Ten
before
They were supposed to go to a friend’s house after prom. Somebody from journalism was having a party.
But Cary didn’t want to go. And Shiloh wasn’t going to go without Cary. She didn’t feel like hustling another ride home. Among
other things.
When they got to the party, Shiloh let Mikey out of the car.
“That’s the last time I sit in the middle,” he said, climbing out and stretching. “I’m a window-seat guy.” He bumped his shoulder
against Shiloh’s. “Cut him some slack.”
Shiloh made a face. She was the one who deserved some slack tonight. Where was her allotment of slack?
She got back into the car, worried that Cary might be thinking about driving away without her.
He didn’t say anything on the drive home. Cary never talked just to keep things from getting awkward. If anything, he seemed
fortified by silence. Shiloh played with the car radio, chattering to herself while she scrolled through the channels. “Gross,
no... Oh. I like this song, but it’s almost over... This’ll do, I guess.”
Cary didn’t even pull into her driveway when he got there. Just stopped in front of the house and waited.
And waited.
Shiloh sat back in the passenger seat and looked out the window, up at her house. She felt heavy all of a sudden. Like she
was made of concrete. Like she didn’t have fully articulated joints.
She wasn’t going anywhere .
If she got out of the car right now, that would be it, the end of the night—Cary would stay angry with her. He might still be mad when he picked her up for school on Monday.
Why was Cary so angry? Because Shiloh wouldn’t dance? Because he’d been trying to do something nice for her? Even though she didn’t want it?
He’d called her stubborn and miserable—well, he was right. That’s exactly how Shiloh felt. Stubborn. Miserable. Immovable.
She wasn’t ever going to get out of this car. Cary was going to have to lean over and open the door, unbuckle Shiloh’s seat
belt, then shove her out into the street. Roll her right into the gutter.
There was no parking on the street in front of Shiloh’s house. A car came up behind them and honked, then swung around. Some
guy leaned out the passenger window to cuss at Cary.
Cary let up on the brake and drove around the block. Shiloh pretended she didn’t notice. It was a long block. When they got
back to her house, he pulled into her driveway and shifted into park. He left the engine running.
Shiloh didn’t feel any lighter or more inclined to get out.
A song came on the radio that she hated. She contemplated changing it, but that would mean moving.
Cary knew she hated this song. He let it play out.
Shiloh shifted against the door. Her forehead hit the glass. She took a breath to say something, but didn’t.
She waited. Then took another breath to say something, but couldn’t.
She pressed her nose into the glass. “I’m not miserable,” she mumbled.
“What?” Cary asked.
“I’m not miserable,” she said, even more faintly.
He turned off the radio. “ What? ”
“I said—nobody’s saying goodbye.”
He turned off the car.
Shiloh kept her face against the glass. “I don’t even know why you’re mad.”
Cary didn’t say anything.
“I didn’t mean to ruin your senior prom.” Shiloh looked at him. He was staring up the driveway. His hands were still at ten and two. “You could
have danced,” she said. “You could have brought a date.”
Cary nodded.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I was going with you and Mikey.”
“Yeah, but...” Shiloh blinked slowly, trying to keep her tear ducts in check. “But you have a girlfriend, right?”
“Yeah,” Cary said quietly.
“So...”
“I already went to her prom.”
“Oh,” Shiloh whispered. “Was it cool?”
“It was fine. It was the same as ours.”
“‘Under the Sea?’”
“‘Welcome to the Jungle.’”
Shiloh nodded. “You could have brought her to ours, too.”
“I could have,” Cary agreed.
“But?”
He sat back a little, settling. The seat creaked. “But nothing, really. Mikey wanted the three of us to go together.”
Shiloh let her head rest against the glass again. “I didn’t know it was a whole thing, ” she said.
“It wasn’t a whole thing.”
“I didn’t know we were making memories .”
He didn’t answer.
“Can we listen to the radio?” Shiloh asked.
Cary turned it back on. He switched it over to the seventies light rock station—it was the only station they both liked.
She bounced her forehead against the window. “Aren’t we always making memories?”
“No,” Cary said. “The brain makes note of novelty. Broken patterns. The more we do the same things, the more they blend together.”
Was that true?
How many nights had Shiloh sat in her driveway with Cary, listening to Lite 96? Too many nights to count. Or maybe too many
to remember...
Was tonight just going to disappear into the rest of those nights? Sink into the fog of them?
Or would she remember tonight because it had been particularly awful?
She rolled her head back in Cary’s direction. He had gel or something in his hair. It looked dark brown, not dark blond. And
he’d shaved—she could tell because he had pimples along his jaw, not because his face was noticeably smoother. The silk lily
had gotten flattened against his chest. Probably when he was dancing with Becky.
The idea that this moment was going to slip away from Shiloh—that it was just flotsam, temporally speaking—made it unbearable. She wanted to start something on fire just to make this moment, this night, stick.
What was the point of being alive if you couldn’t hold on to the details?
“ I’m always making memories,” she said.
Cary rolled his eyes. “Your brain functions differently than every other human being’s?”
“Yes.” Shiloh said it with certainty.
He huffed out a small breath and shook his head.
Shiloh tried to tuck her left leg under her right. Her heel snagged on her pantyhose. She unzipped her boot and let it fall
to the floor, then finished tucking her leg and sat back, turning a little toward Cary.
He was looking at her lap. “You couldn’t walk in those boots.”
She didn’t argue.
“They looked good though,” he said.
Shiloh pulled her bare foot deeper under her thigh.
