by Amanda Grace
It’s hard to know who you want to be when you don’t want to be the only thing you’re good at.
That was my life. Black and white. And I wanted color. But I knew I’d find myself majoring in something uninteresting—for me that would be engineering, or science, or something in which the path was well worn and easy to navigate.
That’s what I thought of that day as I sat in the high backed chair and I stabbed at that spring-mix salad, the lettuce too bitter on my tongue, listening as Trevor talked about his internship at an engineering firm up in Seattle, watching as Dad beamed and Mom hovered, thinking of how I could never be who I wanted to be without disappointing them.
I thought going to Running Start, being in college at sixteen, would be enough to get them off my back, buy me time to figure out what I wanted. But in that moment I finally realized, with horrific HD clarity, that there would never be a break, would never be a time they just decided to step back and let me be me, meandering wherever my path might lead.
See, Bennett, the sad thing about expectations is that if you fail them—by an inch or a mile, it doesn’t matter—you disappoint people. And my parents, they don’t set the bar low. And my brother, he just kept right on raising it.
I wanted fun, the kind of fun I’d never had. The kind of life and adventure I dreamed you were having. I’d watched enough MTV to know that other teens partied, and cussed, and fell in love and out again. They screwed things up, and they somehow came back together again.
But I’d never experienced any of that.
You only had a handful of Facebook photos but I managed to create a whole world for myself in them, something much like what I figured everyone else had. I imagined playing football or rugby or whatever you were doing in your pictures, the sky a vibrant blue, your cheeks flushed as you wore a jersey with a big number twelve. I’d be terrible at it, of course, but you’d laugh and help me and it would be fun. It wouldn’t be competitive, and no one would care if I fumbled.
And then I imagined myself traveling to Paris, the Eiffel Tower in the background, me in the foreground, pretending I was squishing it between my two hands just like you did. We’d be goofy tourists, avoiding all the educational stops my parents would expect.
And I imagined myself in five years, on a barstool next to you, casually holding a longneck bottle, that neon light glowing behind me.
Behind us.
As I listened to my brother talk and my mom murmur “mhmms” now and then to signal she was listening, I let my mind drift back to the mountain, and the memories of our conversation were all that really kept me awake in that moment.
Maybe I’d perfected the art of dreaming with my eyes wide open.
“How does it feel to be one-upped, Trevor?” Mom asked as she speared that piece of asparagus that had been evading her for the last two minutes.
“Huh?” Trevor sipped at his glass of ice water, meeting Mom’s eyes, and I saw his ego flash and glimmer in that defensive sort of way it always did, his eyes so easily readable with his dark hair gelled like it was. Because to him, Mom’s approval was everything. He’d climb Everest and jump over the moon just to impress her. A few hurdles were nothing.
“Madelyn’s in college-level Calculus at sixteen. Didn’t you just take that class a few quarters ago?”
“Oh,” he said. “Last year sometime, yeah.” And he blinked, just once, and I knew he didn’t like what Mom just said, the insinuations behind it. She didn’t push on purpose, like Dad did, and yet it was always interlaced with everything she said.
All I ever wanted was a big brother, someone to watch out for me and show me how I was supposed to live, but all I ever got was a rival. I’m four years younger than Trevor and we still got pitted against each other, stood right up and measured to see who was the favorite that day.
And I wish Mom hadn’t done that, hadn’t thrust my accomplishments at Trevor that way. Because I knew he’d just go right back to raising that bar higher, making it impossible for me to reach, which meant I’d always be second best.
Were you ever in a pressure cooker, Bennett? Did you ever feel like you’d run through the fun house trying to ignore those twenty different versions of yourself, some tall and thin and some warped and ugly, only to reach the end and realize that there was no escape route, just more mirrors, more versions of yourself?
You were my escape route. My doorway to another world, a reflection that looked more like the me I wanted to be than the one I was forced to be.
“We’re really proud of Madelyn,” Dad said, and his voice was kind of raspy or gravelly or whatever, just like always, part of the cigarette habit he thought us kids didn’t know about. A vice he couldn’t admit, because it didn’t match his history as a college ball player, as PE teacher … it was completely at odds with the man he pretended to be.
That’s how my family is, you know. Everyone has some secret vice.
My dad smokes and my mom drinks wine every night—just a single glass—but she drinks it out of a coffee mug like maybe we all won’t think a thing about it.
It’s only one glass, Bennett. Just one. I know because I got curious once and kept track of how much was left in the bottle. But her hiding it, her not wanting to admit to that one-glass-a-day habit … my dad hiding his cigarettes in his sock drawer … well, that’s just how it is in my house.
You have to be perfect, and if you aren’t, well, you better fake it pretty damn well.
I faked it really well, Bennett. Just like that first day after your class, when I spent all afternoon sitting on the couch, thinking of you, and yet my dad thought I was studying because I knew to crack open the books and spread out my worksheets the moment before he pulled into the garage.
