“Do not!”
“I have to! It’s like that bigger, older kid that bullies you for your lunch at school.”
“Exactly. Ignore him and he’ll go away.”
“That isterribleadvice,” Zach laughs, shaking his head. “I have to listen to my heart. I’m sorry.”
“Oh my God, don’t!”I order him, but he’s still trying to break up a cracker, so I lunge at him. We start laughing and I’m trying to pry it out of Zach’s hands before he throws it, and he’s trying to keep it out of my reach, crushing it in his palm. We’re both laughing too hard to do either thing effectively, and then we’re toppling over backward. The sun is warm against my skin and we’re both lying on the grass, facing upward, and I have to squint against the sky. Who cares about some dumb birds?
If a stranger walked by, they would think we were having simultaneous asthma attacks. My stomach hurts like I’ve been doing crunches. Shaking with laughter, I find Zach’s hand, warm and only inches from mine, and the feel of his skin still makes a current rush through my body every single time. I lace the fingers of my right hand between the fingers of his left hand, which is unfortunately where he’s crushed the cracker but I don’t care, and our palms are sweaty and warm on each other’s, with hundreds of tiny little pieces crushed between.
And maybe we would lie there for a few minutes, maybe all afternoon, just cracking each other up over things that are not even that funny, our bodies rising and falling with each breath. The sun is making me drowsy and I could fall asleep with my head on Zach’s chest, and I probably would. But just then another bird dive-bombs us even closer than the last, and we jump apart. Quickly and without discussion, we start to pack up our picnicking stuff.
We put the food away in Zach’s mom’s basket, hoping that will deter the birds, at least while we make the trek back to Zach’s car. I carry the folded-up blanket under my arm, Zach takes the basket, and we make a run for the parking lot.
“We’re almost there we’re almost there,” Zach says as we run with a hand over our bowed heads, the way you do in a thunderstorm. Once we make it safely into the car, we discuss the possibility that maybe we are not picnic people.
“Do you know what would have helped?” Zach says. “A giant-ass umbrella. Maybe one from Two Dollars or Less.”
It’s tempting, but we don’t give up on the outside-summery stuff all together.
We go bike riding through town, coming up with names like Otis and Horatio and Michèle for the people we pass. We try one of the hikes out by Calamore, which is long and hard and sweaty, but still somehow fun. We go out boating once with Zach’s family. They borrow their neighbor’s boat and take it out on a lake two hours from Lyndale, and Raj actually agrees to come, even though he spends the whole time sitting on the boat in a giant straw hat that Zach’s mom made him wear because he didn’t bring one. He sits there, unimpressed by the sights of nature, by the glistening nearly green water, by Kevin’s dirty jokes, or by Zach and me holding hands. He just sighs deeply.
“Dude,” Zach says, tugging on the black beanie he’s wearing today to keep his hair under control. “I say this because nobody else will, but you’re reminding me of a cranky old grandma right around this second.”
“A cranky old grandma at a rave,” I add. “Or a collegeparty.”
Zach laughs but Raj rolls his eyes. “I only came because my cousins arestillstaying with us, and I needed to preserve my sanity.” He flips the brim of his hat up to give us a put-upon look. “But I think I went about it wrong.”
We try some new non-Lindsay-exposed restaurants and wash Zach’s car (he cannot keep it clean to save his life). We talk on the phone, text, and hang out with his brother, and everything is ordinary and normal and slowly summer starts to turn into fall. There is a little voice in the back of my head that wonders whether people like Katy who post about great and exuberant normal lives are not pretending. If they are not embellishing the happy. Maybe their exuberance is even warranted.
Maybe mine—newly found and not broken in yet—reallyis.
AFTER
January
Long after Katy leaves my car, the tears finally stop coming and I pull out of the school parking lot and drive in aimless circles around Lyndale. I turn off my phone so no one can reach me and turn the music up so loud I can’t think. It doesn’t work. My mind whirs with the same thoughts:You erased him. Bus Boy. Zach. You chose to remove him. How could you do that? Why would you do that? You erased him….
Over and over and over.
I don’t know I don’t know. Why would I do that?
I think of what Caleb told me last night about Rory, about how I chose to move forward.
I erased my brother, too.
I drive around Bentley Lake and the park. I drive to the east side of town, weave through the streets, until I find the place where we used to live. Our old house, its walls light green on the inside, the outside made of dark red brick. There is a silver-blue minivan in front of it, in the driveway where Caleb and I used to play tennis with the neighborhood kids. Otherwise, it looks the same. I want to knock on the door and go inside. To stand at the top of the stairs, toes sinking into the carpet, and belt out show tunes like I’m a kid again. I want to be eleven so I can meet Rory and hold him and smell his skin and know what it’s like to be a big sister. I imagine my whole family still lives there—not us now, but like we used to be. We haunt the house with our laughter, with Caleb’s dream of flying, with my music, with the way my parents used to love each other, because I like the thought that things keep existing where they once were, where you leave them, even when life changes. I like the idea that the things we did and thought and felt are entities that go on existing outside of us.
My parents erased him.
Why did they do that?
Why did I let them?
How could I do it to myself again?
When I finally head home, it’s almost dark out.
