by Laura Miller
“But you’re my friend, and that’s never gonna change,” she says.
My gaze goes straight back down to those weathered boards. Maybe, subconsciously, I’m looking for my heart down there.
“Eben?”
She’s silent after that, and I know she wants me to look at her.
“Yeah?” I finally ask, lifting my eyes.
“Can we just pretend I never said the boyfriend part? Can we just be us?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Somehow, a small smile finds my face. And at the same time, her expression softens.
“Who is he?”
She lets out a sigh, and then she rests her head on my shoulder. “His name is Aaron.”
Aaron. I try not to roll my eyes, or at least, not let her catch me doing it. I don’t know why it’s worse when they have a name.
“He plays football. And he’s good at it. But he also has a level head, you know?”
I nod, habitually, but I don’t care what kind of head this guy’s got.
“Are you happy?”
She tilts her face and finds my eyes.
“Yeah,” she says, nodding against my shoulder. “I am.”
“Okay.” I take a breath in and then force it out slowly. “Well, it’s getting late. I just wanted to see you with my own eyes.”
“Come back tomorrow night.”
Something makes me hesitate, but I also know, without a doubt, I’ll be back here tomorrow no matter if she’s got six boyfriends.
“Okay,” I say. And then I stand, refit my baseball cap back over my head and make my way back to my truck.
“Eben.”
I turn back toward her.
“You find my star tower yet?”
I chuckle softly to myself.
“Getting close.”
“Good,” she says, smiling her same, sweet, comfortable smile back at me.
Chapter Fifteen
Salem
(Seventeen Years Old)
Day 4,563
I pull up to Vannah’s uncle’s house the very next evening—just like I said I would.
I knock on the door, and after a few moments, Lester’s standing in front of me with the door wide open.
It seems as if each time I see him, he’s getting older and thinner. But still, his hard jaw and easy smile remain unchanged.
“Salem. Come in.”
He turns, and I follow him into the little farmhouse, taking my cap off as I do.
I know Vannah’s Uncle Lester. On top of me always hanging around his office with Vannah when we were growing up, he just interviewed me for the basketball story he ran in the paper last week. But it is a little weird being in his house. It’s as if I’m invading his personal space or something.
The house is small—one floor, maybe only two bedrooms, and not much is on the walls. Stacks of paper fill several corners, and I can’t help but notice the yellow surrounding the landline phone and covering the refrigerator. It’s as if he went to war with a pad of sticky notes, and the sticky notes won. In fact, it looks a lot like his newspaper office—just in house form.
Vannah’s uncle never married. Everybody always said it was because he married his job. He’s owned the only paper in town for as long as I’ve been alive.
“Savannah’s in her room. Says she’ll be out in a minute. Why don’t you go ahead and take a seat.”
“All right.” I look around the living room for a place to sit down. All the surfaces seem to be occupied by paper.
Eventually, though, I find an older, leather chair with just this week’s newspaper lying on it, and I pick up the paper and sit down.
“You know, I remember you and Savannah playing out behind the paper when you were only yea tall.” He holds his hand parallel to the floor, about waist-high.
I lower my head and laugh to myself. “Yeah, I remember that, too.”
He looks at me then, like he wants to say something or he’s waiting for me to say something or something, so I just start talking.
“This is a nice place.”
“Yeah,” he says, looking around. “It suits me. Been in the family for a long time.”
I nod and notice a photo sitting on a table in the corner of the room. It’s of a guy and a girl. The guy looks as if he could be Lester—a young Lester with dark, shaggy hair and black-rimmed glasses. But I don’t recognize the girl.
“Olivia,” he says, catching me off guard.
“Sir?”
“The girl in the photo. It’s Olivia Ryan.”
“Oh,” I say, not really knowing what to say next.
He sighs and walks over to the little table.
“You know how they say we all have that one great love in our lives?”
I’m not sure if he wants me to answer, but he’s awful quiet after that, so I just do.
“I...I guess,” I stutter.
He smiles.
“Well, she was mine.”
And if I didn’t know what to say a minute ago, I sure as hell don’t know what to say now. So, I just watch him as he picks up the frame and touches the photo, like he’s wishing he could bring it to life or something.
“What happened to her?” And maybe I shouldn’t have asked, but it was quiet, and I don’t know what to do with the quiet sometimes.
He sighs and sets the frame back down onto the little table. “She married some guy, moved to Colorado and had two children.”
It doesn’t sound like a sad story. I was bracing myself for something tragic, like a car accident or some illness. Even so, the story sounds sad, coming from him.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“No.” He shakes his head. “My own damn fault. You live. You learn, huh?”
He glances up at me, and I nod, slowly. “I imagine that’s right.”
I watch him then as he walks back over to the chair across from me, picks up a stack of papers and takes a seat.
“You’re wearing a chain,” he says, pointing to my chest.
I look down and notice the key dangling from my neck. I immediately feel embarrassed. I always keep it tucked inside my shirt.