Cary lifted his head up, almost to her face. “You looked good. In that.” He turned back to the steering wheel, wincing. “You know, you looked... pretty.”
“Well, then maybe you’ll remember it,” she said. “Because of the novelty.”
He shook his head again.
“ Nobody’s saying goodbye, ” Shiloh repeated. More strenuously this time.
“That’s what prom is,” Cary shot back. “And honors night. Senior banquet, senior skip day. Graduation.”
He was looking at her again. She was glad.
“Most of our classmates aren’t even going anywhere,” she said. “They don’t have to say goodbye.”
“ You’re going.”
“I’m going to Des Moines, ” Shiloh said. “It’s two hours away.”
“And Mikey’s going to Chicago. And I’m going—I don’t even know where.”
Shiloh didn’t know what to say to that. It made her clench her fists. “Well, I’m not saying goodbye.”
“Why not?”
“One, it’s stupid. Because we’re not, like, done with each other. Just because we’ve completed Nebraska’s secondary-education requirements. And two, it’s too early—I don’t
leave until August.”
“Things still change, Shiloh, whether or not you participate in the rituals of transition.”
She threw up her hands. “So you’re just done with me? Because we’re graduating?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“That’s how it sounds.”
Cary started to argue, but Shiloh cut him off—“We don’t have to say goodbye. No one is making us.”
“But we aren’t going to see each other after this summer.”
“So? And also—why not?”
“Because we’ll be in different states?”
“Yeah, but—” Shiloh shook her head. She still felt like setting a fire. “We don’t have to, like, take orders from time and
space.”
Cary laughed, genuinely. One loud bark. “Now you’re immune to physics.”
“People do what they want, Cary. We have free will.”
He looked over at her, more amused now than annoyed. “Oh yeah?”
“ Yeah, ” Shiloh said, heavy on the h sound, reaching her head forwards. “We could just... keep being friends.”
“I can’t even get phone calls in boot camp,” he said. It came out sadder than Shiloh was expecting.
“I will write you letters,” she swore.
Cary was looking down. His voice dropped. “I know you will.”
“Furthermore,” Shiloh said, “I have a very potent presence. Do you remember Mr. Kessler?”
Mr. Kessler was their ninth-grade English teacher. Cary nodded.
“He said a little of me goes a long way.”
Cary snorted. His cheeks crinkled.
“So even though we aren’t going to talk as often, it’s still going to feel like you’re getting a lot of me.”
He peered up at her, lifting an eyebrow. “I’m just used to so much of you...”
“I get it,” Shiloh said. “Your new friends might feel watered down in comparison.”
“Mild,” Cary said.
“Weak,” she countered.
“Shiloh, I don’t think you realize how much time we spend together now—”
“We’re stocking up,” she said, “to get through winter.”
“—and how different it’s going to be.”
“It’s a proverbial winter, Cary.”
“Shiloh...” Cary said softly. Like he felt sorry for her. It was intolerable. She reached out and yanked on his collar—his
head wobbled.
“Do you want to drift apart?” she demanded.
“No.”
“Then don’t. Be a man.”
“A man ?”
“Like, not a monkey,” she said. “Use your man parts—your thumbs, and the region of your brain that processes written language.
Make your own decisions, Cary. This is America .”
Cary was laughing at her, with her. Softly. (She had him where she liked him.)
Shiloh moved her hand up and tugged on his hair. She pushed her fingers into the roots, trying to break up the gel.
“Ouch,” he said, ducking his head away from her.
“Don’t be done with me,” she pleaded, poking his shoulder.
“I never said I was done with you. I was just trying to ground the conversation in facts.”
“More like opinions,” she said. “Assumptions.” Shiloh made a fist in his sleeve. She chewed on her lip for a second. “ Don’t be done with me, ” she said. Too intensely. “ Don’t say goodbye. ”
“All right .” Cary was trying to twist his arm free. “Don’t rip my tux.”
“I’m not going to rip it.”
“You marked up my jeans with permanent marker.”
Shiloh had done that, she couldn’t argue, but she wanted to argue anyway. She wanted to break something. She hung on to his sleeve.
“You don’t have good boundaries,” Cary said, like it was an observation.
Shiloh had nothing but boundaries with other people. She wanted to die when they bumped into her. She could hardly even hug her mom. “ Cary, ” she hissed.
“ What, Shiloh?”
She pulled on his sleeve. His shoulders swayed. Shiloh wanted to set everything on fire. She wanted to remember him. Every little bit of him. She wanted to remember him even as she was here with him. To fix him into a single point. Past, present and future.
“I can do whatever I want,” she said. “Don’t tell me I can’t.”
“I’m not.”
“I want to stay like this. With you. No matter what.”
Cary’s eyes widened. He seemed a little frustrated. “Yeah,” he sighed. “Okay.”
“Do you believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe in me?”
“Jesus. Yes. ” He wrenched her wrist away from his sleeve with his other hand. “Is that what you want to hear?”
Shiloh nodded.
Cary let go of her wrist.
She settled back into her seat and turned up the car radio.
He was still breathing kind of loud, like he was frustrated. Like—breathing as commentary.
“I like this song,” Shiloh said after a while. It was “Babe” by Styx. “Even though Styx is lame.”
“Styx isn’t lame,” Cary said. “Aren’t.”
He turned on the car engine, but Shiloh knew he was just giving the battery a boost so they could keep listening to the radio.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
Cary had probably had the full senior prom experience with his girlfriend. They probably had sex in the back seat. The girl
probably cried. Angie. Maybe Cary cried, too. Because it was all coming to an end. Because he was going away. Because the two of them were going
to drift apart, like people do.