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 song.
Soon we are singing at the top of our lungs. A pop song that’s as substantial as a balloon, but lifts us in the same way when we sing it.
It’s as if time itself relaxes around us. She stops thinking about how unusual it is. She lets herself be a part of it.
I want to give her a good day. Just one good day. I have wandered for so long without any sense of purpose, and now this ephemeral purpose has been given to me—it feels like it has been given to me. I only have a day to give—so why can’t it be a good one? Why can’t it be a shared one? Why can’t I take the music of the moment and see how long it can last? The rules are erasable. I can take this. I can give this.
When the song is over, she rolls down her window and trails her hand in the air, introducing a new music into the car. I roll down all the other windows and drive faster, so the wind takes over, blows our hair all around, makes it seem like the car has disappeared and we are the velocity, we are the speed. Then another good song comes on and I enclose us again, this time taking her hand. I drive like that for miles, and ask her questions. Like how her parents are doing. What it’s like now that her sister’s off at college. If she thinks school is different at all this year.
It’s hard for her. Every single answer starts with the phrase I don’t know. But most of the time she does know, if I give her the time and the space in which to answer. Her mother means well; her father less so. Her sister isn’t calling home, but Rhiannon can understand that. School is school—she wants it to be over, but she’s afraid of it being over, because then she’ll have to figure out what comes next.
She asks me what I think, and I tell her, “Honestly, I’m just trying to live day to day.”