to Max and his lips and his hands, and how it feels to have them on me.
My gut lurches at the sound of a car—not Max on his dirt bike—and a horn honking. I roll my head to the side in time to see a shiny red Mustang convertible, circa 2003.
Ethan, swinging around the empty bus circle in my direction.
LATE AUGUST
SUMMER BEFORE TENTH GRADE
The U-Haul is already in your driveway when I get there. You insisted I come, insisted I be there to say goodbye to your brother.
And why wouldn’t you insist? You have no idea my heart is breaking.
Ethan emerges from the house, carrying armfuls of blankets, pillows, his tennis bag, sneakers tied together and hung over his forearm. His eyes dart sheepishly to mine when he sees me.
“You’re just in time to help, JL!” you call happily, waving me over, enthusiastically.
Ethan doesn’t say a word.
And you? You don’t have a clue.
How could I begin to tell you?
MID-MAY
TENTH GRADE
The car stops, idles. The driver-side window rolls down.
“That you, Markham?”
I don’t move a muscle. My heart bangs hard in my chest, a crush of emotions nearly obliterating me. Excitement. Panic. Embarrassment. The air, already warm, grows thick and oppressive.
The car is Mr. Andersson’s old one, his prized baby he saved for the day Ethan got his license, and let him take to U Penn after he made dean’s list his first semester. In it, at the curb across from where I sit, Ethan squints up at me, into the sunlight.
“Hey! It is you, right?”
Does he have to keep asking? Who does he think it is?
I try to smile, but it’s forced like some plastered-on Joker’s grin. The memories rush back: his basement, the orange chair, the game of chicken in the pool … Images I’d tried to forget, not because I wanted to, but because I needed to.
He lowers the passenger-side window the rest of the way and says, “It is you. I thought so,” and he gives a big smile, like it’s all okay. Like it’s all normal, when it so totally isn’t. Like none of the things that happened mattered. Good old, reliable Ethan. Aubrey hadn’t told me he was back already. Why would she have? We barely speak. And, anyway, even if we did, why would she think I’d care?
“Hey, Ethan,” I finally manage. I sit up and swing my legs over the edge but don’t move off the wall. He can come to me if he wants. And he won’t. I used to think he would, but I don’t anymore.
“That’s it? ‘Hey, Ethan’? I don’t see you for months and that’s all you have for me? I came to collect my sister, but it’s better to find you waiting here.”
I’m not waiting for you, jerk, I want to say, but I don’t even know why I’m mad at him. He was leaving for college, and I’m his sister’s best friend. So, he left, and didn’t turn back. What was he supposed to do? Besides, I’m with Max now.
Still, that it all seems light and easy for him bothers me, when everything since that night has been hard for me. The feeling bad. The guilt. The missing him and not being able to tell.
Until Max came along and helped me forget everything.
“You mad at me?” Ethan cups a hand to his eyes to block the sun and waits, but I sit mute, because I don’t know the answer to his question.
Am I mad at him, or something worse than that?
Crushed.
Heartbroken.
But not anymore. I have Max. Whatever happened with Ethan is ancient history.
LATE AUGUST
SUMMER BEFORE TENTH GRADE
“Saturday night,” you say. “It’s going to be ah-mazing.”
“And you’re sure we’re invited?” I ask, tentatively.
“Of course we are. It’s my brother. Combo graduation–bon voyage party.”
You tell me to come early, so we can plan our outfits and mix-and-match bikinis—not that the slew of graduated seniors will give a crap about us, fresh out of ninth grade. But you’re giddy with excitement. It’s not like your parents normally allow this stuff, turning a blind eye to the keg they know Ethan plans to hide in the bushes.
“It’s weird,” you say. “I think my father is helping him. They’re not themselves, my parents. Either of them. It’s like they’ve gone all soft because he’s leaving and they want his last few days at home to be super-fun.” You roll your eyes. “As if my parents could ever be the cool ones.”
But your mom is sure trying. By the time I get there at