Tonight We Rule the World

by Zack Smedley

  Eventually thunder rumbles and rain rolls through, so the five of us pack up our stuff and cluster under the pavilion. I’m afraid we’re about to disband, but we stay talking for almost another hour. Our conversations are unimportant—stupid stuff like what gives rain its smell or how often our future roommates are going to shower. But I feel the impending goodbye growing with each second, and I think the others do too.

  The thing about goodbyes like this is that they don’t take their toll in an immediate way. No one is dying and no one is disappearing for good. But this moment—the quiet, cataclysmic shift happening here and happening now—is always what marks the beginning of the end. It’s not like you’re going to stop seeing each other; but from here on out, you’ll see each other a little less, bit by tiny bit. It’s scary how subtle it is. Slow and soundless. Then one day years from now, it’ll dawn on you that those people have found their way out of your life for good, and you’ll realize how right you were to be sad on that rainy day under the pavilion in the first place.

  “Alright, guys,” Vic eventually says. She looks us over. “I’ve got to head back.”

  “Same,” says Austin, wiping the fog off his glasses.

  It’s the same exchange we’ve had a hundred times before, but this one has a different ending.

  “Wait,” I say, scrambling to my feet. “Beth, what classes are you taking again?”

  She gives me a sad little smirk—she knows what I’m doing. “You already asked me that.”

  “Wait!” I repeat, more urgently. But Beth just steps toward me, takes me by the shoulders, and looks me right in the eyes.

  “Owen,” she says … gently, but with a tough-love edge. “Hey. It’s time.”

  “No it’s not.” I grimace like I’m joking, but my throat is closing up.

  “Yes it is. Come here—yes it is. Come here.”

  I start to cry as she hugs me. Then Austin, who promises he’ll visit. And all the while, I look over to the spot where we had our first bonfire. There we are. The five of us laughing, bantering, and me … me, I know with everything I am that things are happening—that this is exciting, and new, and the start of something that will scoop up my whole heart. And little-me might be barely fourteen, but he already knows to fear the day when that goodbye comes. Because when it does, no matter how much you’ve braced for it, you still find yourself in frantic search of a loophole—the same way you try to stay asleep in a blissful dream when you know you’re waking up. The moment always comes when you open your eyes and you’re grabbing onto your sheets just like you knew you would be, because no matter how hard you try or how much you want it, this system can’t be hacked. This is here, this is happening, and it’s time. Listen, now, because it’s important to understand: It’s time.

  Vic’s hug is the last and longest. As we hold each other, she says into my shoulder, “Remember our talk, yeah? People will show up for you.”

  And I fill up with so many things I can’t tell the group because I don’t want to make it weird—things like, “Thank you for being nice to me when you didn’t need to.” “Thank you for that night at senior week.” “Thank you for my life and every day you were in it.” So instead I dig out three copies of a goodbye letter I wrote them last night and tell them to read it later. And as they promise they will, all I add is, “I’m never going to meet people like you again.”

  Lily puts her arm around me as all the others swap hugs too, and they say all the standard goodbye phrases like “we’ll video chat all the time” and “see you at Thanksgiving.” We’re at the ugliest part now—the part where we’ve said all we need to say, wringing every meaning we can out of this separation. Everything we came to do here is done, and all that’s left is to let go of that too.

  And then it’s finished, just like that. Like all those countless nights that the five of us said, “Alright … ‘night, guys!” and walked our separate ways back home. Austin Lambert, Vic Parmar, and Beth Lieberman all shout, “Bye!” and “Later!” and squeal as they run off into the rain.

  And I’m about to turn away when suddenly I yell, “WAIT!” and chase after them, gesturing for Lily to follow. They halt in their tracks and Austin is in the middle of saying, “Dude, I really need to run—” when I pull out my phone and ask for a picture.

  “Move in a little closer—that’s good,” I say, and I snap the picture of the four of them standing by the playground, arms around each other.

