“How’s Emma?”
“Eh, not so good. I went over to her house right after I got home and she told me that she and Justin broke up over the summer.”
“Really? Why?”
Anna turns her back to me, runs her finger along the jewel cases, and selects one. “I don’t know why exactly, because I haven’t heard Justin’s side of the story yet—I stopped by the record store the other day and he was too busy to talk—but according to Emma, he doesn’t think they have enough in common…that they’re better as friends.”
She drops the disc in her CD player, and when the music begins, it sounds familiar, but I can’t place the song. But then the lyrics begin and I instantly recognize Alanis Morissette’s voice. I’m trying to recall which album this is when Anna says, “Have you heard this before?” She waves the case for Jagged Little Pill in the air, and I nod. “I love her. I’ve been running to this CD all summer.” I wish I could tell Anna that she has a lot more Alanis to look forward to, but I keep it to myself. Instead I tell her that I’ll look up the tour schedule and take her to a concert.
I spot the map that takes up the largest wall in her room. I walk over to it and stand there, counting the number of little red pins Anna uses to mark her travels. Nine, including the new one at the bottom of the Baja peninsula. Five more than the first time I stood here, admiring Anna’s intense desire to see the world and enjoying the idea that I could give her a small piece of it.
I turn around and find her standing next to me. “Here.” She hands me a small bag and I peek inside. My Westlake student ID. A blank postcard from Ko Tao. The postcard Anna wrote to me in Vernazza Square. A stubby yellow pencil. A carabiner. One of her pins. “You left them in your desk at Maggie’s. She thought I should hold on to them for you.”
“Thanks.” I remove the postcard from Vernazza, shooting her a glance as I run my finger across the edge. Anna’s watching me as I read it, and I feel myself suck in a breath when I get to the last line, wherever you are in this world, that’s where I want to be, and a wave of guilt washes over me. My chest feels heavy as I drop the card back in the bag and then toss the whole thing on the floor next to the door along with my backpack. “Is that what you wanted to show me?”
Anna’s eyes light up. “Nope.” She turns on her heel and crosses the room. She crouches down low, wrestling with something underneath her bed.
“Close your eyes,” she calls over her shoulder.
Less than a minute later, I feel her behind me, her hands on my waist, pushing me forward. “Keep ’em closed. A few more steps. Okay, stop.” I feel her next to me. “You can open them now.”
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, and I’m not exactly sure where I’m supposed to be looking. But then I see something lying flat on top of her bedspread, and I take a few steps closer.
It’s a photograph, printed on a huge sheet of thick-looking paper. I recognize the tall rocks and jagged cliffs immediately. “Is that our beach?” I ask, but I already know it is. That’s the spot where I found her in La Paz. The same place I’ve arrived off and on all summer to surprise her during her morning runs. I lean in close to get a better look. “This is incredible. How did you find a print of the exact spot?”
“It’s not a print,” she says as she rests her hands on her hips. “I took it.”
I know nothing about photography, but it looks pretty impressive to me. I can see every tiny crack in the rock face, and the tall cliff is perfectly mirrored in the water below. “You took this?”
“Señora Moreno helped me.” I remember her telling me that her host mom in La Paz was also a local photographer. “I thought you could hang it on your bedroom wall.” She doesn’t clarify which bedroom and I decide not to ask.
“But wait…get this,” she says, holding up a finger. Anna undoes the Velcro on a black canvas bag and removes a 35-millimeter camera. Her thumb glides along the back and over the buttons. “Look what she gave me. I guess it’s pretty old, but I don’t care.” It looks ancient. I watch her twist the long lens, remove it from the body, and replace it with a fatter, stubbier one. She brings the camera to her face, and I can’t see anything but her mouth. I hear the shutter snap and a weird, motorized sound.
Throwing the strap over her shoulder, she reaches under the bed again and returns holding a large envelope. She plops down on the floor and motions for me to join her. We sit close together, our hips touching, and she shakes a pile of images onto the shag rug and tells me the backstory on each one. There are lots of beaches and rocks and vista point views, but my eye goes straight to a close-up photo of a man with dark, wrinkled skin, holding a guitar and wearing the warmest smile.
“These are really good,” I tell her. “Really good.” I watch the flush creep into her cheeks.
“They have this darkroom in their basement. I spent hours in there with Señora Moreno and her daughter, learning how to develop film. It was incredible.” She shrugs. “When I told Dad, he said he might be able to build one for me in that old shed in the backyard.” She reaches for her camera and aims it at my face. “Until then, it’s one-hour photo. Smile. I don’t have a single picture of you.”
I reach around her waist and pull her down onto the rug next to me. “There’s no reason for a picture of me if you’re not in it.”
She laughs as she extends her arm as high in the air as she can and aims the lens at us. Click. She kisses me on the cheek. Click. She sticks out her tongue and I crack up. Click. And then, in one fluid series of motions, I take the camera out of her hands, set it on the floor, and roll over on top of her, kissing her like I’ve wanted to all night.
