by Tim Federle
And just like that, the trumpets stop.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Hey”
“hey, morning, whats up. at work”
“You have a minute to talk”
“no quinn I’m >>>>AT WORK<<<< SOME PEOPLE WORK”
“Hahahah”
“haha”
“Hahahhahahahaha”
“hahahah”
I’m standing in my backyard, right over the makeshift pit Dad and I used to make illegal fires in. It’s basically overgrown now, so lush you have to dull out your eyes to see the charred-out, mossy cement blocks from before. Our backyard could really be something. We’ve got a lot of space. If I ever actually sell a screenplay, you can screw my Hollywood Hills backyard. I’m buying a pool for Mom here; I just am.
“I found my old phone last night,” I send.
“um . . . ok?”
“I plugged it in haven’t turned it on yet i want to say something else tho”
“calling you in 5”
And so he does, exactly five minutes later. Geoff is the picture of punctuality now that he has a job. We are getting older so fast these days. It’s fucking eerie.
“What’s up?” he goes.
“First off, I’m sorry that I freaked out on you last night and almost threw your mom’s metal fruit at the wall in the basement.”
Sigh. “Yep.”
“And that I threw the acceptance letter thing at your face. I have such bad aim, usually.”
I’m waiting for him to snort-laugh, but instead I hear a version of a cough happen on the other side of the phone—the same throaty thing he’s done since I first saw him cry, when we were five and I yanked the truck out of his hand and he wept so quietly that it was the day I learned that a person can make you feel guiltier by underreacting.
“I should, um,” Geoff finally goes, and I say, “Go for it,” and I hold my new phone to my ear for one second longer and hear him tell a customer to “just take the drink” and that he was “sorry for being rude.”
I’ve gotta stop forcing people to be rude on my behalf.
Right before I hang up, Geoff comes back and goes, “Win?”
“Yeah?” I guess everybody’s calling me Win now.
“Wanna go to the pool with me and Carly this afternoon? I think she wants to apologize to you. You can bring your boyfriend.”
I pull a weed out from between two fire-pit cinder blocks. The weed is pricklier than I’d anticipated, and it makes the cardboard cut on my hand scream like it’s in a silent movie.
“Uh, no,” I say. “I think Amir and I are a past-tense thing now.”
“Oh. Dude.”
“But, yes. I want to go to the pool. So hard.”
“Gimme twenty and I’m off work,” Geoff goes, and I’m saying, “Hey, if I can’t make it rain this summer, at least I’ll get wet today,” and it’s such a cheesy piece of dialogue that I’m glad he’s already hung up.
When I’m back in my room a minute later, I slip on my old swim trunks, expecting them to be snug. Isn’t every seventeen-year-old boy supposed to outgrow his clothes, like, every two weeks? But I’m so skinny, they practically pool at my feet. So I double-knot them twice, and I unplug my old phone from the wall and throw it in my bookbag. And as I head out, I touch Annabeth’s door on the way to the stairs.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
We’re right in the middle of an annoyyyying conversation about this movie contest in LA when, “Shit,” Geoff says. He pulls his Corolla off the parkway without using the turn signal.
“What?”
“I forgot I have to pick up Carly in Mount Lebo,” he goes, and that cracks us both up. We almost forgot an entire other human on our way to the country-club pool. I’m glad for the distraction, for the tonal shift, for the introduction of a B-story. But Geoff picks “the talk” right back up.
“Seriously, if you don’t do this writing lab thing, you’re crazy.”
So I jump right back in too. “How would my mom afford a ticket to LA? Where would I stay? Nothing about it makes sen—”
“You could stay with Ricky Devlin,” Geoff goes, and I roll my eyes hard enough that I bet he can hear the sockets creaking. “We could find you a cheap flight.”
“We have different definitions of ‘a cheap flight,’ ” I say. “In my family a cheap flight is jumping off the roof and landing on a mattress.”
Geoff laughs. We used to actually do this together until he broke his ankle in fifth grade.