  “Wait, dude, you’re not in it!” Beth says.

  “I don’t need to be,” I remind her.

  TWENTY-TWO

  LILY OFFERS TO WALK ME HOME FROM THE PAVILION. It’s dark outside and I’d prefer to be alone, but I tell her yes because I can tell she wants to.

  Now’s your perfect chance. Just do it, dude.

  I practice the words in my head: “I want to break up.” But my mouth doesn’t match it.

  Do it before you get to the house.

  “So—” I start.

  “Oh, before I forget.” Lily pats my arm with two fingers. “Can you gerbil-sit for two weeks in August? Like a month from now.”

  “Huh?”

  “Dad and I are planning a trip to my grandparents’ place in Milwaukee—our last family time before I leave for college and stuff. So I was just wondering if you could, you know. Sit on my gerbils.”

  Shit. How am I supposed to answer? Say no and raise suspicion, or say yes and then break up immediately after?

  “You can do it, right? Please?”

  “Sure,” I blurt out. Shit.

  We’re at my house.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “I’m fine,” I lie. “I just want to be alone.” “It doesn’t look like it.” She grips my arm. “I’m not leaving you alone like this. Why don’t we do something?” I don’t want to do something right now. “No thanks.”

  “Come on—we’re doing it.”

  IwanttobreakupIwanttobreakupI—

  I head around the side of my house.

  She calls after me as she follows, clearly confused. I keep walking, slowly even though we’re getting wet in the rain. I navigate around the piles of debris in the yard and lift our garage door open. I step into the structure that was once the Studio—open and empty, except for a few bags of trash.

  “Whoa,” says Lily. “What the hell?”

  No more drywall—bare studs. No more linoleum floors—just the grimy, cracked concrete. All the pretty topcoats scraped away to expose the rot underneath.

  So much destroyed.

  I slap my own arm, listening to the echo.

  “Can I ask you something?” I say. “And I promise I’m not trying to be a dick. I really want to know this.” She raises an eyebrow. “Okay?” “Why do you do this?” “Do what?”

  I shake my head. “You listen to me sit here day after day, and I ask you to take no for an answer, and you don’t. I explained why it’s important to me; I think you know that, so … what goes through your head when I ask you to stop doing something?”

  I don’t want to discuss this. I don’t want to have this same fight again and get shoveled the same bullshit and—

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she says.

  “I’m not trying to yell at you, or blame you, or whatever, I just …” I rub my palms together, trying to start a fire between my wrists. “I’m asking. I’m trying to figure out how you think.”

  “I don’t need a lecture right now, dude.”

  “It’s not a—” I pull at my bracelet. “I’m not trying to lecture you; I want to know. I just want to know.”

  “What are you trying to say right now?”

  “I’m not trying to say anything! Shit!”

  “Can you not yell at me? Can you manage that and not be a fucking child?”

  I try to open my mouth and unleash verbal fury; to tell her that I’m not yelling, I’m not lecturing, I’m not implying, I’m not stating, I’m not accusing, I’m not attacking, I just, JUST am asking because I want to k
now; that’s all, that’s it. I want to know because I’m sick of having to defend goddamn reality. But as I open my mouth, I look at her and I think about all the words boiling inside me, how they’re just new versions of all the same things I’ve said to her a hundred times, how no one who couldn’t understand me before would suddenly understand me if I said it just one more time, and all that ends up coming out is a tiny tight-lipped whimper, and I fall back against the bare wall, poised in grim acceptance that this is how things are.

  (This is how things are.)

  Then I say, “I think you don’t want to stop, and I think you knew what you were doing.”

  “Wh—God. Wait.”

  “Sure.”

  “What do you mean, I knew what I was doing?”

  “I think you knew it was wrong. While you were doing it, I think you knew it was wrong.”

  “Are we talking about what I think we’re talking about? Again?”

