by Brodi Ashton
“I know,” I said.
“Why did you do it?”
I shook my head. “I was trying to pay for college.”
She glared at me for a few long moments. “That’s all you have to say?”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“That doesn’t fix anything.”
She grabbed her tray and stood up.
“Wait,” I said.
“What?”
“Where is he?”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I’m not telling you shit.”
She stalked away.
“Well, that was exciting,” Faroush said.
“Ow,” I answered.
They were silent for the rest of lunch, and for that, I was grateful.
In journalism, Jesse went through the rundown and assigned me a story on the controversy over the school’s expansion project, and the property’s neighbors who were signing petitions to thwart the move. It was a good story, the top one, so I was pretty sure Jesse felt bad for me. After the meeting, Professor Ferguson called me over to his desk.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“I already know it was a bad story,” I said, staring at my feet.
“Not a bad story,” the professor said. “Not badly written. Actually quite compelling.”
I looked up. “Then why are you frowning?”
He leaned back in his chair. “I think you have a hit-and-run approach to journalism.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you went from textbook journalism to suicide bomber. You go for the most damage, but at your own expense. I saw it in the story about the communications system changeover, which, as it turns out, was not instigated by a stalking situation. It was a technical malfunction. But the point is, you crossed bridges and then you burned them, leaving nowhere for you to go. Journalism is a game with rules. You have to learn how to play without blowing stuff up.”
The pit in my stomach radiated throughout my entire body. “I think I understand,” I said.
“One more thing,” he said. “If I were you, I would make sure you have another option for college besides the Bennington.”
My heart turned into an anvil as I nodded.
I dived into my assigned story, first interviewing angry neighbors and then trying to get a comment from Principal Wallace, who was making it very difficult for me to see him. Then I took a camera out to get some B-roll of the grounds and the houses nearby. Jesse texted me to see if I needed any help, but I told him I could do it on my own. Following the story was the only time I was, for just a moment, able to think about something other than how I’d messed everything up.
After school, Mack helped me put together the video footage of my story. We worked in silence mostly, but she spent extra time adding special effects to the video clips and sound engineering it so that my voice sounded a little less nasal.
Right as I was finished, I got a text message from Charlotte.
Charlotte: Meet me outside.
I put the finishing touches on the package and sent it off to Jesse and then gathered my things and went out to the roundabout in front of the school. Charlotte was there in her silver Prius.
She rolled down the window. “Get in,” she said.
I obeyed.
She took off down the road and in the direction of Embassy Row.
“Where are we going?” I said, suspiciously.
“Number two on your list. We’re going to storm the embassy and demand forgiveness,” she said, turning on her windshield wipers. It had begun to snow, which meant all of DC would soon be shutting down.
“We’re not even going to be able to get past the gate.”
“We’re going to try.”
“And what would I say to him if we did get in?”
“You could start with ‘I’m sorry’ and go from there.”
There was no use arguing anymore, and I didn’t feel like trying. Instead, I pulled my knees into my chest and rested my chin on top and tried to take deep breaths.
Sooner than I wanted, Charlotte made a turn and the Spanish embassy came into view, with its red-and-yellow flags and ornate iron gate that seemed twice as tall as the last time I’d seen it.
Charlotte drove right up to the guard’s gate and rolled down her window.
“Pipper Baird, here to see Rafael Amador.”
“I’m sorry,” the guard said. “He is unavailable.”
“Could you just please use your little radio thing and let him know that she’s here? And very contrite?”
“It is impossible.”
“No, it’s not,” she said. “I can see the radio thing, and the button you would need to press.”
“Charlotte,” I started, but she shushed me.
“You just press that green button on top of your walkie-talkie and tell him.”
I began to hope.
The guard shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and for a moment I thought he might be about to send his attack dogs at us. “Miss, it’s not possible because Rafael is out of the country.”
“What?” I blurted out. “Where?”
“I’m not allowed to say.”
I practically crawled over Charlotte. “Is he back in Spain?”
“I’m not allowed to say. Please circle around and remove your car from the premises.”
Charlotte frowned and did as she was told, and on the way back to Chiswick, she said, “Well, at least you can say you tried.”
When I was a little girl, my mom used to buy this really expensive Irish butter from the specialty store. It was rich and creamy and it made her fresh bread taste better than any cake. And if I ever felt sad, or I was having a bad day, I used to sneak into the kitchen and use my finger to shovel small bites of cold butter into my mouth and it would make me feel better.
So today, I went home and tried the same thing with the cheap stuff we had now. And I gagged.
Rafael was out of the country. Probably back in Spain. I Googled his name, but no new stories came up. No explanations of where he was. No hints as to whether he would ever forgive me.
Not even butter could assuage the pain.
So to cope, I did the only thing I really knew how to do. I opened my laptop and started typing.