“And, anyway, whatever.” I’m worried he’ll offer to pay for the flight, so I talk fast: “This was written to be our movie together, not some rando director’s in LA.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Geoff goes. “She didn’t even apply, Win. She would have been really, really happy for you to get out of her hair and meet a director who really wanted to be a director.” He’s doing the thing I hate where he steers with his knee. “Just finish the damn screenplay and get over yourself.”
“No, I would need a bigger sign. She was probably just humoring you.”
“Uh, Annabeth never humo—”
“Maybe she would have changed her mind about me going without her, once I actually got in—and could you please use, like, one hand to drive? Just one.”
In some families, the guys do snap at each other.
“Jeez, Louise.”
Ignore. Talk quieter. “I’d need a sign.”
Awkward pause, and then Geoff makes the tiniest girl voice and keeps his mouth still and squeaks out, “Win, I want you to go,” and I punch his arm and go, “That’s not funny,” and that’s usually where we’d bust out laughing, but we don’t.
I reach into his glove compartment for a Jolly Rancher, but they’re all gone.
We’re driving past the Presbyterian church, and I shouldn’t be surprised when we stop at a red light next to the Liberty, but I am, because of what I see.
Green light, and then: “Oh my God, stop,” I say, and Geoff goes, “What? Why?” and I go, “Pull over!” and I jump out before he stops.
“Excuse me,” I shout like a crazy person, dashing through the cars. I lose a flip-flop in the street, but I keep going, running to this blond woman who is pulling down the “for rent” sign outside the Liberty. “Excuse me, are you Jen?” I say.
She sure looks just like Jennifer “Jen” Richart, whose shiny happy Realtor face is still splattered across the building.
“Rick?” she says weirdly.
“No, no,” I say, “I’m not—I’m Win. My name is Win. Anyway—”
“Dude, what are you doing?” Geoff has the Corolla double-parked. He’s got the passenger window rolled down and is kind of hollering at me.
“One sec,” I say, and whip my head back to Jen. “What’s going on here?”
“Somebody put in a bid on this place,” she goes, crumpling the “for rent” poster into her stomach. She looks tired but happy.
“Wait, to, like, turn it back into—,” but then I stop. I know the ending.
I know the whole story already. My mind is blown open, and instead of brain splatter, what happens is a thousand firecrackers burst out of my ears.
“Dude, come on. Carly’s texting me.”
“Thank you for not renting this out as a pharmacy or a bank,” I say, and “Jen” goes, “Don’t thank me. Thank the buyer.”
I tear down a big handful of flyers from the ticket window, and then another, and I stuff them in a garbage can on the curb and get into G.’s Corolla.
“Sorry,” I say, flopping back into the car seat, “but that was the craziest thing ever. I think Ricky fucking Devlin might be buying the fucking Liberty,” and Geoff steals my catchphrase and goes, “No way,” and I steal Amir’s and go, “Way.” And as we take off again to pick up Carly, Geoff turns down the song of the summer, and I’m thinking he’s gonna nag me to buckle up, but instead he just goes: “Sounds like a sign to me.”
• • •
“Put it all on account
nineteen-eighty,” Geoff says to the cashier, before we take our trays to find some shade. OPEN QUESTION: Can somebody be considered a cashier if they never actually deal with cash? Regardless, it’s a fundamental universal law that there is nothing better than poolside corn dogs that somebody else’s dad is funding.
“You two gross me out eating those things, seriously,” Carly goes, and Geoff and I stop chewing and we lock eyes and for two seconds almost make gross animal noises, but somehow we skip that today. Besides, I brought the rest of my ice cream cake to the pool, and it’s time for dessert. Today’s the six-month anniversary. We never miss a half birthday, though this is more of a half deathday, I suppose.
“Dude,” Geoff says. He kicks my knee with a neon flip-flop. “You got half-birthday cake on you.”
I pull up my tank top to lick it off. Geoff cackles. “I love a dude who fights for his chocolate,” he goes, and even Carly lightens up a little and goes, “Chocolate is literally everything,” and I look right at her for the first time today.
