going to different schools for the first time that year, and I was sick about it. She had planned one last hurrah, and the instructions showed up on my windowsill in typical Mallory fashion. A map adorned with princesses riding unicorns, all of it done in ironic pink and purple marker. I had a packing list, a destination. We were going to do what every kid in our small town had boasted and threatened to do since the beginning of time: sneak through the legendary fifteenth-floor door of the haunted Grover Hotel. The one with the warnings. The one that surely hid the kinds of horrors we’d internalized from every scary movie we’d ever seen.
“I didn’t want to stop being your friend,” I say.
She picks through the can without looking at me. “Okay. But I want to know.”
“I can’t remember. It was a long time ago.”
Her face drops because it’s bullshit, and we both know it. I struggle to find the words because the truth still hurts. It feels like a betrayal, even now.
Of course I was going to meet her that afternoon. She called, I went. That’s how it worked. I was getting a headlamp from the garage when Dad came up behind me, the map in his hands. He held it like it was a dirty magazine, pinched between his finger and thumb.
The conversation was quick, over before I could say two words.
I was almost a man, and I needed to start acting like it. No more make-believe. No more running around with pink and purple maps in my pocket. No more Mallory. Of course he never said I couldn’t be friends with her—not directly. But I understood. If I wanted to be like him and Jake—every man in my life—it had to start right then, no questions.
So I didn’t go. For the first time ever. I didn’t respond to her phone calls or to the knocks at the door. Being at a new school made the separation final. But right now, standing in front of her, I’ve never felt as ashamed.
The first time I saw her in high school, every reflex inside me angled toward her as if no time had passed. I walked up to her in the cafeteria and stood there, hoping she’d say something, grant absolution. Her new friends didn’t know me, so I was just another awkward freshman. Their laughter was loud and embarrassing, and I split. A week went by, followed by four long years, neither of us making a move in the other’s direction. And the longer I’m standing here, her eyes on me, the more I realize how stupid that was.
“You know how Dad is,” I finally say.
“I do.”
“It’s his way or nothing. ‘Gotta be a man, Thomas. Can’t be seen around town like that, Thomas.’ I didn’t know what else to do. He found your note, and he told me I couldn’t go. . . . Do you know what it’s like to have somebody expect so much from you when you’re not ready?”
She wipes at her eyes quickly, nodding. “Yes.”
I hold on to the can like it’s a life preserver and I’m stuck in the middle of the ocean.
“Basically I’m trying to say—”
She wipes her eyes one more time. “That you’re kind of an asshole?”
“I mean, I was eleven.”
“Still.”
“Would you call an eleven-year-old an asshole?” I ask.
“Well, probably. But I’m not the best example of good behavior these days.” She halfheartedly throws a punch. I look at the ground, trying to will up the courage to actually apologize. Because as always, I can’t stand up for anything.
“I wish I wouldn’t have listened to him, if that matters.”
“It does,” she says, her eyes drifting back to the inside of the can.
“And I’m sorry,” I say, but Mallory tries to wave it away. I take the can from her and force eye contact. “No, really. I was the biggest eleven-year-old asshole, ever.”
It makes her laugh, the sound echoing off the concrete walls of the bridge. “You should put that on a T-shirt. I’m sure they’d love that in the army.”
She gives me a stiff salute, clicking her heels together and everything. I try to hide the way my body goes rigid.
Would I have told her? Surely. And right now that feels like a bit of grace. She doesn’t have to be burdened by this, too. Instead, she’ll learn, just like the rest of the town, that I’m nothing like my brother, my father. That I’m a fraud.
I shake the can