Fourteen #2
“And making a career isn’t the only reason people leave home,” Aunt Liz says, continuing her argument.
“I mean, think about what Garrett’s hopefully getting out of this year.
He’s made new friends, gotten to know a different part of the country, tried new things.
He’s probably learned something about himself. ”
As I look around at this perfect living room, at my sister’s sleeping face, at my aunt, so warm and close, an intense, painful feeling boils in my chest.
Aunt Liz hasn’t looked away from me. “Enzo,” she says, “it’s possible to make other places your home.”
I spend the following day at my computer writing an oboe and clarinet duet.
I want to create something I can play with Katrina, something that reminds me of our friendship.
I pretend our life is a movie, and this score would’ve played while the two of us were dancing and being dumb at the end of Casino Night.
The piece turns out upbeat and quirky, with rolling clarinet arpeggios underneath a playful oboe melody.
It’s better than the last piece I wrote, a little more sophisticated and original.
She comes over, and we play through it. When we finish, she lowers her clarinet from her lips and says, “When you texted, I was worried you’d accidentally rewritten the theme from another Star Wars movie and I was going to have to be the one to break it to you. But, wow, Enz. This is something.”
“You like it?” This matters to me. Katrina knows music and is brutally honest.
She nods while replaying a tricky measure she missed the first time around. She gets it right this time and, satisfied, begins pulling apart her clarinet. “It even sounds like us, you know?”
Dad and Garrett return late Sunday night.
Emma and I help them carry their gear inside along with the many pounds of deer meat they’ve cleaned and sealed in plastic.
Dad got a big buck this year, and it will fill the chest freezer in the basement for months.
He carries one last cooler inside, and then it’s just Garrett and me standing on the back stoop.
“How was it?” I ask, taking a seat on the top step.
He sits down beside me, and I catch the smell of deer camp clinging to his over-large camo jacket: woodsmoke, musk, and blood. “Pretty damn boring. Except cleaning the deer your dad shot—that was horrific.”
I laugh. “So hunting isn’t for you?”
“Never again. I guess I don’t know what I expected.
I think I had this image of me stalking a wild animal through the forest, ranger-style, like Aragorn or some shit.
But it was just hours and hours of sitting still in a deer blind.
I wish I’d brought a book.” He looks up and exhales, his breath cloudy in the cold night air.
“But the silence was amazing. And the stars.”
“What?”
“There are so fucking many of them,” he says, gesturing upward. I follow his gaze to the endless pinpoints of light dotting the inky sky. “It’s wild.”
“You don’t have stars in Atlanta?”
He looks at me like I said something oblivious. “Light pollution, you know? I’m lucky if I can see a few dozen from my house in the suburbs. And in the woods, it’s so quiet. Back home, there’s always this distant roar of interstate traffic and city sounds, but here…” He gestures up at the ether.
“Just wind.”
He nods. “Just wind.”
We sit in the dark stillness for a few minutes looking up into the night. Then he asks, “Any more thoughts about Burton-Clark?”
“I don’t know. Every time I imagine going there, going to Los Angeles, I can only think about what it would mean to leave them.
Dad and Emma and Aunt Liz, I mean. How much it would change everything, how guilty I would feel for moving away.
I already have this great life, and I feel shitty because I want more.
And I have no idea how we’d afford it, especially since the break-in. ”
He nods but doesn’t say anything. I’m vaguely aware that my right leg is pressed against his left.
I’ve already unloaded on him, but I’m tired of the awkwardness that’s been between us since our walk by Lake Superior.
I’m tired of spinning between Aunt Liz’s encouragement and Dad’s dismissiveness.
I want someone I can be totally real with.
“And then I think about this town and how much I love it.” Feeling agitated, I stand up, take a step down to the pathway that winds through our yard.
“And I think about how I don’t have to leave everything I care about.
There’s a perfectly fine school twenty minutes away.
I could go there and still live at home and work at the shop and see my family every day. ” For some reason, my voice trembles.
He moves to stand in front of me. “True.”
“And when I think about that version of my future, it feels safer. More comfortable.” My body is shaking now, too.
He places his hands on both of my shoulders and tilts his head down so that his eyes are directly in front of mine. “Enzo. You deserve so much more than comfortable.”
And that’s when I start crying, my body releasing these conflicting emotions in the form of heaving sobs.
Garrett puts his arms around me and pulls me into him, my cheek pressed against the scratchy fabric of his jacket.
He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t try to make this better, and I am grateful for that.
He only holds me between his hands and chest.
When I’m done, I take a step back, embarrassed. I don’t know what to say about what just happened, so I look up at the sky and wipe the snot from my nose and attempt a watery laugh. “There really are a shit-ton of stars up there.”
“Yeah.” He watches my face and not the sky. “So many stars.”