How It Ends

by Laura Wiess

  Like this morning: I dropped my scarf on the way down the driveway to wait for the bus, and when I turned back to pick it up, I got a clear view of Gran’s house through the bare trees in the little woods. There was a light on in the living room, right where our reading chairs were, and I got this awful pang in the pit of my stomach, almost like being homesick, and then this really strong flash of memory.

  “You got here right in the nick of time,” Gran said cheerfully as I trudged up the back porch steps. “Here, I just finished making this for you.”

  “What is it?” I asked, sniffling and wiping my damp cheeks on the back of my hand. It had been a bad Sunday so far—my parents had been picking at each other from the moment I’d woken up—and so I took the little red bag she offered without much enthusiasm. It was made of felt, the drawstring a thin white silk ribbon trailing from the top, and when I looked inside, it was empty.

  “A talisman,” Gran said, pushing herself up off of the back porch step. “Come on, let’s go stroll the deer path and see if we can find anything to put in there.”

  She explained more as we walked, told me how red was a power color for strength and confidence and that whatever I chose to put in the bag should mean something to me, make me feel safe and happy or stand for something important.

  “Okay,” I said, crouching and picking up a smooth, round brown acorn. “Here, what does this stand for, Gran?”

  “An acorn is the seed of the oak,” she said. “So I would say an acorn stands for potential, growth, new beginnings, and—”

  “That’s good,” I said and dropped it in my talisman bag. “Let’s look some more.”

  We wandered farther and before long the bag contained a piece of mica—fool’s gold, Gran called it, because the glittery outside made people think it was worth far more than it really was—a blue jay’s feather for plainspokenness, and a little stick from the catalpa because that tree was old and sturdy and weathered, a place of comfort and shelter, questions and truths.

  Gran and I had spent a lot of time sitting under that tree.

  I shook my head, smiling, and picked up my scarf. Straightened and, on impulse, not even knowing if she was actually even sitting in the window, raised my arm, waved, and then turned and hurried to the road to catch the bus.

  Seth must really be in love with Bailey because he stopped me in the hall to supposedly just say hi but ended with showing me a picture of him and Bailey lounging out in her living room. She had on a really short, tight low-rise skirt and an ankle bracelet and was wearing this smug, totally cocky smile. I wanted to vomit on the picture but only said, “Oh, she’s cute,” when what I really wanted to say was, “She has a nose like a bulldog and one helluva lazy eye.”

  Not that she does, but anyway.

  A senior named Wynn has been sitting with me and Sammi at lunch and walking with me between classes. We went out to the courtyard with me wearing his jacket, and Seth was there with Connor. Seth was sneaking glances over at us the whole time, too. I could tell from the corner of my eye.

  I liked the idea of Seth seeing that somebody else might like me, so I flirted hard with Wynn whenever Seth was somewhere in the background and even went to the movies with him once to see if we could be more than friends.

  Wynn must have been thinking that way, too, because at the end of the night he said I was cool but a little too young for him.

  Uh, okay, but I wasn’t the one snickering through the movie’s love scene, was I?

  Still, word got out that we went, and Seth sat with me at lunch today. He ate half my French fries and even fed me one.

  I don’t understand him at all.

  Oh my God, I can’t even believe this day happened.

  It was beautiful out, one of those freak fifty-degree mornings, and me and Sammi were in the courtyard before the bell rang when Seth got off his bus, stretched, spotted me, and started over. Sammi stepped hard on my foot and hissed, “Stop staring!” and I managed to break the lock Seth had on my gaze.

  I swear, with the sun on his hair and that smile on his face, there was nothing in the whole world but him.

  “Hey, stranger,” he said, bumping his shoulder against mine.

  “Hey,” I croaked.

  “Hi,” Sammi said warily.

  “God, it’s great out here,” he said, stretching. “Way too nice to spend in this dump.”

  “Mm,” I said but my heart was going crazy. “I know.”

