Golden

by Jessi Kirby

  “Love you too, Mom.” I give her shoulder an extra squeeze, then leave her at the table with her sales figures, cabernet, and all the things she would have done differently.

  Upstairs in my room I bring my mind back to the day’s adventure and the feeling of freedom that came along with doing something risky. Ditching class is not a big deal to probably 99 percent of people. It was a little thing, deciding to do it. But it felt big at the same time, and between that and what my mom just said, I’ve got this tiny pang of regret when I think of how much I have probably missed out on in the last few years because I was too scared to take a risk, or too shy to speak up, or too worried to be bold. It is my one wild and precious life, after all.

  And Shane and Julianna are proof that it could end at any moment. I know it was silly to go looking for their initials today, and I didn’t really expect to find them, but I wanted to see them, not just read about them. I wanted proof that Shane and Julianna had been there, together and in love from the start. It doesn’t matter that I know how it ends. My favorite part of any love story is the beginning. Like Romeo convincing Juliet to kiss him, a perfect stranger, at the ball. Or Noah climbing up the Ferris wheel to ask Allie out in The Notebook. Beginnings are magical.

  And in books and movies they’re magical in a way real life never is. So for the third night in a row, I don’t do what I should. I don’t sit down at my desk and start my speech. Instead, I open the window to let the cool night air in, light my candles, and get Julianna’s journal out.

  May 24

  “One often meets her destiny on the road

  she takes to avoid it.”

  —Fortune cookie wisdom

  It’s such a tiny thing, a glance. That half second when eyes meet, lock, and before you can look away, there’s something. A spark, a flash, I don’t know what to call it. But it happened tonight when I walked through Shane’s front door and into the party he wasn’t supposed to be throwing. The usual mix of people from school and workers from the mountain filled all three floors of his house, but I saw someone new right away, standing alone in the middle of them all. He was tall, with wavy brown hair and eyes that stopped mine and held them there in the middle of a sea of familiar faces and shifting glances. And it was there. A pull, like gravity.

  I looked away, and before I could look back, Shane was stumbling over to me in full life-of-the-party mode, beyond drunk and already apologizing for inviting half the town over when it was supposed to be just the two of us. And that’s when it happened again, right over his shoulder, and for a second I lost what he was saying to me in the space between the unfamiliar brown eyes across the room and my own. And then they looked away again. And I was back.

  Back to Shane’s apologies and back to being disappointed because the night wasn’t what I expected and I knew how it would go from there. He would drink more, talk louder, make jokes, and everyone would love it but me. I didn’t say much, which only made him apologize more. Beg me to stay. Pull me in close, slide a hand around my waist, and kiss me with a mouth that tasted like beer and pot. And all of a sudden, I was done.

  “Why do you want me to stay so bad?” I asked. “You have a whole houseful of people here to adore you.”

  “For later. When they’re all gone.” He winked, and tried to kiss me again, but I stepped back. If I’d been as drunk as he was, maybe I would’ve kissed him back, but I spun around to leave right then.

  He caught my wrist, face pleading. “Wait, wait. I’m sorry. That was a joke. It was an asshole thing to say. I’m sorry. Just stay . . . please?”

  I don’t know why I didn’t leave. I wanted to. I probably should’ve. But I didn’t, and now a tiny part of me is glad. Because after I promised I’d stay, and Shane went back to the party, I stepped though the sliding glass door onto the balcony, and the guy with those eyes was out there, elbows leaned against the railing, staring up at the moonless sky.

  It startled me, to see him there, but he just turned to me and smiled. “You know . . . sometimes we meet our destiny on the road we take to avoid it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It was in my fortune cookie today.” He took a step toward me, then motioned at the party inside. At Shane in the center of it. “You looked like you were trying to avoid that whole scene in there, and here I am, and—I’m Orion—your destiny according to the saying.” He offered a paint-speckled hand, which I didn’t take.

  “Fair enough,” he said after a second. “I thought it was a pretty good line, but I guess not.”

  I let myself smile. “It’s only bad if you pair it with a cheesy fake name.”

  “Ouch,” he said, bringing a hand to his chest. “I don’t have a choice about that part.”

  “Your name is really Orion? Like the constellation?”

  “It’s what people call me.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know.”

  “So were your parents hippies, or astronomers?”

  “Maybe a little of both,” he said.

  “Well, it suits you, the name.”

  “Really? How’s that?”

  “Orion was known for being extremely overconfident. Wasn’t he?”

  He smiled like he was impressed. “So the ice princess has a little fire to her. I like that.”

  “What does that mean—‘ice princess’?”

  “Isn’t that who you are? Future wife to the heir of the empire?” He brushed a hand across the sky at the silhouette of the mountain, where the ski runs cut wide white paths through the dark of the trees.