  “You said it was complicated, but how, how could it be complicated? It couldn’t, right? Because it—”

  “Jesus Christ—”

  “—it shouldn’t be complicated; if someone is doing something like that, you tell them ‘please stop; you are hurting me,’ and if they care, they’ll stop; but you didn’t, because you don’t.”

  “Oh—yeah, okay.” Lily grabs her own head in the darkness. “And you don’t think there’s any chance it could be more complicated than that, no? Just … you’ve got it all figured out, done?”

  I feel so stupid for how I started this. The way I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, to make an earnest attempt to understand her. Because every time it happens, it’s like seawater for thirst—all you want is some relief, but each time, it just makes you sicker and leaves you worse off.

  “Nothing I’m saying is unreasonable,” I say, softly. “Stop treating it like it is.”

  “You want to know what I think—”

  “Not really.”

  “—I think the problem is on your end. I love you, but pretty much anything gets you worked up, and this is why—let me finish, please—see, this is why I keep suggesting you look into stuff like exposure therapy, because it can help you to stop getting hung up on things that aren’t worth getting hung up over.”

  “You never, ever fail to somehow take the astoundingly low bar I’ve set and find a way to curb stomp it.”

  “I’m not saying your feelings aren’t valid; but clearly you’re upset about that night at Lanham and I think you could be a lot happier if you worked harder to—”

  “Stop.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop bullshitting me. Please.” “Stop bullshitting you?”

  “Please.”

  “Wh—O—”

  “You do this all the time.” I come off the wall, stepping toward her. “You say things that sound like they’re supposed to help me, but really are to get you off the hook. There’s nothing we can discuss that’s going to make me okay with the night at Lanham. I think we need to break up.”

  “That’s rich.” Lily scoffs. “You lecture me about not giving you a choice, and now you want to just make a unilateral decision that affects both of us, with no input from me. Not everything can be your way, O—that’s not how a relationship works.”

  “Fuck this.” I turn away from her. “I want you to leave.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. Go home and yell all this shit into a brown paper bag—it’ll do as much good then as it is now.” “I want to talk about this.”

  “No you don’t. You want to explain to me why I shouldn’t be feeling the things I feel, so you can justify why you haven’t done anything wrong.” I draw strength off my own voice, my conviction. “I don’t owe you a conversation anytime you want to have one.”

  “I think you do.”

  “That crushes me.”

  “Fuck off with your sarcasm.”

  “Goodbye.”

  “Hey!” Lily steps toward me. “I am not leaving.”

  “I’m asking you to.”

  “That crushes me.”

  Don’t let up now; no, keep going, keep going!

  I work my mouth, trying to use my momentum to load the next round into the chamber. But nothing comes out, because I’m just so, so sick of all this. The feeling of groveling for goodwill that isn’t there and never will be. Then you recharge just enough to think you’re ready to go again, and it knocks you down just as it did before. Oh, the hoops you’ll jump through for the slightest bit of deference toward you. And they know it. It’s a whole delicious dance for them wrapped and tied with a fucked-up bow. God, why does it need to be this way? I spend half the time agreeing with my own actions, and the other half wanting to throw last week’s version of myself down a flight of stairs and yell, “You goddamn idiot! Of COURSE it wasn’t going to change!”

  For the first time since the conversation started, I try to make out Lily’s expression in the darkness. I’ll say this: She looks exhausted. Almost as drained as I feel. There we stand, the two of us, the rain cutting through the wind to my right. To the left—stillness and silence and dead air.

  And I say, softly but without hesitation, “I want us to stop doing this.”

  “Doing what?”

  I don’t blink. Simply, “This.”

  “Yeah, can you be a little more specific? I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Wh—no, I don’t. O—”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” “I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do.” I keep my voice level. “You know exactly why I’m upset; you know exactly what I mean right now, and I’m telling you I don’t want to do any of this anymore. I don’t want to keep doing this same goddamn routine where I try to talk to you about a problem, you find a way to throw it back at me, then promise it’ll stop, and I fall for it. I don’t know what you call this—this fucking cycle. I don’t know if there’s a word for it. But I’m calling it this. And I want us to stop doing this.”

