Silence falls over Oceanside in the autumn, as the tourists slowly disappear into the fog. If you could watch it in time-lapse, over a period of weeks you’d see the boardwalk slowly shutting down, the bright lights going dark, crowds replaced by shadows. The crisp clear air that brings in the weekenders is gradually replaced by cloudy skies and the mist that rolls in off the sea. The music and cars and voices that have provided a buzzing background for months are all simply gone, and you can hear the waves again.

If you’re sixteen in Oceanside, fall is magic. It feels like the entire world has left you alone, and given you a place to hide. The minute the last bell rings at school, you’re out the door, on your bike, getting as deep into the silence and fog as you dare, escaping into the secret world where no adults exist, a world where you can be yourself.

That’s what I was doing that afternoon fifteen years ago, hiding down in the shuttered stands of the boardwalk, inside a picture booth. Hiding, and yet I’d never felt so exposed, so seen.

I gotta tell you something, Ransom had said over the phone. Meet me at the boardwalk. Hearing his voice made my heart beat so fast. I couldn’t imagine what his news would be, but my fingers and lips tingled with excitement, and I rushed out of the house and hopped on my bike. The breeze hit my skin like a tonic as I raced through town towards the shore.

Ransom and I had known each other forever, yet had only recently discovered each other. I don’t know how to describe it better than that: You think you know someone, and then one day you begin to exchange glances, your eyes lock at these odd little moments before you’re forced to look away. That’s when you begin to understand that there’s a layer that you didn’t see before, a longing and a hunger that matches your own. At first it just seemed that Ransom would pop up places I’d never noticed him before; outside Mr. Turner’s Geometry class, near my locker when the final bell rang, our eyes meeting briefly, the tingle of excitement finding its way up my spine as I noticed details about him that I had somehow managed to miss for the past decade we had travelled through school together; his long lashes, the softness of his lips, the way he’d glance up at me, his eyes bright and knowing. It was a look that seemed to say, want to play? And oh! How I wanted to play! I would imagine those eyes in the dark of my bedroom, pretending that my hands were his hands slipping down onto me, imagining his eyes looking into mine as I climaxed, biting my lower lip to stifle the sounds of my private pleasure, the waves coursing through me.

The shy part of me thought this was the best I could hope for, the imaginary Ransom, the dream Ransom. Then the fair came to town.

When you grow up in Oceanside, you know the pier and boardwalk aren’t yours; they’re for tourists. The music and lights and fun are for people from far away. But the fall fair? That was for you. We might pretend to be jaded and cynical about the tourists, but when the fair came, we all were there, standing in line for the rides, laughing our way through the hall of mirrors, getting all the treats we’d watched tourists get all summer long.

I was in line for the Ferris wheel. Ever since I was a little kid, I had known there was something magical about it. Back when my dad was around, he’d take me on it every year, and we’d swoop upwards, into the sky, staring out over the last dying rays of sunset glowing against the water, and on the other side of us, the little lights of town. Like being on the border of two separate worlds. Every year I came and every year I marveled, when the car paused at the top, at how much of the world I could see from here, and yet how little all my worldly concerns mattered. I was, for a moment, both literally and figuratively above it all. Then that glorious swing back down, approaching the earth, returning to the fold, laughing and just a little bit shaky, happy to be home.

I was deep in this excited anticipation, not really paying attention to anything around me, when suddenly there was a shove from behind. I snapped out of my thoughts and turned around, annoyed.

There was Ransom.

By instinct, by habit, I immediately glanced away, feeling my stomach flutter. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else. It was like I’d just gotten off the ride instead of being in line for it.

He smiled at me. “Sorry, dude. Busy crowd. How’s it going...Cave? Right?”

“That’s me,” I croaked, then cleared my throat. “You’re Ransom. I mean, I know you know that. You sat in front of me in Mr. Hasting’s English class last year.” And you keep looking at me in the halls, and I think of you every night.

“Hah, Hastings was such a douche. C’mon, kids, experience the wonder of reading!” He reached up and pushed his hair back with his hands. I’d never realized what big hands he had.

I nodded at him. I would’ve agreed with anything he said, even though I actually liked Mr. Hastings, who had loaned me a copy of Madame Bovary to read over the summer.

“So, you going it solo tonight, man?”

I hesitated. “Looks like it. You?”