Just when I think she’s going to apologize for all the drama on Amir’s boat last night—for spilled secrets that should never have been secrets to begin with; for being kind of mean; for stirring the pot and stirring my life, too—she doesn’t. She goes, “Handstand contest?” instead, and I bust into giggles and go, “Duh,” and she and I dump our trays and throw away the last piece of cake, and leave Geoff behind—because he can’t go upside down in the water (makes him puke, always has, oddest thing).
Not even two seconds later I’m careening into the pool, chocolaty tank top and all, sunglasses and all, hat and all, one flip-flop only, and I’m upside down pressing my hands into the bumpy bottom and feeling my skin pucker up cold and feeling like this is the first time in six months I haven’t felt upside down but rather exactly right.
We pop to the surface maybe thirty seconds later. We haven’t done this in years. I can’t believe my stamina, though I also think she let me win.
“You let me win,” I go, but Carly is shaking her head.
“You were down there for like two minutes. Seriously. It was freaking me out.”
Geoff is by the side of the pool, his hands on his hips. From this angle I see that he is going to turn out genuinely cute someday. That sometimes I should let people just make up their own character descriptions.
“I’ve been holding my breath for six months, I guess,” I say, and even though it’s a little jokey—all of my dialogue is, so sue me; I’d seriously like to hear your first-draft jokes—we all smile at one another. I think at the same moment we all picture how bad Annabeth was at handstands, how she used to come right back up coughing, right away. How she always lost.
And just when that’s the saddest little memory—because all the saddest memories are the small ones that creep up on you quiet and scary as a summer bug—Geoff does a cannonball right beside Carly, and soaks her, and we all laugh and shriek.
The lifeguard tells us to knock it “the heck” off, but it’s a good moment, which is all you can count on or hope for, I think. Tiny little good moments that you catch like a firefly, and just like fireflies, you have to release them, because the whole point is that they’re tiny and little and need to be with other fireflies. They aren’t a pet. They aren’t yours to keep. They’re just moments. They’re just fireflies.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Geoff takes me grocery shopping.
It’s supposed to be a quick little trip, but it turns into an epic voyage. We don’t buy six bananas; we buy twelve. We don’t buy five apples; we buy twenty. We buy healthy stuff. No more Cocoa Krispies.
We take it all out to Geoff’s car and I’m eating a peach in the front seat and it’s dripping everywhere and, you see, this is the problem with fruit. It only seems portable and convenient. Turns out you need a hazmat suit and six towels to eat a peach. Guess what that’s not true for: Pop-Tarts, Cheetos, I could go on. . . .
“Oh, crap,” Geoff goes. “Here comes Dwight.”
I lean forward and look out the window, and even though we don’t go to school with anyone named Dwight, I fall for it, and then the smell hits me.
“Jesus Christ, Geoff,” I say, and I lift my T-shirt and cover my nose. “Seriously, you should see a doctor.”
He rolls down the window and starts laughing so hard, the Corolla swerves. My stomach does too.
“Seriously,” I say, “you should be ashamed.”
I let an appropriate amount of time go by before dropping my collar, but, Jesus, Dwight is still here, like an uncle at Thanksgiving whose stories last wayyyyy too long and never have a punch line.
“Seriously,” I say again. But then I start laughing because the other choice is vomiting, and my stomach is having too good a time with the ice cream cake to say goodbye to it already.
We pull into my rocky driveway. I’m thinking maybe we should whip up some lemonade for old times’ sake, but I let the thought go. We unload all the groceries super quietly, because Mom is asleep in the sunroom, and then I walk G. back out to the car and I take a paper towel to wipe up some of the peach juice on the seat, and I swear to you Dwight is still lingering in there like a nightmare fog and it makes us laugh again.
We make some vague plans for Geoff to come back in a couple of hours with some “tools” to finally put in the new AC, and we’re still laughing about That Lingering Dwight!—but before I let Geoff go, I stop laughing, and I pull my old phone out of my bookbag, and I hold it up for him to see.
