“Absolutely,” I say. “Lunch would be great.”
Again I read her. What I’ve said is too enthusiastic. Justin is never enthusiastic.
“No big deal,” I add.
She’s relieved. Or at least, as relieved as she’ll allow herself to be, which is a very guarded form of relief, the relief of being in the eye of a hurricane and knowing the other wall is probably coming quick. By accessing, I know she and Justin have been together for over a year. That’s as specific as it gets. Justin doesn’t remember the exact date.
She reaches out and takes my hand. I am surprised by how good this feels.
“I’m glad you’re not mad at me,” she says. “I just want everything to be okay.”
I nod. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: we all want everything to be okay. We don’t even wish so much for fantastic or marvelous or outstanding. We will happily settle for okay, because most of the time, okay is enough.
The first bell rings.
“I’ll see you later,” I say.
Such a basic promise. But to Rhiannon, it means the world.
At first it was hard to go through each day without making any lasting connections, leaving any life-changing effects. When I was younger, I craved friendship and closeness. I would make bonds without acknowledging how quickly and permanently they would break. I took other people’s lives personally. I felt their friends could be my friends, their parents could be my parents. But after a while, I had to stop. It was too heartbreaking to live with so many separations.
I am a drifter, and as lonely as that can be, it is also remarkably freeing. I will never define myself in terms of anyone else. I will never feel the pressure of peers or the burden of parental expectation. I can view everyone as pieces of a whole, and focus on the whole, not the pieces. I have learned how to observe, far better than most people observe. I am not blinded by the past or motivated by the future. I focus on the present, because that is where I am destined to live.
I learn. Sometimes I am taught something I have already been taught in dozens of other classrooms. Sometimes I am taught something completely new. I am often given information but have no context. I have to access the body, access the mind, see what information it’s retained. And when I do, I learn. Knowledge is the only thing I take with me when I go.
I know so many things that Justin doesn’t know, that he will never know. I sit there in his math class, open his notebook and write down phrases he has never heard. Shakespeare and Kerouac and Dickinson. Tomorrow, or some day after tomorrow, or never, he will see these words in his own handwriting, and he won’t have any idea where they came from, or even what they are.
That is as much interference as I allow myself.
Everything else must be done cleanly.
Rhiannon stays with me. Her details. Flickers from Justin’s memories. Small things, like the way her hair falls, the way she bites her fingernails, the determination and resignation in her voice. Random things. I see her dancing with Justin’s grandfather, because he’s said he wants a dance with a pretty girl. I see her covering her eyes during a scary movie, peering between her fingers, enjoying her fright. These are the good memories. I don’t look at any others.
I only see her once in the morning, a brief passing in the halls between first and second period. I find myself smiling when she comes near, and she smiles back. It’s as simple as that. Simple and complicated, as most true things are. I find myself looking for her after second period, and then again after third and fourth. I don’t even feel in control of this. I want to see her. Simple. Complicated.
By the time we get to lunch, I am exhausted. Justin’s body is worn down from too little sleep and I, inside of it, am worn down from restlessness and too much thought.
I wait for her at Justin’s locker. The first bell rings. The second bell rings. No Rhiannon. Maybe I was supposed to meet her somewhere else. Maybe Justin’s forgotten where they always meet.
If that’s the case, she’s used to Justin forgetting. She finds me right when I’m about to give up. The halls are nearly empty, the cattle call has passed. She comes closer than she did before.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” she says.
She is looking to me. Justin is the one who makes the first move. Justin is the one who figures things out. Justin is the one who says what they’re going to do.
It depresses me.
I have seen this too many times before. The unwarranted devotion. Putting up with the fear of being with the wrong person because you can’t deal with the fear of being alone. The hope tinged with doubt, and the doubt tinged with hope. Every time I see these feelings in someone else’s face, it weighs me down. And there’s something in Rhiannon’s face that’s more than just the disappointments. There is a gentleness there. A gentleness that Justin will never, ever appreciate. I see it right away, but nobody else does.
I take all my books and put them in the locker. I walk over to her and put my hand lightly on her arm.
I have no idea what I’m doing. I only know that I’m doing it.
“Let’s go somewhere,” I say. “Where do you want to go?”
I am close enough now to see that her eyes are blue. I am close enough now to see that nobody ever gets close enough to see how blue her eyes are.
“I don’t know,” she replies.
I take her hand.
“Come on,” I tell her.
This is no longer restlessness – it’s recklessness. At first we’re walking hand in hand. Then we’re running hand in hand. That giddy rush of keeping up with one another, of zooming through the school, reducing everything that’s not us into an inconsequential blur. We are laughing, we are playful. We leave her books in her locker and move out of the building, into the air, the real air, the sunshine and the trees and the less burdensome world. I am breaking the rules as I leave the school. I am breaking the rules as we get into Justin’s car. I am breaking the rules as I turn the key in the ignition.
“Where do you want to go?” I ask again. “Tell me, truly, where you’d love to go.”
I don’t initially realize how much hinges on her answer. If she says, Let’s go to the mall, I will disconnect. If she says, Take me back to your house, I will disconnect. If she says, Actually, I don’t want to miss sixth period, I will disconnect. And I should disconnect. I should not be doing this.
But she says, “I want to go to the ocean. I want you to take me to the ocean.”
And I feel myself connecting.
It takes us an hour to get there. It’s late September in Maryland. The leaves haven’t begun to change, but you can tell they’re starting to think about it. The greens are muted, faded. Color is right around the corner.
I give Rhiannon control of the radio. She’s surprised by this, but I don’t care. I’ve had enough of the loud and the obnoxious, and I sense that she’s had enough of it too. She brings melody to the car. A song comes on that I know, and I sing along.
And if I only could, I’d make a deal with God . . .
Now Rhiannon goes from surprised to suspicious. Justin never sings along.
“What’s gotten into you?” she asks.
“Music,” I tell her.
“Ha.”
“No, really.”
She looks at me for a long time. Then smiles.
“In that case,” she says, flipping the dial to find the next