I had him here. His hand in mine. His fingers laced with my fingers.
I let go first.
And then I closed my laptop.
Sometimes writing was a release.
Sometimes it was an ascent up the face of a mountain, with no harness and no safety line.
Sometimes it was a leap off a cliff attached to a hang glider.
Sometimes it was a leap off a cliff attached to nothing.
Sometimes each word filled my soul.
And sometimes each word ripped a piece of it out. This was one of those times.
37
Over the next month, I dived into the school paper, sang extra loud for tips, and at night worked on my computer as much as my heart would let me.
My fingers were strong enough to hold him, and my will was strong enough to hold him, but the thing you don’t understand, the thing you don’t see coming, is that point when it’s too late for your strength and your will to keep someone.
I finally stopped looking for Rafael. I didn’t think even any of the DIs knew where he was, except maybe Giselle, and she would never tell me. In fact I was pretty sure she would never talk to me again. Which wasn’t that hard because she had never talked that much to me in the first place.
Eventually, the nasty glares subsided, and the snickers in the hallways stopped, and one day, when I got to my locker, I saw that there was no fresh permanent marker on it. I considered that a good day.
I gave up on the living-on-tips story. Bottom line was, I couldn’t.
So I was left grasping at air. At empty chairs. At water that could be caught only for a moment before it seeped between my fingers, or dried up. Gone.
I failed you.
I stuck with the stories that Jesse assigned or that I discussed with the department before I actually started writing them. By the time March was over, I was back in my form and was consistently scoring some of the top stories.
The only thing I had was that moment I would never get back. That great and terrible what-if.
What if I hadn’t let go of his hand?
And when the deep freeze of winter was gone for good, I found a story. A big one. One that had all the elements of a Bennington winner.
Children in the community were losing teeth at a higher rate than in any other area in Fairfax County. I first discovered it when I heard my neighbor, who was a dentist, remark upon it to my dad.
I started to dig. And dig. First I made a list of things that could cause tooth loss and narrowed it to three factors: diet, tooth-care routines, and environment. The easiest way to check was to interview parents about tooth-care routines.
I didn’t find anything, so I moved on to diet. Again, nothing that stuck out as different from any community in the country.
The third was environment. I began looking up stories of environmental oddities and found one about a local factory that had developed a leak in their waste process, allowing several toxins into the water supply.
There it was. It didn’t take long to draw lines connecting the toxins and early tooth loss.
Professor Ferguson told me that the story was a contender. It would go up against Jesse’s story, where he followed a marijuana plant from its growth to harvest to transportation to preparation to rolled-up joint.
It would be a tough competition, but at least I was a contender. More important, I’d found my passion for reporting again.
Then you came along. And you said those three words. Not “I love you.” But, “I’ve got you.”
And you had me. And I had you.
The story got me attention, first from the local papers and then from the regional ones and then the news stations and then the national news.
Maybe I hadn’t saved the world, but I’d saved a lot of teeth.
But I let go first. I let go and watched you fall to the ground. And then you let go and watched the ground swallow me up.
And for the second time in my life, I’m left with a haunting what-if.
What if I hadn’t written the story that destroyed you?
By mid-April, the Bennington committee held the vote to determine the winner of the Bennington Scholarship.
Professor Ferguson told me it was the closest vote they’d ever seen.
Jesse won.
My savings account was empty and I had no Bennington and no Rafael.
But it didn’t destroy you. At least, I don’t think it did. If I know you, you’re out there in the world scaling national treasures and ignoring fences and showing someone else the back side of water. But I hope you’re not out there in the world hating me.
Because I love you.
There was nowhere to send my words. It wasn’t newsworthy. It had no hook. No scandal. None of the hallmarks that make a good story.
I couldn’t help thinking that Raf would want to see it, but if I was being honest, it was me who wanted him to see it. I didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve that. So I did the equivalent of sending it up in a balloon. I submitted it to the Post-Anon website. Three days later, it appeared on the site.
I read it one more time and said good-bye to Rafael Amador.
38
I didn’t get the Bennington.
But I did get a scholarship to the University of Maryland, College Park, thanks in part to the letter of recommendation Professor Ferguson sent.
. . . Piper Baird was one of the brightest and most difficult students I’ve ever had, but what she lacks in manageability she makes up for in resourcefulness. You’d be a fool not to pay for her to come to your school. . . .
The scholarship paid for everything including room and board. And the best part about it was that Charlotte would be going there too. She didn’t have a scholarship, but it was a top-ten program and her parents could afford to help her. They even talked about renting a room for her near campus.
Late April brought the annual National Cherry Blossom Festival. The tradition commemorates the gift of three thousand cherry trees from Japan to Washington, DC. When they bloom, they blanket the perimeter of the tidal basin next to the Jefferson Memorial in a layer of pink. It was late this year, due to an unseasonably cold winter that seemed interminable.
