by Zack Smedley
I was already dreading the moment when I’d have to wrap this up and go home. It was an odd feeling—knowing that an hour from now, I’d be wishing I could have one more hour like this. It made me want to reach out a hand for my future self to take, to grab onto me so I could pull him back here like I knew he’d want me to later. Everything was just so giddy: Austin finally noticing the labels on his back, and me being able to laugh and high-five with the others because I was in on the joke. Lily repeatedly asking me how I was doing, and me telling her I was great even though my face and hands were frozen. All this electric air. The five of us chatting, bantering, swapping looks. The invisible cities that lived inside us were all lit up, shining side by side in that little patch of woods. And all the while, I just stared at the flames and thought one thing over and over: I can’t believe I’m here.
“I meant to ask, how’d you meet Lily?” Austin said to me, when he noticed I hadn’t spoken up for a while.
We’re not dating, I said. Then I realized, half a second too late, that he hadn’t meant the question like that. Luckily Lily came to the rescue, giving a little fake sob and saying, “It’s over?” Which let me pass off the moment with an awkward laugh, even though I was blushing.
“No, he’s my writing friend—I told you this,” Lily said, grinding her shoe over a stray ember.
“Another writer,” Vic said passively.
“He’s really good at screenwriting,” Lily continued, nudging me. “He’s like a super genius with the stories we’ve worked on.”
“Yeah? Like what?” Beth said with a smile.
All eyes swiveled to me, and I squirmed a little.
Then I said, I don’t really know.
“God, Beth, get off his back,” Austin said.
“You know what, make me.” But she turned to me just as quickly and added, “All good.”
“That’s right, dude,” Austin said, giving me a fist bump. He added with a knowing nod, “Owen gets it.”
(I didn’t, but I didn’t correct him.)
We kept it up until the flames became embers, and Vic said she needed to head home. I tugged at Lily’s sleeve. She leaned in and said, “What’s up?” and I asked, Can we get a picture?
“You said a picture? Absolutely. Hey, guys. Picture.” Lily snapped her fingers. They huddled together. As I raised my phone to take it, Lily said, “Dude! You aren’t in it.”
I don’t need to be, I told her.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said, and as I turned my phone around and leaned toward them, Beth said, “Yeah, get in here.” Two different arms yanked me in close, and it wasn’t in the tentative, being-polite way. They pulled me right in, like I’d known them for years.
Lily added me to their group chat so I could send the picture to them. Beth waved her goodbye; Vic told me to subscribe to her gaming live streams; and Austin said, “Don’t do school, eat your drugs, stay in vegetables!” Then the three of them walked back up the road to their respective houses, all calling, “Alright … ’night, guys!”
Lily and I watched them go, then headed back to our street.
“So …” she asked as we walked, her arms swinging to their own beat. “Did you have a good time?”
I worked my mouth a few times. Words came out on the third try.
You have no idea, I told her.
She laughed and said, “Welcome to the group, dude.” Then pointed at me and added, “On Monday, don’t be afraid to sit with us on the bus if you want.”
I’d love that.
She stopped us so she could hold up her phone and take a selfie—just the two of us this time. I looked like someone who just ran ten miles. She was as pretty as always.
“Look at you,” she said.
I did.
Then she propped an elbow up on my shoulder and said, “Look at us.” And I did that too.
I headed straight to my room when I got home. My jeans were caked with mud and dirt; my hoodie smelled like smoke, and my knees ached like I’d walked around for hours.
I collapsed onto my bed with an enormous grin on my face, and I started kicking my limbs. I know that sounds like a stereotypical ASD thing, but it wasn’t even a quirk. I was just so ecstatic that I got to have this life.
Things finally worked out for Owen Turner.
Sincerely,
O
SEVEN
MOM AND DAD HAVE NEVER BEEN SO ECSTATIC TO SEE me pass a test before—that plastic, piss-soaked stick may as well be the goddamn Mensa exam. I can tell none of us want to address the outburst from earlier, so we don’t. They just tell me we’re done here, and I go to hide out in the Studio for the rest of the afternoon.
The Studio is the name for what used to be our standalone garage in the backyard. Up until I was twelve, Dad kept all his tools and construction projects in there. Then I was diagnosed with ASD—aka Autism Spectrum Disorder—and the counselor recommended I have my own space to work without stimuli. Dad pushed back on the idea—(“He’ll learn to deal with it”)—but Mom held her ground.
The next afternoon, he sent a text to our family group chat:
No one is to come to the backyard under ANY circumstances.
