“Nothing did is all I’m saying.”
“Jade’s dad could’ve come back at any time—”
“But he didn’t—”
“But he could have—”
“No. There was a pattern—”
“Marco, stop.”
We had fought like this for most of the week. Sally pushing to tell. Me pushing to wait until after the dance. I knew there was a risk, but I set my worry aside and trusted that the pattern would hold. Watching Diego and Jade on the dance floor, I was glad I had kept my promise, but I was also glad that tomorrow was almost here. I wanted to stop fighting with Sally. I wanted Jade to finally be safe.
I scooted closer to Sally, taking her hand between mine. “I promise I’ll talk to Pop tomorrow. Let’s just dance. Okay?”
On the dance floor, we kept a Care Bear’s distance between us.
“This sucks,” Sally said. “I want to lay my head on your shoulder.”
“That would be way better than this.”
“We can pretend,” she suggested.
“How?”
“Close your eyes.”
“What?”
“Trust me.”
I looked around self-consciously. Nobody was watching, so I let my eyes drift shut. “Now what?”
“Now,” she said, “imagine me stepping closer, until I’m right against you. And I lean down to rest my head on your shoulder.”
I imagined holding her tightly in my arms, my hand curving around her hips. I felt my face flush. I opened my eyes. “This is stupid.”
She opened her eyes too, slightly hurt. “Sorry. I thought it would be fun to pretend.”
“It’s not.” I glanced at the rest of the kids dancing. No one had their eyes shut. Not one.
“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “What if we didn’t have to pretend?”
I shook my head. “How?”
“What if we go somewhere else?”
“We can’t leave the dance. Pop will pick us up in a few hours.”
“Okay. So, what if we leave the dance but not the school?”
“Not the school?”
She raised an eyebrow. “There’s got to be somewhere in here that we can go.”
I thought about it and then smiled. “I have an idea.”
Senior Year
27. FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH
ON THE DRIVE TO SCHOOL, I return to my ruminations on last night, and another image pops up. This time, instead of Truth, it’s a dude called Reconciliation.
Reconciliation is the kind of guy who swaggers, sweeping his fingers across his shoulders, like, “I got this; I can make this friendship take flight again,” before jumping off Friendship Cliff. But the thing about Reconciliation is he forgot about gravity.
Gravity pulls him down with an acceleration of 32.2 feet/second^2, and at a descent of 100 feet, acceleration causes an “exponential decrease of height.” Mrs. A would tell you to imagine a line that curves sharply down. At one second in, Reconciliation falls sixteen feet. At two seconds, sixty-four feet. Around two and half seconds? Splat on the ground.
And that is the current state of my relationship with Diego.
Because, like I said, other truths came out last night. Here’s the replay:
DIEGO:
I just don’t get it, bro. I killed that interview. But if Grendel’s out there recruiting, I guess he wasn’t that impressed.
ME
No, it’s not like that. . . . When the notice went up about the job, Brenda recommended me to Grendel, but I said no until yesterday. So, don’t be down on your interview—
DIEGO
Brenda recommended you weeks ago?
ME
Yeah, but that’s not the point—
DIEGO
And you didn’t tell me that back then—
ME
Because—
DIEGO
Because what?
ME
Because I thought . . . I thought it would . . . mess with your head.
DIEGO
You don’t think I’m good enough for the job.
ME
I never said that.
DIEGO
Actions, bro.
ME
D, I’m just trying to get my raise. Grendel’s just trying to make sure I know my options—
DIEGO
Right. Your options are to go to that Ivy school—
ME
It’s not Ivy—
DIEGO
Or become an MIT at Grendel’s—
ME
Again, not taking it—
DIEGO
Right. Because if you want it, you’ll get it. Because you’re better than me.
And I couldn’t think of a thing to say. Because I realized he was right. Some part of me thought he wasn’t good enough to get what he wants.
Diego doesn’t show at his locker. Same for Sookie and Jade. When the first bell rings, I walk slowly to calc, sliding into my seat before Mr. Mackenzie hands out our final exams. I try my best, but I’m pretty distracted. Afterward, I go through the motions: Locker, class, locker, class.
At lunch I sit opposite Diego. I arrive empty-handed because you can’t take a beating and eat at the same time. But the response is quieter. Eyes down, he says, “You don’t get to sit here today.”
Sookie and Jade stare at the wall. Nobody will look at me. I expected a fight. An argument. Not this.
“You serious?”
“Yep.”
“Dude, will you just listen to me?”
Silence.
“What about your pop’s advice to deny, deny, deny?”
This gets his attention. He stands, fists on the table, stares at me until the moment gets so tense that Sookie says, “Just go, Marco.”
“Yeah,” Jade echoes. “Go.”
“You guys, too?”
She nods. “For today, yeah.”
I glance at Sookie. “Me too,” she says.
And so I go.