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Or how this guy, who I’d never met, knew me as Shane’s girlfriend. Or why it made something in me tense up that he did.

  “I’m Julianna,” I said finally. “And as far as I know, my future’s not set in stone.”

  “Well—Julianna.” He took a step toward me. In that moment his eyes danced with something I’ve gone back to more times than I can count, because of what he said next. “Maybe the saying is true then. Maybe we were supposed to meet out here on this balcony tonight.”

  I don’t know why I wrote all of this down . . . .

  Actually, that’s a lie. I just lied in my own journal. I wrote it down because it’s three a.m. and it’s all I’ve thought about since I left Shane’s. I wrote it down to remember it, because this night turned out to be beautiful.

  We stayed out there under the stars, trading words like secrets, and I wanted to keep all of his for later. We talked about little things, like how he’d come here and stayed with his uncle for the winter because he wanted to try out a place different from the one he’d been in all his life. I said I wished I could go away too, but to a place tropical and warm, anywhere near an ocean. We talked about small towns and big dreams, about art and beauty and inspiration, and about traveling, and all the places we’d each want to see if we could. We talked like we’d always known each other, and when it finally came time for him to go, it felt like we had.

  And I left too, because I didn’t want to spend the night in Shane’s bed after that. I wanted to come home and be alone, to think about it more. To think about him more. I hope that’s not wrong. It doesn’t seem like it should be, just talking to someone. What does seem wrong though, is that I’ve been lying in bed looking up at the real Orion in the sky, wondering if the one I met on the balcony had someone waiting on him, like Shane with me. I didn’t ask, because if the answer was yes, I didn’t want to know. It’s almost enough to make me hope I never see him again. Almost.

  I close the journal but leave my finger in the space where she left off. All of a sudden this story feels different in a way I don’t expect, and I’m not sure I want that. Shane and Julianna were the golden couple. That’s how everyone remembers them. That’s how I want to keep remembering them. But I can hear a tiny shift in her words. And I can see her standing on the balcony with Orion, the night shining around them with something new and magical. I’ve never been there personally, but I know enough to know that thin
gs like this never end well. Part of me hopes she didn’t ever see him again, and part of me has a nervous feeling that maybe she did. I open the journal again to find out.

  May 26

  I’m restless today and this town feels so small. Shane’s gone, again. He’s off learning to fly his grandpa’s plane, and I’m here, waiting for him to get back, feeling pathetic. Days like these make me realize how much of my life revolves around him, and how little I have that’s just me, or mine alone. Sitting here without him makes me feel totally unmoored—not in a free kind of way, but in a lonely one. The worst thing is, Shane’s never made me feel like I had to give anything up for him. I did that all on my own, from the very beginning, almost without realizing.

  But days like these, I realize a lot of things.

  I don’t have any close friends of my own. No best friend who knows everything about me, a person to call when I need someone besides Shane. After we got together his friends and the girls they dated became my friends, more out of circumstance than anything else. I like them, and I know them now, but I don’t know if we’d be friends without him. It’s like that with so many things. Shane’s the reason for the music I listen to, the places I go, even the clothes I wear. They’re all, in a way, because of him. Because I love him and, for me, that’s always meant loving the things that make up his life. Some people might say that’s how it should be, and others might say it’s wrong. For me it’s just the truth.

  But when Mr. Kinney put that question on the board and gave us these books to answer it, it scared me. Made me think about the things I’ve done in my life so far. My one life. And aside from falling in love with Shane, I’m not sure I’ve done anything wild or precious, which makes me think about the future. We’ve talked about it. Made plans. He’ll go to work for his family as soon as we graduate, and so will I. While he learns everything about running the mountain from his dad and grandfather, I’ll work for one of his aunts—in one of the stores, or in the lodge, or the daycare—something important but not so important that I won’t be able to quit when we get married and have kids, because in the Cruz household, there’s nothing more important than family.

  It’s a future that would be perfect in so many ways, for so many reasons. But lately, if I let myself, I start to wonder if it’d be perfect for me. I keep going back to that quote, and to that night I spent talking with Orion, who was so different and free, he made me feel like I could be too. Like maybe I could do something that is mine alone.

  I would paint, that’s what I would do if I could choose anything.

  I used to, a long time ago, before I came here. I used to love the barely-there weight of a brush in my hand, and the feeling that somewhere inside, I knew how to create something beautiful from nothing but a blank canvas and instinct. Aside from being with Shane, that feeling made me happier than anything else ever has. Like maybe it’s who I really am, or what I’m really supposed to do. Which is why I’ve never told anyone, not even him. It feels too precious almost, to say it aloud. Like it would somehow take the magic away.