“Yeah,” I say, trying to get it back where it belongs.
“It got any significance?”
He’s nosy, but I guess I probably should have expected that, coming into a newspaper guy’s house.
“Nah. Not really.”
He nods his head and makes a face like he’s satisfied enough with my answer, but I can’t imagine he is.
“Eben.”
Vannah comes into the room, instantly halting our conversation.
I stand up. I don’t know what makes me do it; I just do. And I get a good look at her, although I try to be subtle about it. It’s as if she grew up over night. She looks different somehow. She’s got on painted-on jeans and a black tee shirt tied at her waist. The shirt has a V-necked collar, and she’s wearing a gold necklace that doesn’t end before the shirt begins. I swallow and try not to give away to anybody—especially her uncle—that I’d like to see where that gold chain leads.
“You ready?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say, refitting my cap back over my head.
“Take care of her,” Lester says, holding out his hand.
I meet his with mine. He squeezes my hand harder than his usual handshake, and I can tell he makes sure to look me in the eye, until I feel uncomfortable.
“I will,” I promise him.
“Oh, come on,” Vannah says, grabbing my arm. “We’re just going down the way.”
Vannah drags me to the door and then turns back.
“I’ll be back soon, Uncle Les.”
Lester looks down at the floor briefly and then returns with a smile on his face. “You guys have fun.”
I notice Vannah smile back at him, right before she pulls me out the door.
And once we’re out on the porch, she stops and eyes me up and down.
“You look nice.”
I feel my cheeks growing a little h
ot. “Thanks. You...uh, you look grown up.”
She gives me a sideways smile. It makes me laugh.
“It looks good on you,” I add.
She bites her bottom lip and then takes the few steps down to the stone walk. “Thanks,” she says, turning back toward me.
The edges of my mouth slowly curve up, and after a moment of just standing there, trying to convince myself she’s real and that she’s really here, I follow after her.
“So, what were you guys talking about?”
“Oh. Just stuff.”
She nods, seemingly satisfied with my answer.
“Your uncle’s pretty cool.”
“Yeah, he is.”
She stops in front of the passenger’s door.
“Still got it, huh?”
She’s looking at my truck.
“Yep, never sellin’ her.”
I open her door for her, and not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because the damn thumb button is as hard as hell to get down. Vannah knows this, which is also why she never even tries.
I step back, and she climbs right in. And I gently close the door behind her.
“So, where are we headed?” I ask, once I get behind the wheel.
“I want to see the moon.” She smiles out the passenger’s window.
“Okay,” I whisper.
That’s all I say. And we head toward Hogan’s slab.
“Take me back, Eben.”
We’re sitting on the slab, dangling our legs over the edge. The concrete is warm, and the sound of the water pushing underneath the slab is filling the air around us.
“Back?”
“Yeah,” she says, sticking little white wildflowers into her hair, “to when we could change it all. Rewind time. Make me see that I liked you at eleven, twelve, thirteen. Make me tell you that I liked you under those stairs that day that you chickened out.”
“What?”
She turns to me. “I knew, Eben. I knew that’s what you were going to say.”
I lower my eyes and smile, letting seconds fall to the water under our feet. I don’t know whether to be shocked or embarrassed.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “I didn’t know if you had changed your mind at the last second. I figured if you liked me enough, you’d tell me, eventually.”
“Wait. You liked me?”
She smiles and looks my way. “The ham and cheese sandwiches didn’t give it away?”
I feel my jaw go slack, as my mouth hangs open.
“Vannah, this whole time... Are you telling me this whole time, we could have been together? Like really been together?”
She shrugs.
I feel a breath escape my lungs as I refit my Cardinals cap over my head.
“But why can’t we now?”
“I don’t know, Eben.” She breathes out a sigh and goes to picking at a tear in her jeans. “For starters, I have a boyfriend.”
I let go of a puff of air. I hate that she brings up the boyfriend.
“And I’m still a thousand miles from where you are,” she adds.
I go to gnawing on the inside of my cheek. I think it’s a nervous habit.
“I really do like Aaron. And he lives in the same part of the world.” She smiles. “That’s a plus.”
“But what about when you turn eighteen? You could come back then.”
She exhales, but she keeps her stare on that moonlight, reflecting off the water as if it’s little pieces of broken glass. “I thought about it. And I’m not sure how I’ll feel in a year, but...”
I already know I’m not going to like the rest of this story.
“But I think I might stay and go to college there, maybe. My dad said the in-state tuition would be a good thing.”
She briefly looks up at me.
“Well, I could go there. After I graduate, I could go to South Carolina.”
She shifts her face, so that her eyes are in mine. And a piece of her long hair falls from her shoulders and comes to rest on her chest.
“What about the lumberyard?”
I feel my lungs fill with air. She’s right. I don’t want to say it, but she’s right. I know I’m the next in line. I’ve already closed up shop on my lawn-cutting business, just so I can start learning my way around the lumberyard again.
