Where We Used to Roam

by Jenn Bishop

  And now, ahead of schedule, he is away. Just for a month, and just to Cape Cod, but still.

  “I can try to warm her up to the idea,” Tyler says.

  Now that things seem okay with us, I pull the letter from Austin out of my back pocket. “I got this in the mail yesterday,” I say, handing it to him.

  “You sure you want me to read it?”

  “No, I handed it to you because I don’t want you to read it,” I deadpan. “Yes, silly.”

  We pull off to the side, where there’s a picnic table under a tree, and sit down next to each other. The whole time he’s reading it, I keep shifting my new Becca box, creating little rainbows from the refracting light. As much as I don’t want my time here in Wyoming with Tyler to end, in this moment I want to fast-forward to the end of the summer. Becca’s box will be beautiful by then. No, perfect. And Austin will be home and healthy again. And we’ll start the new school year and everything can just go back to the way it used to be.

  Tyler hands the letter back to me. “That’s… great, Em.” I can’t help noticing how his voice doesn’t match the words.

  “It sounds like he’s doing so much better, right? I mean, he’s joking in the first part. And he says how much he’s learned now and how he’s never going to get into that stuff again. He sounds like how he used to. I mean, not that you would know. But he does. He seems happy and hopeful. They caught it in time, you know?”

  “Yeah…” There’s that hesitation again.

  “What?” I say.

  “It’s just—this stuff is so hard. That’s what I saw with my mom. She was in and out of rehab so many times. And every time, she’d say it was the last time, but it wasn’t. And so eventually I just stopped believing her. It was easier that way. Then she couldn’t let me down.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, surprised by how easy it is to reach out and hug him.

  I wish I could make his mom as strong as Austin. Wish that there were some way to give their story a happy ending. But all these unhappy families, they’re different, like Tolstoy said. Some of them stay unhappy forever. And others get a second chance.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Back home I used to be the kind of person who always slept through the night, but now that I’m in Wyoming, that’s no longer true.

  I wake up with a start, never remembering my dream, and every time it takes me a second to figure out where I am. The streetlight outside my window back home would shine into my bedroom no matter how many times Mom or I played around with the shade. Plus it never got that dark, with the city so close by. It was comforting, that light. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but as I fell asleep, it felt like someone was watching over me.

  In the darkness now, as my brain remembers why I’m here, there’s that little moment of panic. Austin and my parents, they’re so far away. What if something happened to them? And I don’t even know it yet?

  My brain starts whirring with all the things that could go wrong, until I lay my eyes on the one thing that settles all the worries. My Becca box. Even though I’ve been working on it in the den during the day, at night I always bring it back to my room. I don’t trust that Dumbledore for a second. The box sits on the desk across from my bed, and in the dark I can just barely make out the shape. A fuzzy black rectangle, but that’s enough somehow. Maybe it’s better that I can’t see more than that, because in my head I can see the finished product.

  As I close my eyes and try to fall back asleep, I imagine walking over to Becca’s house. Knocking on her door. Becca opening the door and the look on her face when she sees it. Surprise and relief and something else.

  She takes it in her hands and turns it over, seeing all the details I put into it. Two months’ worth. I know I can’t see her remembering, but I’ll know she is. I’ll know because she’ll do that lip-biting thing she does when she reads. Except she won’t be lost in some book she’s imagining in her head; this time it’ll be us she’s imagining. Us she’s remembering.

  And she’ll forgive me.

  She can forgive me, and Austin can get better. We can all go back. I can’t explain how the two are related, only that I feel it in my body, the way you know your heart is beating, your lungs are working.

  This trip is like my reset button. When I finally go home at the end of the summer, everything can go back to normal.

  * * *

  My legs look pink, so I smear a dab of sunscreen on them. Tyler’s got his face in a library book, like he always does when we’re at the town pool, but when I glance up, I catch his crush Demetri getting into the snack line. Usually, Demetri is with a bunch of his friends, but right now he’s alone. Entirely and totally alone.

  “Ty,” I whisper.

  No reaction.

  I poke him in the side and he yelps. “I was reading!”

  “Yeah, I know, but maybe you should get a snack now.” I tip my head in the direction of the snack line.

  “It’s not even lunchtime.”

  I make my eyeballs go huge. Do I have to spell it out for him? Really? I thought he was smarter than this. I clear my throat and again tip my head toward Demetri.

  Ty suddenly stiffens. I know what he’s about to say next because I used to be the exact same way until someone forced me out of my shell. Someone. I reach into my bag for my wallet. “If you don’t, I will.”

  “You will what?”

  “Have a little chat with him. I might have to tell him how I’m new in town and about my great new friend and how he’s been showing me around and I might maybe say something about—”

  “Don’t!” Tyler pleads with me.

  I pass my wallet from one hand to the other. “If you don’t get in line soon, I—”

  “Let me put on a shirt first.” He scrambles for his button-down.

  “I’m giving you ten seconds. One, two…”

  By the time I get to ten, Tyler’s heading over there, still fiddling with the last button. Okay, he did glare at me first. But he’s doing it! That’s the first step.

