Sweet Water(42)

He’s trying to pretend like this is any other Thursday night.

Meanwhile, Finn stays in his room all evening, a prisoner too. In an attempt to secure our freedom, we’ve locked ourselves up anyway.

I climb the steps, exhausted, and they make an awful creak. The house disagrees with me.

“What now?” I whisper.

This time there is no sign, no answer from Stonehenge. No rose or offering.

And I don’t know why Joshua keeps invading my thoughts, but as I clutch the rose in my hand, all I can think about is the first night we met. The night he gave me a rose just like this one.





CHAPTER 11

Summer of 1996

I pull over on the back road until my tires come to a complete stop. The low branches scratch the top of Dad’s truck. My heart skips a beat at the thought of getting caught, but I can’t drive by tonight.

After I hit my teenage years, Dad and I didn’t ride by this place as much, but then when I started driving, I found myself missing Stonehenge.

And I began cruising by on my own. Then I discovered the boy, and I kept on driving by.

The boy with the guitar is strumming his chords, and I’ve listened to him play through my driver’s side window more times than I can count. I can see him from the road, but tonight he sounds different, more urgent, the pain in his lyrics piercing me just right.

With my headlights dimmed, head back, eyes closed, his melody floats through my window—from his soul to my ears—the sound of anger and beauty wrapped in a slow and steady beat.

The intro is familiar. I’d know that song anywhere.

The boy with the guitar is playing Pearl Jam.

Usually he sticks to the classics—the Doors, the Stones, Floyd—but tonight he’s crushing it to “Better Man,” and I think I might be in Heaven. I’ve never done it before, but I allow myself to sit there awhile, because this song is killer, and I’d do anything to hear him play it.

I’m hidden behind the brush, obscured by the starless night, the flurry of fireflies like tiny lighters held up for this young wannabe Eddie Vedder, and everything is right in the universe.

My body settles into the upholstered seats.

There’s something about the boy’s voice tonight that pulls me in. The ache is so real, I can almost reach out and grab it.

The words dance on my quiet lips in rhythm with the rustling trees. The summer breeze trips across my bare arms, daring me to follow it to the next moment, whatever that moment might hold. The music is stirring something—a longing for all the life that hasn’t happened yet. I lean back into the headrest and inhale the heavy air.

But the music is rousing all my unloved wounds too, everything I’ve missed in my time here—parties I haven’t attended, boys I haven’t kissed, female friendships I haven’t made. I’m not prepared for life’s next adventure.

And Kurt Cobain.

I’m still sad about him too. Everything. All of it. The world.

I’ve been struggling ever since I received my acceptance letter from CMU. I haven’t experienced enough to go off to college yet, and I fear the other kids will smell the immaturity on me like a new puppy that’s just soiled the rug.

I even made a list of all my Nevers. Things I feel I should’ve done by now but haven’t, and it’s all completely depressing.

Sure, I got into CMU, but what have I lost because of it?

My dad’s parental siren worked—“Don’t get pregnant. Don’t do drugs. You’ll screw everything up.” I was convinced the first time I had sex that I’d get knocked up, and that my first hit of any drug would turn me into an addict. It could happen. We weren’t lucky people.

There’s a light rap on the side-view mirror. “Oh my God!” I jump in my seat, hitting my elbow on the door handle.

“Uh. Hi,” my guitar player says. When did he stop playing? How long has he been standing here?

“Hi,” I try to whisper, but I barely make a sound.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.” He has the sexiest voice I’ve ever heard, a little on the deeper side but calming—mesmerizing—like the musician at the beginning of the show talking freely to the audience.

My eyes readjust to the darkness, and I’m so startled, I can hardly speak. My heart is in my throat and there he freaking is—the boy with the guitar. He’s staring at me up close with his serious eyes, but they’re not dark like I pictured; they’re light—blue or green—and they’re confused.

“You lost?” he asks.

“No,” I manage.

Crap. I had my eyes shut for so long, I’d either been lulled to sleep or sat there way past the time he’d stopped playing, tired from my waitressing shift, lost in his song.

“Well, then, what’re you doing?” he asks. He smiles at me like I’m a peculiar creature, but damn, he’s fine, a delicious cross between Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Slater, a vision reserved for Teen Beat magazine—not me.

“I . . . um . . .” Should I tell him the truth? Well, I can’t tell him the whole truth, that I’m his drive-by stalker, so I decide for second best. “I had my window down and heard you playing. You’re really good, and Pearl Jam is my favorite. I’m sorry. I’ll go now.” I feel my cheeks sizzle with embarrassment.