by Amber Smith
She laughed.
My parents laughed.
And finally I laughed too.
Looking back, I wished we had a picture, because the memory was so blurry around the edges that I wasn’t sure it could be trusted. I wished Mallory’s older self had been there in that moment, like she had managed to be present at all the right moments, ready to capture it. But she wasn’t her yet. I wasn’t me yet. Me. Am I even me right now, or am I like Mallory was back then, still trying to find her camera—the way she would see the world through ground glass and technology, the medium by which she would record it all? I hadn’t found my version of that yet, and I sometimes wondered if I ever would.
Chris continued driving down the street, but I wished I could put the world on pause. Because it all happened in that ice cream parlor, right there—we were passing it.
Then on the other side of the street, I could see her on the sidewalk, hear her footsteps skipping ahead of me. That sidewalk, right there. She was running, so excited, her shadow bouncing beneath her.
I closed my eyes; her laughter echoed in my head.
I was running too, but I was way behind, in the background, like I always was.
A camera shutter snapped. At least, that’s what my mind told me it was. In reality, it was probably a test firework being set off in the distance.
I twisted around in my seat, already unclicking the seat belt and flinging it off my body.
“Hey, can you pull over up here?”
“Yeah. What is it?” he said, slowing to a stop at the side of the road as I opened the car door. I heard him say something else through the open window, but I was speed walking, practically jogging, my sandals tripping me. I ran back along the wrought iron fence, the black parallel lines moving the scenery in the background like an animation—a cartoon graveyard. It made me feel like I was running in place and the cemetery was moving rather than the other way around.
Somehow, in spite of all of this, I made it back to the gate.
I knew this gate. I knew this spot.
I couldn’t remember the feel of cold metal on my fingertips.
It was her hands I remembered, trailing along the wrought iron. I was following her like a shadow, mimicking her every move, because that’s what little sisters do. All except her hands on the gates. I was afraid to touch it, afraid of getting too close to death. She walked right up to it, though, stood face-to-face with it.
But that wasn’t my only memory of these gates.
There was another.
This one was static, not a lived memory. This was one of Mallory’s pictures. I closed my eyes. I could see its exact location on the wall in the barn where Mallory had pinned it up.
Which meant she had come back here. To the place where we stopped once and behaved like a functional, loving family. And now I was here again too.
I sensed Chris standing behind me. “Soooo . . . ,” he said, drawing out the word. “What are we doing?”
“I have to come back here,” I said, still looking out at the cemetery, my hands wrapped around the bars, the weight of the cold, rough metal finally under my own fingers.
Chris made a sound like a hum—a questioning, uncertain syllable.
“With the camera, I mean.” I turned around quickly, and added, in as normal a tone as I could, “I have to come back with the camera. To take pictures.”
We stood opposite each other on the sidewalk where Mallory had once been, where even a different version of me had once been, and he exhaled like he’d been holding his breath. His eyes went from narrowed and focused to soft and open, his mouth curving into a smile.
As he let out that breath of air, it was almost like he was making the phew sound. “I am so glad you just said that.”
“Why?” I asked, and as he had me wondering what about this situation was so amusing, I felt my face inadvertently mirroring his smile.
“ ’Cause this whole thing just had a very beginning-of-a-horror-movie kind of vibe going on for a minute there.” He stepped up to the gate and stood next to me, looking into the distance at the massive cemetery that stood beyond the wrought iron bars.
I looked into the distance too, and said, “Oh.”
“I mean, I think you’re cool and all,” he continued, a lightheartedness in his voice. “But I’m not ready to die some kind of bloody zombie death for you.” He laughed, and added, “Not quite yet, anyway.”
He took a few steps, letting his hand trail along the fence the way Mallory’s had. He was following along behind my memories of her skipping, light on her toes, and for some reason I felt light too, like my feet were barely touching the ground.
It had taken several minutes for his words to fully sink in, but as they did I laughed.
He turned around and asked, “What?”
“So, bloody zombie death. That’s one of your tests of a relationship?” I asked, realizing too late I’d used the word “relationship.” I held my breath as I watched for signs of freak-out, wondering if I should quickly swap out “friendship” instead, or clarify that I didn’t think this was a relationship.
His eyes widened, and his voice was laced with faux shock as he gasped and said, “You mean it’s not one of yours?”
I exhaled a laugh, relieved that maybe he hadn’t noticed.
“Isn’t a willingness to die a bloody zombie death a little more reliable a test than”—he paused, looking in the distance like he was searching for the rest of his sentence—“a dozen roses?” he finished.
The sound of his laugh was like a tiny volt of electricity zapping my confidence. Something nudged me in the side, like a poke under the ribs. I turned to look, again half expecting to see Mallory right there next to me.
Nudge. Nudge. Nudge.
She nudged at me until I said the words she had carefully lined up on my tongue: “Fine,” I sighed in that playful way she used to do when she wanted to be extra melodramatic. “I’ll take it under consideration.”
