I want to laugh. What comes out instead is a single tear down my bruised jaw. Carter pretends he doesn’t see it. He hands me water and while I drink he reaches into my jacket pocket and pulls out my remaining three joints.
He pockets them all. “You’ve had enough, man.”
I check my phone. It’s already 6:47 p.m. and the sun is long gone. “I need to get to the cemetery.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“No.”
He studies me and then nods. He orders me a rideshare and we stand in the alley until a gray sedan pulls up to the curb. He opens the door for me, then taps the roof twice, the way people do in movies, and I almost smile.
I fall asleep during the ride, so the driver wakes me by shouting my name. I stumble out of the car.
The cemetery is quiet the way only places full of the dead can be. Gravel crunches under my boots as I walk. The headstones are all in rows, each one the same basic form with differentnames carved into the surface. It’s a sculptor’s nightmare; all that stone and nothing original.
I find the right one. A child’s grave, because he was a child when he died.
Eli Matsuda.
I stand there and I can’t speak. My mouth opens and nothing comes. The screaming starts again inside my head, the boy calling for help. My eyes burn and my throat locks, and I let the tears come because there is no one here to see me fall apart.
It’s the one time a year I truly let myself fall apart.
Then there are footsteps on the grass behind me.
Somehow, I just know it’s her, like there’s some invisible thread connecting us.
I glance over my shoulder, not even caring how wrecked I look because I know she’ll look the same. She’s standing ten feet back, hands in her jacket pockets, face blotchy, eyes swollen. She’s already been crying, like me.
But why is she here so late? We have an understanding about this place. She comes during the day. I come after dark. Every year since the funeral, we’ve never let ourselves be here at the same time. We never have to stand here together at the site of what we did, because seeing each other makes it true in a way that standing alone does not.
She doesn’t move and neither do I.
I turn back to the gravestone. She’s here and nothing’s going to change that.
I knew this day would come eventually; eventually we’d face what we’ve both been avoiding for twelve years. I just didn’t know it would come so soon. In our forties, maybe, but not now.
Not today.
I knew this anniversary would be worse.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
DORIEN
Iwas nine that summer. June was eight. We were old enough to roam the neighborhood without adults and young enough to think that meant we were free.
The Matsudas’ lake house sat at the end of a gravel road. It was a white house with a screened porch that faced the water. Our families rented the neighboring cabins every July and became friends with the Matsuda’s easily, thanks to their warmth and generosity.
My parents were there—a miraculous moment where I actually saw them for an extended period—but they were often taking phone calls, physically present but mentally vacant.
June’s father wasn’t there because her parents were officially separated, and Aeron was staying with him. Melia was the one who actually watched me and June that summer. She made lemonade in a plastic pitcher and yelled from the porch when we swam too far out into the lake.
Eli Matsuda was two years older than us, lean and tall for his age. He had a laugh that came out in bursts, like he surprised himself with it. He was nervous about most things, like new food and water deeper than his waist. But he was the kindest kid I’dever met. He would give you his last piece of candy and then apologize because he thought you might not like the flavor.
The three of us spent that July inseparable. We built sandcastles along the shoreline where the rocks were thin. Caught frogs that June would name and Eli would insist we release. The sun sat low every afternoon and turned the lake a color I didn’t have a name for yet but would later learn was burnt sienna.
The day it happened we had wandered away from the cluster of cabins to an empty part of the lake. We were throwing flat rocks across the water. June was trying to beat my record of four skips. Eli sat on a log behind us, peeling bark off a branch. He’d lost interest ten minutes prior.
