have lots of cats and write my hundreds of stories, that’s still pretty awesome. But if I’m going to date, I hope it’s with someone at least like Evan. He’s been hanging out with me since I got back here for vacation. We had a long talk tonight, which is, like, rare. We never do that, but I told him about some stuff
about my parents and my mom, and it was kinda deep. He wants to help so bad, but what can you do? He’s sweet, though. I wish I could bring him back with me. Maybe I’ll share one or two of my stories with him.
By the time Lucy turned to the next blank page, she’d decided he deserved some kind of explanation. Whatever happened, she’d just tell him everything. He deserved that much.
Lucy turned off the lights and crawled into bed, and she felt a little calmer, a little more tired. She felt a little bit like thirteen-year-old Lucy. She fell asleep quickly.
Lucy spent the next full day attached to her phone, waiting for a call or text from Evan, trying to muster up the strength to make the call herself. She went over scripts in her mind of what she could say. Do I apologize? Exactly what am I apologizing for? Do I tell him right out that there’s a lot I have to tell him? Do I do it over the phone? Can I write an e-mail, so he can’t interrupt, so I don’t have to see him? Will I chicken out if I try to do it in person?
She did write, and rewrite, an e-mail. She wrote from the gut in her diary to figure out what she wanted to say. She rationalized the idea of just leaving without a good-bye. It was an easy rationalization. But it was the fact that this was so immensely difficult for her that made Lucy realize she needed to do it. She gave it another night.
Are you free? Lucy finally texted Evan on New Year’s Eve, the day before she was flying back. She would do it in person. She would start with “I’m sorry” and she’d let her mouth do the rest of the work. This was not a job for her brain. Yes, Evan replied.
Evan met Lucy outside her house twenty minutes later, and they started walking down the hill. Away from the downtown area and toward the ocean. He looked so goofy with his knit hat, and his semismile. It was so hard to stay angry at Evan. Even after everything that had happened between them, she felt like they could look at each other and start giggling. But she couldn’t just put this behind them. He deserved to know everything.
They walked in silence for a bit as Lucy tried to figure out what to say. They crossed the fence to the beach, which was understandably empty, what with the cold air and ocean winds. It was cloudy out, a light gray sky. Despite the frigid temperature, it smelled like summer.
“I’m sorry, Evan,” Lucy finally said as they walked along the boardwalk, and almost immediately started to cry but fought it back. “I’m really, really sorry. I am so messed up, you have no idea. I’m sorry I dragged you into it.”
“You didn’t drag me into anything, Lucy,” Evan said, and put his arm around her. “I had an awesome time with you. Seriously.”
“I didn’t want to end things that way,” Lucy said.
“I didn’t, either.”
“No, I mean I at least have to talk to you. We need to really talk.” And this was the point of no return. “I haven’t been honest with you.”
Evan stopped walking and looked at her like she didn’t even need to say anything, like he could just read it all in her eyes. Lucy looked down.
“It’s just not easy for me to live these two lives in these two places, and the biggest thing in my life, you, I’m only here a couple of weeks each year for. I have this whole other life.”
“Lucy—”
“I haven’t been honest, because I look up to you so much,” Lucy said carefully, as if she’d prepared the statement. “I feel inferior to you.”
“That’s ridiculous, Lucy. You’re not at all inferior to me,” Evan said, and Lucy knew he wanted to just forget the fight and move on, too, but she had more to tell. “It’s the opposite. I wish I could be as open and honest with myself as you are—”
“Please,” Lucy said, and Evan stopped talking. “Can I just say what I need to say?”
Evan nodded once.
“Things haven’t been good for me this year,” Lucy said quietly. “I was kicked out of my house. Things have been chaos since I got back last year. They still are.”
Evan opened his mouth and tried to interrupt, and Lucy knew he was scared and didn’t want to hear it, but she kept going.
“My mom started seeing someone new. I guess that’s what started it,” Lucy said, feeling distant as she spoke, like she was out of her own body. “I didn’t like him. Bill. And he didn’t like me. This guy was a serious asshole, and I tried to explain what he was really like to my mom, and she didn’t want to hear it. And I don’t even know what happened from there, but she picked him, basically. I mean, that’s the short version. She chose this new guy over me, and we basically fell apart from there. Things were uneasy, but I dunno. I always feel uneasy.” Lucy looked at Evan now. “I think that’s one of my problems with you—you make me feel too stable sometimes, and, like, I’m not used to that. It’s hard for me to deal with it. They kicked me out.”
Evan looked pale and angry. She continued.
“It gets worse. There was a guy, too. Ian. I was kind of dating him. I kind of am, still.”
Evan stopped at a bench and sat down. “Okay. I get it,” he said, and sounded beaten.