So, that night with Trevor, I sat in the dining room chair and did my duty, and it was thinking of you that made it easier. Thinking of our upcoming hike, thinking of the place called High Rock, hoping it went up so high it would take us somewhere else and we’d never have to return.
See, my dad had his cigarettes and my mom had her wine, and me, well, I had you.
On Thursday at the end of class, I had to linger behind because we hadn’t agreed on where we’d meet, but I couldn’t talk about it in front of anyone else. It was the first day I had to really work to hide us from everyone else.
Katie was sort of gathering her stuff, holding her book to her chest as she paused, waiting for me. I waved my arm and said, “I gotta ask Mr. Cartwright a question about next week’s test.”
I’d gotten used to thinking of you as Bennett, and saying Mr. Cartwright felt weird on my tongue, but you know I had to do it.
Katie nodded and slipped out of the room, and then it was just us.
You didn’t pretend to be fiddling with your laptop or papers or anything like that. You just looked up and grinned at me, and in that moment my worry whooshed right out, because that wasn’t the face of a guy who wanted to cancel our plans.
“Hey you,” you’d said, and I read so much between the lines, read a casual comfortable air about the words that put me at ease.
“Hey yourself,” I said. “I just wanted to know where we were going to meet up.”
“Why don’t we just meet at Mt. Peak, and then you can ride with me? We need to go that general direction anyway.”
“Great. Just one other question,” I said, stepping up beside you.
Your eyes darted over my shoulder, to the windows, even though we were only as close as any student and teacher would stand. I took a tiny, almost imperceptible step backward, and you seemed to breathe again, and something about your reaction stung, just a little.
Did you think I was going to close the gap, Bennett? That I’d touch you or flirt with you right there in your classroom, in plain view of all those passersby?
I wouldn’t have done that. I wanted it a secret in the same way you did. But I guess your nervous
ness was understandable, so I tried not to be bothered.
“What’s that?” you asked.
“How do you like your coffee?”
Your truck smelled like pine that day, an almost overpowering scent. You bought a new little tree air-freshener for me, didn’t you, Bennett? I was afraid to ask, because if the answer was no I would have felt oh-so-stupid, but I knew the truth.
There was not a scrap of garbage or a fleck of dust in the cab. You’re a tidy person—I knew that by the careful way you hung your coat in class, by the organized look of your messenger bag—but I could see you’d cleaned that truck for me. As we settled into the long drive to High Rock, I cracked my window so that piney scent wouldn’t overwhelm us.
I knew we’d be gone much longer than my normal hikes took, so I told my parents I was going to the library at school to study for your test.
Funny, right? That I actually mentioned you by name and they didn’t suspect a thing? The strangest sense of pleasure … of spite, in a way … had washed over me that morning as I stepped out of the house, knowing that I had a whole day to myself—that we had a whole day to ourselves—and my parents would never know, because going to the library to study fit their image of the Very Perfect Daughter.
I knew that as long as I was perfect on the outside it didn’t matter how I felt on the inside, so I enjoyed that long drive to High Rock, watching as you sipped at the coffee I’d picked up for you, happy that you drank it right to the last drop.
We drove down twisting country roads, next to lakes and hills, under trees and over little bridges. The farther we got from school, from home, from life, the more the mood changed, became lighter, as a day of infinite possibility stretched out just like that winding pavement.
“Still liking my class?” you asked.
I grinned and looked over at you. “Some parts more than others,” I said.
“And what’s your favorite part?”
“You,” I said, feeling brazen.
I think you blushed, just the tiniest bit of warmth in your cheeks—cheeks that looked more clean-shaven than on an average class day—and then you said, “I have to admit, my eleven o’clock class isn’t quite the same.”
“Oh?”
You nodded, your lips curling just a little bit. “I shouldn’t say that, you know.”
“But I want you to,” I said.
“Sometimes I find it hard not to look at you a dozen times in those two hours. I’m going to get myself in trouble.” The way you grinned, your eyes still trained on the road, revealed that one crooked tooth of yours. My mom would say it adds character; I just thought it made you look even hotter.
“I guess I’m lucky. I’m supposed to look only at you,” I said.
You reached out and playfully poked my arm, and I poked you back, and we were both smiling and it was beautiful, wasn’t it? Us just being a boy and a girl and saying what we were thinking?
It hurts so much to think how complicated this all got, when it started from such a beautiful place.
Past Elbe, down a skinny stretch of pavement, you put your blinker on and turned onto a gravel road. The further we got from reality the more I wished your truck had bench seats, because I wanted to slide over until our thighs touched. I wanted to see if you’d rest your hand on my knee, or maybe wrap your arm around my shoulders and let me lean into you.
Voldemort had been quiet, back there in the bed of the pickup, as we drove down the paved county roads, but now he perked up and started biting at the wind and whatever tree limbs he could reach. It was another couple of miles on that puddled road, and when you hit the really big bumps we’d fly almost out of our seats, and then we’d laugh.
