June. Everything in flux, our futures gaping wide and fathomless, rushing toward us like a river gorged on snowmelt. Two months after the letters came in (the house party crowded with balloons in blue and red, cake with “UPENN” scrawled over it in spidery frosting letters, his whole family and me squashed into his backyard while ribs smoked on the grill)—a month after graduation (every face we’d ever known packed twenty to a row in the pea green expanse of the football stadium, tears flowing, speeches suered, caps thrown, the whole four-year nightmare forgotten as the two of us bustled to a late-night diner to make ourselves sick on pancakes)—on a drowsily hot Saturday, I called him.
“You busy?” He, I knew, was freshly home from an internship: a three-hour flight away he had donned a white coat, poured cells from one dish to another, ran simulations that sketched multi-colored lines across a darkened screen. He’d sent me pictures.
“Umhh,” he said. “I’ve got essays. But I can finish ‘em tomorrow. What’s up?”
I didn’t know how to ask. “Do you—” I hesitated, forged on: “Do you remember the creek? Down where we used to live?”
“Course, why?”
“I was thinkin’, I mean, with everything, it would be nice to go down there again. Just walk around like how we used to.”
“Oh,” he said. “Uh...” A confused pause, a little painful. I could almost see him on the other end: that slow, owlish blink he’d had since when we were kids, the one he did when he couldn’t figure me out.
“I know it’s weird”—it was all coming out in a rush—“I mean, no pressure, obviously. But my dad said I could take the pickup, so I can drive us. If you want. I just thought—we only have a couple weeks. Before we...” I did not finish. I could not voice the thought, terrible in its unfamiliarity: we had to go. Him to Pennsylvania, me to community college a city over. Miles and miles between us. It was unbearable.
“Yeah, no,” he said. He was reluctant to leave his work, but also to refuse me. “Course. If you want to... Yeah. Before we go.”
☼
I had not been in this part of town for years and years. It looked nearly the same, but somehow deader: the pale shutters bleached to the color of bone, rows of old clapboards sitting quiet as the grave. We parked at the curb across from my old house. It was identical to the others but for the magnolia in the yard, spitting pale blooms onto the straw-colored lawn. Someone had taken down the tire swing. I didn’t like the sight of it, the tree’s dark arms naked and cheerless, so I looked down at my arms as I slathered them with cream, sunscreen first and then mosquito repellent. All the while the sun beat down on us like a pair of scorching fists.
We looped around the houses and headed downhill. We kept up a steady chatter: a girl I’d been texting, my lifeguard gig, his dream cars. We’d come down this way ten thousand times before, when we were kids; to do it now was somehow surreal, like walking through a dream. By the time we reached the forest proper we’d fallen silent, under some kind of spell, no sound but crunching grass and our breathing. Gradually the woods thickened; the air cooled. The smell of exhaust gave to the rising scent of moist earth. Twenty minutes in we started to hear the rushing hiss of moving water. I sped up, excited. He called after me; I did not slow.
The trees opened; the sound crescendoed. I stopped and drank in the sight. Before us ran the bright, broad ribbon of the creek, the sun dappling white over green, the water crystal clear so that we could see the rocks in grays and browns pebbling the bottom. I felt the mist of it against my face, thrown by the breeze, and grinned. I was a boy again, in awe of the world, everything alive and timeless.
“Oh man,” I laughed, and looked at him, sure that he could not help but share in the exuberance of a secret place—ours, where nothing could touch us. He was smiling too, a sight that warmed me, like whiskey, with intolerable relief.
I rolled up my jeans to just below the knees; he followed suit. I shucked my shoes, but he gave me a look and kept his sneakers on. We walked.
☼
“I’m not sayin’ I don’t like Meteora,” he was saying, “There’s good songs on there. It’s just wild that you think it’s their best. Hybrid Theory is better, no contest.”
“You’re just biased ‘cause that’s the first one you heard. You weren’t gonna like nothin’ better after that.”
By the time we sighted our flag, my collar was sticking to my neck with sweat. We approached, and I marveled that it was still there: a pole stuck in the ground in the shade of an oak, three feet tall with a scrap of Theo’s shirt knotted around the end. His mother, he’d said, had given him hell when he showed up with a big strip missing o his tee. It marked HQ, when we were spies; our mountain hideout, when we were cowboys. Now it was respite. We sat.
“God in heaven, it’s hot,” I breathed. “Better down here than back at home, but still.”
“Yes, sir. Dog days are almost here.”
Almost dog days—almost July. We were meant to start packing then, is what my momma said; packing and, come August, moving out.
As if he’d read my mind, he said: “Not too long until we’re out of here, huh?” There was anticipation in his voice, in the way he looked o past me as if seeing some glorious future in the shrubbery behind me. For some reason this annoyed me unspeakably.
“Gonna miss this place,” I said, trying to steer him, anchor him here.
He plowed on, not hearing me. “I gotta buy sheet covers and things for my dorm. And mountains of blankets. In Philadelphia they get blizzards some years, can you imagine? Did I tell you, my roommate said—”
“Can you shut up about UPenn?” The ugliness in my voice startled us both, but I couldn’t stop. “It’s the only damn thing you talk about these days.”
He looked at me, not a little hurt. “Man, I’m excited about it. Aren’t you excited for college and all?”
This question struck me as horrendously stupid. “I’m not goin’ to an Ivy in Pennsyl-fuckin’-vania, Theo, I’m headin’ a few miles down to Canuta State. Hell, I’m just goin’ ‘cause I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You don’t have to make that my problem,” he said, brow furrowed. “I get that you don’t have stu figured out, but you don’t have to take it out on me.”
This stung. I felt my rage, a rising tide, spilling out from some implacable reservoir. “Like you got everything figured out for yourself? You’re flyin’ blind same as me, so don’t try to act like you’re better than me.”
Silence roiled between us, ugly and hot. I stared at the dirt between my feet, stewing, too indignant to regret, just yet, what I had said. I was angry that he didn’t understand me; I was angry because this was not even what I wanted to argue about.
Finally, he said, “I don’t know why you can’t just be happy for me.” His anger was terrible in its restraint.
“Theo,” I said, quiet, and then louder: “What is even so great about that ancient ass school?”
“It’s one of the best in the nation,” he said stiy, “and ‘sides, it’s beautiful.” He was so sure. Of where he was going, why he was going there: away from everything he knew, away from me. “And I met some great people there, some of the smartest, most impressive people I ever—”
I burst out, “Aren’t you going to miss this place at all, Theo?” What I meant, and what I wanted him to hear was, aren’t you going to miss me?
“This town? This random ass creek in the woods? I’ve been here all my life, man.” I closed my eyes against him, something inside of me twisting irreparably. “I’m gettin’ pretty tired of white houses and the same five hundred people. I’m sorry I want somethin’ more from the world and you just want to be stuck here.”
More than me. All at once the energy was out of me; I was not angry but crushingly sad. I rose; I put on my shoes; I walked and didn’t care if he followed. We got in the truck and didn’t say a word to each other the whole ride home.
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