You've Reached Sam(28)

Oliver covers his mouth and holds up an OK sign.

A few minutes later, I find Oliver waiting for me on the porch steps, his hands in his pockets. It’s dark out. The moment I step into the porch light, Oliver’s eyes widen.

“Oh—uh, your shirt…” He stammers a little, and steps back.

It’s a bit chilly tonight, so I threw on Sam’s plaid shirt before I left my room without thinking about it. I wasn’t sure if he’d notice.

“I couldn’t find my jacket,” I say. I roll up the sleeves and cross my arms, trying not to bring attention to it. The two of us stand in silence for a while. “So where are we walking?” I ask.

“Nowhere really,” Oliver says. “Is that okay?”

“Sure.”

He smiles a little. In the porch light, I see him better. Dark brown hair curls across his pale forehead, not a strand out of place. I’ve always been envious of Oliver’s hair. The curls can’t be natural.

Oliver motions me down the steps. “After you.”

We walk along the lamplit sidewalks in silence. The only sounds are our footsteps on the concrete and the occasional passing car. Oliver stares straight ahead, his eyes distant. I don’t know where we’re heading or if that matters.

After a while, I decide to say something. “Are we going to talk at all?”

“Sure,” he says. “What’d you want to talk about?”

I stop walking. “Oliver … you asked me to come out tonight.”

Oliver pauses on the sidewalk without looking back. “True.” He glances up and down the street for cars. “This way,” he says and crosses the road. I follow him reluctantly. As we leave the neighborhood, I get the sense he’s leading us somewhere.

Oliver doesn’t look at me. He keeps walking. After a while of this, he finally asks me something. “Do you still think about him?”

I don’t need to ask who. “Of course I do.”

“How often would you say?”

“All of the time.”

Oliver nods. “Same.”

We cross the street again, avoiding the lights from town. Oliver drifts onto a gravel road I’m not sure we should be walking on. I follow him anyway, checking back and forth for cars.

“Have you checked Sam’s Facebook lately?” Oliver continues.

“No, I deleted mine recently. Why?”

“It’s really weird,” he says. “People are still writing on it. On his wall.

As if he can still read it or something.”

“What are they saying?”

“Exactly what you’d expect them to say,” Oliver says, his jaw tense. “I can’t stand it. No one even uses Facebook anymore, you know? I don’t remember the last time I wrote on someone’s wall. Suddenly, he’s dead, and it’s flooded? I read through them all. It’s like they’re not even writing to him. It’s like they’re writing to each other. Trying to see who can grieve the most, you know?”

I’m not sure what to say. “People cope in different ways sometimes.

You shouldn’t let it get to you.”

“It’s not different if everyone’s doing it.” He points across the road.

“This way.”

It’s getting late but I don’t say anything. The town is somewhere behind us now, and I’ve lost track of how long we’ve been walking. I usually wouldn’t go this far out, especially at night. But Oliver’s with me. And I can tell he doesn’t want to be alone.

The temperature drops a little and I see my breath in front of me. But for some reason, I don’t feel cold. I keep my arms crossed and focus on the sound of the gravel crunching beneath my shoes, until Oliver suddenly stops and I almost bump into him. Then I look up and see the sign. Even in the dark, the bold white letters reflect the words.

LEAVING ELLENSBURG

We are standing at the edge of the city limits. A field of grass stretches out from the line of gravel that divides Ellensburg from the rest of the world. The air is still, the stars just beginning to show themselves. I look left and see the moon hanging low over the trees, lighting the tips of the grass that are slightly frosted from the cold, making it glitter like moonlight on water.

Oliver touches the line with his foot as I stand near his side, watching.

He stares out into the distance for a while, hands deep in his pockets.

“Sam and I would come here a lot,” he says, almost wistfully. “I mean, we used to, anyway.” He looks at me. “Before he met you.”

I don’t say anything.

Oliver looks away. “You know … for a long time, I was mad at you.”

“For what?”

“For stealing my best friend from me,” he says. “I was always a little jealous, if you wanna know the truth. How he’d always leave me to go see you. And whenever we hung out, you were all he talked about.”

I look back at him, a flutter of laughter inside me. “That’s funny.

Because I was always jealous of you for the same thing.”

Oliver smiles, and then stares out again. “Me and Sam made a lot of plans together, you know. To leave Ellensburg eventually. Whenever we got sick of this place, or one of us was having a bad day, we’d walk all the way here, and step over the line,” he says as he does it. “We always talked about finishing college at Central, and where we would go after. But that was before he made new plans with you.”