  Shane would probably think it was cute if I ever told him. Anyone else would nod and smile at it like you do with a little girl who says she wants to be a singer or a model. But Mr. Kinney said to be idealistic here, so there it is. My big secret, on paper for all eternity. Maybe someday I’ll be brave enough to actually do something about it. I can talk and write and daydream all I want about going places and making art and living a beautiful life, but if I never leave this town, if I just settle into what’s easy and already there, I don’t know if any of it will ever happen. I may read this ten years from now and it’ll just make me sad.

  I don’t know why I’m like this today. Restless is the perfect word for it. I need to get out. Maybe I’ll buy a new sketchbook and get in my car and just drive until I find someplace beautiful and inspiring. Maybe I’ll do that, and in a way, it’ll be like I’m flying too.

  I leave off for a second to reframe the image of Julianna in my mind, because reading this journal is a little like how I imagine it would be watching film develop. Not evenly or all at once, but in fragments and layers. I had no idea that Julianna Farnetti painted, or that the life she and Shane would’ve had together made her feel restless, or unsure. Why would I?

  But I can see it now, and understand it. We all have something we hold close or dream about, something that maybe seems too dear to tell anyone. I have, ever since my dad published his book when I was little. I decided at eight that I wanted to write stories and poems like him. I did, too, in notebook after notebook. And I brought them all to him, and when he’d set everything aside to read my words, I felt that thing she talked about. That pure feeling of happiness at having created something from my own imagination. But then writing became a thing associated with my dad, which meant it was a thing my mother didn’t like anymore. So I stopped. Probably for the same reasons Julianna stopped painting. It didn’t fit into the life she had with a person she loved. I wouldn’t have guessed it, but I understand this part of Julianna.

  There’s something else I think I understand reading her words, even though she probably didn’t when she was writing them. Or maybe she did, but she couldn’t bring herself to write it. But as a perfect stranger reading her words ten years later, I can see clear as day that her restlessness started to grow the night she met Orion.

  12.

  “We make ourselves a place apart,

  Behind light words that tease and flout”

  —“REVELATION,” 1915

  “I need a favor,” I say. And it surprises me how bold it comes out sounding.

  Trevor drops his hand from the dial on his locker and turns around to face me. “Says the girl I pulled out of the mud yesterday. Good morning to you, too.” There’s a smile in his voice, but he’s surprisingly good at keeping a straight face.

  “Sorry, I’m just in a hurry.” I back up a step. “Good morning,” I say, meeting his eyes. “Um . . . any chance you still have the keys to the art supply closet?”

  With this I have his instant undivided attention, and it takes everything in me not to hide behind my locker door like I usually do.

  He steps toward me with a smile. “Maybe. Why?”

  Because I need a place to hide out and read Julianna’s journal this period. “Because I might wanna see it today . . .” I try to channel Kat and sound playful and sexy when I say it, but I’m no good, so I opt for a practical approach instead. “And because I want to go through the old student work and see if any of it belongs to the same kids who wrote the journals I’m working on for Kinney. I thought it’d be cool to send that to them too.” That sounds believable. I think.

  He just looks at me for a second, probably trying to make up his mind whether I’m lying or just lame. I’m not sure which one he settles on, but he seems genuine when he asks, “You need some help?”

  “No, no, no,” I say, trying to sound casual, only it comes out sounding ridiculous instead. “I’d rather be alone. Or, I mean, no. I don’t need help. I just . . . it’s a one-person job.”

  “Hm,” he nods. “Too bad. I thought maybe you finally realized what you’ve been missing out on all these years.” He digs around in his backpack, fishes out the lanyard, and hands it to me. “Here. Have fun. By yourself.” Our fingers brush, just barely, when I take the keys, and I feel a little rush of gratitude and something else I decide to ignore. “Thanks,” I say. “And thanks for yesterday too. I owe you.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” The bell rings and people slog by us, making their way to class, but we stay standing right there. Trevor clears his throat. “So did you want me to show you where it is or something?”

  “Oh—I . . .” I flash back to my art supply closet daydream and feel my cheeks flush. “That’s okay. I think I can find it myself. Down the hall from Kinney’s room, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Perfect.” I pick up the box of journals and turn to go. “Thanks again.”

  Trevor nods and
we go our separate ways, and by the time I make it down the hall I feel a tiny pinprick of regret that I didn’t just pretend I needed help finding it and let him walk me. Although that probably would’ve led to more awkwardness when it came time to open the door and slip inside. I would’ve had to turn him away at that point. I really do need the closet to myself.

  I try and look casual as I wait next to the locked door for the second bell to ring. When I’m sure the hallway is empty, I slide the key in the doorknob, slip into the dark, and close the door quietly behind me. My hand finds the light switch on the wall, and when I flip it, I see I’m in a tiny room that’s not all that different from what I imagined, except I’m alone and not kissing Trevor.