The Leaving Season (16 page)

Outside, it had stopped raining, and I breathed in the fresh air, rich with the fragrance of late autumn. I studied the scenery with Nate's eyes. What would he see when he returned? The summer was officially gone; winter was on the horizon. At Roseburg Farms, it would be time for winter vegetables, for turnips and spinach and radishes. At school, we were starting basketball season, Nate's favorite sport.

I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. A text from Allison:
yay!

I grinned, texting her back.
Soooo happy!!

It's over, right?

What did she mean?

Lee? Is that what she meant? I felt my pulse quicken and part of me wanted to respond childishly.
I know what I'm doing!
But maybe that's not what she meant. Maybe “over” meant Nate's ordeal in Central America. Whichever it was, I typed:
It's all good.

I was Nate's girlfriend. I was happy he was home. Lee was Nate's best friend. He was happy too.

My cheeks burned as I thought of the car, of us. It
was
over. It had to be.

Right?

At school, the entire student body was uplifted by the stunning news. Any lingering solemnity about Nate's death—his disappearance, we were all calling it now—was gone, replaced by relief and excitement that he was returning as a hero.

During lunch, Haley and I sat with Katrina and Debra, discussing winter formal, a dance scheduled for late January that everyone began planning before Christmas.

Katrina waved a plastic fork around the cafeteria, pointing out possible candidates for dates. “What about Dave's friend, the one who just transferred here?”

“Isn't he a sophomore?” Debra asked.

“But he was on the football team.”

“JV.” Debra rolled her eyes. “Please.”

“JV is better than no V.” Katrina smirked and the girls roared with laughter.

I loved hearing my friends laugh.

“What about you, Hale?” Katrina was asking. “Thoughts?”

My best friend shrugged. “Maybe Rick, I don't know.”

“What happened to Senior Year Boyfriend?” I asked her.

“Oh yeah, well, who says there can't be boyfriend
s
, plural?”

Katrina lifted her fist, wrapped around a plastic fork, and bumped Haley's. “Amen to that.”

My gaze was drawn to the next table over, where a group of guys sat, the kind who looked like they'd be more comfortable reenacting
Game of Thrones
with papier-mâché swords than attending a dance with girls.

“. . . and Nate will go, right, Mid?” Haley asked me.

“What's that?” I tore my attention away from the boys.

“You and Nate? You're bringing him, right?”

“Um, I guess so,” I answered slowly. “We'll have to see how he feels when he gets back.”

My friends nodded wisely and sympathetically. “Of course, you have to give him time to heal,” Debra said. “But obviously you can't go with anyone else.”

The lunch bell buzzed and the girls quickly finished their salads and sodas. Over at the next table, one of the
gamers slid his iPad into his backpack and stood up. “The guy's nineteen, survives a massacre, lives by his wits in the jungle and returns?
That
is an amazing story. Book, movie, maybe a TV series.”

“HBO?”

“Netflix.”

Nate,
I thought. They were talking about Nate. I picked up my tray and followed my friends out the door.
He's coming home. He's really coming home.

I had my head buried in my SAT study guide as I waited outside the school for my mother to pick me up. A familiar voice called to me.

“Yo, what's up?”

Lee dropped the kickstand on his Vespa in front of me as naturally as could be. “Oh, hey,” I managed to stammer. I stood but kept my books clutched to my chest, keeping distance between us.

Lee slid off the Vespa and leaned in a little too close; I could smell the residue of his shaving cream on his skin and the laundry soap in his T-shirt. I had a sudden urge to shoot my hand out and press it to the back of his neck, to pull him close to me and feel his lips on mine. I quickly stepped back.

“What are you doing here?”

“You're a friend. We're friends, right?” He cocked an eye at me.

I nodded. I couldn't speak. We were friends. We could
only
be friends. Even after what had happened in the car, that was all we could be.

“So, I saw you sitting there and decided to say hello.”

I glanced around, checking for bystanders in a way I hoped wasn't obvious. “Hi.”

“I was thinking maybe a trip to the pond.”