“Yep, wanna share a ride?” That light in his eyes was as unmistakable as the smile that played around the corners of his mouth. I wasn’t imagining things! Want to play? Yes, Ransom, yes I do.

We didn’t talk on the way up. Instead of watching the turning world below, I watched him. Watched his face change, as he looked out over the ocean. I could see the dying sun reflected in his eyes, and then his eyes moved to look at me. That look of recognition, of understanding. We didn’t need words at that moment.

We counted that as the start. We began to find secret places to meet, the abandoned boardwalk, the dark of the movie theater, our houses when no one else was home. We explored each other in secrecy, reading each other like forbidden books, hungry to learn and memorize every curve and line of each other’s bodies. Learning the way Ransom’s pulse felt in his throat when my lips would touch him there. Learning the weight of him, as I pulled him into my lap.

He was so strong, so energetic, a wild spirit you had to hold onto tight if you wanted to keep up. Our encounters left us sweaty, physically exhausted, in the mood for those long, winding conversations that can only happen after midnight, tangled in each other’s arms.

Now Ransom had news, and I was exhilarated. Everything had been so thrilling with him, so new. My first real kiss. My first...well, my first real everything. My mind was reeling with the possibilities. Maybe he wanted us to come out as a couple. That would be amazing. I knew he was keeping his private life private for now--his parents were rigid, old-fashioned and unaccepting, and oblivious to who he really was. He resented them, but at the same time was reluctant to cross them. I understood that, although I had a harder time understanding why he wasn’t out to our friends in school. It was difficult to watch him play straight in the halls, the girls flirting with him, the guys all wanting to be his friend, the two of us keeping a safe distance. I listened out for his deep, rich voice whenever I was at the lockers, so I’d know which way to look, to hopefully catch his gaze, that momentary private reminder that we were together, even if here at school it was like nothing had changed. Like nothing had begun to blossom that night at the fair, as though he had not spent long luxurious weeks touching every inch of me with his fingers and lips and tongue.

Maybe all of that would change today. Maybe he was ready to be honest with the world. I felt a certain pride when I thought about the two of us, sitting together at lunch, walking together down the halls, this gorgeous guy the girls all swooned over, and yet he had chosen me. Me, the quietest, shyest gay kid in the world. I had done my small part to help him, to nudge him forward to take that step. There was so much warmth in my heart, thinking of how I would be there for him, hold his hand when the world’s jaws dropped at the news. We were so deeply in love, and Ransom talked so much about honesty and authenticity; surely he would decide we had to tell the world, consequences be damned.

I ditched my bike next to the abandoned cotton candy stand and slid through the curtain into the photo booth. Ransom was already there, drinking something out of a brown paper bag. He held it up to me. I recognized the feel of the bottle through the bag, and dutifully took a sip of Seagram’s gin, careful not to wince at the flavor. It had taken some getting used to; it tasted like something you’d clean the floors with, but over the past weeks I’d grown to like how warm it felt as it went down, and had come to associate it with the taste of his lips.

His face was enveloped in shadow. His normally playful eyes had taken on an intensity, a seriousness I wasn’t used to.

Wanting to break whatever spell had come over him, I found his thigh and stroked it gently. I could feel a stirring in my pants and, setting the bottle down by our feet, I slipped my hand up under his shirt to feel the warm skin of his belly. I leaned closer to kiss him, but he turned away. Fear gripped my stomach and I sat back.

“Dude, we have to talk,” he said. “Let’s walk.”

The days were getting shorter, and the afternoon was ripening into evening as we made our way down the boardwalk. I waited for him to speak, but the tension was excruciating. I swallowed my anxiety and spoke first.

“What’s up?”

He pressed his lips together and scowled at the long shadows in front of us. I recognized that look, the thoughtful, tortured look he got when talking about his family or the future or the state of the world.

“It’s my old man. He’s pulling the noose tighter.”

I blanched. “He knows...about us?”

Ransom shook his head. “No. But he can tell something’s different. Hell, maybe it’s that I’m happy for the first time in my life, and he can’t let that happen. Tonight his lecture was about how I’m aimless and I’ll never amount to anything. He says if I don’t get my shit together, it’ll be straight to the military when I turn 18. How about that?”