• • •
I head to my truck and drive. I don’t know where until Old Ancient pulls into the park, idling beneath the shadow of the rope tower. Nearby is the toddler playground where Diego and I played as little spits. I have an old-school picture of us on that playground in my room. There’s Diego, big head and stocky legs. There’s me, gummy smile and poofy hair. We’re going down “the big boy” slide together. His legs are wrapped around me, and I’m falling back into his chest. You can be like that with your best friend when you’re small. But it seems like part of growing up is growing farther apart.
Diego always makes fun of the photo. “Dude, you got me here, solo, like I’m your girl or something. Why don’t you put up a photo of you and Erika or even your moms? This is like a bromance portrait.”
But I keep it there because it reminds me that once upon a time our only jobs were to play and not fuss. Life is way more complicated now. But through it all, Diego’s watched my back over and over again.
I wish he had hit me. It would have been simpler.
I get out of the truck and make my way to a picnic table near the playground. The park is empty except for a few moms with their chubby, knee-high kids running around, falling, and getting up again. Some stop to cry, but if the moms don’t blow up the fall, they forget why they started crying in the first place.
I sit on the picnic table, leaning back until I feel the wood against my shoulders. I stare up at the sky, thankful for the way that sunny blue shows up, day after day. And then—I don’t know why—I feel thankful for a lot of other things: for my job at Grendel’s; for a mom and pop who stuck it out; for friends who, up until today, have always had my back.
And I’m hit with that nostalgia again, followed by a wave of sadness about what I did to Diego, about the aftermath in the cafeteria, about that coldness in his voice.
I think about Pop, about good days and bad.
About Sally, about how she looked that night when she said she missed me. And how she looked wh
en she saw me back together with Erika.
I think about Erika, about if things are really right with her.
I feel a sadness in my chest, like that blue sky is crushing me.
There, in the middle of the park, wrapped in a blanket of trees and air and children laughing, I am hit with the messiness of this life.
The messiness of survival.
And how tired I am of just surviving.
How I want more than that.
This time I don’t bring the tips of my fingers to my eyes.
I let it happen.
All that twistiness of hurt that crushes my chest. I let it out.
So I can breathe. So I can continue. So I can keep on surviving.
• • •
I’d like to say that there are no witnesses. But there is one. I see her when I finally sit up, on a park bench in the near distance. She wears a yellow dress, her black hair pulled up into a bun, and when our eyes meet, she lifts a solemn hand.
This is happening underneath this blue sky.
I am here.
I am still here.
And she is here too.
She stands, swiping at her dress, nervous hands easing out the wrinkles. Then she crosses the park, eyes slipping to the blades of grass beneath her bright red sandals.
A few feet away, I see her embarrassed half smile. She doesn’t call out my blotchy face. She only gathers her skirt and climbs onto the table beside me, scooting over until our thighs touch—our pinkies just inches apart.
We look at each other.
And then her pinkie takes mine.
I’ve missed you.
I’ve missed you too.
And I know that it doesn’t matter that I have a girlfriend.
Not to her.
Maybe not to me either.
That with Sally the past and the present are all mixed up. And the idea of a future with or without her seems impossible.
A heat spreads through me as I travel down a wormhole to the start of ninth grade. Early November. Her homecoming weekend. And I remember the weeks leading up to that day, all the excited conversations over the phone—Sally there, in North Carolina, her grandma or dad or Boone always screaming about something or other in the background of our nightly phone calls. And me, here in Seagrove, stopping our talks to tell Lil’ Jay to put away his dishes or Domingo to finish up his math homework or to ask Pop if he wanted to go outside for some fresh air. The newness of being the man of the house, the separateness of having Sally so far away. But we were sticking to the plan, that no matter what, that no matter how far she was, we’d keep each other close. And then that day, that day in November.
“I showed up at the airport and you weren’t there,” I tell her.
She looks at the ground. When her eyes lift, they’re wet. “I think about that every day.”
She had bought me a return ticket home. Worse? She’d sent Boone to deliver it. He met me in baggage claim, wearing one long frown. He said Sally was “sorry.” That she “wasn’t feeling well.” That I couldn’t stay. I had to “go home.” Two hours later, I was on a plane heading south.
After that she disappeared. No return calls, texts, e-mails. Not to me or any of the tribe.
Just gone.
And it just blows my mind that my biggest worry was that your corsage would wilt on the flight to North Carolina. I didn’t worry about my mom being left alone with Pop. Or flying solo. I kept thinking about that freakin’ corsage.” I look at her, my eyes equally wet. “You sent Boone to tell me to go home.”
“He didn’t say it like that,” she says quietly.
“It doesn’t matter how he said it. What matters is that he said it, not you.”
She picks at the dress, tugs the hem over her knees. She looks at me for a second before her eyes dart to the playground. “I tried—I did—but I couldn’t get myself out of bed.”
I imagine what that looked like—Sally of the infinite “gotchas,” suddenly stuck to a bed, like someone had glued her there. Sally, trying to push herself up with every ounce of willpower, first her shoulders and then her spine, but there is a snapback. That glue gives a little but doesn’t break.
Sally stuck.
“Why?” I ask slowly. “What was wrong with you?”