For the next ten days, my father was a ghost that lived in the walls of our home. I heard traces of him traveling throughout the house, but I barely saw him in the flesh—every day, he was working in the backyard until my bedtime. Then one night after dinner, he brought me outside to show me that our standalone garage had been converted into a standalone study. He went all out, too: laminate floor tiles, drywall painted my favorite shade of blue, a dimmer switch to accommodate my sensitivity to light, and hand-restored furniture. A work desk. A bookcase in the corner. A couch next to the desk facing a flatscreen on the opposite wall. And a big wooden sign hanging up top, carved in Dad’s own handwriting:
Owen’s Studio
That was the first day I saw him for who he was: Steve Turner, the Builder. But the truth is that my father has been obsessed with building things ever since his medical discharge from the Marines. These days, he spends most of his mornings at junkyards and thrift shops in search of old furniture to restore. His goal is to take old, beat-up junk and make it pristine. “Not a millimeter off,” he always says. If he’s unhappy with something, he keeps working on it. Almost every piece of furniture in our house, and in the Studio, came out of his shop.
Soon that wasn’t enough, so he bought a patch of land up in the Pennsylvania mountains and built an entire cabin on it. Soon that wasn’t enough, so he goes up there a few times every month, disappearing for days. I’ve only ever seen pictures of it—Dad says he goes to his cabin specifically for the solitude. And I go into the Studio for the same reason: to get a breather any time I feel fed up with other people.
Now, for instance.
I have the urge to smoke the last of the weed Austin sold me—something I’ve been using to stay mellow since the Lanham Trip—but I already took my Adderall for the day. So instead I plant myself at my desk and start to zone.
Zoning (that’s what I call it) is what I do when my meds turn my brain into a machine. Once I get absorbed in a task, it’s like I can feel physical gears turning. I have three monitors at my desk—each for a different purpose—and I click between them at the speed of light, dozens of tabs open as I tackle the next five steps of my task at once.
Today, I sit for hours and download all the documentation I can find about school sexual assault investigations. I read old incident reports from the Pennsylvania General Assembly; I dig up summaries of old cases in the state; I even comb through federal memos from the OCR outlining Title IX guidance.
None of it makes me feel better, and all of it makes me feel sick.
I’m in the middle of reading through our school handbook when my phone lights up with a text from an unknown number.
Hi Owen, this is Luke. I’m assuming you know about the report by now … can I come by? I swear I can explain, and I don’t want to do it over text. Please ju
st give me a chance.
I reread it twice, then start mashing out a reply. A two-paragraph essay packed with the most awful shit I can think of; every all-caps insult in the book, profanity that would make Steve Turner cringe; and then, then …
When I’m done, I backspace it all, curse under my breath, and start again:
There’s nothing you can say to make this okay. Don’t explain it, don’t come to my house, and don’t text me again.
I get a reply in less than a minute.
Okay. I’m sorry.
I smack the phone against my palm.
The problem is, I really am itching for answers. None of Luke’s actions make sense, and I’m fixated on finding a way to make them fit together. But I’m so livid over what he did, I can’t stand to hear his bullshit justification about how he’s actually the good guy here.
I’m still staring at his response when the Studio’s garage door springs to life, making me jump. I rush to pocket my phone. All the light from outside spills onto the ground, gradually tracing over the silhouette on the other side of the door. At first I think it’s Dad or Mom, but then I realize the shadow is too short.
It’s her—shit.
Lily ducks her head under the door to let herself in, her bright eyes sweeping the room like a spotlight. When her gaze finds me, it unlocks a grin.
“He lives,” she says, waving her phone at me with a smirk. “Man, you don’t call; you don’t write …”
I check my watch and see that it’s almost 5:00 p.m. My butt hasn’t left the chair for six hours.
“Sorry,” I say. “Not feeling great.”
“I figured when you weren’t at lunch.” She holds up a bag that I see is full of cough drops, antacids, pain relievers, and a box of my favorite coffee. “I have gifts. I wasn’t quite sure what your symptoms were, so.”
Lily always, always, gives me stuff—well, she gives everyone stuff, but I get the brunt of it since I’m her boyfriend. She’s the girl who makes little bags of treats during the holidays and passes them out to all her classmates in the halls. Or I’ll mention over text that I’ve been wanting to see some new movie, so she’ll come over with the movie downloaded and a pack of popcorn.
“Aw, what happened here?” she asks. My blood chills until I realize she’s pointing to my bracelet, still snapped apart and sitting on my desk corner.
“That was my fault. Pulled on it too hard,” I say.
“Aw,” she repeats. “I can fix it if you have a glue gun.”
I can tell she won’t leave until she does, despite the fact that she looks exhausted from the day. So I tell her sure.
Lily is the busiest person I’ve ever met. She takes the job of being class president with extreme seriousness, which means she’s constantly organizing fundraising events or special projects. Her social media pages are packed with pictures of her at charity events. Like the Saturdays she spends volunteering at the local animal shelter, or the time she staged a class-wide walkout after the school refused to hold an LGBT Pride event. And don’t get me wrong, it’s sweet how much of a do-gooder she is. But the job also turned her into a grade-A perfectionist.
“There,” Lily says ten minutes later, sliding my bracelet back onto my wrist. “Good as new.”
She puts her hand over mine, and my skin crawls with the conversations from this morning—everything I’m keeping from her. Everything with Luke. I pull away a little, and she tilts her head.
