Picture Us In The Light(83)
I slide off the bed. My legs are numb.
It’s just that I love my life here. Loved it, at least. And now so little of it is left.
I walk down the stairs with him; I know Harry well enough to know both that the shadowy gated parking lot probably freaks him out and that he’d never say so. As we go I imagine him moving further and further into a life that’ll always be too distant for me to be a part of, all those unfamiliar days building up like fence planks while I’m stuck in a picked-over version of our old life, the one he shrugged off and left behind. I didn’t even realize how much I’d been clutching that hope that we’d end up in the same place after all—I thought I was more of a realist than that—but I feel it now, that sharp pain spreading into a dull ache like a fistful of hair being ripped out.
I wish he’d just stayed home. I didn’t need to find this out tonight.
“Listen,” he says, his voice echoing through the stairwell and coming to swell in my eardrums. “I just—I needed to see you with my own eyes. I had to make sure you were okay. Next time please, please just get off your ass and call me, will you? Please don’t do that to me again.”
Something unspools inside me like a kite string. “What does it matter?”
He frowns. “What do you mean what does it matter?”
“I mean—” I’m trembling in that way you start to when it’s late and the night has bleached all traces of the day from you and you’re depleted. “Who cares, right? In a few months you’re moving to New Jersey anyway. I’ll probably never see you again.”
“What the hell? Why would you say that? Of course you’ll—”
“Did you really have to come here and tell me this tonight? I’ve had literally the worst two days of my life.”
At first he looks startled, like he can’t believe he heard me right, and then his voice goes hard. “Yeah? Maybe I would’ve known that if you’d bothered to call me back.”
“I was a little bit busy.”
We’re on the ground now, and we let the stairwell door slam shut behind us. His Uber’s waiting there, a vehicle summoned from the darkness to whisk him back to his perfect life that’ll funnel him into the future he’s always planned for. Harry jams his hands into his pockets and turns to face me.
“You guys need anything?” he says tightly. “You want me to run to the store for your mom tomorrow or anything?”
I can’t say why it’s that, of all things, that does me in. “Just go.”
“Just go?” He lifts his hands in an angry, empty kind of way and then lets them fall. “You know what, thanks for all the support. I really appreciate the congratulations. Thank you, as my best friend, for not trying to guilt me about the most important thing I’ve ever done with my life. It’s not like I’ve spent the past four years or anything trying to—”
“You weren’t even supposed to win that election.”
He squints at me. “What?”
“Sandra won the ASB election.” My heart is careening through my chest, pounding sideways and upside down and in every direction, roaring in my ears. “I changed the number of votes.”
His face changes, slowly at first and then all at once. “What?” he says again, and this time I don’t answer; I know he wasn’t really asking. And immediately regret billows around me like steam, condenses on a mirror, and my skin feels hot and damp. I didn’t plan to say that. I was never going to tell him.
“You would’ve gotten in anyway,” I say quickly, even though I know that’s not the only part, even though it’s too late. “You—”
But he puts out a hand to stop me. And I always thought I would hold that secret because of what it said about me, because it would expose me in those moments I was emptiest. I was wrong, though: it was because of this exact look on his face.
The Uber driver, a white guy in his twenties, rolls down the window and leans out. “Is one of you Harry?”
“Yep.” He breaks himself from the moment, turning toward the driver to lift his hand. “Thanks.”
I say, “Harry, wait—”
He doesn’t, though. He climbs in and before he closes the door I see him manage a mostly convincing smile for the driver, hear him say, “Hey, man, what’s up?” Then the door closes, and the car starts. In the dim light of the parking lot I see him lean his arm against the shotgun seat and rest his head in the crook of his elbow. I watch the car drive away, the taillights staring back at me like bloodshot eyes as it goes down the street.
Your grandfather loves birds. He loves to point them out to you, loves to tell you their names and habits, loves to try to teach you to distinguish between their calls. He likes to draw them for you. When he was younger he nurtured a private dream of being an artist. He was a factory worker instead. You sprawl on the floor next to him, playing busily and watching wings take form and life on his papers.
You love birds because he does. You dream of them at night. You’re a jealous, greedy watcher of their flight. If you could fly, you would follow your parents across the ocean. You imagine your mother looking up at the sky in shock and surprise, seeing you coasting toward her. Sometimes you practice. Your grandfather finds you climbing onto shelves and counters and tabletops. You defy him and climb and jump, your arms aloft, when he isn’t looking.