The pond.
My face flushed, thinking about skinny-dipping with Lee. “Oh, um . . .”

“Friends, right?” he asked, his gaze boring into me.

“Yes,” I said quickly. “But . . .”

“But?”

“It's cold,” I said lamely.

“Not
that
cold.”

I glanced back at the school, as if it could call me back inside or tell me not to go—but no one came rushing out to stop me. While Lee started up the Vespa, I texted my mom:
getting ride from haley's mom.

I straddled the scooter behind Lee and wrapped my arms around his chest. He leaned back into me and I breathed in his scent. He no longer smelled of cigarettes; there was no trace of Liza, no “girlfriend.”

No one but us.

In minutes we were at Dayton Feed, eagerly trekking into the woods toward the pond. With every step, I felt giddy, remembering the last time we were here. But as soon as we were out of the sun, the temperature dropped fifteen degrees, and the closer we got to the water, the
colder it became. The back of my neck tickled as the wind tossed my hair.

Wrong,
the little voice said.
This is wrong.

This wasn't about swimming. This was a choice—a test. One answer meant one thing; the other meant something completely different.

I didn't want to go in. Not if it was going to change everything.

But if Lee was waiting for my answer, you'd never know it. He seemed completely carefree. Like he was just game for a dip.

He heeled off his sneakers at the water's edge and waved me over. “Come on! How bad could it be?”

I unlaced my Nikes and peeled off my socks but hesitated when I was down to my bare feet. Had it been this cold last time we were here? The isolation of the pond from the rest of the farm had been a blessing in the heat of late summer, but now, six weeks later, it was more of a curse.

Lee rolled up his jeans to the knees and began to wade in, and I shivered in anticipation. “Holy shit! It's freezing!” he howled.

He reached a hand for me and pulled me into the pond. I shrieked as the water hit my ankles and splashed at my calves. A shudder ran up my spine and neck, shocking me as if it were an electrical field I'd stepped into. I dropped Lee's hand and dashed back to shore, shaking my head. “Sorry, sorry, no.”

Lee stared forlornly over his shoulder at me.

If only we had left our memories intact, tucked away as safely in our minds as the ones in Nate's boxes.

It had changed. The weather. The pond. Us.

It had to. For the past three months, we had lived in a bubble of our own making, comforting each other, knowing what the other needed, providing what no one else could.

But Nate would be home soon and things couldn't be the same anymore.

“We should never have tried to come here again,” I told him.

“Don't worry about it,” he muttered, stuffing his feet back into his shoes. “We're leaving.”

After the pond, Lee and I limited our communication to text messages—all about Nate.

Did you hear from his parents?
he would ask me.

Did you walk Rocky?
I would ask him.

When do you think . . .

What about . . .

Should we . . .

It was . . . businesslike. Polite. I felt like we were figuring out who we were to each other, who we would be to each other, but texting was cold and impersonal and every typed message pushed us further apart. Every time I saw his name on my phone, my heart beat faster, but inevitably the message was benign. And mostly began with the word “Nate.”

Stop thinking about him,
I told myself.
Stop thinking about it. . . .

But I couldn't.

I had to clear the air. I had to before Nate returned, and maybe it was selfish, but I had to see him again. One morning, I jogged over to his house before school, knowing he wouldn't have left for work yet.

“I want to drive Christine,” I told him when he stared at me quizzically.

“I don't know about—”

“Just once. For Nate.”

He rubbed the back of his head with his palm as he thought. A cowlick stuck up at the crown and my hand began to reach toward him as if I could press it down into place, to touch him once more, but I stopped myself. I felt my face flush and I turned from him so he couldn't see.

“Okay but not for long.” Lee backed the car out of the garage and then slid over to let me take his seat.

I tried to remember what he'd told me last time, about how to shift smoothly, how to use the clutch with my left foot instead of my right.

He sat on the far side of the bench seat, his back to the window, staring at me.

“Okay, if you do that, I'm gonna stall,” I said. “I know it.”

“What am I doing?”

