The Paper Shepherd

by Olivia Landis

  “Are you doing this to make Michelle jealous?” she asked.

  “No,” Max said honestly. That was the furthest thought from his mind.

  “Are you doing this to get back at Tiar for something?” she asked frankly. Max laughed, trying hard to make it seem genuine. She won’t care.... that’s the problem, he thought.

  “Get back at her?” he said incredulously. “Why would I want to get back at her? Anyway, Tiar and I were just friends. We were never dating.”

  Sarah squinted at him, trying to assess the situation. In truth, it wouldn’t have mattered to her either way. She had just broken off a brief romance with a senior at the public school across town and had no desire to go to prom alone. Finally, she shrugged.

  “Whatever. Pick me up at eight.”

  Prom came and went. Jen, not thinking it was cool anymore to “go stag”, went to Prom with Prentice Jackson who got drunk and vomited in the limo ruining Jen’s dress. Michelle, Dana, and Tiar dropped in briefly and then camped out in Tiar’s uncle’s pool house and watched movies all night. The next Monday, Michelle saw Sarah sitting alone at lunch and sat down across from her.

  “How was the dance?” she asked.

  “Fine,” Sarah answered. “Max is such a gentleman. The whole thing was like out of the ‘50’s. I thought I had walked into an episode of Leave it to Beaver.” Michelle laughed.

  “More like the 1850’s. Like, you have to ask someone’s father’s permission to marry them before you can walk them home from school.”

  “I’ve never been on a date with someone before where they seemed to be trying so hard to like me,” Sarah continued. “But there was like no chemistry there at all. And, when he kissed me...”

  “Max Franklin kissed you?” Michelle interrupted, shocked.

  “Yeah,” Sarah replied. “From what I heard, you did way more then that.”

  “No, we didn’t,” Michelle said quietly. As she recalled, this omission wasn’t from her lack of trying. After three weeks together, he still looked nervous holding her hand. “I made up those rumors myself,” she admitted.

  “But, why?” Sarah asked. Michelle shrugged. “Well,” Sarah said tossing her blond hair carelessly away from her face. “Maybe I’m his type.” Michelle wasn’t convinced this sudden advance in Maxwell’s social experimentation was due to his preferring tall blondes. Something had definitely changed since December. She recalled the conversation she had with him in front of the counselor’s office and wondered if she had anything to do with it. At the time, she was just venting her frustration over Max’s blindness to her advances. He seemed to take the discussion far more seriously than she had intended. Michelle decided not to share this possibility with Sarah, who seemed quite proud of herself.

  “But, anyway, go on,” Michelle prompted.

  “Well, I was just going to say, when he kissed me, it was like kissing my brother or something. Well, no, not exactly. My brother doesn’t want to kiss me. I think Max did, but it just wasn’t what he expected. You don’t think he’s...” Sarah hesitated. “You know.” Michelle shook her head. She had kept Max’s secret from Tiar. She had intended never to tell anyone what he had shared. However, Sarah was her friend, too. It wasn’t fair to keep her in the dark now that she was tangled up in the story, too.

  “No,” she replied simply. “He’s not gay, if that’s what you mean. He’s just… old fashion.”

  “No one is that old fashion.” Michelle looked around the room making sure no one was in earshot.

  “He’s in love,” she whispered, pointing with a subtle head movement toward Tiar, who was still in line.

  “Duh. So, why doesn’t he just tell her?” Sarah asked.

  “I don’t know,” Michelle said with exasperation. “Because he’s Max.”

  It was cold for late August. The three weeks between Prom and summer vacation passed uneventfully. Tiar worked as many hours as she could at the animal shelter. When she wasn’t there, she hung out with Jen at the park. The summer dragged on much too slowly. Somehow Tiar had made it nearly to the end and school would start the following week. She would welcome the distraction. Jen had decided to throw one last summer party out at the lake house. Without Max to drive her, Tiar rode out with Jen but quickly disappeared. The party was far more calm than usual, with half their older compliment of guests already heading out to college. Some of the remainder were still on vacation with their families. They would soon return for school and bring with them the season’s first frost.