  He looked at me like he was searching for something, some kind of answer. He must have found it because he grinned and said, “Want to cut out?”

  “No,” Sammi said, giving me a hard look.

  “And go where?” I said, ignoring her because, oh my God, this was it.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, anywhere. Just hang out and enjoy.”

  “We can’t,” Sammi said, bugging her eyes at me. “We have a history test third period, remember Hanna?”

  “If we leave before the bell rings we’ll be marked absent,” Seth said.

  “And how’re you gonna get home then?” Sammi said, elbowing me and scowling.

  “We’ll come back last period and hang here for the buses,” Seth said. “No big deal.”

  “Yeah, no big deal,” I said, giving Sammi my answer with one burning look.

  She sighed, shook her head, and said, “Well, if you’re going to do it, you’d better go before one of the teachers sees you.” And to me, in a whisper, “Call me!”

  So we went. We just turned around and cut across the side lawn to the road, which wasn’t real easy for me in heels, but Seth said, “Here, hold on to me,” and we picked our way across, with me expecting to have a nun snag us at any second…but no one did.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I said when we got to the sidewalk and were out of sight of the school and could relax.

  “You never cut out before?” Seth asked, taking off his suit jacket and slinging it over his shoulder.

  “Nope,” I said.

  “So I’m your first,” he said with a mischievous smile.

  I blushed and gave him a hip bump. “Don’t advertise it.”

  He laughed, slid an arm around my shoulders, and squeezed me to him. “Hanna, Hanna, Hanna, what am I ever going to do with you?” he said, and kissed the top of my head, right in my hair. “C’mon, let’s go to the diner. My treat.”

  That alone would have been enough to make the whole day worth it. But there was more.

  We got a booth in the back, ordered OJ and waffles, and while we were waiting for the food I got all kinds of shy and couldn’t even look at him because I was afraid I would start crying with happiness or something totally geeky like that.

  “So are you still seeing Wynn?” he said.

  I shrugged and, tracing the design on my place mat, said, “Are you still going out with Bailey?”

  “Yup,” he said.

  “This is so bizarre,” I said, shaking my head.

  “What?” he said. “I think we should have done it a long time ago.”

  “Really,” I drawled because he was flirting, and if that’s how he wanted to play it, then I could do that. “What else should we have done a long time ago?”

  His smile widened like he was thinking something delightfully perverted, and suddenly the air in the diner got hot and close, and everything else receded and there was nothing but him and me.

  “You should ask me over,” he said.

  “You should ask to come,” I said, drowning.

  He nodded, never breaking the gaze. “Yeah, I should.”

  And then the food showed up, which was good because I had to breathe again but bad because it completely changed the mood.

  He told me about his guitar and his music theory class and all these songs he was learning from the sixties on up, stuff I’d never even heard of but made a mental list to download as soon as I got home.

  “So are you in a band?” I asked.

  “Nah,” he said, coating his waffles in s
yrup. “I don’t know if I want to get into a band or the studio side of it, like maybe an audio engineer.”

  “Right,” I said, wishing my stomach would stop jittering so I could eat, too, but all I could think about was where we would go after this and what would happen once we got there. Would he ask me out? Would he kiss me without asking me out? Would I let him? That would make me an affair girl, almost like a slut, and I didn’t want to be that, but what if kissing finally made him realize he really liked me and—

  “Hey, cool, the Cowboy Junkies doing ‘Sweet Jane,’” he said, nodding up at the ceiling where the speakers were playing a slow, dark, heartbeat-sexy song. “This song never gets old.” The singer’s voice was sultry, summer-night hot, and Seth watched me, playing air guitar and murmuring the lyrics like he was singing them to me.

  Is it possible to bloom and die of love at the same time? Yes, because I was doing it, especially when I felt his legs stretch out on either side of mine under the booth and rest against me. I sat spellbound, watching his fingers slide over invisible strings, his hair slipping forward into one eye and him flicking it back without taking his gaze off me.