  He gets into line behind Demetri and at first he doesn’t say anything. But he must know I’m watching him because he turns around to check. I flash him a thumbs-up, and his face reddens, but he’s still there, so that counts for a lot, actually. And then Demetri turns around. They’re talking—not a ton, but a little—and the line is moving super slow because the teens who work the snack bar are terrible at their job and probably giving free food to their friends.

  Eventually, two moms and their kids get in line behind Tyler, taking away my prime viewing angle. There’s no way I can go back to reading my buffalo book now.

  Is this how it feels to be Kennedy? Putting things into motion. Being the instigator for once, instead of taking the back seat like I usually do. I feel strangely powerful.

  Maybe it’s different when the things you put into motion aren’t so positive, though. Like that first night at Camp McSweeney. The feeling you’re left with then, it’s not butterflies in your stomach. More like a brick.

  For a while I watch a group of girls gossiping right where the deep and shallow ends meet. Two of them are super close together, but the third is a little bit removed. But maybe that’s just how they’re standing. Maybe that’s just the moment I’m catching them in.

  “I could kill you.” Tyler’s almost at our blanket, carrying a basket of fries. But his smile doesn’t exactly look deadly.

  “How’d it go?” I grab a fry—crispy, hot, and salty.

  “Okay,” he says, a blush creeping over his face.

  “You talked to him, Ty! You talked to him and you didn’t die. What did he say? What did you say? I need a full recap.”

  “Okay, so first he turned around. No, wait, maybe I said, ‘hi, Demetri’? I can’t remember. Anyway, so then…”

  As he gives me the recap, Tyler’s smile is different than usual. Almost like he’s glowing from the inside. Was that how I looked after talking to Noah? That boost of confidence from doing the thing that scared me, Ken
nedy gave me that. I would have never done it without her egging me on.

  * * *

  “Why are they always eating more food than humanly possible?” I ask Tyler, for a moment looking up from the Becca box.

  “That’s the magic of Gilmore.”

  “But four Thanksgiving dinners! I mean, come on.”

  “It’s called ‘wish fulfillment,’ Em. What are they supposed to do? Which invite could they really turn down?”

  He has a point.

  I set down my tweezers and join him on the couch. My fingers are shaky from all the painstaking work I’ve been doing on Becca’s box. It’s worth it, but it definitely requires plenty of breaks.

  For the past couple of days I’ve been skimming through books by Tamora Pierce, one of Becca’s favorite authors, and writing down the best quotes about friendship. I typed them up on Delia’s laptop last night and printed them out in the teeniest-tiniest font that’s still readable by the bare eye. With the tweezers I’ve been layering them into the glass on the side of the box, after spreading a thin layer of glue. It’s tiring work, but I love how it looks.

  Someone thumps down the stairs, and then Sadie peeks her head in. “Mail call,” she says, thunking a yellow padded envelope on the sofa.

  Austin sent me a package? Of what?

  “What is it?” Tyler asks.

  But when I reach for it, I find that the package is covered in Kennedy’s manga drawings, with my name and address lettered in Lucy’s most perfect penmanship. How did they get this address? I never told them where in Wyoming I was going.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” Tyler asks.

  My hands tremble, except I’m not sure it’s from all that careful work with the tweezers.

  “I’ll be right back,” I say before darting out of the den, the package in my hands. I head down the hall for my bedroom and shove it in my suitcase, in the darkest corner of the closet. I’m not ready to open it and see what’s inside.

  I have to fix things with Becca first. Once that’s done, I can figure out what to do about Kennedy and Lucy.

  I suck in a deep breath and slowly let it out before returning to the den. I just want to watch Lorelai and Rory go to their last two Thanksgiving dinners and not have to think about what happened back at home. But the show is paused, and when I ask Tyler to unpause it, all he does is say my name.

  “What?” I ask.

  “What just happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Riiiiiight.” He raises an eyebrow at me.

  I cross my arms and kick my feet up on the coffee table.

  “Who sent you the package?”

  “Just these girls I used to be friends with.”

  “Used to be? Dude, I wish people I used to be friends with would send me a package they clearly spent hours decorating.”

  I don’t think they spent hours on it, but I’m not about to quibble.

  “What happened with y’all?”

  Part of me thinks I should just tell him. That we’ve spent enough time together, and he’s not going to turn on me.

  But then the other part feels so guilty still. Like I don’t deserve his friendship at all, and if he knew the whole truth of what I did to Becca, maybe he would think he’s better off without me. That I’m not the kind of person he can really trust. And would he be so wrong?

  Before I’ve had a chance to answer him, he reaches for an Oreo. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. I know we promised we wouldn’t make each other say things we didn’t want to. And you kept up your half of the deal.” He twists the Oreo apart. “But if you ever change your mind…”

  We watch in silence as Lorelai and Rory go to Sookie and Jackson’s for their deep-fried turkey.

  As I grab Oreo after Oreo, stuffing myself along with the Gilmores, all I can think about is that time over at Kennedy’s when we binged-watched Haikyu!! and how much fun we were having, the three of us. Before I brought up Becca. I still don’t even get why I did it. Why is it that sometimes we feel the urge to put somebody down for a quick laugh? I know I’m not the only person who’s ever done it. But I still don’t understand the why of it all.

