He glances at me in the rearview again. “Doing okay?”
I nod. When he looks back at the road, I add, “Thank you. For helping me.”
“Of course, Ethan.” His soft-brown eyes appear in the mirror again. “I just want you to be okay.”
I almost add something snarky and mean, something alluding to how he sure as shit didn’t care if I was okay for the last five years, but I leave it.
We drive the next few miles or so in silence.
9
Shane
January 1999
I glance back atEthan. He’s got his eyes closed.
I’m not sure if he’s asleep or not, but I keep the CD player and radio off just in case.
On the map, there are highlights Ethan must have made and a few notes he’d written out. I glance at it to make sure I’m still going the right way. His handwriting is still the same. I smile to myself as I think about all those notes we used to give to each other. He still capitalizes his Es and As in the middle of words. I can’t remember exactly, but I think I read somewhere that when people do that it’s some kind of personality trait that means they’re constantly frustrated.
If it’s true, then it seems Ethan’s life hasn’t been any less frustrating over the last five years.
I turn my attention to the road. We have to stay on Route 8 for a while, then get on Interstate 88 to Binghamton. I’m thinking maybe we could stop there to eat or something. He’s got it circled, so maybe that’s what he was thinking too.
I sort of lied to him. My grandma had panic attacks, but I had them too. I still do sometimes. They started, not unsurprisingly, after the night I last saw Ethan. I got a brief reprieve after Mikayla was born, thinking that I had a purpose, but they came back after it was clear Gina and I couldn’t pretend anymore.
I didn’t have anyone there to talk to me, to tell me to recite things and calm me down.
And it isn’t surprising that Ethan would be having one on a trip like this. I suspected he was back at that gas station.
I glance over at Everett’s ashes. I wonder what he would do if he were here. If he saw Ethan and I doing this together. Would he be happy? The last time I spoke to Ev, he wasn’t happy at all. In fact, he was pretty pissed.
And I was completely caught off guard, so I reacted in the most cowardly way possible.
As I drive, I think back to that night, Everett’s graduation party at the Sawyer house. His parents let him have one as long as it didn’t get too wild. Ev and I went out to my Bronco to get something. I had all my photos on the passenger seat inside a folder. I’d just developed them. Some were close-ups of my grandpa’s hands as he carved a soldier figurine. Some were pictures of my grandmother’s knitted Afghan, wrapped around her in her favorite chair. And some were actually of Everett, running on the track at school. I’d been trying to capture all these pieces of life, little things that most people just ignore, but always fascinated me.
And Ethan had fascinated me. A lot.
There was one of him sitting on the railing of the Sawyer’s wraparound porch. One knee was drawn up, the other leg dangled. His jeans were ripped, and that Depeche Mode tee was baggy against his thin frame. I told him to look out at the street so the light could catch the side of his face, but he turned his face to me at the last moment, a smile just beginning in his eyes.He’d stuck out his tongue and made devil horns with his fingers. In the darkroom, I’d blown up the picture to get more of his face in the frame, because I wanted to see all the different Ethans I’d caught at once. Spontaneous Ethan. Silly Ethan. Angsty Ethan. Edgy Ethan.
I captured Awkward Ethan out in the street with his skateboard. And then there was Curious Ethan in the Sawyer’s backyard, his head tilted up, gazing at the night sky.
Then there was one of Shy Ethan sitting by the river in the grass, looking at the camera with tenderness in his storm-cloud eyes.
And me sitting right behind him, with one arm around him and my chin resting on his shoulder. I remember us taking that picture just like I remember us taking the one out on the rocks. I remember them mostly because of what happened after.
But the picture Everett saw was the one with my arm around Ethan. The way we were sitting, how close we were, it was obvious; it was an intimate moment I hadn’t intended on anyone else seeing but Ethan. But that’s the one Everett picked up and stared at when he opened the folder, just lying there in the passenger seat, unguarded.
“What the hell is this?” he’d said, frowning.
My heart was pounding with terror and the pain of having that private moment with Ethanseen. I’d meant to give Everett the ones I’d taken of him running track. I don’t know why I brought the whole folder with me. I guess I’d been stupid and not thinking. Or maybe I’d been hoping to get Ethan alone at that party and show him those pictures. Especially the ones of us.
I still can’t get the look on Everett’s face out of my mind. He was angry. Even a bit horrified.
“What the hellisthis,Shane?” He’d demanded, holding up the photo.
I stammered and stuttered and tried to come up with an explanation. Something good, something convincing, something that wouldn’t lead to me being outed in our little sheltered town. But Everett was so angry. And a bit confused too. He was looking at me in a way he never had before, and I didn’t know what was going to happen.
