The Love That Split the World(36)
“Sorry,” I say. “Thought I forgot my phone.”
Jack chortles then tries to play it off like he’s clearing his throat, a trick Dad frequently employs when Mom disapproves of whatever he’s laughing at. “Nothing,” Jack hurries, before I even get a chance to glare. “You just checked it, like, three times between the kitchen and the porch.”
My cheeks burn at his observation, and I start the car, devotedly pretending not to have heard. It’s been four days since Matt’s party. I’m still actively fuming over what happened with Matt that night, but it’s Beau who has me wavering between giddiness and obsessive, all-consuming overthinking. It seems like the Wrong Thing incidents and the thought of Megan leaving for Georgetown in a couple of days are the only things that make me stop wondering why he hasn’t called.
As I drive toward the school, I do what I’ve done every time I didn’t want to deal with or think about something for the past two years: I imagine myself at Brown, with new friends who don’t know about Matt or care about why I quit the dance team, a place where I can start over. But the daydream gives me no relief. I’m too angry at Matt, too embarrassed about whatever happened with Beau. It felt right while it was happening, sweet and genuine and so intense that I’d been sure he was feeling the same thing. Now I’m forced to replay all the highly personal details I shared with him and cringe at my own vulnerability.
When we pull up to the gate outside the field house, Jack springs out of the car, calling, “Later!” but I don’t drive off right away. Instead I watch my brother sprint across the field. He’s blipping in and out of view—just like Beau did at Senior Night—and then I see his teammates in the distance buzzing with the same strobe-light effect. Only those guys aren’t disappearing like Jack is. They’re shifting, rearranging with impossible speed, on the left side of the field one second and the right the next; mid jumping jack one instant and jogging along the far side of the track the next. I watch one boy in particular, T.J. Bishop, whose hairstyle keeps oscillating between a close shave and a pathetically short ponytail, his body bulking up and slimming down in steady, alternating beats.
“The Wrong Things,” I say aloud to myself. I still have no idea what they mean.
12
Thunder crackles overhead, but it’s distant and soft, like a bass drum covered by a towel. Megan and I are sitting in my garage with the door cranked open so we can watch the thick spray of rain slap the driveway and the blue-green foliage framing the yard.
We’ve storm-watched like this for as long as I can remember, and it’s always given me a sense of peace. We don’t need to talk to feel happy or understood. The rain flooding the cul-de-sac is enough. Our eleven years of friendship tell me so. We may be different, but in this moment we’re feeling the exact same thing: the sad kind of bliss where you realize, suddenly, how perfect your life really has been all along. So perfect it hurts, and you could let yourself weep if you wanted. So perfect that even though everything you know is ending, you truly believe life will continue to be beautiful, even—or maybe especially—in those pure moments of loss.
We sit there for hours. When the rain finally lets up, we stand, brushing the dirt and leaked car oil smears off the backs of our thighs.
Goodbyes have always been as natural for us as silence, unspoken agreements between us nine times out of ten. There’s no I should go or look at the time. Megan just smiles and squeezes me tight in a hug. “Love you,” she says.
“Love you back,” I say. “Get home safe. Get to school safe.”
“I’ll see you so soon, Nat,” she says, and I nod, unwilling to doubt her. She pulls up the hood of her thin sweatshirt and darts through the drizzle back to her black Civic parked at the curb.
The headlights flick on, and Megan pulls away. As soon as I shut myself in my room, I see the cardboard boxes spread around the room and break down and cry. When the tears are all used up, I pull out Alice’s recorder and tell another story about love and pain.
“There once was a young man who believed he was in love with a beautiful woman,” Grandmother said. “So he went to the woman’s father, who was the Chief, and told him that he wished to marry his daughter.
“‘Bring me many horses,’ the Chief answered, ‘and you may marry my daughter.’ So the young man set out into the wild in search of horses to please the Chief.
“While the man was away, the tribe moved on, and though the man caught several beautiful horses for the Chief, when he returned his tribe was gone. The man planned to go in search of his lost tribe, but the sun was very low in the sky, so first he decided to rest. He went to a lodge nearby but could find no doors, no matter how many times he circled it. Finally, he dug his way through the sod surrounding the lodge and made his way inside, where he found a burial bed supported by four high posts.
“On the burial bed lay a young woman in clothes decorated with the teeth of elk. The woman turned and looked at him. He recognized her right away as a member of his tribe, who must have died while he was away. But the woman sat up and greeted him by name, for she remembered him, too, from her life.
“The man stayed with the Ghost Woman for many nights. As time passed, he thought less and less of the Chief’s daughter and more and more of the Ghost Woman bound to her burial bed, until finally she became his wife.