I blushed, glared down at the speedometer. “Staring. You're—”

“You won't stall. Just do what I told you.” He chewed a finger, the only thing that indicated he was as nervous as I was. I sat there with the engine running in neutral, the windshield fogging up, my hands gripping the wheel so tightly I thought my fingers would break.

“Meredith . . .”

I heard him call my name, but I couldn't answer.
What am I doing here? What am I doing?
I wondered. My eyes filled with tears and my throat felt like it was closing up. I could barely breathe.

“Meredith?”

I felt Lee slide over. He wiped a fallen tear from my cheek and held his palm under my chin, gently pulling me to him, pressing his lips to mine. I tasted salt on his lips and sugary, milky coffee on his tongue. I crawled on top of his lap. Kissed him back and let him cover my face and neck with a flurry of kisses. The windows fogged all around us, creating a steamy cocoon.

The space between us heated, the air was thick and warm and alive. I felt Lee's hands under my shirt, his palm on my belly. “This,” I gasped. “This is—”

He took a breath and eased me back behind the wheel. “I'm gonna take you home now,” he said. He slid the button on the air vent open and almost instantly, the windows began to clear.

“What? Now?” I yelped. But I knew it had to be now. We had to stop before this went further than it should. That we
had taken it to this place was my fault. I'd known at the pond that our relationship, whatever it was, couldn't go on. But I had to test it. I had to see how I felt. How Lee felt.

The answer was . . . upsetting.

I shook my head. “I'll run home,” I told him as I opened the driver's-side door. A rush of cool air against my face was a dose of reality. I took off down the driveway, headed home. I wanted to turn back, to glance over my shoulder to see if Lee was watching, but I didn't dare. If he was, I might be tempted to run back, and if he wasn't, my heart might break a little.

Dinner with the family came and went. Emma talked nonstop about Girl Scouts. Dad was on a kale kick. Mom wanted to know if I'd wear one of Allison's dresses for winter formal. I attacked my homework and near midnight, crawled under the covers, and shut off the light.

Not long after I closed my eyes, I heard my phone buzz with a text.

It was from Lee:
miss u.

I sat up in bed and pulled my knees to my chest under the sheet, my hands clinging to my nightgown. My emotions were a roller coaster: What did he want from me? Part of me was angry that he could make me feel this way, while another part wanted more. More passion, more life, more Lee.

A flash of light caught my eye as I stared at the phone. Not lightning or moonlight, and certainly not a street lamp. It was coming from our neighbor's tree. The tree fort. Lee.

I tapped the screen for his number and while I waited for the crappy Wi-Fi to connect, I hesitated. What would I say?

I miss you.

I want you.

I lo—

He answered, his voice husky and low.

“Read to me?” I said.

I heard him clear his throat. “When last we saw our intrepid photographer, Peter Parker,” he enunciated like a broadcaster, “he was chasing down a criminal mastermind with his camera.” The rustle of a page, of the wind blowing through the holes in the fort. “Here we see Peter in his regular clothes,” Lee said in his normal voice. “And, man, what a dork! Like that Mary Jane would ever pick him over Spider-Man. I mean, come on. . . .”

As he went on through the story, my eyes began to close. I settled my head on the pillow, imagining my head against his chest and my knees curled over his lap.

In the morning, I awoke with my phone buzzing in my hand. I grinned. It had to be Lee.

“Hey, you!” I said with a smile in my voice.

“Middie? Hi! It's me!”

Oh my god. It was Nate. My heart nearly leaped out of my chest. “Nate! Oh my . . . oh my . . .” I felt like I was hyperventilating. “Where are you? What—?”

“I'm on my way home.” The line was clear, unlike the last time we'd spoken when he was in Honduras, but he still
sounded faraway. “Tomorrow, I think.” He began coughing into the phone, an awful sound, as if his lungs were filled with fluid.

Nate's mom came on the line. “Hi, sweetie, Nate just wanted to touch base with you, but he's really got to rest. We're in San Diego now, should be back tomorrow. Love to your family, okay?”

The call ended and I stared at the phone in my hand. It was real. He was real.