“You okay?” she asks. She has a blinding smile that could win anyone over, but I’ve had trouble making eye contact with her since the Lanham Trip.
What’s funny is that I actually did try to talk to her about the assault the morning after it happened. Part of the problem is we were on the bus ride back to the school, so I had to be careful how I phrased everything. But I beat around the bush way too much, because she didn’t even understand what I was telling her. From there it snowballed to the point where I couldn’t bring it up organically, so I made myself okay with just dealing with it on my own. Part of that has meant putting on an act around her for the past few weeks … dodging her invites to go on dates and making excuses for why I wasn’t getting hard around her. It was ugly—Lily can’t stand dishonesty—but I was able to keep it confined to my own head.
Now? All bets are off. The school is escalating this into something real, something I’m keeping from Lily. If she finds out I’m involved, there’s no coming back from that curveball. We’d be over—that’s a given. But even scarier is the hand grenade that that would toss on the friend group during our final months together.
Our days as a friend group are already numbered, and a fallout with her would toss a hand grenade on everything. Everyone would have to pick sides, and I’m not confident that anyone would be on mine.
This needs to stay contained, plain and simple. Even if it means I start telling lies here and there.
“Hey, you’re in your planning hoodie,” Lily says, pointing to my jacket—the one I only wear when I’m trying to zone. “What’s up with that?”
“Oh,” I say. “Only thing that was clean.”
“Ah.”
There’s one.
EIGHT
MRS. SONDERGOTH—A SHORT BLACK WOMAN WHO looks no older than thirty—calls me down to the guidance office next Monday morning and introduces herself as our Title IX coordinator. She’s warmer than Principal Graham, but all her talking points are the same.
She tells me that the school is required to question students and chaperones from the trip immediately.
She tells me a report of any findings will be put together in the next month.
She tells me I can give the school permission to forward its info to the police, so I only have to give one statement instead of two.
She tells me I can refuse to give the police anything, but this will tie their hands to take action.
She tells me no one can force me to say anything—the only exception being if the police decided to take things to trial on their own, at which point the state could theoretically subpoena me.
She tells me if I were to name an attacker and they were a minor, they would need to inform that person’s parents, but I would be kept anonymous.
She tells me if I want my schedule changed in order to feel safer at school, they can make that happen.
She tells me the school’s job, and hers, is to eliminate the hostile environment created by this incident.
She tells me that their goal, same as hers, is to help me.
She asks me, several times in several different ways, if I’m willing to tell them who did it.
I say no until she stops asking.
NINE
“YOU SHOULD REALLY SPOT YOURSELF IN THE MIRROR,” Austin advises. He watches me curl with the free weights on my usual bench. “If it’s crooked, you can screw up your wrist.”
“I’m fine,” I mutter between sharp breaths, my arms quaking. I squeeze my eyes shut and focus on the fire running up my biceps. I’m not exactly fun to look at in the mirror, especially while I do this.
It was Beth’s idea for our group to start hitting the neighborhood gym last summer, back when she decided to do track and wanted to get in shape. The “gym” is really just a single room with a few treadmills and free-weights, but it’s right in the neighborhood and always empty. So we don’t complain.
“Did either of you pick up your graduation stuff yet?” Vic calls from her treadmill, pulling out an earbud.
“The gown?” Austin says. “Yeah.”
“What’s it look like?”
“A gown. Want to know what the cap looks like?”
She flips him off. She and Austin have a brother-sister thing going … they like to rib each other, but Vic is a total gamer nerd and Austin loves Pokémon, so they practically live at each other’s houses.
“Hi hi,” comes Beth’s voice as she buzzes herself through the door. “Sorry … forgot my wallet. Owen, you should use a mirror for those.”
Beth’s doub
le-hi greeting has been an inside joke ever since she did it by accident when we met. Her hair is different today—she doesn’t completely dye it anymore, but she still sports a colored streak on the left side. She just got it changed to royal blue, our school color.
“I’m done with these anyway,” I tell her, re-racking the weights. I shake out my hands.
“Just saying.” She climbs onto the treadmill next to Vic’s. “Where’s Lily?”
“She’s got the thing,” Austin says. When Beth raises an eyebrow, I clarify, “Fundraiser.”
“Oh. Has she heard from Lanham … should I ask …?”
I make an ugly noise with a thumbs down. Lanham University released its early decision verdicts back in December—I got in; Lily wound up on the waitlist. It’s a sore subject with her.
“When are they going to let her know?” says Beth.
“Waitlist is usually in May,” Austin points out. “Didn’t she get into another one, though?”
“Hillview. All the students hate it there, though,” Vic says.
“Says who?”
She blinks at him. “The students.”
Even their small exchange tugs a smile out of me. This group, I swear … spending time with these people is like cranking up your favorite song with your windows open. It doesn’t matter what kind of day it’s been, or how little I’m in the mood to do anything with anyone. Breathing the same air as them makes me come alive.
