is yell at the innocent bystander, Please help me, and run for freedom.
But the conversation moves to my grandfather’s work and his golf game and the church they go to and their neighbor, poor thing, who is in the midst of a terrible divorce.
GRADUATION
On Saturday, at graduation, I stand on the stage behind the microphone, behind the lectern, and look out at the sea of blue caps and gowns. The faces of my classmates swim into focus. There is Saz, my best friend, and Wyatt, the boy I love, who was supposed to love me but now apparently loves someone else. There is Shane Waller, who has seen me naked, and Matteo Dimas, who has seen me almost naked, and my friends Alannis and Mara, phones up and pointed at me. There is Lisa Yu, the girl who stole Wyatt Jones from me without knowing it, and there is Yvonne Brittain-Muir, who is stealing Saz. All of them waiting for me to share some words of inspiration. Beyond them I see my parents, sitting side by side with my grandparents, eyes on me.
I open my mouth and out comes my speech about dreams and wonder and all the things I used to believe in before my world imploded. “ ‘Stuff your eyes with wonder….Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream.’ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451.”
I hear myself but I can’t feel myself, as if the actual Claude is far, far away from here, and the one up on this stage is just filling in. I want to say, Don’t believe a word of this garbage. Get ready for divorce and heartache and betrayal and feeling like you’re completely, utterly alone no matter how big a crowd you are in.
As I somehow finish and wait for the applause, I smile out at everyone and think, Isn’t it funny that they can’t see I dropped dead a week ago?
I walk across the stage in my cap and gown, and afterward Saz and I pose for photos. I’m so hollowed out I’m practically invisible and I wonder if I’ll even show up on camera.
Saz says, “I love you more than freedom and vodka and skinny-dipping.”
I say, “I love you more than libraries and sunshine and boys with guitars.”
Suddenly the breath goes out of me and the room is spinning. The whole world kind of tilts, and for one peaceful, terrifying second, everything goes black.
And then I come to on a bench outside the gym, and Wyatt’s face is the first thing I see. For a minute, I think it’s all been a dream—the past seven days. But he is checking my pulse and Alannis is fanning me and Mara says something about locking my knees up on that stage and how her sister made that same mistake at a wedding. Saz is telling the onlookers, “It’s okay, nothing to see here, she’s fine,” and I want to yell, I am not fine at all.
But then I look up at Wyatt and he looks down at me and I say, “Wyatt?” I reach for him.
And now Saz is next to me, holding my hand and patting me. “You fainted, Hen. Jesus.” She shakes her head and her cap comes loose. She yanks it off and tucks her hair behind her ears so that it’s not hanging in her face and she can see me clearly. She leans in and studies me. “Are we sure you’re not pregnant?” She says it under her breath, and she is joking, and the normalcy of this is so comforting and familiar that suddenly I feel the tears coming.
“Sazzy,” I say.
But then everyone is crying—Saz and Mara and Alannis—as they pile on top of me and hug me tight, and Alannis shouts, “Mary Grove High forever!”
* * *
—
That night Saz and I drive, just the two of us, with the music up and the windows down. We are driving just to drive, and somehow, in a town we know inside and out, we find ourselves on a street and in a neighborhood I don’t recognize.
Stretching ahead, as far as the eye can see, are all these little houses, small and neat and identical. Saz turns off the music and rolls to a stop. Each house faces away from the road, with the entrance on the side, and a single orange streetlight marks the entrance of every driveway. Little mailboxes. Little porches. All a perfect distance from one another.