  Sarah pulled a throw from the family room around her shoulders as she went out to the patio to smoke. Matt Ryder was already out there nearing the end of his cigarette. Matt lit Sarah’s cigarette and then another for himself. They gazed out beyond the back yard to the reflection of the moon on the calm lake.

  “Isn’t that Ti?” Sarah asked, seeing a lone figure lying where the grass met the sand. “I better see if she’s okay.” Sarah’s motivation was more curiosity than true concern. She could think of few things she would leave a warm living room for other than nicotine and she knew Tiar didn’t smoke. She picked her way in the dark over tree roots and garden tools to where Tiar was lying on her back with her arms folder under her head.“Whatcha doing, Ti?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, no use catching pneumonia doing nothing,” Sarah said sitting next to her. Tiar sat up and Sarah spread the blanket around her shoulders. Behind them, a roar of laughter emanated from the house.

  “What’s up in there?” Tiar asked.

  “Spin the bottle.” Tiar shook her head slowly.

  “I never understood the point of that game.” Sarah laughed as Tiar continued. “I mean, what’s the point in kissing people you don’t care about?” Sarah shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” Sarah admitted, giving Tiar a small squeeze on the arm. “I never thought about it. You don’t think making out has its own allure?” Tiar looked off into the tree line away from Sarah.

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said softly.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve never kissed anyone, Ti,” Sarah said in disbelief. Tiar didn’t respond. “No one, ever?” Silence. “Not even Max? Come on, even I kissed Max.”

  “Max and I are... were just friends,” Tiar said finally.

  “Yeah, that’s what he said, but I didn’t believe him either.” After a moment, Sarah turned her torso back toward the house. “Hey, Matt,” she said. He crushed his cigarette out under his foot and walked toward them, sitting down next to Tiar. “Ti needs a kiss,” Sarah explained.

  “No, it’s really okay,” Tiar protested.

  “It’s nothing,” Matt said casually. He grabbed the back of Tiar’s head and kissed her on the lips. Smoke seemed to cling to his face, rushing at her when he exhaled. Tiar resisted his attempts to force her lips open and pulled away. She tried hard to suppress her desire to cough or gag.

  “Thank you,” she said, straining to sound polite.

  “You want to try...”

  “No, it’s not necessary,” Tiar interrupted. Matt shrugged.

  “Whatever,” he said, and walked back to the house. When he was out of sight, Tiar stuck her finger down her throat.

  “Ick,” she said dramatically. Sarah laughed and Tiar smiled at her despite herself. They lay down in the grass, the blanket wrapped around them not saying anything for a long time. Then Tiar freed her arm from the blanket and pointed up to the sky.

  “That’s the big dipper,” she said. “That’s Cassiopeia, and that is the giant clam.” Sarah giggled.

  “I don’t remember the giant clam from Greek mythology,” she said.

  “Yeah, Max made that one up,” Tiar said, sadness obvious in her voice.

  “You okay, Ti?” Sarah asked. Crashing waves on the beach filled the overly long pause.

  “Yeah,” Tiar said, her voice small. “I was just thinking of this time… I was eleven and my uncle was having a party. He invited over a bunch of doctor friends from medical school. One of them
thought it would be really funny to spike all my drinks. I kept thinking the food was making me feel sick so I should drink more ginger ale to settle my stomach. So, I drank more and more and got sicker and sicker. What did I know?” She sniffled. “Max stayed with me while I threw up. He wouldn’t leave my side.” Tiar paused for a while. “I was so afraid if my uncle found out I was drunk, he would send me back to Jordan. Max took me to his house. But, I didn’t want the Franklins to see me like that and think I was a bad kid. So, Max told them we were going to camp out in the back yard. He pitched a tent and made a fire and everything.

  “I eventually stopped throwing up, but every time I closed my eyes or sat up, everything would start spinning again. All I could do was lie there, looking at the stars. So, Max started making up constellations to keep me entertained until I fell asleep. It became a regular game for us for like the next four years.”

  “Wow,” Sarah said. “All that time, we thought you guys were making out back there.”