Geoff looks at it weird, like it’s an ancient Mesopotamian tool.
“I thought—I don’t know,” I say. “I thought we could turn it back on together.” Deep breath. “Geoff, I have to tell you something.” Deep exhale. “Annabeth died right after sending me one last tex—”
“Win, I know. Everybody knows.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Literally everybody knows. It was on the news.”
Ignore. Can’t compute. I power the phone on and my stomach does every single ride at Kennywood at once. The old cell takes forever to come awake, and in a flash I think that perhaps I’ll be saved from reading the message from beyond—Geoff even goes, “Dude, maybe it won’t even, like, register old texts, since you have a new phone now,” when—ding.
There’s exactly three hundred unread messages. But only one that matters.
I can’t look at it. I can’t look at it.
I hold it up for Geoff to see. He touches the screen, and then his eyes go watery, but he is somehow made out of smiles.
“YOU’RE DEAD TO ME,” I texted my sister—after not finishing the college recommendation letter for her teacher to sign; after almost two decades of not appreciating the A to my Q—and right before she ran the red light without her seat belt on, she wrote—
“Read it, dude,” Geoff says.
I flip the phone around.
“grow up, win,” it says.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
After Geoff drives off, I walk two steps at a time upstairs and I keep up the pace till I reach my desk, where I wake up my laptop and decide it’s time to finally do it. To finish the damn screenplay.
And here’s the thing: I don’t plan out the last fifteen pages or refer to Ricky Devlin’s outline or worry about satisfying mythical story beats. I just . . . type. Forty minutes later—that’s all a first stab at it took, forty minutes; or maybe six months and forty minutes, depending on your math—I hit print, and pace an infinity loop in my floor until the hot stack of paper piles up, which I grab to take downstairs.
When I wake up Mom, I am crying and so she is too, immediately.
“What is it?”
“Mom, I’m gay,” I say, which I didn’t expect to say, but there you have it.
She holds my gaze. “I know. I’ve known.”
“Are you—are you, like, disappointed?”
Her face fuzzes over like mine does when I write dialogue, or so my sister used to tell me. “Only in myself,” Mom says. “That you’d think you could ever d
isappoint me.” Her eyes well back up for round two. “I just want you to be happy, baby.” She looks like my sister, who cried at everything. “But maybe you aren’t a baby anymo—”
“Did you know about Geoff and Annabeth?”
“Of course, yes.” Her voice changes gears. It grinds in the shift. “It was killing me for you not to know. I don’t like secrets.”
I take a pillowcase off her pillow. We don’t have throw pillows; we have full on pillow-pillows in the sunroom, to make up for how uncomfortable wicker furniture is.
I walk the pillowcase to the mantel, and I throw it on top of the urn. I can’t look at it anymore. It isn’t good enough for Annabeth. It’s fake.
“Well, that just makes it look like a ghost,” Mom says, and she isn’t wrong. It looks as if the urn is dressed up in a cheap ghost costume, that amazing Halloween sequence in E.T.
“Yeah,” I go. “But don’t you always kind of feel like she’s with us? Like, doesn’t she feel like a ghost already?”
“I believe in heaven,” Mom says.
“Doesn’t it feel like she’s always over your shoulder, though?”
“Every minute,” Mama says. “Every second.”
Now she practically laughs almost, her sobbing is so hard, like a hyena or a volcano. She laughs and I do too, because this is almost joyful, this realization that we get to share something again. Misery loves company and that’s not a bad thing, folks. Misery fucking needs company.
“I saw fruit in the fridge,” Mom says curiously, as a middle schooler might if his parent had laid out a book about how bodies change. My parents never did that for me. Maybe that’s why I was the last guy in my class to get armpit hair. My body just never knew the rules.
“Yeah,” I say, “I thought we’d have some fruit for once. The red ones are called apples and the purple ones are called grapes.”
