eighteen #2
didn’t know what I’d do with them after this, but I had never stamped out the urge to collect things from when we were younger.
“I’ve already told you everything. The sports. The writing,” he demurred. “I’m more interested in what happened to you after
I left. What did you get into? I mean, other than journalism, which I already could’ve guessed.”
I shrugged. At an age when a person’s identity and worth could be measured in what extracurricular activities they did, I
felt like the most uninteresting person in the world. Alan didn’t want to tell people he wrote romance fanfic, but he did
have that as a facet of his life, whether he shared it or not. I just didn’t have any parts of myself to offer up.
“You know me. I mostly kept my head down and did just enough to get by.”
What a sad summation of those years in Mount Pierce, where I made myself small and gray. I squinted toward a glare at the end of the boardwalk. “It was always Sam who was the one who did every extracurricular. He was good at everything. He was the Renaissance man under our roof.”
“I remember that.”
“He made it easy for me, you know. He was the oldest boy, the overachiever. I could never have done half the stuff he did,
but it was okay because my parents at least had the one.” My breath hitched slightly. I tried to hide it. I hadn’t talked
this much about Sam since he died. Not at home. Not with anybody. Some part of me was glad, having a release valve for all
the pressure to go somewhere. But it also felt tender and tight, like my lungs were squashed together in the wrong place between
my ribs. I still wasn’t at the place where I could bring him up without feeling as though I were inviting people to dig through
my private belongings.
Sam, before he had died, was a public fact of life. Sam, after, I wanted to keep to myself.
“Now it’s just me,” I said softly. “I’m an only child. I guess.” I turned to him. “Like you.”
“You’ll always have a sibling. Just because he’s gone, doesn’t mean that he didn’t exist.”
I was grateful to him for saying that. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. But it feels different, for sure, without him
there.”
“It’s a big adjustment.”
“It’s more like—” I scanned the horizon for the right way to say it.
“My brother did all the things my parents ever could’ve asked for, and in an instant, they lost him.
Then they realized there was only one kid left to meet all their expectations, and that kid isn’t up to snuff.
I feel like it’s a double whammy for them. ”
“That’s not what it is, Stella. They are definitely not thinking about it that way.”
“That is what it is. And I’ve tried and tried and tried to make myself into what they want and not make waves, not make them have
to worry about me. I’m splintering a bit on the inside. I think I’m losing it.” I swallowed. “It’s just, you weren’t there
after it happened. They were so messed up. Permanently broken, you know. I was sad too. We were all devastated. We didn’t
even know how to comfort each other or anything. I wanted to be perfect for them, so I wouldn’t make them more wrecked.”
“That can’t be your burden.”
It was dysfunctional. But I couldn’t help how I felt. And since I had said so much ugly stuff already, I let the worst thought
out. The one that I had sometimes when I could hear my parents sobbing in the bathroom at night or putting family pictures
face down, ever so gently where they once stood.
“Sometimes, I think my parents would’ve picked me over him. If they had to lose one of us.”
I was a hideous person for even imagining such a thing, but it was out there now. There was nothing a person could say in
response to that.
I didn’t dare look him in the face. I was afraid of what I might see there. “Anyway,” I said, completely mortified at myself, “you always say I never tell you what I’m thinking. Probably wish you could take that back now. You can pretend like I didn’t say anything.”
I had made it clear how damaged I was. I expected him to run screaming in the opposite direction. He hadn’t signed up for
this when he agreed to go on this trip with me.
He shook his head. “Thank you for telling me.” His voice was soft enough to land on a pile of snow and leave it pristine.
“I know you think I’m so messed up. I know that’s a horrible thing to say. I even know that it’s probably untrue, but my brain
goes there anyway every now and again.”
“I’m not judging you. It’s impossible not to go there at times.”
I tilted my chin up at last, gathering the courage to meet his eyes.
He looked thoughtful and sad. “You know, my parents wanted more children. It didn’t happen for them. But I know what you mean
about feeling like you have to be worth it for them because there’s no one else.”
A memory surfaced suddenly then. A dinner with Alan’s family, where his father joked that between he and Baba, it was more
like they had two daughters rather than two sons. He had had a little too much to drink, but it came out too sharp to be funny
and too cruel to be accidental.