She brings an index finger to the corner of her eye, her voice a slender breath. “I was really sad.”
“About . . . ?”
Her calls were filled with talk of new friends, a demanding track and field coach, a part-time job in the art gallery. Her life seemed full. Happy even. My calls were about trying not to yell at the twins, trying to get a job to deal with a stack of bills.
But looking at her face now, I realize there were no friends, no team, no job.
“I was sad about everything. It was easy to pretend when you were far away, but I knew that when you came, you’d see. You’d know. And I couldn’t face that. . . . I couldn’t face you. Any of you. I didn’t mean to lie. . . . I honestly believed it would get better. I thought it was the move, but now I know that moving made it worse. But, Marco . . .” This time when she looks at me, her gaze is unflinching. “I’d been sad for a while. . . .
“I think I tried to tell you before I left, but maybe I didn’t say it in a way that you could understand. Maybe when I was with you, I said just enough to be okay for that minute, for that hour. Maybe another person can be like a Band-Aid, but if you remove the Band-Aid, the bleeding continues.”
She stares at the ground, taking deep breaths. That nervous hand shaking.
I am quiet. I am waiting.
Her shoulders rise up to brush her ears. “After homecoming, I went further and further inside until I all but disappeared. Boone saved me.” She wipes at her eyes. “He pulled me out, bit by bit. But by then so much time had gone by. I felt like it was too late. I . . . I went online. I saw pictures of you hanging out with everyone, with Erika—”
“We weren’t together back then—”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“You’re right. I should have. But I didn’t even know how or where to . . . to start.”
“And then you suddenly did?” My anger is sharp, but Sally doesn’t toss that anger back at me. Here voice stays calm, resolute.
“Nothing about this was sudden.” She takes another deep breath. “This year, with Mom, and the divorce, and reading—I’ve read so many books to just try to understand what happened.” She looks at me, eyes pleading. “And sometimes I can’t understand what happened, not entirely. A lot of what I did, the choices I made, are blurred. . . . But when Mom said she was moving back . . .” She offers me a shaky smile. “I knew that I wanted to come back here, to talk to you.”
She tries to touch me, but I slide away, standing.
“Marco.”
“You talked to me, okay? You can check that off your box.”
“I know it’s a lot. To take in.”
She waits and waits, but I’m silent.
“I’ll go,” she says. “Give you some time . . . But if you want to talk about it more—”
“I won’t,” I say. But honestly, I don’t know why. I just need this conversation to stop.
“Okay . . .” She’s a few steps off when she turns back to me and says, “Wait, Marco, I want . . . I need—”
“What? What do you need?”
She nods, like she deserves that. Like it’s okay if I snap at her a thousand ways. “For what it’s worth, I really did love you.” She waits a beat, glancing at her hands. When she looks back at me, she’s determined. “For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure I still do.”
Middle School
28. THE CUSTODIAN’S OFFICE
“THIS ISN’T BAD,” SALLY SAID as we stepped into the custodian’s office. “I’ve never been to the end of this hall before.”
The custodial office was in the west wing of the school, up two flights of stairs. The room was small, tucked away beside a storage room, and had jus
t the basics—a table, a few shelves, a sofa that could only fit two pushed up against the far wall of the room. We left the lights off, the illumination pushing in from the street and hall lights making the space bright enough to see.
When I shut the door behind us, Sally took my hand and pulled me closer. She nestled her head on my chest. There wasn’t enough space for a teddy bear. There was only the feeling of her chest against mine, the smell of her coconut shampoo.
“We could probably get in trouble for this,” Sally said as we glided left and right. Our first real slow dance.
“Probably,” I replied, kissing her neck—another first for us. Sally stepped back and smiled nervously, as if realizing the possibilities of us alone. I had already realized those possibilities, a puddle of sweat accumulating under each of my armpits. If Pop knew that I had brought Sally here, he would say that I was “crossing a line,” and Mom would add that they had “raised me better.” But in that moment, no amount of “better raising” would have stopped me from trying to get closer to Sally.
I led her to the couch. At first we were stiff. Shoulder to shoulder.
“Maybe . . . Maybe you should put your arm around me?” Sally suggested.
The obvious choice was my left arm, since it was the one between us. I commanded it to rise up. Up, my brain screamed. Over her shoulder! But for some reason my arm stayed stiffly between us until Sally looped it around her. She snuggled in closer. “Better?”
“Yeah,” I whispered.
“Okay . . .” She laughed, shaking her head.
“What?”
“We’re just so awkward. Like, so, so, so awkward.”
“So awkward.”
“This is super terrible.” She scooted a little, so we were face to face. “We can do better than this.”
“How?”
“We can just be us.”
“But how?”
“What would we normally do? Before?”
I glanced around the room. “I don’t know.”
“We didn’t used to do this.”
“Yeah, we’d . . . watch a movie?”
“A movie,” she said. “Yeah. So let’s do that.”
“Okay?”
She pulled her phone from her purse and loaded up her movie app. “What do you want to see? Only the old ones are free.”
The Universal Laws of Marco Page 22