But the longer we kiss, the guiltier I feel. I promised I wouldn’t keep secrets from her any longer. “Anna,” I say. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
The knock is soft, but startling enough to send us scampering in opposite directions. The door was ajar as instructed and we didn’t have much time, but we move so quickly that by the time Mrs. Greene’s head pops in, Anna and I are already sitting up, a generous amount of shag rug between the two of us.
“Your dad and I are going to bed,” she says.
“Okay. Good night,” Anna says brightly.
Her mom clears her throat. “That means that Bennett needs to leave now.”
“Mom—” Anna huffs.
“It’s okay.” I stand up quickly and cross the room toward my backpack. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say to Anna. I squeeze past Mrs. Greene and into the hallway, heading for the front door.
I’m just about to turn the knob when I hear Anna’s voice behind me. “Wait a sec!” I turn around and find her halfway down the stairs. “Where are you going?” she whispers.
I shrug. “I don’t know. I’ll probably just go home and come back in the morning.”
She looks around to be sure her dad’s out of earshot. “What, like, home-home? San Francisco home?” She doesn’t add 2012 home, but I know that’s what she means.
“Yeah, it’s too late to go to Maggie’s now. Don’t worry. I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll go over to her house and then we can go do something together.”
She shakes her head hard. “No. I mean, you’re here. You can’t just…leave.”
I don’t want to leave, but I picture the look on Mrs. Greene’s face a minute ago and think it’s probably better not to push my luck tonight. I go could back to San Francisco, to the tiny garage, and crash in the Jeep. Or I could go back to my room and hope my parents don’t walk in and find me. Come to think of it, maybe Anna’s right. I might be better off staying put. I could always sleep on the couch in the back room of the bookstore.
Anna holds up a finger. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.” Before I can say another word, she’s gone, flying back up the stairs.
I stand in the foyer and look around. On my left, I see the built-in bench, and on the wall above it, a row of empty coat hooks. It reminds me of the first time I came to this house. Anna had stayed home from school, and when I s
howed up, she took my jacket and hung it there. Then I told her my secret, showed her what I could do. Took her somewhere warm and far away. I consider doing it again tonight.
I hear her bare feet padding down the stairs. She’s holding an armful of bedding. “You’re sleeping on the couch.”
My eyes dart to her parents’ bedroom door at the top of the stairs. “No way.” I rub my forehead hard with my fingertips and think about the idea. “Your parents actually said I could sleep on your couch?”
Anna nods. “Just for tonight. They agreed that it was too late for you to walk home in the dark. I told them you’d call Maggie and tell her not to expect you until tomorrow.”
“I can’t call Maggie,” I whisper in her ear.
“I know. Just pretend to do it.” She gestures toward the kitchen and I see the phone hanging on the wall next to the microwave. I cover my face with my hand. I wish I’d just said good night, gone outside, and poof, appeared back in her bedroom ten minutes later like I originally planned to.
“You can change in the downstairs bathroom.” She points to a door I’ve never noticed before. “I’ll go get you set up.”
5
I fluff up the pillow and twist around in the blankets. For possibly the tenth time in the last hour, I sit up, resting my hands on my knees and staring out the sliding glass door and into the Greenes’ backyard. According to the clock on the mantel, it’s a quarter after midnight.
The last time I sat on this couch, Anna and I were wrapped up in this exact corner while Justin and Emma curled up on the opposite side. We watched a movie and took turns reaching into an enormous bowl of buttered popcorn that her mom made for us.
I throw my feet onto the floor and stand up. I walk through the kitchen and into the hallway, stopping at the bottom of the stairs. Her parents’ door is open a crack. Anna’s is completely shut. I’m about to close my eyes and bring myself to her bedroom, when I think of the look on her parents’ faces tonight. Sure, if they caught me in their daughter’s room, I could just go back five minutes, ten minutes, and do it all over. But going up there at all feels like a violation of their trust and I’m already on thin ice here.
There’s no reason to rush things. I have plenty of time to see her tomorrow, the next day. I turn around, shuffle back to the couch, and collapse with my head in my hands. After a while, I settle into the pillow again and close my eyes, attempting to empty my mind. I finally feel like I’m about to drift off when I hear something that sounds like breathing.
I crack my eyes open, lift my head up, and see a silhouette in the doorway. “Oh, God. I’m sorry,” Anna whispers. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It’s okay.… I wasn’t sleeping.” I sit up a little bit and gesture for her to come closer. She sits across from me on the coffee table. The sight of her, the sound of her voice in this room, fills me with relief. “What are you doing down here? What about your parents?”
“I checked. They’re asleep. Trust me, once they’re out, they’re out.”
She sweeps her hair away from her face and twists it around a finger, holding it against the back of her neck. “I couldn’t sleep either. I’ve just been lying in bed, staring at my map, and thinking that, for the last few months, we’ve had all this distance between the two of us, you know?” She lets her hair fall, and then pushes it behind her ears. “And it suddenly dawned on me that tonight—finally—there was nothing between us but a door and a staircase, and it seemed”—she blinks fast—“silly.”
