She was talking about me right to my face knowing I’d never know.
When I arrive at the farm, I sling my backpack up onto my shoulder and step out of my car. The thick white clouds provide some cover from the late-July sun as I start across the field to the spot where we worked on the fence together last week, but I still feel hot all over.
I spend the entire walk trying to stop crying, but the tears just won’t stop leaking out of my eyes, because every time the shoe box thumps against my back, I’m reminded of all the lies Nora has told me these past couple of weeks. All the secrets she’s been keeping from me.
The one person I thought was a clean slate… and she knew everything the whole time. It’s everything I was afraid of. The reason I decided to stop looking and turn over a new leaf for a second chance. I should never have changed my mind. I just never imagined that what I might uncover would be something this big.
By the time I spot her four-wheeler, I’m crying even harder, my breath a little ragged.
“Stevie?” she asks, surprised, as she tugs on the cord of her earbuds and they dangle from around her neck. “What are—” She stops. I can see that she registers that something is wrong. Every time it felt like she was somehow reading me, every time she would say exactly the thing I needed to hear. It makes sense now.
“What was I doing in the woods that day?” My voice shakes as I speak, but I enunciate every word, giving her one more opportunity to tell me the truth this time.
“Stevie, what are you talking about? I—I don’t—”
“What, are you just gonna tell me the same bullshit story again?” I cut her off, trying to swallow my tears long enough to get this out. “You don’t know? Huh? You don’t know anything?” I swing my backpack around in front of me, unzipping it to reveal the orange shoe box.
With a shaking hand, I slip it out and let my backpack fall to the ground at my feet. I lock eyes with her and then throw the box onto the grass between us, and the contents go spilling out at her feet. The camera and photographs and a random lottery ticket and a ton of other things that don’t meananythingto me.
But I can see it in her eyes as they shift frantically from item to item.
I can see that she knows exactly what all this stuff is.
And that it means something to her
I watch her chest rise and fall, sweat beading on her tan skin and pooling at her collarbone. She looks up at me, slowly, her mouth hanging open like she’s going to say something, but she never does.
“This whole time…” I keep my voice low, because it’s the only thing I can muster right now. “This wholefuckingtime…”
Nora lets her head fall backward, looking up at the sky. When she finally looks back at me again, tears are falling from her eyes just like that day in the butcher shop, and that’s how I know for sure it’s all true.
“You… forgot me,” she says, her voice so small that I can barely hear her over the soft sound of the wind blowing through the grass.
“But you didn’t forget! You knew and you didn’t tell me.” I shake my head and she presses her hand over her heart like she’s in physical pain. “All those times I was going on and on like anidiotabout how nice it was to talk to someone new. Someone who didn’t know me before.”
“I wanted to tell you. Buthowcould I?” She throws her hands up. “I know you don’t remember, but you told me that you never gave one thought to your sexuality before we met junior year. So how would you have reacted to me telling you something like that? I didn’t know what to do. Then you kept coming by and we started hanging out and I thought maybe that meant something, that if I waited, it would all come back to you. Or that maybe we could just fall back into… and then our plan could still work.” She takes a step toward me but I take a step back.
“What plan? What are you talking about?” I ask.
She bends down, her hands shuffling desperately through the mess I’ve made in the grass until she pulls out a thick piece of linen paper folded in thirds and tucked inside the popcorn bag. She holds it out to me, but I don’t move to take it.
So she starts reading.
“Dear Ms. Green, Congratulations! It is our great pleasure to offer you admission to UCLA…”
“What the hell?” I grab the paper and run my hand over it, my thumb dipping into the imprint of the school crest at the top.
California.
I wasnevergoing to go to Bower.
I was never going to stay here.
But why would I hide getting into UCLA? Why didn’t anyone know?
“We were going to get out of Wyatt, Stevie. You and me, we were going to a place we could actually be together. We wereso close,” Nora says. I remember the California travel guide on her side table that she didn’t want me to see. It wasn’t hers, it was ours. Just like the mess lying in the grass in front of me, proof of a secret life that I don’t remember.
“Why would I goanywherewith you? Why would I leave my whole family, my friends behind without even telling them? I don’t even know what you’re talking about… I’m not… I’m notgay.” Just saying the word feels wrong, it makes me feel scared, makes me check over my shoulder to be sure we’re alone.
