It’s easier to leave before everyone else is up. Before the questions begin. Before the chaos of Julian leaving and the inevitable silence that follows—where we’re all trying to figure out how to be with each other, without ball games to schedule and booster clubs to run, and the fact that it’s always my turn to clear the table.
There are two possible routes between Caleb’s house, in Old Stone Pointe, and my own, in East Arbor. The first is a loop outside the town centers, hooking back in through the other side, closer to the shore. It avoids the traffic lights, but also takes a little longer—closer to twenty minutes instead of fifteen. The other cuts clear across the county, a direct path through the town centers, separated by residential streets, strip malls, and the river.
I decide on coffee. I decide on the river. I haven’t been this way since. But there’s something about being in his room that shakes everything loose.
First come the strip of stores, the gas station, the ice cream place, and the dress shop. The sky is light, but there’s a sense of fog, a blurriness as I approach the sign.
Coats Memorial Bridge. The road narrowing and the trees thickening, and my hands gripping the wheel, my lungs burning with the breath I’m holding.
It never occurred to us to question what this bridge was a memorial for.
The sunlight catches on a new stretch of guardrail in the corner of my vision. And then I’m past it, and my breath releases. The trees thin out again, the stores begin picking up, and I pull into the lot of the coffee shop I used to meet Hailey at on Saturday mornings, setting up in the corner booth with our schoolwork and a chocolate scone and coffee (for me) and hot chocolate (for her).
The clerk doesn’t look up after handing me the cup, steaming hot against my cold hands. It’s not until I have it in my grip that I realize there’s a tremor in my fingers. The guy looks up and smiles. “Sure you haven’t had enough already?”
I take a sip, and it burns the roof of my mouth. “I’m sure.”
On the way back to my car, I see her: Hailey, in the car with her parents, eating something with a paper wrapper. She’s in a dress, like usual, but more modest than her typical flared style, this one with a higher collar and in a shade of navy. Even through the window, I can tell her makeup is toned down. They’re on the way to or from church, I decide.
I don’t knock or wave or anything, but I can tell the moment she sees me. She stops chewing, the food still positioned between her teeth. I raise my hand to her, and she slowly raises hers back, her eyes wide, like she hasn’t seen me in ages. And maybe she hasn’t. I’ve built a nice, dark cocoon for myself these last few months, the sheen of everything around me dulled and filtered. I’ve been to school. I’ve been home. I’ve kept moving.
But I’ve quit the team. And I’ve quit my friends. Or my friends have quit me. I can’t really remember which way it went—my lack of response, or their lack of attempt. All I know is that it felt like relief. Nothing is expected or required of me; there’s nothing to mess up, no actions to undo or words to unsay. My presence or absence affects no one. I am blameless.
I think the last time I spoke to Hailey might’ve been at Caleb’s service, but I can’t remember what she said, or what I said. I do remember her shoes: silver, with straps. I remember wondering if she had anything more appropriate, then thought: probably not. I don’t remember if I voiced that out loud. I probably did. That’s probably part of the problem.
I couldn’t tell you what happened there, because it still struck me as such a ridiculous concept: the service. Up front, there was a montage of pictures of him—some including me. And more: Caleb in his lacrosse uniform, with his teammates. Caleb giving his sister a piggyback ride. Younger versions of Caleb and Max smiling up at the camera, a pile of wood between them, a hammer in Caleb’s hand.
The pictures would have to do, because there was nothing else remaining. A crooked license plate, stuck between river rocks the next town over; a section of the bumper, trapped in an eddy near the inlet; a single tire, washed up on a nearby beach.
The engine exhaust lingers in the parking spot as Hailey’s car pulls away. I can’t catch my breath. I picture Caleb running down the front steps, his head ducked low because of the rain, his wipers squealing as they cut through the torrent while he drives.
I wonder if he could see through the rain.
It’s just rain, our coach said. Just rain.
My mom used to say the car was the safest place to be in a storm, with rubber wheels that ground you in the event of a lightning strike. It’s a piece of metal, two tons, designed for our protection. There are airbags. Safety protocols. Antilock brakes. All to keep us safe.
The surge came later. A flash-flood warning on the radio, lighting up all our phones after the race, but we get those all the time. Turn around, don’t drown, says the alert, but nobody takes it too seriously.
The Old Stone River snakes through town, under Coats Memorial Bridge, and then continues on. That day, the river kept rising, with nowhere else to go; it breached the guardrail of the bridge. In six inches of water, you lose control. In twelve inches, the car will float. The current will take you.
The river curves through another town on its way to the coast, where it empties out into the Atlantic. A whole ocean, where he might be.
There was nothing to bury. Nothing to reduce to ash. Nothing to feel in the second-row pew of the church other than the fact that nothing was there.
I shiver, holding tighter to the coffee cup. I scroll through my phone until I reach Hailey’s name, see her photo: an up-close shot of the two of us with our eyes squeezed shut and our faces pressed together.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to start.
Hi, I write.
I’m halfway to Caleb’s when I hear the ding in response.
The last few miles of the drive pass in a blur—the larger suburban homes giving way to narrow brick homes wedged closer together in a grid of streets. But you couldn’t beat the location. Caleb’s home was effortlessly close to the shore, and we could walk to the shops on the outskirts of town, with no highway or major roads cutting through the path.
I parallel park in the spot in front of his house that once belonged to him instead. I see the curtain shift in the front window, the profile of a little girl with dark hair. I wave, and the curtain falls shut. The little girl disappears.
I check my phone and see Hailey’s response. Hi, she says.
The front door opens, and Eve is waiting for me. Her mouth is set in a grim line, like she disapproves of the fact that the phone is in my hand.
“Who was that?” she says as I walk up the porch steps. Her gaze shifts to the phone still in my grip.
“Hailey Martinez,” I say. And then I show her the display, as if she has forced it from me. As if I have to prove that I have not taken up with some other boy who is not her son, to be granted access to this house. That I am loyal, even now, to his memory.
Eve is still looking at the phone, at the meaningless text, when she asks, “Do you have my number, Jessa?”
“No,” I say.
“Next time, call when you’re on the way, so I make sure I’m here in case anything comes up.” She holds out her hand for my phone, and I place it in her palm. If anything comes up. It’s an empty room. What could possibly come up?
She adds her number as a new contact, and I’m startled by the sound of footsteps behind me.
I turn just in time to see Mia disappear up the steps. Upstairs, I hear her door slam closed. Eve says nothing when she hands back my phone, so I make my way up the steps. I decide to make a visual dent this time. So it seems less and less like Caleb’s room, as if that might make it easier.