Roots Tennessee, Seventeen Years Old
Roots
Tennessee, Seventeen Years Old
Serendipitously, Paloma and I have first period together. As we walk to class, she talks about Advisory, the thirty-minute free period between third and fourth. “Most of us use it like a study hall or a social break,” she says, “but it’s also when clubs meet. Come to the library. I’ll introduce you to the girls.”
AP Government is okay because I have Paloma to sit beside. Through our whispered conversation, I learn that she moved to Tennessee from California, because her tío and tía and a wealth of cousins live here. The South is growing on her, she says, but she misses Glendale and Liam, the boyfriend she left behind.
“I mean, sometimes I miss him,” she clarifies, rolling her eyes like, You know how it is.
I don’t. For me, the missing is incessant.
Physics and French are a drag. Syllabi are read and rules are recited. I spend the better part of two hours slow-cooking in guilt, remembering the defeat on my mom’s face as she held that stupid blackboard and watched me drive away.
I send up a silent wish: Let Mom have a nice day.
By the time Advisory rolls around, I’m itching for a break. I find Paloma in the back of the library, where groups of upholstered chairs look out over the southern end of campus. There’s a baseball field in the distance, and a football field in the foreground, ringed by a red track, a lot like the one at Rosebell High.
Out past one of the end zones, there’s a dedicated shot-put circle. I imagine Beck there, hurtling shot after shot, watching the iron balls arc through the air as if they weigh nothing more than hens’ eggs. He used to beat himself up over lackluster puts, and he refused to celebrate spectacular efforts. He was always pushing, always chasing excellence.
Paloma’s with a couple of girls, who she introduces as Sophia and Meagan. They’re Southern hospitality personified, all welcoming smiles and cheerful banter, and they spend the next few minutes filling me in on the essentials. Sophia, the youngest of five, is the product of a Tennessee senator and an accountant. She plays varsity volleyball and has brown curls that cascade down her back. Meagan’s blond like me, though her hair is pixie short and streaked with pink. She has two sisters: a freshman at ERHS and a fifth grader at East River Elementary, Mom’s new school. Meagan’s mother died three years ago, breast cancer, so her dad’s doing all the parenting while working at Bridgestone’s corporate headquarters in Nashville. She and Sophia—Soph, as Paloma keeps calling her—began as next-door neighbors, became besties in fourth grade, and in tenth grade, realized they cared about each other in a way more intense than friendship. After weathering a storm of disapproval on the part of Soph’s initially unaccepting parents, they got together and have been a happy couple ever since.
When Paloma moved to town last year, she landed in gym with the both of them, which included a unit in the on-campus pool.
“Torture,” she says.
“Utterly sadistic,” Meagan confirms.
“It was Paloma’s idea to fight the prerequisite that juniors swim a mile to meet promotion requirements,” Sophia tells me.
“We marched on the courtyard with signs,” Meagan says. “Hell no, H2O!”
Sophia hushes her, giggling. “We launched a protest on social media, too, and Paloma raised hell at a school board meeting. A splashing success.”
Paloma grins and singsongs, “No more mile.”
And that was it: Meagan and Sophia’s duo turned into a trio.
I hope they’re open to the idea of a quartet.
“Lia moved here from Virginia,” Paloma tells her friends. “We met in the parking lot this morning. She drives a Jetta, which almost turned me into a pancake.”
I grimace. “I’m still mortified.”
I give them the basics of my dad’s time with the Army, and my mom’s new job at East River Elementary. “We have a house in The Glens,” I say, naming our development. “At least, for the next few years.”
Meagan and Sophia give me pity eyes, a reaction that’s not uncommon from those who’ve spent their whole lives in the same town. They assume it must be awful, picking up and moving all the time. It’s not though. At least it hasn’t been for me. People have the wrong idea about what it means to put down roots. You can have ties to more than a location. Sometimes experiences serve. So do people.
“You must miss your friends back in Virginia,” Meagan says, taking Sophia’s hand.
I think, What friends?
My junior year at Rosebell High, Beck had graduated. So had Wyatt, Raj, and Stephen, his friends who’d become mine by default. I still had Macy, Wyatt’s girlfriend, who was tons of fun and a trustworthy confidant, but I wasn’t easy to be around. I spent most of first semester lamenting my aloneness. Second semester, following Beck’s death, I plummeted into a chasm of sorrow. Everyone knew what had happened, of course. Counselors had been poached from nearby schools to aid us in our grief, but I was too far gone. And so, in an effort to save her from my pain, not to mention spare myself the countless reminders of Beck, I shoved Macy out of my lightless world, just as I’d done to my parents and the Byrnes.
I told myself—keep telling myself—it’s for the best.
“Oh, we stay in touch,” I say lightly.
“But still,” Sophia says with sympathy. And then she brightens. “Let’s go to The Shaggy Dog for dinner. Ring in senior year right.”
“Twist my arm,” Meagan says wryly.
Paloma nods, then looks to me. “You’ve got to come. It’s a brewery downtown. They have the best bread pudding.”
I consider. Dinner with my parents, tiptoeing over eggshells, Mom and Dad making gentle attempts at prying life out of their Very Sad Daughter, versus dinner with three girls who’ve got loads of friend potential?
I’m about to respond when movement by the study carrels snags my attention. A boy, lean and very tall, with a lock of dark hair swooping over his forehead. He has a mouth that lifts crookedly and eyes like chips of obsidian. They catch mine, and his smile widens. The connection lasts long enough to distract me from my conversation with the girls. Long enough to prod my heart into something like wakefulness.
“Lia?” Paloma says as the boy breaks eye contact to turn a corner, unnoticed by everyone but me. “The Shaggy Dog? Are you in?”
I extinguish the treacherous flicker of interest sparked by the boy, then mold my mouth into a smile that mimics hers. “You had me at bread pudding.”