“It hasn’t been days for me,” he said. “It’s been years. I was there for a long time, and now I’m not.”
“But we didn’t even get through all the ice cream flavors,” I told Alex stupidly.
“I know.”
“Do you think you might go back?” I tried to say it funny. Without crying. “To where you were?” But my voice broke. The way Alex looked at me was not a way he had ever looked at me before.
“No,” he said. “I can’t.”
We stood there, the two of us. There was everything and nothing left to say.We almost made it,I thought.We almost made it to each other.
145.
now
I have found my stride at last. My pace is steady and smooth. These roads are mine now.
Deep green fields stretch out in the lowering light, barns and fences rising up out of the farmland. The trees at the edges seem to be waiting to take back the land.You played here for a few centuries,they say,but we will have it again.
146.
once, that night
Ella found me at the edge of the lake. I seemed to have washed up there, the way dead fish and plastic wrappers and paper cups sometimes did. “Hey,” she said. “July. Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” The toes of my shoes were wet, and I knew if I took another step into the water, the mud would make a sucking sound. “Are you?”
The tears were coming silently. I wasn’t making any noise, but they kept sliding down my cheeks, dripping off my chin.
“I’m okay,” Ella said. “Thank you. For what you did. That was really—”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I felt horrible interrupting her and at the same time I felt nothing doing it. “Can you find another ride home? I need to go.”
“I’ll come with you.” Now Ella sounded like she might cry, too. Had she seen Syd and me fighting, or Alex and me on the swings, or heard that Sam and I had broken up? I heard something in her voice. Was she mad at me about the manifesto? Had I done the wrong thing there, too?
“I need to be alone,” I said. “Please.”
The air was full of bonfire sounds—people were talking, and someone, Syd maybe, had turned the speaker up—but I had never felt more alone.
“I’m sorry,” Ella said.
“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” I said. “But I have to go. Now. By myself. You can get a ride with Syd. Or Alex. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said. “But are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine.” I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.
“You’re not,” she said. “What can I do?” Ella put her hand on my shoulder. It was so gentle, so kind. It was the first time anyone had touched me since Sam and I had broken up.
And that undid me.
It’s heartbreaking when someone actually, truly, deeply wants to be the right person for you. To be there for you. And they’re a good person, and maybe they could be, could have been the right person, butyouhave become so wrong, such a wrong person, that it doesn’t even matter anymore.
“I can’t be your friend right now,” I told Ella.
She looked like I’d slapped her in the face. Her hand dropped from my shoulder.
“Why?” she asked. “What did I do?”