  She blinks at me, bleary-eyed.

  “There is a word for it, O; it’s called a relationship.”

  “It’s not. But I think you know that too.” I take a deep breath. “I think you know a lot of things.”

  I’m not sure how to describe the war on her face. It’s not that her expression dims, exactly … it’s more like a tight realization, tinged with relief. Like a bank robber who sees the police sirens in the window. Someone who’s run out of rope and is at least a little bit relieved to stop running.

  Then: reload.

  “So, just to be clear,” Lily says in a harder voice, “you think that everything I say is bullshit.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” I say.

  “In other words, I just have to deal with whatever accusation you make of me. I have no options.”

  “Acknowledge it or don’t. You have two options.” “Well in that case, we shouldn’t be in a relationship.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay? That’s what you have to say?”

  Yeah—for once, it is. And God, it feels good.

  “So, what I’m hearing is you don’t care at all about us,” she spits.

  “Okay.”

  “Any of it. Not about me, or my feelings, or anything you may have done to cause it. All that—right out the window. Just gone. You don’t care about anything you personally may have done to hurt someone you’re supposed to love. That’s pretty messed up, don’t you think? That’s what you’re saying right now. You’re saying that you don’t care if you hurt other people. Am I wrong? Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s what I’m getting from this.”

  “Okay.”

  “I just want to get that on record.”

  “Okay.”

  “Say something else! Christ!” She shuffles toward me, both arms outreached like she’s coming to wring my neck. I stare at a tree in the distance, a silhouette shivering in the storm. She starts hitting me in the arms, then in t
he chest.

  I let my eyes go out of focus and keep them there.

  She grabs my shoulders, digging her nails in. I bite down on my lip to keep a noise from slipping out.

  “O,” she says, her voice wobbling, “you’re making a mistake.”

  I say, “Fine.”

  “What?”

  “Fine—maybe I am. Maybe in ten years I’ll be sitting in some bar remembering this and I’ll think, You idiot, you threw away a perfectly healthy relationship because you’re a dumbass.” I size her up. “Only I don’t think that’s what I’ll be thinking in some bar ten years from now. I think I’ll be thinking, Holy shit, why did I put up with that and how the hell did I do it for so long?”

  “You need me. Do you remember what it was like before you met me? You were fucking helpless.”

  I don’t answer. She’s found my weakest spot.

  “One more chance.” She’s panicking now. “O, I’m sorry for everything, but please. Things will be different, I swear.”

  I feel her words worming their way into my head.

  This is the narrative, isn’t it? Man, if only you’d given things ONE more chance, this would’ve been the time it shaped up! But that was the narrative six chances ago. There will always be a “one more time,” but there won’t ever be a change. So now I’m the asshole for pulling the plug on things.

  “I don’t think I’m wrong about this,” I tell her. “But if I am, I still don’t care.”

  Lily lowers her arms.

  Instead of answering, she walks over to the center of the room. Lays down under the skylight. At first I hear a noise that I think is the wind, but then I realize it’s her—panting for air, hyperventilating.

  I kneel down next to her. She’s trembling. I ask what’s wrong, and she stammers, “Panic attack,” and next thing I know, I’m holding her and we’re rocking back and forth and I’m whispering that it’ll be okay the same way she’s done for me before.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmur in her ear.

  Idiot.

  “Forget what I said. We’ll figure it out later,” I say.

  Fool.

  Lily stops shaking and rolls over onto her back, wiping her eyes.

  I lie beside her under the ethereal glow of the moon—our fingers almost touching but not quite; our free arms lodged under our necks. I watch the rain eat at the glass pane above us, imagining it bursting and flooding the whole room. The two of us suspended in all the weight of the water. I play Brian Eno’s “Ascent” in my head … the song I was listening to when Lily’s hand touched mine for the first time.