  Did it really make me feel that much better? No. Not in the moment and definitely not in the long run. So why did I do it?

  I try my hardest not to think about it anymore, to push all those thoughts away and watch the show.

  “How come on TV shows and movies, everyone always has just one best friend?” I say, thinking out loud for a minute. “Rory has Lane. Lorelai has Sookie. How come no one ever has two best friends? Or, like, really close friends but from totally different worlds?”

  “Isn’t Luke kind of Lorelai’s best friend too, though?” Tyler says.

  “No, he’s her love interest.”

  “But what about Paris? You haven’t seen all the seasons yet, but once they’re in college, Paris stops being Rory’s frenemy and becomes her friend. Like, as much as Lane is because she’s right there all the time.”

  Maybe he’s right. Maybe it is possible to have more than one best friend, so long as you don’t throw one of your best friends under the bus.

  * * *

  Tyler leaves right before dinner, even though Delia says he’s more than welcome to join us any time he wants. As I’m setting the table, Delia plops down a vase of black tulips in the center, and that fast, I’m in third grade again.

  Grandpa Bill died unexpectedly, a heart attack. I was having a hard time with all of it—not just losing Grandpa Bill, but death. It terrified me in a way I couldn’t explain to anyone—the idea of not being there anymore. Not just Grandpa Bill, but me someday too.

  Before Grandpa Bill, nobody I’d known had died. At school everyone tried to say the right things about heaven and the afterlife. How he was in a better place. Except I wasn’t so sure of any of that, not the way they were. Our family didn’t go to church.

  But then Becca—classic Becca—brought me this picture book. Duck, Death and the Tulip. It looked sort of creepy, with only that long, slender duck on the cream-colored cover, but I read it anyway. Unlike everyone else who tried to comfort me, Becca hadn’t expected me to be just like her. To share her same beliefs about death. She saw me for exactly who I was. She listened.

  She knew me better than anyone else. When no one else could figure out the right thing to say or do, she did.

  When did that change? When did she go from being the person who got me the most to someone who didn’t? And can I make her again?

  Can I really? Can this box be enough?

  I want it to. No, I need it to. But right now I’m not so sure anymore.

  After I set down water glasses at all four spots, I’m about to ask Delia if I can have one of the tulips for my Becca box, but then I remember that it won’t look this way once it’s dead, and so I don’t.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Today marks Austin’s twenty-eighth day in rehab. Two more days, and then he gets to come home. I’ve been texting with Mom and Dad constantly, checking for updates, but I guess with the facility he’s staying in, there really aren’t many updates. According to them, everything has gone fine and Austin will be discharged on Saturday.

  He’s coming home. For good.

  Mom says we can FaceTime once he’s home. I can’t wait to see him—a letter just isn’t the same.

  The only sort of sad thing about Austin coming home is that it means my summer in Wyoming is half-over. Only one more month with Tyler.

  I’m at the kitchen sink rinsing out my cereal bowl when Sadie asks, “So where’s your conjoined twin?”

  “My… what?”

  “You and Tyler hang out so much you’re practically attached at the hip or the brain or… wherever twins are conjoined.”

  I place the bowl in the dishwasher and glance up at the clock. It’s 9:47. He’s usually here by nine thirty at the latest. “Huh.”

  “He didn’t text you?”

  “I don’t even have his phone numbe
r.” I haven’t needed it since we spend pretty much every day together. I use my phone only to text with Mom and Dad and, okay, to play the occasional game. Delia’s so impressed with me, but it hasn’t been that hard.

  “Maybe you should bombard him at his place. A little role reversal for once.”

  “I don’t know where he lives.” It’s only as I say it out loud that it sounds weird. How well can you really know someone when you’ve never been to their house?

  Even though I haven’t been in Becca’s room for more than a month, I could still draw every detail of it from memory.

  “Probably on the other side of town, where all the other meth heads live.” Sadie eyes me, waiting for a reaction to the last bit. “You know his mom got busted for making meth, right? It was all over the news. Well, our news.”

  Tyler’s mom is in prison for making drugs? She was helping people—people like my brother—get addicted? No, I think. No way. Sadie’s got this wrong.

  “He didn’t mention that, huh? No, I guess he wouldn’t.”

  Sadie leaves the room, flicking the light switch on her way out. I run my hands under the water, turning it up so it’s almost scalding. I want to wash it away, all of it. What she said can’t be true. That can’t be why his mom is in prison. It has to be some other student of Delia’s whose mom is in prison for that. Not Tyler.

  Delia invites me to go to the rec center with her, but I pass, afraid if I go, I’ll miss Tyler. I hang around the house all day, not even taking the bike for a ride. Down in the den, I work on my Becca box. It doesn’t feel right to watch the next episodes of Gilmore Girls without Tyler, even though he’s seen them all before, so instead I queue up the Harry Potter movies to keep me company as I finish gluing in all the friendship quotes.