You Know Me Well(53)

“Yeah,” I say. “He read the rest of it.”

“He did?”

“Yeah.”

“I knew it. We left. I was … upset. At least that’s what Taylor kept saying, ‘You’re upset. You’re upset,’ and he said we should probably leave, so we left. And then we got back to his place and I remembered that I dropped my poem. That it was just lying there on the stage somewhere, all alone, for anyone to find and make fun of, and I panicked. I left him and I ran all the way back, and everything was over and almost everyone was gone, but they let me back in anyway and I looked all over the stage, but it wasn’t there. But then I found it, and it was face up, right there on the table, and I knew it. I knew he’d read it. How did he react?”

“You should probably ask him that yourself,” I say.

“I told you already! His phone. Is fucking. Off.”

“Then ask him at school.”

“I don’t think I can go to school today. I’m not really feeling well.”

I want to tell him he doesn’t need to state the obvious. I didn’t know Ryan was capable of this kind of emotion. I thought he was all literary allusion and little feeling, all critic and no poet. But then I think of him onstage last night, all tremor and fear, and I feel myself softening for him, even though he’s crushed my friend’s heart and might not deserve my sympathy.

“Are you okay, Ryan?” I ask him. “That’s a sincere question and I want a sincere answer.”

Silence.

“Ryan?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay,” I say. “Just breathe. We’ll be there soon.”

Mark’s waiting for me when I pull up to his house. He looks a little worn-out himself, and I can’t help it—I reach out and mess up his floppy, all-American boy hair.

“Is that really necessary?” he asks, but I can tell that he didn’t really mind.

“Where does Ryan live?”

“Why?”

“Because that’s where we’re headed.”

“You know,” Mark says, “there’s this thing called ‘first period’? And then this other thing called ‘first period on the second to last school day of the year’?”

“Address,” I say.

“Howard Street. Behind the Seven-Eleven.”

“Thank you.”

“What’s this about?” he asks as I drive.

“You’d know if you turned on your phone.”

“Maybe I kept my phone off precisely so that I wouldn’t have to know.”

“Then you should be happy that he called me so that I could tell you this: Your friend needs you. It might not be fair. It might really suck, because you’ve needed him and he’s been off slip-dip-dripping with a college boy—”

“Don’t forget mortar-pestling.”

“Oh, I haven’t. Nor have I forgotten rearranging the universe—”

“—with their bodies—”

“—which last time I checked is a pretty big accomplishment. I mean, not just anyone can do that.”

“Apparently not me,” he says. “Or else Ryan wouldn’t have had to trade me in for his erotic poet.”

“Nope,” I say. “No time for self-pity this morning. You have some rescuing to do. Which house?”

“The blue one.”

I pull over. I turn off the Jeep and turn to Mark.

“He sounds like shit,” I say. “It sounds serious. I’m gonna be right here. Let me know if you need me.”

Mark takes a breath. Shakes his head. I can tell he really doesn’t want to do this, but he gets out of the Jeep anyway. I expect him to knock, but he turns the knob and lets himself into the house, and yeah, that makes sense. Because up until a few days ago, nothing was wrong between them—not on the surface, anyway. A few days ago, Mark was a quiet kid in my math class, a blur of motion in the outfield at the one baseball game I ever attended. So much can change in a few days, even in a few hours. I’ve brought him here to face the change head-on and I know I’m going to have to face it, too.

I’m not running away from anything anymore.

It’s a promise I’m making to myself.

You can keep doing what you’re supposed to, what you’re expected to, and tell yourself it’s what you want. Sit with the same people at lunch, pretending you still have things in common. Read the shiny college brochures, go on the tours, buy into the myth that one of them is meant for you. Believe, at eighteen, that you know what your life will hold and how to prepare for it.

But if you don’t really believe it, if all that time you’re harboring a doubt so deep it creeps into even your best moments, and you break the rules and step away, then there’s going to be a reckoning. You are going to have to explain yourself.

As I sit in the driveway and wait, last night rushes back, takes me over. I’m sitting in that uncomfortable chair, already wrecked by Quinn’s poem, by Ryan’s exit, by Mark’s defeat. And now here’s Lehna.

“I don’t usually write poetry,” she says. “But I had this in my journal from the other night and I figured, I don’t know, why not.”

She blinks against the lights into the audience. “Go, Lehna!” Violet shouts. June and Uma wave with great enthusiasm. But I just watch her, bracing myself for what might come.