16 Forever

Carter

I have nobody.

That’s all I can think as I stand near the curb in front of Tech Haven waiting for Mom to come get me. If Manny Alvarez, my

best friend in the whole world since fourth grade, isn’t really my friend anymore, then who the hell is?

This one kid, Caleb, who’s a junior, introduced himself in the cafeteria today and said we were friends last year. So I guess

him. But after I nodded and said, “Cool,” I had no idea what to say next. Caleb was like, “You doing okay?” and I was like,

“Not really,” and he was like, “Sorry,” and he said I could come sit with him and his crew if I wanted, but I didn’t really

want, so he slowly walked away, and the whole thing was awkward as hell.

Mom coasts toward the curb in her white Prius, and it’s only once I’m in her car that I realize it’s not Mom at all.

“Yo, bro,” Lincoln says.

“Holy shit, you can drive?”

“Apparently.” My younger/older brother smoothly pulls away from the curb, and even though he seems like a capable driver,

it’s supremely weird to see him behind the wheel. I grab on to the plastic handle bar above the window.

“So how’s it going?” Lincoln asks. “I heard your first day sucked.”

“Uh, yeah,” I say, unable to take my eyes off this nineteen-year-old version of my brother. I’ve time-traveled into the future. And I’d like to go back now. “What’re you doing here? I thought you were at college.”

“Winter break, bitch,” he says with a smile. “Had my last final this morning, then I knew I had to get home to see my big

bro.”

“Thanks,” I say, looking away for the first time since getting in the car. “It’s really good to see you.”

“You don’t have to be polite,” Lincoln says. “I know it’s weird as shit. How was Manny doing?”

“Old.”

“Ha!” Hearing that Lincoln still has his classic guffaw is like being in a crowd of strangers and finally spotting the one

person I know.

“It was good to see him and everything,” I say, “but it didn’t feel, like, the same.”

“Well, yeah, CT, it wouldn’t,” Lincoln says, taking a left turn onto Wyncrest, which is in the opposite direction from our

house. “Because he’s in his twenties now. You’ve been living completely different lives for a while.”

“Right,” I say, staring out the window. “Pretty fucking depressing.”

“It’s definitely not the best,” Lincoln says. “But you’ve made new friends. Connected with new . . . people. And you will

again. I’m not gonna pretend it’s a great situation or anything, but it will feel better than it does today. And I’m sorry

you have to keep doing this.”

“Yeah. Me too.” I think about all the memories Lincoln has of me that I don’t—whatever joyful moments we’ve had, hilarious ones, embarrassing ones, any stupid fights.

I’m clueless about all of it. Who knows if we’ve even had fights, though.

Knowing Lincoln, he probably feels too bad about my situation to ever argue with me.

“But guess what?” my brother says. “Whether you like it or not, no amount of looping is keeping me away from you. I don’t

care if I’m forty-five and people think you’re my son, I’ll still be here.”

“That’s so unsettling. A little vomit just came up into my mouth.”

“Yeah, I felt gross as soon as I said it. Sorry. But you get my point.”

Lincoln swerves into another parking lot.

“So we’re not going home,” I say.

“One thousand percent no.” He steers us into a spot, and then I see it: the bright red lettering that forms the words Cheesecake Factory. “You need at least one good thing to happen today.”

“Wait, Jon Polito and Eli Rosenthal are a couple?”

“For almost three years,” Lincoln says. He nods as he sips his chocolate shake.

“That’s . . . wow.” We’ve been sitting in a booth chatting for almost an hour, our nachos and wings long since consumed, our

round of milkshakes just arrived. Lincoln is bringing me up to speed on pretty much everyone we’ve ever known. It’s been a

relief to think about people who aren’t me. Though I, of course, end up thinking about me anyway, as in: I can’t believe all this has happened and I have no memory of any of it.

“Well, it makes sense, right?” Lincoln says. “Jon and Eli always did everything together anyway, it already kind of felt like

they were in love.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Hey, Shaker Guy,” a bald server says, pointing to me as he passes our table. “Back so soon, nice to see you again.”

“Oh,” I say. “Thanks?”

But he’s already out of sight.

I turn to Lincoln. “I guess I was . . . just here?”

“Guess so,” Lincoln says, shrugging and giving me a sheepish look. “Sorry, that must feel really disorienting.”

“It’s pretty insane, yeah. Like someone else has been driving my body around while I was asleep. Why am I Shaker Guy?”

“I have no idea.”

“I wasn’t here with you, was I?”

“No. Not me.”

“Do you know who?”

“I . . . don’t. Just got home, remember?”

“Should I ask the waiter?”

“I mean, you could.” Lincoln takes a long sip of his shake. “In general, your therapist has advised us not to tell you much

about what’s happened in the previous years. That it can be too upsetting and confusing and it’s better if you start fresh.

Which I guess I get.”

“Hm,” I say. I really want to interrogate that bald server guy. Who was I just here with? A friend? A group of friends? A girlfriend? ALONE? But I can tell how uncomfortable that would make Lincoln, so I let it go. I take a deep slurp of my Oreo milkshake and move

to another potentially uncomfortable topic. “What about you?”

“Me?” Lincoln asks, his eyebrows bouncing up.

“Yeah. How’s your, like, romantic life?”

“Oh.” My brother smiles and looks at the table, his face going tomato red. “It’s good, actually. I’ve been hanging out with this guy Terrell. It’s only been a month, but . . . I like him a lot.”