  I don’t think I even breathed until he leaned back at the end and smiled a slow, spontaneous smile that was real, that stopped time and erased place and graced me with happiness so pure it was too big to hide.

  “Good song,” he said finally and, breaking the gaze, picked up his fork.

  “Yeah,” I said and slipped my trembling hands off the table and into my lap. “I never heard it before but I like it.”

  He looked at me again, studying me like he was trying to figure something out.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing,” he said, glancing down and poking at the last hunk of cold waffle. “Maybe I’ll play it for you sometime. If you want, I mean.”

  “That’d be good,” I said and wiggled my feet under the table. They bumped his legs, which were still sort of wrapped around mine and he quickly withdrew them.

  “Sorry,” he said without looking at me.

  “No, I didn’t mean to kick you,” I said, and I hadn’t. “My foot just fell asleep.”

  We hung out awhile longer, finishing our OJ and doing the dumb word games on the place mats, then he looked at his watch, stretched, and said, “You ready?”

  “Sure,” I said, because that was an understatement.

  He paid and I lingered close enough so that everyone in the place would know we were together. He pushed the door open, and thanks to Wynn holding the door for me, I thought Seth was holding it for me, too, so I started through but I guess he wasn’t because he started through at the same time and it was really embarrassing because I’d already said, “Thanks,” and basically ran right into him. He got kind of snappy and said, “Well, go, then,” like I’d humiliated him on purpose, which I hadn’t.

  I felt like kicking Wynn for getting me used to guys holding the door open for me.

  And then Seth pissed me off by saying, “So I guess Wynn’s a real gentleman, huh?” But he said it in this mocking voice, so I said, “Yeah, he is.” And Seth snorted and said, “Well, I’m not Wynn,” and I snorted back and said, “No kidding.”

  Talk about a strained ten minutes of walking.

  I was starting to feel bad and even panicky for blowing it. I mean, so what if he didn’t open the door for me, and okay, so mocking Wynn wasn’t the greatest thing to do but why did I have to get snotty back? Wasn’t this chance bigger than one quick payback?

  Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and stopped walking. “Look, do you want me to just go back to school and you can hang out on your own?”

  He turned and shoved his hands in his pockets, ambling backward and watching me, moving farther and farther away. “Do you want to go back?” he said finally.

  “Do you want me to?” I said, staying planted there by sheer force of will.

  He shrugged. “I want you to do what you want to do.”

  Okay, now he was pissing me off because I’d ditched school to be with him and he wouldn’t even give me one inch of reason to stay. “Well, good, then stop walking so I can beat you over the head with my shoe, all right?”

  His jaw dropped and his face cleared and he laughed.

  “Stop walking,” I insisted, and bent to pry off my heels. The sidewalk was chilly under my stockinged feet and I picked up the shoes by the straps and let them dangle from my finger.

  “Oh, hell no,” he said with a mischievous grin. “I’m no fool.”

  “Matter of opinion,” I said, lifting my chin and walking toward him, blood tingling at the laughter in his eyes. “Now stand still, you big chicken, and take your punishment.”

  “Girl, if you’re gonna punish me, then you’re gonna have to catch me and hold me down to do it,” he drawled, still walking backward away from me.

  “I’d like to hold you down,” I muttered, swinging my shoes like I hadn’t a care in the world. It threw him off for the one second I needed to lunge, but he recovered fast and, laughing, turned and took off at a jog down the street toward the little park.

  “Pretty lame fake out,” he called back.

  “It’s what I do best,” I said under my breath.

  “Come on, you’ll never catch me walking,” he taunted.

  “Well, then, I guess I’ll never catch you, Seth, because really, do I look like someone who runs?” I said with attitude.

  His gaze dropped pointedly to my chest and his grin widened. “Hey, a guy can dream.”

  “Perv,” I said, sauntering closer.

  “You wish,” he said, ambling onto the grass.

