The Love That Split the World(17)

“Fair enough,” I say. By the time we broke up, I already found Matt’s burgeoning party boy persona a little annoying. At first, I’d just assumed that he was being absorbed into the many-headed monstrosity that the football team can be, while forsaking his true self. But when his drinking became more and more regular, I knew that wasn’t it.

“You want some?” Matt says, patting a flask-shaped lump in his pocket.

“A flask?” He nods. “What is this, Atlantic City in the 1920s?”

“Do you want any or not?”

“Hold on, I’m about to make a joke about the little teetotaling town from Footloose.”

“Nat,” he says. “Yes or no.”

“No thanks,” I say. “I don’t want to fall off the stage onto the mob bosses while I’m doing the Charleston.”

He laughs again and shakes my shoulders. “So, what do you think? Are you ready?”

“To debut my flapper dress to a bunch of bootleggers?”

“To get married,” he says.

“Ah.” I look up at the cement-and-faded-redbrick school, the cropped green grass and trees, the columns of dark clouds forming overhead. Thunder booms in the distance, and this secondhand dress is soaking through, growing heavier with rain every second.

And suddenly, it happens again.

I feel my stomach rise as though I’m on a roller coaster. Matt, Megan, Rachel, and all the others, Derek’s truck, the school itself—everything—is gone.

I’m alone in a field of rolling blue-green hills, standing in a cool breath of wind beneath a brewing storm, my hair and dress dripping. Thunder booms again, closer this time, and rain rushes down my eyelashes, blurring my vision. On the hill in front of me, where the school should be, I see a herd of buffalo.

I can hear them eating the grass. It’s a thick, breathy, crunching sound, and puffs of mist expulse around their velvety nostrils. Their great heads swivel back and forth as they eat; their large brown eyes with impossibly long and curled lashes are watching me, though they don’t seem concerned.

And then it ends, as quickly as it started.

My stomach drops back down. The school flickers back into place. The buffalo wink out of existence. Matt’s in front of me again, the corrugated truck bed firm beneath my feet. The sounds of the world rush back in, my classmates hooting and laughing and talking all around me, leaning on their horns and driving Rachel insane as she tries to get everyone moving. “SCREW YOU,” she’s screaming. “Seriously, Tony, screw you!”

“Nat?” Matt says. “It was just a joke. I don’t really think we’re getting married. You know that, right?”

I nod, distracted.

“I mean, unless you want to get married, in which case—”

“Matt,” I warn, immediately alert again.

“Don’t do that, Nat. Don’t say my name like you’re about to deliver crushing news. It was just a joke.”

“I care about you,” I tell him. “You’re a good person.”

“But,” he says flatly.

But I’m still reeling from the fact that you disappeared a second ago.

But I’m too busy trying to figure out what’s happening to me to have this conversation again.

But I’m worried that I started liking you because you made me feel normal, in the most Union sense of the word.

But you can’t stop trying to turn me back into the Natalie you fell in love with, the one who tried desperately to be the quintessential prom queen instead of the girl with two mothers, two fathers, and two nations.

“But I’m moving to Rhode Island, for one thing,” I settle on.

“Why does it have to be Rhode Island?” he says.

“I don’t know. Maybe it just can’t be Kentucky.”

He laughs harshly. “What, you need to make sure there’s nothing else better out there?”

“I’m not going to college to look for a boyfriend, Matt. I’m going to figure out who I am and what I want to do. Why are you allowed to figure those things out, and I’m not?”

“Oh, right, I’m sexist. I forgot,” he throws back.

“Well, I didn’t hear you offering to go to school in Rhode Island,” I shout. “You’re so convinced you know exactly how your perfect life should unfold that you haven’t noticed it’s not what I want and that I’m not who you want. You like me despite the things I care about—can you imagine how bad that feels?”

For a moment we’re both silent, staring. I wonder if either of us really sees the other clearly anymore or if we’re stuck looking at the frozen images of who we used to be. It’s the only explanation I can think of for why Matt would still want to be with me when we’ve grown to disagree on approximately everything.

The Rachel and Tony disagreement has been resolved, and the front truck has jolted to life, to the applause of all except for us.

But while everyone else is cheering and hollering, flipping off younger teammates and shouting proclamations of love at a disapproving Ms. Perez, I’m watching Matt turn away from me toward the place where minutes ago I watched buffalo grazing.

I’m feeling cold and lonely, and still I’m looking at a puzzle whose pieces don’t make sense.

Buffalo and unlit hallways, mysterious boys on the football field, and Grandmother’s stories. A warning and a ticking clock. A painful hollow in my stomach. What is Grandmother trying to tell me?