“Yeah, bro!” I shout, loudly enough that it draws stares from several other tables. I reach across the table to punch his

arm. “That’s the best news. And you came out! I was thinking you must have, but I didn’t want to assume, or—”

“Totally. Yeah. I came out at the end of middle school.”

“Wow,” I say, experiencing the same surge of FOMO I felt when Manny told me he was Immanuel now. Like, I wish I was there

when Lincoln came out. I mean, I was there. But I wish I remembered it. “Did Mom and Dad handle it well?”

“Yeah, they were awesome. And not really surprised at all.”

“Sweet. Did . . . I handle it well?”

“Yeah,” Lincoln says with a grin. “You were cool too.”

“Good,” I say. I want to give Lincoln a hug, tell him I’m proud of him, but instead I punch his arm again. “So, back to this

Terrell guy.”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Lincoln says, hands on his cheeks as if he’s five years old. “He’s a sophomore. And we’re—okay, don’t

laugh at this, Carter, you have to promise.”

“I mean, I can try to promise. But laughing can be hard to control sometimes.”

“Nope.” Lincoln smacks the table. “Not good enough. I really need you to promise not to laugh.”

“Ohmigod, okay, now I’m nervous you’re going to tell me that Terrell is a robot or something.”

“He is not a robot. Do you promise?”

“Fine! Sure! I promise. GEEZ, DUDE.”

“Okay. Excellent. Thank you.” Lincoln smooths his forehead curls down to the side. “So: Terrell and I are in the same a cappella group.”

I want to laugh. I desperately want to. But I calmly say, “You? You’re in an a cappella group?”

“Yes.”

“Like one of those singing groups that isn’t accompanied by any instruments?”

“Yes.”

“Where the singers make instrument sounds with their voices?”

“Sometimes, yes.”

“Which means you sing now?”

“I do.”

“You’re a singer.”

“I am.”

“Even though I’ve maybe heard you sing twice in my entire life? And both times you were so quiet it looked like you were lip-synching

without a track?”

“Yes! Okay? Yes! I sing now, get over it!” Lincoln throws his used napkin at me. I catch it and hurl it back, but he dodges

to the left, and it bounces off the shoulder of a thirtysomething guy behind him. Lincoln gasps and covers his mouth. The

guy is looking at his phone, though, and doesn’t even realize it happened.

We both crack up.

“Yo yo yo!” a tall guy Lincoln’s age says, appearing next to our table. He has a ridiculously long brown beard that extends

down to his neck. “What’s so damn funny?”

“Ohmigod, hi!” Lincoln says, getting up from the table to give the tall guy a hug. “I didn’t know you were back yet.”

“Literally just got home a couple hours ago.”

“Me too!”

“Yo, Carter, what’s good, man?” The tall guy extends a hand my way.

“It’s Prateek,” Lincoln says, clearly sensing I have no idea who we’re talking to.

“Holy crap,” I say. This hairy ogre of a man is the little pipsqueak who was over at our house all the time? WTF. Like, seriously.

“Oh shoot, it’s reboot day, isn’t it?” Prateek asks.

“’Fraid so,” Lincoln says.

“Sorry, Carter.” Prateek pats my shoulder, his beard lightly bouncing. “So what happens now with M—”

“Mom!” Lincoln shouts, cutting him off. “And Dad! What happens with Mom and Dad? Well, same thing that happens every year,

I guess. We start over, try to make it work as best as we can. But it’s not easy. For them. For me. For all of us. But most

of all, for Carter.”

“Truth,” Prateek says. “Anyway, speaking of moms, gotta go eat with mine.” He points to a woman standing twenty feet away,

who waves. “But let’s hang soon.”

“Definitely,” Lincoln says, waving back as a hostess leads Prateek and his mom to a table. I can’t stop staring at Prateek.

“You all right?” Lincoln asks.

“He got huge,” I say. “What is he, like, in a jam band for sasquatches now? That was so disturbing. Aren’t you disturbed by

that?”

“I’m . . . not. But it happened more gradually for me.”

“Right, yeah.” I stare forward into nothing as I aggressively sip the remnants of my milkshake, enjoying the abrasive slurping

sound it makes once there’s nothing left.

“So much has changed,” I say.

“I know.”

“Like, everything.”

“Yeah.”

“Except me.”

Lincoln scrunches up his mouth and blinks several times, like he’s about to cry. “Look, CT.” He reaches across the table and

accidentally knocks over my empty milkshake glass. “Oops.” He picks it back up, but I reach out and knock it over again. “We’ll

figure this out.”

“How? I mean, that’s a nice thought, but, like, how will we do that? Do we even know why this is happening?”

Lincoln stares at the table for a long moment. He wipes at his eyes with his fingers, clearly wishing he still had his napkin.

“Dad is looking into more doctors,” he says finally. “He’s not giving up. And Mom and I aren’t either. I don’t think you’ll

be stuck like this forever, Carter. I really don’t.”

“You said you were ready to be my forty-five-year-old dad,” I say, wrestling with the knot in my throat.

“That was just a joke,” Lincoln says with barely credible conviction.

“But it’s possible this is my eternal reality, right? Everyone feeling bad for me, constantly explaining all the shit I don’t

remember, politely informing me that, sorry, they don’t hang out in parking lots anymore. Does this even count as a life?

What the fuck is the point?”

I pick up the milkshake glass and thunk it down loudly on the table right as our server is reaching out to clear it.

“Oh, so sorry,” she says, flinching backward. “Are you done with that?”

“Not yet,” I say.

I hold tight to my empty glass.