  And, oh God, I did. I wished for everything, for him and me together, for the right to touch and kiss him, and for him to want me even one tenth as much as I wanted him—

  “Damn, you’re slow,” he said and, with a cocky grin, headed for the swings.

  Not always, I thought and, taking careful aim, hurled one of my shoes. It grazed his arm and he turned, astonished, while I aimed and threw the second one. If he hadn’t ducked, it would have nailed him right between the eyes.

  “Oh, you are so seriously gonna pay for that,” he said, dropping his jacket and loosening his tie.

  “That’s what they all say,” I said as, eyes sparkling, he started toward me.

  I let out a shriek and, laughing, headed across the grass toward the slide, yelling, “This is home! I call you can’t touch me!” but maybe I garbled the words because all of a sudden his arms closed around me in a tackle, but instead of driving us forward he somehow swung me around, and when we fell, I landed on top of him with my back on his chest, his arms locked high around my ribs and our legs tangled boy-girl. I immediately started to squirm off and he tightened his arms and said, breathless, into my hair, “Stop. Relax.”

  So I did, heart pounding, afraid I was too heavy, afraid he could feel the heat in my blood, the want in my heart, afraid he’d hate the smell of my sandalwood oil, my shampoo, my skin, just afraid he would find a reason to end it.

  He was breathing against my neck, warm, heavy breaths that smelled of maple syrup, and somehow I began to breathe with him, lying there on the verge of everything, eyes closed against the wide-open sky, body tensed and waiting, and little by little the arms locked around me eased open just enough to free his hands, leaving his fingers on my ribs, his thumbs nestled against the bottoms of my breasts, brushing the curves under the ugly blouse and the thin lace bra, and oh God, I didn’t know if he didn’t realize his thumbs were there or if he was doing it on purpose, didn’t know if I should say something or leave it be, because he was breathing deeper now, breaths that lifted his chest and me on it, breaths that somehow slid his arms down across my stomach and his hands to low-rise territory, where they settled on my hips, holding me without effort, sinking me into him without moving, without him rising or me falling, with just the heat from where the back of my skort pressed against the front of his khakis.

  And I think he felt it, too, because
he shifted beneath me just a little, but it was a reaching shift, an upshift that hollowed his stomach and tightened his thighs and suddenly we weren’t just playing anymore.

  I don’t know what would have happened if we hadn’t heard little kid chatter coming down the sidewalk toward the park.

  “Shit,” Seth said, releasing me and sitting up.

  Face burning, I quickly slid off him and became very busy smoothing my shirt and hair and skort. I was so dazed that I didn’t know what to say—was there anything?—or how to act or what to even think.

  “Come on,” he said, giving me a hand up. He wasn’t looking at me either, releasing me fast and turning away, bending to pick up his jacket as I retrieved my shoes and purse.

  “Where are we going?” I said as we passed the mom with three kids heading for the swing set.

  “Hell if I know,” he said with a wry smile and ambled across the grass to the sidewalk.

  I took a deep, shaky breath and caught up with him.

  It’s the weirdest feeling, walking next to someone you just laid on and yet still being so careful not to let your hand touch his while he’s being just as careful not to touch yours, feeling so huge and aware of how awkward it is, and that awareness makes it even harder to walk normally. Your face feels hot and fake and obvious, and you can’t even decide if your expression is right.

  Nothing is in harmony, nothing is in sync.

  “Look, don’t worry about it,” he said as we stopped at the corner and got ready to run across to the mall. “I mean technically nothing really happened so you should still be all right with Wynn.”

  And then the light changed and he started across the road.

  I just stood there with the wind knocked out of me, watching him moving farther and farther away without turning to see if I was following, without waiting to see the effect of his words.

  Technically, nothing really happened.

  Technically?

  Oh, God, my stomach.

  All these people stopped at the light, watching me stand there humiliated and stricken.

  He made it all the way across and turned to see where I was.