Shane says from the hay, “You know, you’re like this series of boxes, and every time I open one, there’s another one inside. It’s like box after fucking box, and I don’t think anyone will ever be able to open all of them.” He gets up, pulls on his jeans, pulls on his wet, crumpled shirt.
He stares down at the stain and I say, “Sorry.”
“It’s my fucking Snoop Dogg shirt. Jesus, Claude.” Clod.
I say, “I think we should just be friends.” Better to have too many boxes than not enough.
He says, “No shit,” and leaves me there.
* * *
—
I find Saz at an old weathered-looking picnic table, talking to a group of people that includes Alannis and Mara, as well as Yvonne Brittain-Muir, musician and gamer, and her girlfriend of three hundred years, Leah Basco. For the past few weeks, Saz and I have envisioned every possible scenario in which Yvonne dumps Leah and professes her undying love for Saz. Or at least agrees to have sex with her.
One of the guys passes around a joint, and another is telling this long story about the college party he went to last weekend. Leah holds out her hand to Yvonne—pale as a ghost in the moonlight, long yellow hair dyed blue at the ends—and they go rambling off toward the barn of iniquity, Saz staring after them like they just ran over her dog.
I say to her, “Do you want to leave?” Even though it’s not even eleven o’clock.
“More than anything on earth.”
I throw my arm around her and we walk across the field toward the house and the long gravel driveway where we parked. As we go, I sing Saz the cheer-up song we made up when we were ten: “Ice cream, ice cream, freezy, freezy. You can get over her easy, easy.”
A lone figure comes toward us, and Saz is jabbing at my ribs, going, “Stop it, maniac, before someone hears you,” which makes me sing louder, and then the figure steps into the moonlight and of course it’s Wyatt Jones. Like that, I forget about Saz and Yvonne and Shane and boxes and everything else that came before this moment.
Wyatt is going away soon, across the country, across the world, to California and girls with long, swinging hair and sundresses. A fact that makes him seem taller and separate from the rest of us. Saz and I were supposed to go to California too, where I would find him and get to know him, strangers in a strange land, initially bonded by our unfortunate Midwestern roots, and then—gradually—as two worldly adults who discover they are destined to be together.
Wyatt catches my eye, and my bones turn to liquid. There’s a rumor that he likes me. That he wanted to ask me to prom but was too shy to do it. That the reason he and three of his friends toilet-papered my house two months ago was because somehow I was special. Until my dad the marathon runner interrupted them and chased them around the neighborhood on foot. I break our gaze now and stare at my own feet because the memory is still mortifying.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” I say back.
I make myself look at him again. Deep brown eyes, light brown skin, broad shoulders, smiling mouth. Even though my lips are still throbbing from all the kissing I was doing minutes ago, I want his hands on me.
“You leaving?”
“Yeah.”
“Too bad.” He breaks into a full-on smile, as blinding as the sun, and everything fades away except for the two of us. His dad is black, his mom is white, and she died when he was a baby. He doesn’t remember her, but he always says she gave him his smile.
He’s saying something else right now, but it’s drowned out by music and laughter and someone screaming. We turn at the same exact moment, and it’s Kayla Rosenthal, who always screams at parties. She’s standing on the picnic table, waving her drink around like a human sprinkler.
He nods in her direction. “And she got a scholarship to Notre Dame.” I laugh a little too hard. “Did you come with Waller?” he asks me.
“No, but he’s here somewhere.” I wave my hand like, Whatever, and hope these five words imply everything he needs to know: I don’t care where he is because he’s nothing to me. It’s you, Wyatt. It’s always been you.
He nods again, like he’s thinking this over. “Hey, congrats on salutatorian.”