  “Oh, goodness,” Tiar said, embarrassed. “I don’t think Max even realizes I’m a girl. Or if he does, he thinks of me as his annoying little sister.”

  “I don’t think so,” Sarah said. “When we were at the prom, he spent the whole night looking for you. Michelle said the same thing about homecoming.”

  “Whatever,” Tiar said. “It doesn’t matter now. He hates me.” Although Sarah had started out the conversation relatively uninterested, she was moved by Tiar’s story. It was too pitiful to let Tiar watch her whole world crumble and not try to help.

  “Ti,” Sarah asked after a respectful silence. “What ever happened between the two of you. Did you two have a fight?” Tiar cleared her throat.

  “I don’t really know,” she began. “We were in England. Everything was going really well. At least I thought it was.” She was quiet for a while, considering how to proceed. “Max had been acting kinda weird for a few months. But, on the trip, I thought he was having a really great time. Then, the last night we were there, he asked me what college he should go to. I told him the best college he could get into. After that, he barely spoke to me.” Sarah propped herself up on one elbow.

  “You’re sure he didn’t say anything else?” she asked, suspiciously.

  “Um... yeah, he said something like ‘is there any reason I shouldn’t go to St. Andrews,’” Tiar remembered with some reluctance. “I said ‘no’. I said he had to go to the best school he could.” Sarah felt genuine pity for Tiar. They had never been much more than acquaintances and team mates. Recently, even that relationship was strained when Tiar was one of only two sophomore girls to get bumped to the varsity basketball team postseason. It was just the last straw of many. This immigrant orphan who never bought a stitch of clothing was always considered the cutest and best dressed. She bought only junk food everyday for lunch but had a perfect body and skin. She never held a basketball until she was twelve but succeeded effortlessly at sports just like everything else in life. Now suddenly Sarah saw how tenuous a spider web Tiar’s life really was. She felt compelled, if she could not protect Tiar as Max had, to at least explain why Max had disappeared.

  “Ti,” she said delicately. “He wanted you to tell him not to go.”

  “What good would that do?” Tiar asked. “He would go to St. Andrew’s anyway.”

  “That’s not what’s important,” Sarah said. “He needed to know how important he is to you. Don’t you see that?”

  “But, he knows that,” Tiar protested.

  “You need to tell him, Ti,” Sarah insisted.

  “It’s too late,” Tiar said. “He’s leaving for school tomorrow. And, I have to go with my uncle to his lawyer for some… stupid thing.”

  “All the more reason you need to tell him now.”

  Tiar stood in the alley under Max’s window watching as his head flashed past the screen. She fondly remembered standing in that same spot listening to him practice for choir, his sweet tenor voice drifting down toward her like the feather of an exquisite bird. Then he started dating Michelle. He hadn’t sung in front of her since. She left the alley and slowly walked up the familiar front steps, letting herself in the house.

  She walked silently up the stairs, her head hanging low, eyes following the old carpet runner, as she searched for the right words to say to this young man, who, but for the right words, might walk out of her life forever. Mourning? Max wondered. Her feet spoke of pain and loss. These feet delivered a 10-year-old celebrating her first birthday without her parents. They were the harbinger of her first big fight with Jen in fifth grade. They prophesized her first bad report card grade. But this was so much deeper. This was more loss than all of those combined. Mourning? Max concluded again. It must be a lie. Very good acting, Ms. Alfred. Max’s eyes flashed up briefly. He quickly turned his face away lest his eyes or mouth betray the slightest interest in her presence. He coolly pushed the sweater in his hands into an already too full suitcase on the bed.

  “Need any help?” Tiar asked, her voice seeming small in the high ceiling of the room.

  “No,” he said calmly, his back still to her. He searched for a voice that would express nothing—neither warmth, nor anger. For, to express anger would mean that he cared enough about her to be angry, that he felt some loss on her account. The room remained nearly silent save for the soft flap of fabric of Max carefully folding the last of his clothes. Tiar stared at his back, wishing she could bore holes into it with her eyes and could make him feel the pain in her heart.