“No,” Lucy said, pained. “There’s more. I was with Ian, and we did things, stuff you wouldn’t like. The smoking and drinking. And worse things.”
“Lucy, okay, I get it. Stop, please.”
“I’m not a virgin, either. We had sex.” Evan turned his head away from her, but she moved into his sight, tears falling now. “I need to get it all out, Evan. I’m sorry. I had to tell you because if I don’t say it now, then I never will. I don’t want to lie to you!”
But she’d been lying the whole time. She was never his. Lucy felt like her heart was ready to stop beating. She felt like scum. She’d smiled for him all week. They’d been closer than ever before, and she was lying—she was planets away from him. She kissed him when she was in an intimate relationship with another guy, when she knew Evan would never have kissed her had he known. She felt evil. She was the evil succubus Lucy. Even as she spoke, she wanted to scrub his brain clean so he’d forget everything she was saying.
Lucy grabbed Evan’s coat. “It wasn’t right,” she said, starting to plead with him, seeing the judgment forming. “My summer wasn’t right. It was crazy. I’m not proud of it.”
Evan turned to her with a blank look on his face. She was crying now.
“I’m young, Evan. I’m a kid. We have so much growing up to do. Both of us. I need to rein myself in. I know that,” she continued. “And you need to run and fall and know pain and get back up. You need to make mistakes, too.”
“What?” Evan looked at her as if he’d forgotten where he was. “What’s with all this we? You messed this up. This is all a mess.”
“Of course it’s a mess. I’m a mess,” Lucy cried. She reached to touch Evan’s cheek, but he softly pushed her hand away. “I didn’t mean for any of this. I just wanted to be together, but it’s not the right time. I should never have kissed you.”
“We could have grown together,” Evan said. “I mean, we did. We grew up together.”
“It’s not the same,” Lucy said. She held her hair to her face and looked at her feet. “You’re talking about the whole ‘completing each other’ thing, and I hate that. It’s such Hollywood bullshit. We don’t complete each other—no two people do. We just highlight what’s missing. We’re just two incomplete people.”
Evan sat in silence while Lucy cried. She nestled into Evan’s side and cried into his shoulder. He let her.
“My heart’s broken,” he said numbly.
“I know,” Lucy said. “Mine is, too.”
They kissed, softly and repeatedly, Lucy’s face once again a mess of tears and makeup, but this time it wasn’t the start of a romance. This time it was the end of one.
HANG ON TO YOUR EGO
Lucy felt crushingly alone as she sat in the waiting area for gate D-26. She felt sick from eating at a greasy burger place. She had felt sick before and she shouldn’t have eaten anything, but her dad had dropped her off too early and there was nothing else to do. Lucy sat lifeless with a twisted frown
on her face, looking at strangers’ feet as the airport played a string of depressing songs from the seventies. To top it off, they finally played something moderately upbeat, and it was “I Want to Hold Your Hand” by the Beatles and it depressed Lucy even more. She was sure at this point some harsh joke was being played on her; someone, somewhere, was laughing. She was thinking about Evan, doubting every action she’d taken during the past two weeks. She simultaneously doubted that she should ever have kissed him and that she should ever have broken up with him. She should never have left her house and she should never have left his side. Because now she had nothing. She had this plane to catch, to fly her away to nothing good.
She looked up at the other passengers waiting with her to pass the time. Only the absolute most annoying would be seated next to her on the flight. The most obvious was the young couple with the baby. Sure, the baby looked sweet now, but put him in that tight little space for hours, put that plane in the air, where his ears would pop every few minutes and there was nowhere to move, and it would be only a matter of a very short time before he exploded in tears and screams. That’s if she didn’t beat him to it. There was the annoying eleven-year-old girl who hadn’t stopped talking for the last fifteen minutes. Lucy was sure she’d finally run out of breath and keel over midsentence, and that she’d never get to find out just what it was that Justine said that made Kelly so mad she threw a five-subject notebook at her.
Ten minutes later, Lucy stood in the slow-moving line to board the plane. Claustrophobic. She could feel someone’s breath on the back of her neck. Flying was the worst thing ever. She had to do it twice a year, so she was used to it by now. She knew all the sounds to listen for and what they meant. She had her breathing exercises. There was little preparation she could do, though, for when the plane hit a flock of birds or got struck by lightning or ran out of gas midflight and dropped to the ground in a hunk of flaming wreckage. And that might be the cleanest, most positive outcome. Every ounce of her wanted to run away or scream This isn’t right, I’m not supposed to be here! She felt like a prisoner, bound and gagged and forced on a long, blazing-hot walk to hell, jabbed repeatedly with pitchforks by a pair of scantily clad Minotaur demons. She had boarded planes regularly for years now with it predecided in her mind that there would be fire, water, or a Gila monster. And so she boarded planes in a state of panic and faintness, and usually with a fair amount of perspiration.
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