Connecticut
Summer before Junior Year
I ran through the woods until I broke into the clearing of my backyard, my underused muscles begging for mercy.
Even if I went inside and headed right up the stairs, my parents would ask why I’d come back so soon, and I didn’t want anyone seeing the mess the last half hour or so had made of me. I curled up in a ball on the side of the house and hugged my knees, jumping a mile when my cell phone started to ring for the second time. David again. I hit ignore.
My head spun with everything that had happened. He’d kissed me. My best friend had kissed me, and he’d told me he loved me.
He’d waited until we’d hardly ever see each other to go ahead and turn my feelings into a tumbleweed of sticky, tangled confusion. Maybe he only wanted me because he couldn’t have me. Or because if I lived in a different state, I wouldn’t be around to see how he handled—or didn’t handle—girls who swarmed him at every opportunity. He could have his cake and eat it too.
How convenient. How selfish.
Yes, angry was the way to go. I wanted to be angry. Angry was so much better than sad. So I fumed until I felt it was safe to go inside, ignoring two more calls from David in the interim. I went straight into the bathroom and washed up for bed, then threw myself down on my mattress—literally, just my mattress. The bed frame had already been loaded into the U-Haul. I clamped my eyes shut and demanded sleep to take over. The sooner tomorrow came, the better.
Problem was, with my eyes closed, I couldn’t control the images flashing behind my eyelids. As hard as I tried not to think about kissing David, it was the only thing I could think about. It didn’t help that my shirt still smelled like him, and my blankets were a crappy substitute for the warmth of his body. So, naturally, it wasn’t long until I started sobbing again.
Within minutes my bedroom door creaked open.
“Kelsey? Are you okay?” Miranda asked.
“I’m fine. Go away.”
“But you’re crying. Are you sad about moving?”
“No! I can’t wait to go! I can’t wait to leave this shit town and these stupid people. Leave me alone.”
She ignored my order and came closer. “Are you crying because you’re going to miss David?”
I meant to say, “David is an idiot,” but a round of gasping sobs stole my breath, and “He kissed me” came out instead. The mattress dipped as Miranda climbed onto it next to me. “I swear to God, Miranda, if you ever tell anyone about this, I will never forgive you. Promise me you’ll never tell.”
Her huge blue eyes glistened in the dark. “I promise, but why is it bad that he kissed you? I thought you liked him.”
“There’s no point in liking him. We’re leaving tomorrow and I’ll never see him. I’m going to make all new friends and David will move on and I’ll meet someone great and he’ll be the guy of my dreams.”
“Why do you have to go to Newport to find the guy of your dreams if he’s right here?”
Her words were like icicles down my spine.
It was exactly what I hadn’t wanted to think about: that I’d fooled myself into thinking the best things were yet to come, waiting for me to go to them. When in reality there was a very good chance I’d be leaving at least one of them behind.
I sat up, covering my eyes with my hands. “Oh, God,” I moaned. “What did I do?” I threw the covers off me. I couldn’t sleep tonight, not without seeing him again. And no way could I leave without telling him I loved him too. “I have to go. If Mom and Dad ask, I left something at David’s.” I threw on a pair of shorts before running out of the room, then doubled back. “Do not repeat a word of anything I told you.” Miranda pretended to zipper her lip and then flicked her wrist to mimic throwing away a key.
I bolted through the woods, panting and sweating by the time I reached David’s doorstep. Not seeing his car in the driveway did nothing to help the runaway-train pace of my heart.
Mr. Kerrigan opened the door, surprise and concern mingling on his face when he saw me. “Kelsey? Are you all right?”
I nodded, trying to keep the gasping out of my voice. “I’m fine. Is David here?”
“He’s not, but come in. Sit down and let me get you a glass of water.”
I started to protest, but he’d already made a beeline to the kitchen. I must’ve looked worse than I thought. I perched on the edge of the couch, ready to take flight again as soon as he told me where David was.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Mr. Kerrigan said as he handed me a tall glass filled with more ice cubes than liquid. He sat in the armchair across from me and gave me a smile that didn’t match the sadness in his eyes. “I know I wished you luck with your move, but I don’t think I’ve told you how much we’re going to miss you.”
“You’ll still see me.”
At the time I believed it.
“Of course. David’s already been asking if we can head up to my father’s early this year.” The mention of David made me think of his lips against mine, and I was suddenly very aware of the water making its way through my stomach. Mr. Kerrigan looked at his hands. “You know, Kelsey, David is my proudest accomplishment. Knowing that he chooses to spend his time with people like you—good, salt of the earth people with smart heads on their shoulders—it makes me feel like I’ve done something right.” The smile still played on his lips, but an unmistakable mist gathered in his eyes.
