The minute I step out of my car, I can see they haven’t written anything back. There’s nothing added to the marquee.
Disappointment hits me in my heart, in my knees. I have to hold on to something to catch myself, and I lean on the rearview mirror, which creaks under my weight. So after a second I straighten up, tell myself tobe strong. Be smart.
It still says8/31and GET TH3M BACK.
My IM SORRY letters have mostly blown away or fallen off. TheOand the twoRs are still standing.
The ladder is exactly where I left it after I fell.
But there’s nothing new.
Wait.There’s something at thebottomof the sign. Glistening in the late-afternoon sun of today.
Of8/31.
It’s the marquee letters that I couldn’t find in the student government room. Scattered like leaves all around the base of the marquee.
And something else.
Propped up against the bottom of the marquee is a cross.
It’s simple, plain, made of two sticks tied together with twine.
Pain hits me in my stomach, my hands, my feet. My whole body is pins and needles and knowing and recognition.
I have seen crosses like this before.
At the jump.
112.
once
“Summer’s almost over,” Sam said.
We were lying on a blanket underneath a tree outside of the Howell University library. On our way over from Sam’s dorm room, a guy had called out to Sam by name as we walked by (“He’s from freshman orientation,” Sam had explained), and some girls—laughing, short-shorted—checked him out as they passed us on the sidewalk.
The campus that had been ours was now everyone’s. Freshmen were everywhere; others were coming back. The excitement was palpable. Someone started singing the Howell University fight song and a bunch of people joined in, dissolving into laughter when they messed up at the end.
“It is.” I smiled at him. Up close, his eyes had those gold flecks in them. In the distance, I heard music. A band somewhere else on campus for a welcome event, probably.
“I’ve been thinking a lot,” Sam said. He wasn’t smiling. And there was something in his voice I didn’t like.
“Thinking a lot about what?” I asked.
“About us.” The something was still there. It was getting worse, in fact.
“Oh yeah?” I rolled over on my stomach so I didn’t haveto look at him. The evening air was warm, but when I reached down to pick a blade of grass, the ground was cool.
“Yeah,” he said. I still didn’t look at him. I found I couldn’t. “July,” he said, very soft. “You know how much I care about you.”
And there it was. And there we were. I had felt it coming for me all summer. College guys don’t date high school girls. No matter how much they like them. It always ends with the summer.
Even us.
He was breaking up with me.
I wanted to head him off.
