“Same, except where no one can watch me.” I bang my head on the wooden plank supporting Gene’s mattress as I crawl from under it to stare out the window forlorn-cat style. There’s a certain darkness to eight PM in suburbia, like does anyone really choose to end up here? I sigh. “Maybe he’ll ask me to prom Friday night with an arrangement of beer bottles and everyone watching.”
“Maybe,” she says doubtfully.
“Well, I guess I should get back to it,” I say, walking into Gene’s bathroom and pausing in front of the mirror.
“Godspeed, little one.”
“You always say that,” I complain, “and I never know what it means.” She’s already hung up.
After a long dinner, during which I pretend not to imagine what “after high school” looks like for me and Gene—beyond Senior Volunteer Trip to Nicaragua—he pulls me into the closet at the end of the hall.
“I wanted to do this all night,” he says, drawing me toward him and the rack of clothes. It smells a little bit like shoes and soggy umbrellas, and I fall against a cushion of puffy jackets as he kisses me. There’s a softness to his lips, and when our tongues touch, it’s like he’s licking the inside of my whole body. Our breathing gets faster. And then my phone goes off.
“Ugh,” I say, looking down at it and using one of the hooks in the closet to steady me. “My mom wants me home now.”
“No,” he says, grabbing me playfully. I groan into a large leather jacket to my right. We only have a few seconds left to cram our bodies into each other, so I pull him toward me. His fingers travel up my shirt. Every new place he touches makes it harder to breathe. Either that, or I’m slowly suffocating in this cowhide pocket.
“Do you want me to run back with you?” he asks, then kisses the back of my neck, which now holds all the nerves of my body.
“You don’t have to,” I say. But like, yeah, I do.
“It’s okay,” he says, and gives me one more kiss. He smells peppery, like he does when he’s starting to sweat. “I want to.”
Once he’s put on the eight layers required to go running in Massachusetts in the butt of winter, we hold hands and walk outside. He talks about how excited he is to start training right after Senior Volunteer Trip because preseason starts in the middle of June. I don’t say anything. I don’t really know where we comes into all of this.
“Race you to the corner?” I ask suddenly, then take off, feet hitting the pavement, body revving up. I pump my arms and legs faster, breathing more quickly to create a rhythm. I hear him behind me, sneakers slapping the sidewalk, so I cut across a lawn and then the road to beat him. Some lungs crave oxygen. Mine crave the lack of it, and the strain for more.
I force everything in my body to work harder as I approach the red octagon, my orange sneakers blurring with the dark pavement, and the curb of the sidewalk shaking back and forth. Just as I’m starting to taste iron in my mouth, I reach it. With a grunt and a jump, I slap the top of the stop sign and run a bit past it as my legs slow down.
“You win,” Gene pants, slapping the stop sign too. He jogs over and pretends to bump into me. “Excuse me, excuse me,” he says.
“You let me win,” I gasp, and push him toward the road. A car goes by and catches us in its headlights, kissing. The kissing makes it kind of hard to breathe, but breathing easy is boring anyway.
“Come on,” I groan, grabbing his cold spandexed butt and taking off.
For a few seconds I’m ahead of him, charging toward the traffic light, but then he catches up with me, a few strides here, and then he’s ahead of me.
“Wait!” I call as the light turns green and the stopped car drives off and the pom-pom on Gene’s hat bobs away. “Wait,” I call again, but I can’t catch up, so I just keep running as fast as I can after him.
3
Days ’til prom: 100
ON THE MORNINGS WHEN MY HAIR IS OBEDIENT, I HAVE EXTRA time before school to tend to the thing under my bed. Don’t worry; it’s not a monster. Maybe I am too romantic, but since that day with Gene in gym, I’ve been keeping a cardboard box there for all the sweet debris of senior year: movie stubs, the moldy daffodil Gene got me for my birthday in November, Polaroid pictures Abigail took of us, the fangs Gene and I wore trick-or-treating even though some old man said we were too old to be trick-or-treating, a Milk Dud, some sample perfume, and an unopened condom with red flames on it that says In case things get hot. It’s not that I’m a pack rat or a scrapbooker or a hoarder. It’s that right now we kind of have a kingdom here in the universe of rare and regular high school experiences. Maybe I’m too sentimental, or maybe one day when I’m old and life is bankrupt of adventures and my memory is even worse than a goldfish’s with Alzheimer’s, I will take this box out and remember. I’ll touch the black Ticonderoga and know what it was like to be bored out of my freaking mind in Calc until Gene walks by and throws his pencil at me and suddenly every bacteria in my gut is alive. I’ll remember how it felt to make videos with Abigail and laugh until we wet her bed. Maybe the deep purple paint on the box will be chipped and the glow-in-the-dark stars will be peeling off, but I’ll look inside and know that every single moment of senior year mattered.
Obviously, I haven’t told anyone about this. The only thing more embarrassing than having something like this is having something like this that is mostly full of notes I’ve written to myself. This is the note I wrote in August that started it all:
Dear Universe,
I was sifting through the catalog of potential high school experiences, and I’ve decided to place an order for something just a little amazing. I want a yearbook signed you rock, don’t change by everyone except for my best friend, who basically writes my living eulogy, and my high school sweetheart, who runs out of pages with his x’s and o’s. I want to go to prom with said high school sweetheart, and he will remember to get me a corsage. I want to get invited to a party. I want to spend most nights with Abigail, eating pizza and looking for stars in her driveway. (Not with Hilary. Hilary can find a new friend, thank you very much.) I want to look back and remember like four things from senior year: the first beer I drink (which is bound to happen soon, right?), the first boy I kiss (also bound to happen soon, right?), the entire month abroad wreaking havoc on the world under the guise of charity during Senior Volunteer Trip, and that sweet, sweet time (prom night?) when I do it. I have a feeling sex is one of those things that just lifts us up. And with prom and graduation and everything happening, we are happening. This is it, you know? What do you need from me to make something just a little amazing happen, Mama Universe? A PO box?
Post-breakfast text exchange with Abigail, Hilary, and me, even though I should be at the bus stop freezing my sweet little nips off:
A A Friday with a party attached to it is literally orgasmic.
Please don’t literally orgasm at his party. C
H Ya… remember when Danika got really drunk on Halloween and took her clothes off and sat in the middle of Doug’s kitchen?
Poor thing. C
A My brother got us alc btw!!!