Alan and I had been sitting next to each other. His fingers reached out under the table for mine. We held each other tightly,
in secret, until the moment had passed.
I remembered now, because his face reminded me of that evening. Smooth and composed, but I could see how brittle he was underneath.
I reached for his hand because I needed it as much as he did, and he took it.
This time, not under the table, not fleeing into the shadowed streets, but in the daylight, where everyone could see.
How do people go from being friends to something more? Where is the tipping point when you look at the other person, who you’ve
known for so long, and suddenly your heart goes, Ah, yes ?
These were the questions I was asking myself as we walked beside each other that afternoon and laughed easily under the sun.
I didn’t know exactly when the transition happened, but I knew when I was on the other side.
Still, it was another question entirely when you suspected your feelings versus when you were able to take the leap of faith
and see where you landed. It was the kind of gulf where you either had to make it across in one try, or drown. I was scared
to ruin what we had, even as we were building it.
No matter how my pulse quickened as his thumb brushed my wrist, or how much I wanted to put my fingers through his hair, there
was enough fear running through my veins that I stayed just on the right side of friendship without attempting to cross any
lines.
I had no experience in this area anyway. I didn’t know how to start things, only how to screw them up. A fact that became abundantly clear from the debacle with Colin Greiner.
Colin had been nice to me during a tumultuous year, letting me borrow his notes when I struggled in class, and asking me how
I was doing when other people were scared to look at me in those initial weeks after Sam’s passing. I had been in no place
to be contemplating serious relationships. I had barely noticed him before, but as he started popping up everywhere, I started
to think—not that I liked him per se—but that it might be nice to have a distraction.
Which was how we ended up in my car in the back corner of a strip mall. He was the one who started everything, while I mostly
went along with it. I had never kissed anyone before. Except that once he’d begun kissing me, his lips overly wet, I promptly
began to cry out of nowhere. Uncontrollable, ugly sobbing. I couldn’t explain why.
It was regrettable, but unsurprising, that he escaped out of there faster than if someone had told him the car was rigged
to explode. He never talked to me again after that.
Even though it hardly should’ve mattered, I could still feel the vicious sting of rejection.
For that, and other reasons, going beyond friends with Alan seemed impossible.
Impossible, even as the late afternoon bled into an early evening and we didn’t want to go back, suspended in this in-between day where no one asked anything of us and we had nowhere to go.
We ate hot dogs with our legs dangling off the boardwalk.
Our bare thighs pressed against one another, warm and familiar.
Our hair was crunchy with salt. Our ankles were gritty with sand.
Impossible, even at the end of the night as he pointed at the temporary Ferris wheel put up for an expo, lighting up against
the darkening sky, and said, “Let’s go,” and, as always, I followed. We squeezed against each other in the small creaky cage
that made you wonder, just a little bit, whether a contraption like this was really safe. We rose up directly into the stars,
and then fell backward toward the earth with the speed of a meteor.
Impossible, even as we looked down at the city, romantic as an oil painting with smears of light from the buildings below.
The wind rushed around us. The world seemed to be passing us by. He pulled a strand of hair off my face as we flew upward,
his face closer than I could ever remember. His hand brushed against my cheek. I saw that he was going to lean in. I felt
the rapid and wild beating of wings in my rib cage. I wanted it.
But at the last moment, I had a fleeting thought, a blur of doubt.
The ride jerked to a stop. We snapped back in our seats, casting around for an explanation, as though we had broken the Ferris
wheel ourselves.
After a minute, the man on the ground shouted that there was a technical glitch with the ride. They were going to manually
crank the wheel around so the people in each car could get off.
Alan looked at me with a sheepish smile and shrug. “I guess we should go back, yeah? Getting late. Don’t want to keep our hosts up.”
I nodded.
He helped me out of the cage. Quietly, we went back down the boardwalk and toward the parking lot. I waited until my heart
slowed down again. I tried not to think too hard about the uncertainty that anchored in my mind earlier.
At the last second, I had remembered the first time I saw him at Weston High and how he’d pretended not to see me at all.
He was lying, I was sure of it. And I still didn’t know why.