Finally, you parked the truck, and I was so pleased to see there weren’t any other cars there.
“Did you bring any gloves?” you asked as we climbed out. It was so much colder up there, in the mountains, than it had been back home. I found myself surprised by the bite in the air, but I knew once we got hiking it wouldn’t be so bad.
“Uh, no,” I said.
“I have an extra pair.”
You slipped a backpack over your shoulders and then tossed me a set of those stretchy, black, one-size-fits-all gloves and I pulled them on, imagining you’d worn them before, so it was almost like we were holding hands. It seems so childish now, like a girl with her first crush, but I couldn’t help the thoughts from forming.
And a moment later I didn’t have to imagine it, because you grabbed my hand and said “Come on,” pulling me over to the trail head.
You were different that day, less cautious—like it didn’t matter that you were my teacher and I was your student.
You wouldn’t have acted like that if you knew I was sixteen. That’s what I was thinking as you held my hand. I was thinking that I was doing something I shouldn’t and I was thinking I was betraying you and I was thinking you would never have to know and that I could have what I wanted, and maybe years later we would laugh about it.
I hope they know that. Know that everything you did, every step you took, every touch you made, it was because you thought I was eighteen.
You let my hand go when we got to the trail because there wasn’t room to walk side by side, and we fell silent as we traipsed up the hillside.
It was steeper than Mt. Peak, harder for me to keep up the pace you set, and we stopped periodically, sitting down side-by-side on fallen logs. Voldemort would race over and bury his face in my lap, making me giggle, and you’d pat his head.
I wanted to lean into you when we took breaks. I wanted you to touch me.
But we weren’t there yet. You were still holding back.
It must have taken close to two hours to reach the spot where the tree line fell away and a giant craggy rock slanted steeply upward in front of us. The whole hike was only a mile and a half, but the angle of it, the steepness of that mountain, it slowed us down, and that was okay with me.
“What is this?” I asked, my eyes following a steel cable along the surface of the rock. At the top stood a ramshackle shed.
“It’s a surprise,” you said.
I turned and looked at you with raised brows, but you looked so happy, so eager, your blue eyes sparkling like that, that I just turned and followed you.
There weren’t any trees or shrubs or grass, just a big peak of the mountain made of exposed rock. It wasn’t vertical, though—I could still walk up it with the help of the cable. As that little shack loomed closer, my curiosity grew, and your face took on this glow like you were about to share something special with me.
It was one of those times when twenty-five looked young.
You still had that worldly, sophisticated atmosphere about you, but when that glowing smile took over, I could see you in startling clarity as a high school student, as just another boy who would have sat beside me in class. And it made all the guilt of being sixteen, of keeping that secret, it made it melt away, made me think that I wasn’t so far off, we weren’t so far apart.
We made it to the top and I saw that it wasn’t just a shack, but an old cabin complete with a porch. It was perched on the edge of the rock peak, just a dozen feet shy of the drop.
I was afraid to let go of the cable, but as I stood there, holding on, my heart stopped.
I could see everything from that spot. The whole world, Bennett.
Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens.
Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams.
Four of the biggest peaks in the state of Washington, and I could see them from one spot in all their snow-capped glory, a stark contrast to the tree-topped mountains surrounding them.
Below us, the National Forest sprawled. Miles and miles and miles of green, rolling valleys and steep mountains, broken up only by the occasional lake or river.
It was breathtaking.
You were breathtaking.
&nbs
p; “What is this place?” I finally managed to say.
You stepped up behind me, not needing to anchor yourself to the cabin like I did, and stood so close to me I felt safe enough to let go.
“A long time ago, it was built it for smoke-spotting. Forest fires, you know? It was built in the thirties. They had to use donkeys to get all the pieces up here, and then this old guy would stay for days and days in the summer, watching out for smoke and fire.”
“That’s incredible,” I said.
It must have been magical, being up there for days on end. The smoke-spotter must have felt like the only person left on earth.
“Come on, there’s more.”
I couldn’t imagine anything more spectacular than what you’d already shown me. You took my hand again, and squeezed it, and then led me up onto the porch. You unlatched the door and we stepped inside.
There wasn’t much to it. Just a small desk and a bed with no blankets.
And a notebook.
You picked it up and gestured for me to follow you back out to the porch, and then we sat down on it, our feet dangling toward the rocks. I swung my legs back and forth as you settled down beside me, cracking open that simple spiral notebook.
“See, people come from all over the place to see this cabin, and they write down their names and a message.”
You took a pen out of your backpack and handed it to me.
“Write something for both of us.”
As you handed over that pen, it was symbolic. You were giving me the honor of recording our moment up there on top of the world.
I could have written our names separately, one on each line, but I didn’t.
I wrote Bennett & Madelyn, right next to one another. And then I tapped the pen against the page a few times, trying to decide what sort of message I wanted to add.
