discussion has worn me out, I realize after we’re dismissed and I’m walking slowly across campus. Maybe I’ll just sleep during physics class today. There’s no point in being awake anymore. Without Reeve, I’m hardly even a person.
I turn the corner and I’m alone on the leafy path, walking in silence among the trees. I know the colors here in Vermont in the fall are supposed to be a big deal, and yet I just don’t care. The colors actually seem to be taunting me, saying, Here we are, Jam, all the colors of the spectrum. Roy G. Biv, remember? And yet you can’t appreciate us one bit.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
I shove my hands deep into my pockets, finding a dime that’s coated with lint. As I turn it over and over between my fingers, I notice Sierra up ahead hurling stones against a tree. Again and again she winds up and then torpedoes a stone against the tree’s surface, using all her force. She’s driven, focused, as though throwing stones is some kind of release for her.
“Hey,” I call, breaking her rhythm.
She turns and looks at me, suddenly self-conscious. “Hey,” she says back.
“You’ve got a good arm.” I come closer.
“Thanks.”
We stand awkwardly together, and I say, “You must be really pissed at that tree. Did it give you a communicable disease or something? Dutch elm? Root rot?” But she doesn’t even smile at my pathetic joke.
Instead she says, “I had a rough night. I guess you know that.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
Sierra studies me, as if trying to figure out whether it’s okay to talk to me or not. Then she says, “Have you ever had an experience that made no sense?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I mean an experience that’s so surreal that if you told anyone, they’d be like, ‘What the hell is wrong with
her
?’”
My heart is quickening. I did go through something intense after I lost Reeve. And some people did look at me funny because they weren’t used to seeing that kind of intensity, and that kind of grief, in someone my age. But Sierra means something else. I’m not about to reveal the story of Reeve right now.
All I say is “Could you say more?”
“Never mind,” she says. “It doesn’t matter.” She picks up her backpack, looping it over her arms, and turns away, done with me. She’d tried to see if I was a kindred spirit, and apparently I’m not. I was put to a test, and I’d failed it.
• • •
On Friday night there’s a social. This is about the saddest idea in the world: a bunch of psychological misfits gathered awkwardly in a gym at night with house music playing as if this is some normal “teen time” get-together, while on the edges of the room a few bored teachers chaperone. Like everything at The Wooden Barn, this social is probably supposed to be “healing,” and we’re meant to actually get something out of it. Like, learn how to be social.
“Oh God, these things are the worst, I should’ve warned you,” says DJ, who stands beside me, surveying the grim room.
“How long do we have to be here?” I ask.
“Until the next millennium.”
“But what’s the
point
?”
“That is the million-dollar question.”
DJ’s hair is so deeply in her face that it’s more like a wall of hair now than a curtain. She wears a pink miniskirt and Doc Martens and an army jacket, and somehow it all pulls together and looks cool on her. She stands with her arms folded across her chest. I’m in my usual jeans and sweater and Vans.
Suddenly I remember Reeve’s brown sweater, the soft chocolate wool and the particular sweet-and-sour smell of him. And though I’m forced to remain at this social, in my mind I start doing this thing I sometimes do, which is to go back over the forty-one days of our relationship in detail. The forty-one days that I’ve memorized, and that in times of stress or boredom I replay in a loop in my head, like a movie on repeat. I start to remember every single thing we did together:
The morning he showed up in gym
I turn the corner and I’m alone on the leafy path, walking in silence among the trees. I know the colors here in Vermont in the fall are supposed to be a big deal, and yet I just don’t care. The colors actually seem to be taunting me, saying, Here we are, Jam, all the colors of the spectrum. Roy G. Biv, remember? And yet you can’t appreciate us one bit.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
I shove my hands deep into my pockets, finding a dime that’s coated with lint. As I turn it over and over between my fingers, I notice Sierra up ahead hurling stones against a tree. Again and again she winds up and then torpedoes a stone against the tree’s surface, using all her force. She’s driven, focused, as though throwing stones is some kind of release for her.
“Hey,” I call, breaking her rhythm.
She turns and looks at me, suddenly self-conscious. “Hey,” she says back.
“You’ve got a good arm.” I come closer.
“Thanks.”
We stand awkwardly together, and I say, “You must be really pissed at that tree. Did it give you a communicable disease or something? Dutch elm? Root rot?” But she doesn’t even smile at my pathetic joke.
Instead she says, “I had a rough night. I guess you know that.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
Sierra studies me, as if trying to figure out whether it’s okay to talk to me or not. Then she says, “Have you ever had an experience that made no sense?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I mean an experience that’s so surreal that if you told anyone, they’d be like, ‘What the hell is wrong with
her
?’”
My heart is quickening. I did go through something intense after I lost Reeve. And some people did look at me funny because they weren’t used to seeing that kind of intensity, and that kind of grief, in someone my age. But Sierra means something else. I’m not about to reveal the story of Reeve right now.
All I say is “Could you say more?”
“Never mind,” she says. “It doesn’t matter.” She picks up her backpack, looping it over her arms, and turns away, done with me. She’d tried to see if I was a kindred spirit, and apparently I’m not. I was put to a test, and I’d failed it.
• • •
On Friday night there’s a social. This is about the saddest idea in the world: a bunch of psychological misfits gathered awkwardly in a gym at night with house music playing as if this is some normal “teen time” get-together, while on the edges of the room a few bored teachers chaperone. Like everything at The Wooden Barn, this social is probably supposed to be “healing,” and we’re meant to actually get something out of it. Like, learn how to be social.
“Oh God, these things are the worst, I should’ve warned you,” says DJ, who stands beside me, surveying the grim room.
“How long do we have to be here?” I ask.
“Until the next millennium.”
“But what’s the
point
?”
“That is the million-dollar question.”
DJ’s hair is so deeply in her face that it’s more like a wall of hair now than a curtain. She wears a pink miniskirt and Doc Martens and an army jacket, and somehow it all pulls together and looks cool on her. She stands with her arms folded across her chest. I’m in my usual jeans and sweater and Vans.
Suddenly I remember Reeve’s brown sweater, the soft chocolate wool and the particular sweet-and-sour smell of him. And though I’m forced to remain at this social, in my mind I start doing this thing I sometimes do, which is to go back over the forty-one days of our relationship in detail. The forty-one days that I’ve memorized, and that in times of stress or boredom I replay in a loop in my head, like a movie on repeat. I start to remember every single thing we did together:
The morning he showed up in gym
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