“Hey, that’s all I’m saying,” he replied, not missing a beat.
And just like that, this whole thing—the witty banter, the back-and-forth—became so easy, so navigable.
He pointed up ahead. “There it is.”
I could see the sign: PED-X CYCLE SHOP
The scent of incense and candles and lavender wafted out onto the street from a new-age-type store we passed. It snapped me back into the present like a rubber band against my wrist. I recognized those smells from Mallory’s room. They hovered around the building like an invisible fog, the way it used to cling to her clothes and hair, following her wherever she went. We walked by a little storefront gallery that seemed to specialize in seascape paintings and pottery, and then there was the soda shop where Mallory’s ice cream cone had melted, the place where my mom and dad had laughed together.
I slowed down as we passed the window, trying to find the booth where we’d sat as a family. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window, but then as my eyes adjusted to the interior, I saw something in the corner that was familiar, but again, not familiar from my memories.
It was a shiny jukebox, all lit up in neon.
I didn’t remember seeing it there when I was a kid. No, I remembered it from another picture on the wall. I’d had no idea where it was even taken until this moment. I pulled up short and peered through the window with my hands cupped around my eyes. My reflection stood in front of me, and for a split second I swear I thought it was Mallory. I flinched like it was one of those jump-scare movie moments.
Chris stepped up beside me and looked through the glass too, craning his neck to see. “What?” he asked.
“I thought I . . . ,” I began, but by the time I got the words out, my eyes had settled back on my own reflection again. “Nothing. Never mind,” I said, and as I turned back to look at him, I had this overwhelming sense that I was exactly where I was supposed to be—because Mallory was everywhere I turned. She had spent time here, and now I was discovering all of these pieces of her
that she had left behind like a trail of bread crumbs.
When we got to the bike shop, I pulled on the door handle, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Oh shit,” Chris said, pointing to the window.
CLOSED, the handwritten sign said. Then underneath: HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY.
CHRIS
JUST AS WE WERE ABOUT to walk away, a man came to the door and unlocked it. He appeared to be around my dad’s age, a little less gray maybe. He was wearing a polo shirt that said “PED-X CYCLE.”
Pushing the door open, he looked at me and said, “Come on in.”
“You’re not closed?” Maia asked.
“Not if y’all can find what you need in the next five minutes.” He looked at me again and smiled, even though Maia was the one who’d asked the question. “So, what can I help you find today?”
I gestured to Maia, who glanced at the words on her hand and told him, “Both of my tires are flat, so I need to get two new inner tubes. And I need an air pump, too. And bike levers,” she added, sounding so sure of herself, like we hadn’t just sat in the car watching the same videos for the first time.
I watched the man’s face as he listened to her—or rather, didn’t listen to her—and I understood why she suddenly sounded like someone else. He was fidgeting as she spoke, kept opening his mouth like he was about to interrupt her, squinting his eyes hard and scrunching up his face, like she wasn’t making sense, even though she was.
“First thing’s first.” He looked to me. Again. “Do you know what size her tires are?”
I knew this routine well. This guy was a jackass. I’d been treated like this plenty of times.
“Who, me?” I responded. “No.”
“I know my tire size, though,” she replied firmly.
“You know all the numbers that are printed on the sidewall of the tire?” He looked at me again, then back to her, like he’d just challenged her with some sort of a dare rather than an answerable question.
Maia pulled her phone out of her pocket and said, “Yes. I even took a picture.”
She was putting misogynistic bike guy in his place.
I said to her, “Hey, I’ll let you do your thing—I’m gonna look over there.”
She nodded, and when she met my eyes, I felt like we had a silent moment of understanding.
“All right,” he said as I drifted away from them. “Let’s see what you got there.”
I was checking out the cycling apparel, all the Lycra and technological fabrics, and I wondered if I could use something like this for running. As I walked by a floor-length mirror, I couldn’t help myself. I pulled the bottom of my T-shirt down, making sure my chest was smooth and flat. Just then, Maia appeared next to me in my reflection.
“Hey,” she said. “Ready?”
The man locked the door behind us, and we stood there, Maia with her bag of supplies, me hoping she hadn’t caught me checking myself out in the mirror.
“Well,” I said, looking around, “what should we do now?”
Almost like it was an answer to my question, a firework sounded in the distance. We both looked up, searching for the explosion in the sky, but it was still too light to see where it had come from.
She shrugged, and looked around, as I had. “It’ll be getting dark soon,” she began. “I don’t know. Maybe we should just go back?”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” Her voice wavered, though. I suddenly got the feeling I had missed something. “I mean, nothing’s going to be open now anyway, with the holiday and all.”
“We could walk a little farther?” I looked down the road, at the line of shops that seemed to hold so much potential, so much possibility—we were out here living, not asking anyone for permission. I wanted so badly to stay.