She rests her head on my shoulder. “Have you ever thought that maybe the universe just doesn’t want us together? That maybe that’s why it made us friends?”
I sigh. I don’t know what to say. What do you say when you’re coming to terms with the fact that you might have missed your chance...for good? Or that maybe you never even had a chance at all?
“Do you remember when we were in fourth grade, and we did that play?”
I know she’s trying to change the subject, but I don’t even have the heart to fight her on it.
“What was it?” she asks.
I stare off into the water and think about it for a second.
“Pocahontas,” I finally say.
“Yeah.” I can hear the smile in her voice.
“You forgot your lines,” I say.
“And you said them for me.”
Her head is still on my shoulder, but I know she’s looking up at me.
“ ‘It would’ve been better if we had never met,’ ” I recite the line. “ ‘None of this would’ve happened.’ ”
The irony isn’t lost on me, and she seems to notice, too.
She nestles her cheek more into my shoulder. “Those were the words.”
I don’t say anything.
“You were manning the curtains off stage, weren’t you?” she asks.
I feel a small smile start to cultivate on my face as I think back. “I was.”
“And no one ever questioned the voice from above,” she says, dramatically raising her hand.
“No one was the wiser,” I agree.
“I was,” she says, turning her face up toward mine.
I catch her stare. And as if it’s pure instinct, I put my arm around her.
She stiffens a little.
“I know. I know,” I say. “The boyfriend.”
I feel her body relax.
“We’re friends, though, right?”
She breathes out a smile. “Right.”
It’s quiet then, until a memory rushes into my head like a freight train, drowning everything else out.
“The day after that play, I got my first shiner,” I say.
“Oh, that’s right. The hockey puck.”
“Yeah.”
“I got you ice from the cafeteria.”
“No,” I say, chuckling under my breath. “The ice melted before you got to me. You brought me your cold hands, instead, and held them to my eye until the nurse came.”
There’s a surprised look on her face, until something new washes over her. “That’s right. I couldn’t find a bag to put the ice in.”
I shrug. “It was fine. Your hands were nice.”
She looks at me and smiles before reaching for my hand. And I must look a little shocked because her next words come out in a scolding tone.
“Friends can hold hands.”
I don’t argue. Meanwhile, the tree frogs surrounding us begin their nightly chirps. And I watch as several stars start to pop out of the black background. And the whole time, there’s this comfortable hush between us. I think we’re both just gnawing on pieces of our past—long gone.
“Vannah,” I say, after a little while.
“Hmm?”
“You’re a bird on a windowsill.”
I hear her grin.
“I’m a what?”
“A bird,” I say. “You’re there one second, and the next, you’re gone. But every time I see you there, I can’t help but stop and look at you.”
She’s quiet, but that water just keeps pushing a path beneath us, making a soft, whooshing sound.
“Eben?”
“Mm hmm?”
“Are you trying to tell me I’m pretty?”
I shake my head. “No. I’m trying to tell you that you’re the most intriguing...and the most captivating...and the most beautiful bird I’ve ever seen.”
She looks up at me and rests her gaze in my eyes. She almost looks as if she’s searching me, looking for something she hasn’t found in the last twelve years we’ve known each other.
“You mean that.”
“Of course I do,” I say, even though what she said wasn’t a question.
She lays her head back on my shoulder and squeezes my hand.
“Do you have to go back?”
I don’t know why I ask it. I already know she does.
Even so, she moves her head back and forth. “Not now.”
“Ever?”
She doesn’t say anything.
“I mean, I can come this time. I can finish high school there, and I don’t have to do the lumberyard business. I mean, my dad can run it for a long time, still.”
“Eben,” she says, stopping me, “it might as well be a world away. And anyway, you belong here.”
I don’t say anything, but I feel as if I belong wherever she is.
“You can’t pull a stick two ways and expect it not to break,” she says.
I follow her eyes to the silver creek water.
“I can’t take you with me,” she says. “I might break you.”
I chuckle at that, even though I know it comes out sounding a little sad.
“But what about you? What if you belong here, too?”
She tilts her head back and looks up into the dark sky. “Well, I’m a bird, right? I’ll just fly back someday.”
Her eyes find mine, and I squeeze her closer to me.
“My beautiful bird,” I say, resting my head on hers. “My beautiful bird.”
Chapter Sixteen
Salem
(Seventeen Years Old)
Day 4,577
I know one of these days I’ll wake up, and I’ll think about seeing Vannah, and she’ll be gone. It’s happened once already. And I know little pieces of her, like the colors in her eyes or how her head feels on my chest, will slowly start to fade over time. But at least I have her voice.
“Eben.”
My thoughts disappear, and I turn toward her. We’re at the only park in town. I walked over to the paper from the lumberyard an hour ago to see if she wanted to eat lunch with me. Thankfully, she did.