On the morning of the middle Saturday of the festival, Charlotte texted me.
Charlotte: Hey! Want to meet at the Jefferson Memorial at noon?
The memorial was at the center of the cherry blossoms.
Me: Sure! Want to ride together? We can save on gas.
Charlotte: I can’t. I’m going to be in DC beforehand.
Me: Why?
It took a few moments longer than usual to get a response.
Charlotte: Shopping. For college stuff. Lamps.
The answer seemed too detailed, but I shrugged it off.
Me: Okay. See you at noon.
Before I left, I opened my laptop and put together a little postcard collage made of various pictures of the Spanish flag, and I typed the words I’M SORRY over the top. Then I sent it in to Post-Anon.
It was the thirty-fifth I’m Sorry I had sent since my first message. Only two had been published on the site. The rest ignored. The people at Post-Anon were probably tired of receiving them.
I didn’t know why I was doing it anymore. I guess I hoped that one day my apology would reach him.
Michael popped into my room as I was shutting my laptop.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“An exercise in futility,” I replied.
“I hate exercise.”
I chuckled.
I took the metro to the Smithsonian station, the closest to the Jefferson Memorial but still a fifteen-minute walk. It was actually a gorgeous day to walk and contemplate the meaning of life and how I’d already screwed something up so bad. Did other people my age have this much regret?
Maybe. But right now, I felt alone in the weight of it.
The wind picked up, and pink cherry blossom leaves floated and danced above my head. One of the things that make cherry blossoms so beautiful is the fact that they’re so ephemoral. They bloom all at once, and then just when you’re growing accustomed to the Tidal Basin being blanketed in brilliant pink, they’re gone.
I was not about to make it a metaphor for life, or disappointment, or missing someone. That would be such a cliché, and reporters . . .
Who was I kidding? I wasn’t a reporter. Yet.
I got to the steps at 12:05, but there was no Charlotte.
Just as I sat down, my phone rang. The number was one I didn’t recognize. I swiped it open.
“Hello?” I said.
There was a pause.
“Hello?” I said again.
“Did you mean it?”
It was Raf’s voice. His smooth rich voice. I’d know it anywhere. I bit my lip and put my hand over my heart to keep it from bursting through my lungs.
“Did I mean what?”
“What you wrote.”
I shook my head even though I knew he couldn’t see me. “No. I didn’t mean it. I should never have written it. I am so sorry. I thought about all the things I would say to you if I ever got to speak to you again, but now they just all seem so trite and inadequate. I was stupid. So stupid. Seriously, dumb as dirt. And . . . did I say stupid?” My voice trailed off.
“Keep going,” he said.
“So so stupid. I just . . . Ever since I was twelve I’ve been obsessed with how to pay for college, and I got it in my head that this was the only way. The tips I make at the Yogurt Shop are nothing. I was desperate.”
He was quiet on the other end for a few long moments.
“Okay, maybe that sounds like too much of an excuse. I’m sorry.”
Quiet again.
“I wish yo
u were here,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because I’m looking at the prettiest cherry blossoms we’ve had in years. Seriously, they look like a nuclear bomb went off, only instead of fire and destruction, there . . . are . . . blossoms.”
“Yeah, not the best analogy, is it?”
“No, it isn’t.”
He was quiet again, and I wanted to reach through the phone and touch his face.
“Where are you?” I said.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Oh,” I said. He still didn’t trust me. And rightly so.
“I miss you, Pip.”
The words. The words. I’d let myself go so long without hoping I would ever hear them.
“Does that mean . . . you forgive me?”
He didn’t answer for a long time. Hours.
“Yes,” he said.
I blinked and a tiny tear fell down my cheek. “A fat lot of good that does, now that you’re half a world away.”
“At least you know I’m not out there somewhere in the world hating you.”
My breath caught. “What?”
“I’m not out there in the world hating you.”
Not out there in the world hating me. I’d written those words in my Post-Anon essay.
“So, did you mean what you wrote?” he said.
“You’re not talking about the People article, are you?”
“No.”
A couple more tears followed that first one, and I wiped my cheek with the palm of my hand.
“Don’t cry, Pip.”
“What? How do you know . . . ?” I looked left and right but didn’t see anything.
“Your friend Charlotte sent me to the Post-Anon site. My dad filtered emails from you, but not from her.”
I started down the stairs, desperately searching the throngs of people for that face. His face. Where was he?
“You said you loved me,” he said. “Is that true?”
I fought my way through the crowd, going against traffic toward the cherry blossoms.
“Warmer,” he said.
I smiled and scanned the crowds.
“Warmer,” he said.
I was about ready to grab people and turn them around and then I saw him leaning against a tree, his phone up to his ear and a huge smile on his face.