  “Did you really think I wouldn’t miss you?” she said, finally, summoning up all her will not to let her voice falter. “Did you really think that I would go on with my life without my best friend, as though nothing was wrong?”

  “You sure have been acting like it,” he said, trying, and failing, to sound matter-of-fact as he dropped a box of black ball point pens into a crate.

  “And what am I supposed to act like?” she asked, pointedly. “Would you prefer that I make you feel guilty for getting into a good university? Would you prefer I ask you to give up your dreams to prove your loyalty to a sixteen-year-old girl back home? That’s nonsense Max, and you know it. This isn’t like deciding what movie to go to on a Saturday night, this is college. It’s your future. Why do I care more about your future than you do?” But there is no future, Max thought to himself. Just now. Just a now you don’t want me in. And a tomorrow you don’t want to share. He didn’t turn toward her, standing still with his back to her as she continued.

  “I don’t want you to go. Don’t go. But, you have to go. If our friendship can’t survive you going away to college, it isn’t worth you giving up your education for.” She swallowed hard. She was about to go out on a limb, to trust Sarah’s advice and suggest something she feared to share. “But if we’re supposed to be together, Max… If you and I were meant to be together,” she said, barely above a whisper. “You’ll come back… and I’ll be waiting.”

  Max suddenly experienced his entire being as bitter and acidic, as though his soul, his thoughts, his personality, his whole self was a bad taste he had to swallow. Stupid, arrogant fool, he thought to himself. What am I doing? What am I trying to prove? He had guaranteed that which he feared most—life without her. He pushed her away cruelly, to punish her? He wondered. And what happens now? If he had misjudged her, if he had guessed wrong and he should have trusted her back in London… if he should have kissed her then and changed his whole vision of his life to orbit around her, then could he still do that now? Had his miscalculation actually changed that which he was trying to measure, and changed her feelings for him? And how can I measure that? He felt deep shame for his loss of faith in Tiar months ago and for the cold shoulder he had shown her since. But what about now? he couldn’t answer. Is she here to make amends, or say “I told you so”? He slowly closed the distance between them, his eyes conveying a deeper apology then any words could. He tentatively put his hands on her shoulders and stared deep into her eyes. They were so beautiful and de
ep and green. But so confusing. She wasn’t lying. Of that, he now felt certain. But what is she not lying about? He didn’t know what she wanted to say. He didn’t know what she wanted. But he knew what he wanted. He let go of her shoulders and enfolded her in his arms, burying her face in his chest.

  “I’m so sorry, Little Bird,” he said softly into her soft chestnut hair. “I wasted so much time being angry at you… angry and hurt. I was stupid. I’m so sorry,” he whispered. He felt her warm breath penetrate his polo shirt.

  “Just do well,” she said. “Promise me you’ll do well, and then it will be worth it for us to be apart.”

  “I promise,” he said, stroking the back of her head. She tilted her face toward his, their foreheads almost touching. “I’ll go. I’ll learn everything they can teach me and I’ll come back.” Tiar nodded. He could feel her lips almost brush his as she started to smile. He felt like he needed to keep talking as an excuse to keep her there. “And the next time we go traveling, I’ll have even more to teach you.”

  Max’s babbling was accompanied by the low purr of an engine as a shiny black Mercedes pulled up in front of the house and idled. It had not even stopped when it issued two short beeps. Tiar closed her eyes in resignation.

  “I have to go, Max,” she said flatly.

  “I know,” he said. “I love you.” Neither Max nor Tiar could be sure if he moved toward her or if she moved toward him. Possibly, as his lips protruded to make the word “you”, they merely occupied the sliver of emptiness between the them. Regardless of the cause, their lips touched ever so briefly… accompanied by a loud, sustained honking.

  In a swirl of dark brown hair, Tiar twisted out of Max’s grasp and dashed for the stairs. She hesitated at the top landing, looking back at him.

  “I…” she began. She didn’t finish. Another deafening honk would have drowned her out anyway. Just like that, she disappeared. Max could not even make it to the window before he heard a car door slam and the gentle hum of the car’s engine announced that the distance between them was already growing.