Relaxing a little--I’d heard about Ransom’s dad a thousand times--I said, “Nobody decides what they want to do for the rest of their lives when they’re 16. That’s why they keep shoving all those career aptitude tests on us. Besides, you’re not even aimless. You’re going to be a musician.”

“I got an earful when I told him that. No son of mine is gonna prance around on a stage. Fuck, Cave, if he ever did find out about me liking guys, I’d be done for anyway. I just can’t do this shit anymore, man. I can’t live a lie.”

My emotions were confused and overlapping. One minute I was excited thinking he was going to come out, letting us be open about our relationship; the next, I was terrified he was going to break up with me so he could hide from his dad.

“I get it,” I said. “I mean, you’ve got to be true to yourself. You can’t let your dad put you in that box, and you can’t keep up the facade at school. And I’ll be here for you, every step of the way. You don’t have to do this alone. You know if you want me to be there when you tell people, I’ll…”

The look he gave me sent me back into silence. He slowly shook his head. “You don’t understand.”

You don’t understand. I was used to that. All my life people had told me I didn’t understand what was important. I didn’t believe them; I thought I had a pretty good grasp on the crucial stuff. But I nodded at him and listened closely.

“It’s not me I’m talking about,” he continued. “It’s this town. This place is full of fakes. Everybody pretending it’s so great to live here. So much fucking civic pride. It’s a ghost-town, man. Nothing but a bunch of rednecks coming down to work in the cannery, then they go home and the tourists come in. My parents, my so-called friends, all the expectations and bullshit. I can’t stand it anymore, Cave. I can’t breathe in this place.”

On the other hand, I could breathe just fine. I’d heard this before from Ransom. It was part of his nature to rebel against everything he saw as artificial and fake in the world. Last year we read Catcher in the Rye in Mr. Hasting’s class, and when Ransom would get on this kick, he always reminded me of Holden Caulfield going on about phonies. I’d never tell him that, because I knew he’d say it was just a fake character in a fake book in a fake class in a fake school, but if anything it just made me love him more, to see his spirit captured on the page like that.

I turned toward him and put my hand on his shoulder. My instinct was to wrap my arms around him, but I knew that’s not what he wanted right now. “Don’t worry,” I said. “One of these days you’ll make it out of here. We both will. Together, we’ll--”

“Tonight, dude. There will never be a better time to leave than right now.” He sat on the edge of the boardwalk and pulled the bottle back out. I watched him take a long pull from it. He grinned and pushed the bottle toward me. I reluctantly took a drink and sent the bottle back in his direction. This time the warmth felt sour, unpleasant, more like heartburn.

“I want you to pack a bag and come with me,” he said. “Oceanside is killing me. Killing us. Neither of us belongs here. We need to get out in the real world!” His eyes were wild with excitement.

We had talked about running away before, of course; if you were a kid in Oceanside, it was one of the most frequent topics of conversation. Everyone wanted to leave, nobody understood why people kept descending on the town every summer in droves. But to actually go? “You’re not serious,” I said.

“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life.” He stared at me expectantly, but I found it difficult to meet his gaze. On some instinctual level, my body sensed the increased distance between us, and it ached over it.

“You can’t run away,” I said. “What about school? What about us?”

“You’re living in a fantasy, Cave. How can there be an us, in a small-minded town like this? I don’t need school. I don't even want to go to college. As far as my dad’s opinion, fuck, I'd rather walk off a cliff than join the Marines. No, man, I’m going to the city. That’s where the future is. I’ll take my guitar, look for gigs. Finally get some use out of those years of music lessons, right?”

“But...” My voice trailed off. There were so many objections that I wasn’t sure which one to say.

“It’ll be great. Look, I’m not saying I’m going to be famous overnight. But I’ll find places to play. Hell, I’ll busk for food money. You can make a lot of money up there, just playing on the sidewalk for people. I know it sounds crazy, but you’ll see, we can make it.”

We. The word had never sounded so perilous and frightening.

He was looking straight into my eyes. “And Cave? We will be free. We won’t have to live under the thumb of anybody else. You know me. When I set my mind to something, I do it. I promise you, I’m going to be somebody. It’s not going to be what school wants or my dad wants, but I’m going to make something of myself, something great.”

