The Serpent King(80)

Mrs. Blankenship sighed. “Welcome to the club.”

“All right, kids, we’ll leave some towels by the back door if you want to come inside later,” Dr. Blankenship said. “We’ll be up watching TV.”

Lydia gave them a “now scoot” gesture, and they went inside. Lydia grabbed Dill’s hand. “Okay. Stargazing time.” She pulled Dill out to the center of the lawn and they flopped onto the wet grass, lying on their backs side by side.

For a couple of hours, they talked and laughed incessantly about nothing in particular while they dried slowly. After that, they fell quiet and gazed up into the boundless starlit expanse while the owls and crickets sang their night hymns all around them.

Then, Lydia nestled up close to Dill and laid her head where his chest met his arm. Every nerve in his body suddenly felt like a rush of wind in long grass.

“Okay, Dill,” she murmured. “I lied. This is the final phase of Pathetic Prom. Instead of getting laid, your prom date is falling asleep on you.”

Lydia’s hair cascaded across his chest, forming tributaries and estuaries. Her breathing slowed and her head became heavy. What will become of this? Of us? No, don’t ask. Just accept this gift, this moment, after all that life has taken from you. He felt aglow, like his blood was fluorescing. Like you could see his pulsing, humming heart through his skin.

After a while, she stirred with a purring sound and snuggled in even closer, resting her lips on Dill’s neck. He could feel her warm breath. She laid her leg across Dill’s leg.

She’s it. She’s everything. She’s the standard by which I’ll judge beauty for the rest of my life. I’ll measure every touch to her breath on my skin. Every voice to her voice. Every mind to her mind. My measure of perfection. The name carved into me. If I could, I would lie with her under these stars until my heart burst.

He slowly reached over to her hair with his free hand, and caressed it. He gently ran his hand along its course. And again.

Again.

Again.

If he could be still enough, all the world’s motions would cease. The orbit of the Earth. The dance of tides. The march of rivers to sea. Blood in veins. And all would become nothing but her perfect and temporary thereness.

Hold this moment. Keep it. Until the next train whistle in the distance pierces the stillness.





The early June dusk was soft and green, not yet with the oppressive heat of summer. New grass grew on Travis’s grave. They sat beside it and searched for what to say to each other and to Travis. Lydia no longer felt like she was abandoning Dill, but she did feel like she was abandoning Travis. Which was somehow worse at the same time as it was more irrational.

“How long is your drive?” Dill asked, picking at blades of grass.

“I think about ten hours,” Lydia said, smacking a mosquito on her calf. She loathed making small talk in general—a thousand times more when it was with someone as important to her as Dill. But she understood why they had to do it.

“Are you doing it in one day?” Dill’s demeanor conveyed that he wasn’t enjoying making small talk any more than she was, but he also wasn’t ready to fill the silence with anything else.

“Yeah.”

“Damn. When are you leaving tomorrow morning?”

She sighed. “Probably around six.”

“Ouch. And then your internship starts—” Dill carefully plucked a ladybug from his arm and held it in his palm so that it could fly away.

“Next week. June ninth.”

“I wish you didn’t have to leave so early.”

“Me too, but I want to have some time to explore and get settled in before I start my internship.”

“Are you nervous to be working for the Chic lady? You said she was scary.”

Lydia laughed ruefully. “Yes, and she is.”

A pensive stillness passed while they listened to the hushed chirr of insects in the trees that surrounded the cemetery like an embrace. The ten days or so they’d had since school ended flew by in a blur of work, watching trains, sitting at the Column, random road trips (Graceland was Dill’s favorite), and lots and lots of lying under the stars and kissing.

Dill leaned back onto his hands. “Won’t it be hard to park Al Gore in New York City?”

“Yeah. I’m selling him to one of Dahlia’s friends from school. We’re meeting in the city and he’s driving Al to Stanford.” She felt a fleeting ache. Oh come on. You’re not seriously getting sentimental about inanimate objects now too, are you? You were not supposed to be this big of a mess. That was not in the plan.

“You’re selling Al Gore? I’ll miss him.” The wisp of betrayal in Dill’s tone told her that he was in the same mindset. Irrationality loves company.

Lydia ran her hand along the top of the grass. “Me too.”

“I hope you kept the bike from prom so I can give you rides when you come back to town.”

“I bet I can convince my dad to let us use his car.”

“Yeah, but the bike is pretty fun.”

Yes it is, Dill. Yes it is.

Fireflies flickered among the headstones in the leaf-green failing light. The cemetery smelled of clean dirt and sun-washed stone.

“We should have planned some ceremony,” Lydia finally said.

“Planning means we would have had to think about this, and I didn’t want to think about this.”