With only three weeks of school to go, I’ve been running around doing things I’d never imagine actually happening to me, like picking up my graduation robe and cleaning out my locker.
Freddie, Adam, Ruthie, and I meet in the courtyard for lunch and to trade notes for various finals.
Freddie and I haven’t talked much since the hospital. It’s like that night was a safe zone, and nothing we said or did would count against us. And now I see him at lunch or in the hall. I’ll wave and he’ll smile back. But that night didn’t change things. Maybe if my life were a movie, the tornado would have driven us back to each other, but that wasn’t how it happened.
The intercom crackles for a moment, before the school secretary says, “Attention, students: yearbooks have arrived. They will be available in the yearbook room and at the front office.”
There are a few distant cheers. The school was only slightly damaged and ended up closing for two days following the tornado. The entire trailer park was condemned, like it should have been years ago.
“It doesn’t even matter what we get on these finals,” says Ruthie. “We’ve all already been accepted to colleges.”
“Almost,” I say. “I still have to mail in my final transcript.”
“Come on, Ramona! Hop to it.” She nudges me in the ribs. “You’re totally in, though. I mean, you’re basically on the swim team already.”
Freddie smiles but looks away quickly. I want to ask him if he decided to do the open tryouts at LSU, but I don’t want to put him on the spot.
When I told Ruth about Coach Pru’s offer and that I had decided to take her up on it, she cried. She cried actual human tears. And seeing Ruth cry made me cry. So the two of us sat there outside Boucher’s on our lunch break, hugging and crying.
I made the decision last week after swimming in my new suit for the first time. I did some weight lifting with Coach Pru as she sat there reading a copy of Sports Illustrated.
“I should charge you for this,” she said.
I laughed. “Couldn’t afford you anyway.”
She glanced up over the edge of her magazine, huffing out a laugh. A moment later, she stood and said, “I’m heading out early. That’s not an excuse to slack off.”
I groaned, knowing I’d finish my reps regardless. Afterward, I jumped into the pool to cool off. I let my body sink down to the bottom of the deep end. As I sat there, testing my lung capacity, I realized wherever I can find water, I can find home. I am home.
We all leave lunch early to line up for yearbooks. I didn’t shell out money for my own, but I wait with my friends still. After the bell rings, and we part ways with Freddie and Adam, Ruthie and I head to class.
“You mind if I look at that?” I ask as we take our seats, motioning to her yearbook.
She shrugs. “Sure.”
As Mr. Galvez goes over our Spanish final review, I flip to the back of the yearbook and search for the page bearing my name.
I tracked down Allyster a few days after we got settled into the extended-stay hotel. I was super late on the deadline, but he was surprisingly sympathetic. I may have guilted him with the whole losing-my-house-and-most-of-my-belongings-in-a-tornado thing.
Everyone’s senior page has one photo. Usually it’s a picture taken on the beach or in a field. The picture on my senior page is half a strip of black-and-white photo-booth pictures of Freddie and me from our day in New Orleans. It was an old photo booth—the kind that still uses chemicals. We took so many that day despite the line of couples waiting behind us.
In the first photo, he and I are still getting situated, not quite prepared for the first flash of the bulb. In the second photo, Freddie is holding me tight and we’re both laughing hysterically. You can even see his orange freckles splattered against his cheeks.
Next to the photos is a single quote.
You know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming? That’s where I’ll always love you. That’s where I’ll be waiting.
—J. M. Barrie, PETER PAN
After school, I wait at the bike rack next to my new red Schwinn.
I wait for Freddie. For a second, I worry that he won’t come out this way or that he’s going to avoid me, but his bike is chained up right next to mine.
He’s walking with Adam across the courtyard when Freddie turns to him and says something. Adam nods and waves good-bye. I can see Freddie’s finger holding his place in the back of the yearbook.
From across the courtyard, his eyes meet mine, and he walks directly to me.
My heart is thrashing against my rib cage. “I never said thank you for the senior page.”
He nods slowly. “I saw it.”
I take a deep breath. “It’s been—a lot has happened this year,” I say. I wish everything about this moment was perfect. I wish it was like that stupid movie we watched before school started. If we lived inside that movie, everything between us would be fixed with a kiss.
He laughs halfheartedly. “Yeah, not the year I expected. Definitely didn’t keep my promise to swear off girls.”
I grimace as I remember the two of us, driving back to Eulogy, completely heartbroken. “I’m sorry for ending things the way I did,” I say. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
He holds his jaw with one hand, thinking. “I was really mad at you. I still kind of am. I felt like we built this really amazing thing together—this connection that I’d never had with anyone else before—and then suddenly you decided it was over. It just—if we built it together, it didn’t seem fair that we couldn’t at least decide to end it together.”
I shake my head. “You were right.” I take a step closer to him. “You have every right to be mad. I’m mad at myself, too.”
“So what do we do now?”
“I was thinking that maybe when you’re done being mad you could forgive me?”
“Forgiving you isn’t the hard part.” He twists the ball of his foot into the dirt before looking up at me again. “I’ve got to trust that you won’t just cut me out of your life again without warning. And I think that’s going to take a little while.”
“That’s fair,” I tell him.
He half smiles. “So what does all this mean for us?”
I let out a deep sigh. “Listen,” I say, “our lives are about to change in really big ways. Neither of us has had much luck with long distance.”
He chuckles. “You’re right on that one.”
“But I think we can promise each other one day at a time. I think that’s fair . . . if that’s what you want.”
“I don’t want to hold you back from anything,” he tells me. “I already tried that with Viv.”
“And I don’t want to hold you back either, but I also know that I love you, and I think you still love me too.”
He takes my hand, tracing circles in my palm. “I’ve tried to stop,” he says. “But no luck.”
He pulls me in for a kiss.
With my eyes closed, I almost feel like I’m standing on the beach in the dark. In the pitch-black night. The only clue to where I am is the lapping of the ocean. In this moment, Freddie is my anchor. And the rest? It’s unknown. A great and beautiful question mark.