I put my glass on the end table next to me and stood up. Mr. Kerrigan did the same, and I wrapped my arms around him in a fierce hug.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
He pulled away with a chuckle and held me at arm’s length. “Look at me, getting old and sappy on you when you came here looking for my son.”
I apologized and told him I didn’t want to run off, but it was getting late and I’d need to head home soon.
“Do you know where he went?”
“He said he was going over to Hemlock Lane. A girl named Maggie’s house? Or was it Maddie?”
“Maddie.” The anticipatory butterflies in my chest grew strangely heavy. “I know this is going to sound weird, but can I borrow David’s bike? I sort of need to find him.”
I flew down the hill, pedaling as hard as I could, tempting fate to flip the whole bike over. Shadowed woods and angular houses with small, illuminated square windows blurred alongside me until the road began to widen and the treetops grew sparse and graceful, and I took a left turn onto the cul-de-sac of storybook colonials that composed Maddie’s neighborhood.
I hopped off the bike, trying to get my breathing under control as I propped it against the car-lined curb edging the Clairmonts’ property. My ears were met with the sound of voices coming from the backyard, and the crack of Wiffle balls against plastic bats. I tiptoed slowly through the grass, hesitating at the fence trellis that served as the entrance to Maddie’s yard.
David stood in the middle of the lawn wielding a yellow bat. He picked up a ball from a bucket at his feet, tossed it into the air, and smacked it across the yard, where Eric ran to catch it, one hand in the air. Maddie and Jared Rose lay snuggling on a hammock a few feet away, the same hammock where Maddie and I used to swing lazily and read books and talk about our crushes. Maddie’s older brother sat near a cooler on the patio, handing a beer to someone.
Isabel.
I angled my body behind the trellis posts as feelings warred within me, the desire to run to David and fling my arms around him battling a surging, overwhelming sensation that I didn’t belong there. It was enough to keep me from taking one more step.
David had sought these people out after I pushed him away. He felt comfortable turning to them, these same individuals who had slowly but surely edged me out of their lives.
Or maybe I’d edged them out of mine. I couldn’t really tell anymore. Either way, I was literally very much on the outside looking in.
“Nice!” Eric yelled as David sent a Wiffle ball careening into the yard next door, and Maddie whooped from her spot on the hammock. He’d hit it like he had a serious vendetta against it. I was willing to bet no one else knew why. To any other person, it would’ve looked like a typical group of friends hanging out on a summer night.
As if the girl hiding behind the fence had never been part of their lives at all.
David threw the bat down as Eric ran off to retrieve the ball. Almost instantly, Isabel appeared in front of him, clutching her beer bottle against her abdomen and tentatively holding another out to him like a peace offering. I stood stone-still as David looked from the bottle to her, frowning. Isabel said something I couldn’t hear. David said something back, something clipped and short. She set her beer down on the grass and put her hand on his arm, speaking more pressingly this time, more earnestly.
I knew what she was doing. Trying to wind her slimy tentacles around him and pull herself back into his good graces. Again.
David folded his arms across his chest. But he was listening to her. She rose up on her toes with the urgency of her speech. He looked off into the distance. His lips, those beautiful lips that had kissed me only a couple of hours ago, were set tight. When he looked back at her face, something passed over his. His eyes darkened with conflict, like he was on the precipice of forgiving her, once again, or telling her to go to hell.
And maybe it was a trick of the light, but in the next moment I swore I saw the slightest hint of a smile tug at his mouth, and I knew he’d decided. His fingers opened and he reached for the beer. Isabel let her hand linger over his as the bottle transferred from her grip to his. As he took a swig, they turned toward the house. And as they walked away together, Isabel’s arm slid around David’s waist.
I jerked back from the fence.
I couldn’t keep doing this. I couldn’t watch him find the good in people I despised and pretend it didn’t kill me. After he’d kissed me and I ran, I’d told myself I needed to be angry. That it would help me believe I’d done the right thing. That it would make leaving everything behind easier.
Now I knew I’d been right.
That’s why I turned around and headed back to the street, replaying what I’d seen and letting my imagination fill in the gaps of what I hadn’t.
Whatever his decision, whatever that little scene had meant, I didn’t want to know. David was going to be just fine without me.
And I was going to be just fine without him.
My last glimpses of Norwood blurred with tears as I rode back to the Kerrigans’ house and propped David’s bike against the garage door.
I turned off my cell phone, not wanting to know if David called again. And especially not wanting to know if he didn’t.
I wouldn’t turn it on again until I was under a different sky, in a different town, in a different state, just twenty-four hours later. It felt like a whole lifetime had passed in between. Everything felt different and new and scary and promising all at the same time. But one thing hadn’t changed.
No matter how many times that familiar number showed up on my phone, my only answer was silence.