I don’t understand it.
It makes no sense.
I hide the book he gave me—Peter and Wendy—with the sketch of him tucked inside the pages, stuffing it into the very back of my closet, pressed up against the wall, behind damp, forgotten clothes and an old handmade doll from my childhood.
I try to push him away. Cut him free from my mind like a rotted, gangrenous limb.
But…
It doesn’t work.
I walk down the tracks to the forgotten train car, and I lie on my back, staring up at the stars, imagining Oak lying beside me—everyone of his exhales stirring loose the constellations above, rearranging the night sky. And when the other train roars down the tracks, I stand and feel the wind against my face. But Oak isn’t there to keep me from tipping over the edge. So I escape to the pond, strip free from my clothes, and sink beneath the surface, wishing the water were the same weight as his hands.
Wishing we had another chance.
I wish for stupid things.
“He’s not just going to materialize,” my brother says, finding me on the front porch staring down the empty driveway at the darkened road. Sunset an hour behind us.
“I wasn’t looking for—”
My brother raises an eyebrow. “You’re full of shit, little sis.”
I pull my knees up on the porch swing.
“You should have left a long time ago, after graduation, but you’re still here. You’re waiting for him.”
I frown. My hatred for this town, this house, has always been at my core, the center point that every decision pivots from. My reason for leaving. And yet, beyond all reason, there is now a second center of gravity. Sturdier, more dangerous than the first.
A boy. Who I need to forget.
“Even if he came walking up that driveway, could you trust anything he said? Anything he felt?”
“I’m not waiting for him.”
He cuts his eyes over me and smirks. “You might be able to lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to me. I know why you sit out here onthe porch every night, watching the road. You’re hoping that boy will appear.”
I exhale and look away from my brother. I know the point he’s trying to make, but I don’t want to hear it.
“It’s fine, I get it. But eventually you’ll need to decide what you want more: freedom from this town, or that boy.” He sinks onto the swing beside me and begins shelling peanuts from his pocket, tossing the brown husks over the railing into the creek, where they’re carried away beneath the house, then out through the tulip garden to the woods beyond.
I stand up.
I can’t take it anymore: this conversation, the waiting, the hole burning its way slowly through the soft muscle of my heart.
“Where you going?” Archer asks.
“Out.”
“It’s supposed to rain!” he calls.
But I stomp down the steps, over the creek, and down the driveway—without a word.
It’s not just the desperation I feel to be rid of this house, of my brother and my room and my notebook filled with the sketches of people I can never get close to; it’s the ticking in my skull for every day that’s passed, every hour, when I should have left this all behind. I should be counting the miles that separate me from this town.
But I can’t, not until I see him, not until I understand what went wrong.
This is the truth.