There was a definite tension pulling at the space between us, and when I turned back toward her, I recognized something in her expression, in the tone of her voice when she said, “No, I just want to go. I mean, I didn’t even really tell my friends I was leaving.”
I felt like an idiot, the realization hitting me at once. I was a guy. I was just some guy she didn’t really know, in a place that was far away from home, where there weren’t a lot of people around, and it was about to be getting dark, and no one knew where she was or who she was with. Of course I got it.
“Okay, that’s fine. Yeah, let’s go.”
As we walked back to the car, I didn’t know the right thing to say. I had so many different thoughts swirling around in my head. It was a strange feeling—a good but strange feeling—to really be passing. Not as a girl who was really a boy, or a boy who was really a girl, but to be seen as just a boy.
But then I had to remind myself of how boys could be—how men are taught to be. Not just rude and condescending like the shop guy, but how they could turn scary and mean and dangerous. It wasn’t something I could ever really forget about; it was always there in the back of my mind. I had a whole list of scenarios tucked away in my memory of things that had happened, and it was not made up of the really terrible stuff, like what happened that day in the woods. It was filled with smaller things—a particular look a boy gave me while passing in the hallway at school, or some guy walking too close behind me on the street, or a man sitting down next to me on the bus and taking up too much space, letting his thigh knock against mine. All of those seemingly innocuous things men do every day that can be threatening as hell. Meanwhile, they’re completely oblivious.
I would never be that type of man.
Which meant that if Maia said she wanted to leave, the only thing I was supposed to do was take her home. Not try to persuade her to change her mind or make a point or suggestion, however well meaning. The only thing I was supposed to say, immediately, was, Okay, let’s go.
I was starting to understand that there’s also a price that comes with being a boy, one that’s different from being a girl. Maybe the price is more one of a responsibility—to not only be a decent person, like everyone else, and not only to not turn scary or mean or dangerous, but to never forget.
I found myself wondering, as I had once wondered if other girls felt the consequences of their bodies the way I did, if other boys felt consequences too, like the one I was suddenly coming face-to-face with, as I walked down an unfamiliar street with an unfamiliar girl.
When we made it back to the car and started driving, I wished that I could tell her I wasn’t thinking anything about her. Not really, anyway. At least, nothing mean or perverted or dangerous. That I really did just want to hang out. I wanted to know her. I wasn’t looking for anything else, not expecting anything.
Ten minutes had passed before she said, “Who is this?” looking at the radio, as if she just realized music had been playing the entire time.
“I don’t know, it came with the car,” I said, laughing. She drew her eyebrows together, like she was trying to understand what the hell I meant or why it was a joke. “It’s like an actual cassette tape my aunt had in the car. There’s a whole bunch of them in there.” I gestured to the glove box.
She paused and looked around, like she was only just now seeing the car for the first time, realizing it was as old as dirt. She opened the glove box and peered inside.
“Full disclosure,” I began, hoping to lighten the mood. “That’s why I almost hit you that day on the road.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was messing around with the tapes. That’s why I wasn’t paying attention.”
She laughed. “Nice to know I’d have gone out for a good reason. I like it, I think—the music.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. I wanted to say something else, though, about the bike shop guy. I wanted to acknowledge that I realized he was being a douche, to ask if that’s why she wanted to leave, if it bothered her. But I probably already knew those answers.
The sky was darkening. The sun had just set. It was a new moon tonight. The sky was so clear. Too bad the fireworks were about to obliterate it all with their smoke and chemical
s. Venus was rising in the west. I wanted to hear her talk again, hear her voice, so I went with the one subject that was always easy for me to talk about.
“Hey, check out the moon, Maia.”
She looked up through the windshield. “Where?”
“West.”
“Where?” she repeated, this laugh in her voice. “You gotta give me right or left.”
“There.” I pointed to her right. “Can you see it?”
“No. . . ,” she said.
Careful to keep the car centered in the lane, I leaned slightly toward her and looked up, pointing more precisely in the direction I was looking. “See? It’s a new moon, so it’s dark, but with the light right now, you can see the complete outline of it.”
“Oh wow,” she breathed. “Yeah, I see.”
“I love when it’s like that,” I told her.
“That’s really beautiful.”
“Yeah, plus when the moon is dark, it’s easier to see everything else—the stars and planets, I mean.”
“It looks fake,” she mused. “Like a cutout or something someone just stuck up there.”
I liked the way she saw things; I guess it was because she was an artist.
“See that one bright star near the moon, kind of below it and to the right?” I asked her. “You know what that is?”
She squinted at the point of light. “Is that really a star? It’s so bright.”
“No, it’s Venus.”
She smiled as she looked at the sky. “It’s so crazy to think about,” she said, and I waited for her to finish. I counted silently: one, two, three, four.
“What?” I finally asked. “What’s crazy?”
“Just thinking about being on Earth, the way it’s just sitting there in space, in the middle of nothing.”