I knew that I was young and had little experience of the world, yet part of me felt an icicle of pity, hearing him say those words. People who run away don’t make something of themselves. They get sick, or run into trouble, or get hooked on drugs. Either they come back home with their tails between their legs, or they wind up a sad headline in the paper. Running away didn’t solve anything. To think otherwise, that was living in a fantasy.

Hard to tell Ransom that, though. Somehow in our brief relationship, he’d taken on the mantle of the sensible one, the one who knew all about the world, while I was the innocent one, ignorant of the dangers out there.

I don’t think I was as innocent as he thought. I had been out of the closet for a few years now, and had been through a lot of what the world can throw at a gay kid who isn’t hiding. I think I knew more about the dangers of life than he did. Sometimes you feel a gravity in a relationship, though, slowly pulling you into orbit, and that’s what happened here. Ransom was my star; I was just the dull satellite.

My voice was quiet in my ears, much quieter than the blood I could hear rushing through my veins. “So...you’re really leaving?”

“I can’t live like this anymore. I know you keep saying come out, come out, but that doesn’t solve anything. You know what my parents’ll do if I come out of the closet right now? It’ll be straight to military school. A little discipline will beat that out of you, my dad will say. Not happening. No way. If this shit’s going down, it’s going to be on my terms. Be a good boy, stay in school, study hard, get a job at the fucking cannery? Everybody’s like, if you work hard you can be an accountant or a lawyer, but why would you want to kill your soul doing that shit?”

Ransom took another long pull from the bottle. The way it was concealed in the bag, I couldn’t be sure how much he’d had, but I was willing to bet it was a lot.

“I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to get to where there are possibilities, Cave.” His voice dropped an octave, and his eyes softened, from that steely determination, to the Ransom whose warmth I had grown to love. “I want you to be with me,” he said.

That playful light was back in his eyes, beckoning me. Promising fun, adventure, and endless time together. No more hiding. All I had to do was come along on this crazy ride. This crazy terrifying ride. Want to play?

I looked away. This was different than our usual trash-talk about the town. I knew that. I understood that he meant it absolutely, and the weight of it made my heart sink.

“I can’t come with you,” I said. “My mom needs me. She can’t raise Janey all by herself. Besides, I’m in AP Algebra, and the yearbook club, and--”

“Yearbook club?” Ransom shook his head. “There’s a whole world out there, and you’re worried about the fucking yearbook? Cave, nobody ever came from Oceanside. Nobody talented, nobody interesting, because nothing can survive here. It’s like planting a tree in the sand, it’s not going to grow.”

Now it was my turn to say, “You don’t understand. I’m needed here.”

All the play was gone again. His jaw set in determination. “I want you with me, but I can't make you choose something better for yourself.”

“You don’t have to go.”

“I’m really going to miss you, Cave. I’ll always remember you.” His hand squeezed mine. “I love you.”

My fear was so great it would swallow me whole. I had never loved anyone before Ransom. Everyone before him had been a simple boyhood crush. He was my first, and in my 16-year-old mind, I thought that made him mine forever. To have that disproved, to realize he might really leave, made me so afraid.

It was like when my dad left when I was ten. I’d cried and cried, feeling like nobody would ever be there for me, ever again.

It was like the end of the tourist season, when people in Oceanside simply vanish into the fog.

“Don’t do this, Ransom,” I said. I imagined throwing myself down to the ground, getting on my knees, proposing marriage, proposing anything that might get him to stay. Yet I found I couldn’t move at all. I could barely even speak.

He grabbed me then, pulled me close, so close I could smell the clean soap scent of his freshly-shaved chin. “I wish things were different,” he said. “I wish you could come with me. It’s going to be so great out there, Cave.”

All I wished was that this moment--me in his arms, his soft cheek against my forehead--would stretch out forever, and never end.

He kissed me then, his soft lips pressed to mine. There was none of our usual hormonal urgency in this kiss, though. No sense that it would lead to naked limbs and sweating and climax. No. This was a goodbye kiss, and it tasted like sorrow, like the gray sea during winter. His fingers trailed over my cheeks as our lips parted, and we looked each other in the eye.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for out there,” I said to him, holding back as much emotion as I could. Trying to be rational. Trying to be good. “I hope you find something that’s real.”

That night, walking my bike back home, Oceanside felt emptier than it ever had before. I was a little satellite who had lost its star, spinning and spiraling all alone in the universe.