I nod. “That’s definitely silly.” Even though the room is dark, lit only by the porch light on the back patio, I can see her blush. “I’m glad you remedied that.” I say.
“Yeah, me too.”
“But there’s still more, you know?”
Her eyebrows lower and pinch together. “What do you mean ‘more’?” she asks.
I stretch my arm out in her direction, angling it so my fingertip comes within a centimeter of her knee. “There’s this distance here—a whole arm’s length—which is really quite a lot if you think about it. This is, like, seventh-grade-dance kind of distance.”
She laughs quietly. “That’s not even silly. That’s just…unacceptable.”
“Right? And then there’s this,” I say, pinching a corner of the wool blanket she covered me with a little earlier. “What do you make of this?”
She reaches out, rubbing the fabric between her thumb and her forefinger. “Yeah, that’s definitely a problem.”
“Exactly what I was thinking.”
I start to pull the blanket back, but before I can, Anna moves from the coffee table to the couch, sealing the opening shut with her weight. “What did you want to tell me earlier?” Her dark eyes fix on mine and I feel a sudden chill that hits my core. I wasn’t expecting this turn in the conversation, and I’m trying to decide how to start, but she doesn’t give me time.
“You aren’t staying this year, are you?”
I shake my head no.
She rolls her shoulders back and looks up at the ceiling. “I knew it. Every time I’ve mentioned something about school, you’ve looked away and changed the subject.” Her gaze ping-pongs around the room. Now she won’t look at me. “Why not?”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t.” I sit up so I can face her straight on. “Look, I’ve been experimenting with this all summer. I even told everyone I was going on a two-week climbing trip and took off by myself. I pitched a tent where no one would find it and went to London. I wandered around, enjoyed the sights—missing you the whole time, by the way—but after three days, I was knocked back to the tent. The migraine was excruciating, but just like I did when I first got to Evanston, I immediately closed my eyes and brought myself back. It worked. I stayed another day, almost two. But then I got knocked back to the tent again. I kept bringing myself back, but each time…” I trail off, shaking my head, remembering migraines so debilitating I could barely open my eyes for nearly an hour. “The side effects got worse, not better. After a week, I closed my eyes and nothing happened.”
“Why could you stay last time?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. I think it’s because Brooke wasn’t where she was supposed to be, you know? Like…things were off and once they were righted again…” Anna just stares at me, and I look at her, trying to figure out what she’s thinking. “The two must be connected, because once she got back, I couldn’t return here. And now it looks like my ability to stay here has changed too.”
She still won’t look at me and she clearly doesn’t know what to say. She brings her hands to her forehead and rubs hard, like that will help the information sink in or something. “So, what? This is how it’s going to be?” she asks.
“I don’t know. This is the way it is right now.”
I feel horrible. Back in the beginning, I prepared her for the fact that I couldn’t stay here with her. I never should have let her believe that I could. I never should have let myself believe that I could.
“But I want to come back. A lot. I figure I can’t visit too frequently or your parents will get suspicious, you know, but we can come up with, like, a schedule or something.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“If you think about it, this is how we always thought it was going to be, right up until Vernazza. Remember?” I stop one step short of saying what I’m really thinking: You already agreed to be part of the most screwed-up long-distance relationship on the planet.
She wrings her hands while she weighs the pros and cons of everything I’ve just said. We’ll be together, but not every day, like we were before, and not on either of our terms. We won’t go to the same school or hang out with the same people and, at least while we’re both still living at home with our parents, we’ll spend most of our days seventeen years away from each other. So many people take proximity for granted. We just want to be in the same place at the same time.
Her eyes are fixed on the carpet. �
�I can handle a lot, you know? I can handle everything about you and what you can do, but what happened last time…I can’t let that happen to me again.” She lifts her head and looks right at me. “I know you didn’t want it to happen, and I realize you didn’t do it on purpose, but you were here and then you were just gone, and when you didn’t come back, I…”
She grabs a strand of hair and twists it around her finger. I’m just about to speak when she opens her mouth and looks me straight in the eye again. “Here’s the thing. When you left, I sort of…fell apart.” Her shoulders hunch forward and she starts breathing faster. “I mean, I completely fell apart,” she repeats. “I don’t fall apart, Bennett, and I don’t want to be someone who falls apart and…” She inhales deeply and wraps her arms around her waist. “I can’t let that happen again.”
I look at her, bracing myself for what she’s about to say. What she should say. She wants me to leave. She doesn’t want me to come back here again.
“I need to think about it,” she says.
The words aren’t as bad as the ones I was expecting, but they still take me by surprise. “Yeah.” It takes effort to keep my voice steady. “Of course you do.”
She presses her lips together, hard, like she’s holding something in, and I realize she’s trying not to cry. But I wish she would. I wish she would just sit here and fall apart, like she apparently did when I left, because unlike last time, I could actually be there for her now. I could tell her everything I would have said then: That we’ll be okay. That this whole thing is weird and twisted and unfair to both of us, but especially unfair to her, because it’s always harder to be the one who’s left behind than the one who leaves. And I’d tell her that I love her, and that I’ll do anything to be with her, any way I can be.
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