It’s June 2002. The Larper takes me five minutes deep into the woods near a park before he tells me that things are too hard between us in order to work. He’s right, but I didn’t know it then, just like we both didn’t know we would eventually go on to have a relationship after all, the kind that would make me wish that this moment had really been it. The smell of lilacs hangs thick in the air.
He asks me what I’m thinking; he wants me to say something.
I look up at him, never once stopping my manic scraping at the bark of the tree with a twig. “What do you want me to tell you?”
He doesn’t know. Anything, really. I can’t give him anything, though, not while I’m feeling too much. How is this both expected and a surprise? What if he is truly blameless? What if he really has tried with me?
He tries to change the subject and speaks of a birthday present for me, despite that my birthday’s five months away. He wants to get me a tapestry to hang in my room; he found the perfect one in a hippie catalog that sold Grateful Dead earrings and hollowed-out books where you could stash your weed. Somehow I lose what he’s saying and instead I watch his mouth move. I can only think of how if he isn’t pursuing me, he’ll be pursuing other girls instead.
I drop the twig and run my pinky finger back and forth through the fresh carving. “Can you just take me home?”
He stops, and then he nods wordlessly at me with eyes like the moon. We walk back to his Cavalier and drive in silence. I don’t know how to talk to him anymore.
On the way to my house, he sniffs the air. “It smells like someone’s barbecuing chicken.”
I tangle my fingers together in my lap and hope that that’s enough to prevent me from strangling him. I stare out the window with dry lips, wondering if this will be the last time I’ll ever see him. I wonder if the last thing he’ll ever say to me will be about a whiff of barbecued chicken.
He pulls into my driveway and as the car comes to the stop, I say, “Thanks for the ride.” He doesn’t say anything. I walk up the driveway with a wooden body, feeling his eyes on me the whole time, like he’s waiting for something to happen. I hide in my house, and no one’s home. The Cavalier coasts down the road, and I close the door behind me and I cry.
# # #
Now that I’m alone, it’s easy to imagine what wasn’t. His fair was softer, his voice was quieter. He used to hold me just right with his arms around my waist and his face nuzzling in the crook of my neck. He said just what I needed to hear, and didn’t make me feel like I’m lying now.
Now that I’m alone, I think that we had always been doomed. That’s what he thinks, too. It just makes sense this way: us, apart.
Now that I’m alone, I realize it’s the last thing I need to be.
# # #
I head to the pizza chain where Twist and I work. She’s in the back by the sink, on dish-bitch duty. Surrounded by dirty pots and pans in the back, she smokes a cigarette while sitting on a stepladder and smiles at me, flicking her ash in the sink. “What’s up?” she asks over the roar of the dishwasher.
“Visiting,” is all I say, and after that I am at a loss for words, which is unlike me when I’m around her.
She tilts her head at me and squints at me like a psychiatrist. I scratch at some of the dirt and specks of food accumulated on the walls. I don’t want to cry in front of her.
I crack open the back door and stare out at the empty parking lot as Twist throws her cigarette butt in the dirty dishwater and finishes up the last of the dishes. She disappears around the corner for awhile, cradling a bunch of clean cups in her arms, while I watch traffic: strings of white Toyotas, red Hondas, and black Sentras. When she returns, she has her canvas book bag covered with anime cartoon characters slung over her shoulder and two Styrofoam cups in her hands.
“Let’s go,” she says.
She hands me a cup; she’d made us coffee (two sugars in mine, five in hers). We leave the brick-walled pizza place behind to bake in the six o’ clock sun. She leads the way across a series of parking lots belonging to the dollar store and the Chinese buffet, and then up a grassy knoll toward the train tracks. I trip a few times as I trail her up the hill, past the circle of rocks where she and her friends used to try to hold séances. I scan the area for snakes.
We make our path through the tall grass toward a giant stagnant puddle full of tiny tadpoles. I never saw anything like it. Twist, enamored, spills her now cold coffee out onto the rocks before plunging the cup in the shallow water, scooping up one or two of the immature frogs and watching their dark forms writhe against the stark whiteness of the Styrofoam.
“We should put some in a test tube and shake it,” I joke. “I bet it’ll make them all disoriented.”
“No! That’s terrible!” But she laughs anyway. I suggest taking them home, but she shakes her head and dumps them back in the puddle. We continue walking.
At last we reach the tracks, overgrown with weeds and wildflowers. She picks up a rusted railroad spike, weighs it thoughtfully in her hand, then tosses it over her shoulder and states she already has too many. The spike lands in the grass with a muffled thunk. We step on the metal rails and catch our balance. Then we keep walking, trying not to step on the wooden planks.
Twist spots a ripped Barney the Dinosaur plush toy with a missing head hiding in the bushes, and I look up and down the endless railroad tracks. No matter what direction I look in, the tracks fade into the distance at the same points and blur, blending with the greens and browns of the trees. I’m right in the middle of it all: I’m the only thing not fading. I’m what is sharp and clear.
A jolt of melancholy hits me, and for a moment, it feels good to feel so sad. Hours have passed, and now I’m on a new planet. I miss him—no, I miss my idea of a future with him. The best part was the part that never happened.
She and I pass more flowers and weeds; this time I do walk on the wooden planks. I count each one I walk on. The scent of lilacs hangs thick in the air.
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