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The week after my mother died we had final exams. I went to school, but the questions blurred in my mind even as I filled in bubbles and wrote equations. Between tests, I found myself sitting in the room that was set aside for Leslie’s yearbook staff. Leslie is a permanent sub for the school, which is probably why she looked familiar when I met her at the police station. She does the yearbook as a volunteer, I think. She is the epicenter of the room, and all the odd and quirky kids she has collected accept my presence without so much as a raised eyebrow. They aren’t kids I had known before, except maybe by sight. But they are every bit as outside as I feel, and here they are, collected together in a small pod of the accepted. A group of irregulars in a box. Yearbooks are long since done and handed out, but an occasional student will stop in, with money to make his or her purchase. I did not buy a yearbook. I don’t know that it even occurred to me that the school offered a yearbook. I don’t care. There is nobody here that is going to matter to me in the future.
I am alone in the room today, having left my English final complete and on my teacher’s desk a good half hour ago, and since there is nobody here to talk to, I slide a yearbook over from where it sits on the edge of the table. I start thumbing through it. I don’t get far before Dylan is staring at me from one of the pages, his pale eyes sparkling, Kelci bent in a dip over his arm. They are both laughing, and her hair shimmers nearly to the gleaming floor. They are a stunning image of youth, and of beauty, and of affluence. Only people with money can look like that. My hand drops to the page, completely covering Kelci’s face, my fingertips on Dylan’s jawline. Mine. My heart thuds against my ribs. Mine. He is mine. He has always been mine. The door behind me bangs open, and I slam the yearbook closed, guilty, caught. Jay and Tommy come in, talking. “. . . and down she went,” Jay is saying.
“Too funny. She’s such a goop.”
“She’s nice enough,” Jay says, but there is laughter in his voice, and even though I don’t know who they are talking about, I wonder if I have ever been called a “goop.” “Hey, Alison,” Jay says, his hand sliding over my shoulder as he makes his way around the table. “I have money for you.”
“You do?” I look at him as he settles into the seat across the table. He takes two bills out of his pocket and hands them to me. Two twenties. “What’s this for?”
“Painting the slide.” I had gone with them on Sunday and spent a hot afternoon with a paintbrush and a gallon of paint on one section of slide while Jay and Tommy worked on other sections.
“You don’t have to pay me. I enjoyed doing it.” I try to hand the money back to him, but he shakes his head.
“It’s my dad. You don’t work at Summer Grove and not get paid. Unless you’re me, that is.”
“You keep it, then.”
“No, it’s okay. I get food.” He laughs. “Oh, and here’s this.” He hands me a small card, laminated by packing tape. It has my name on it, under the Summer Grove logo, and the words “Summer Pass.”
“That’s nice,” I say, taking it, feeling too much emotion for this small thing. Tears actually prick at my eyes.
“Just come out. Keep me and Tommy company this summer.” He raps his knuckles on the table, tap tap. “It will be fun.” I nod but can’t look at him, my chin puckering up like it always does when I’m about to cry. Why am I crying? I don’t cry. I am not a crier. “You okay?” he asks, his voice dropping, his fingertip brushing across my fisted hand.
I nod and suck in my breath, glancing up at him with his round friendly face, and a single tear spills over my lashes. I knock it away and clear my throat. “That was just really nice of you.”
“Naw,” he says, laughter in his voice. “You’re better company than Tommy.” I laugh, and the tears that had threatened drop back again, just below the surface. I wonder what he wants from me. Is he hitting on me? I wonder . . . but in the same second he is up and away, heading on toward the library to meet up with Tommy, who is already digging through stacks of books that are being discarded at the end of the year.
I watch the door fall shut behind him, and I decide that maybe he is just being nice. Maybe he’s just a nice person, and so somehow his being nice doesn’t feel at all like charity, the way Dylan being nice always does. The bell rings, and I grab my bag and head out into the hall for my last exam. The halls are less crowded because all the seniors are finished. They get out a week before the rest of us—no finals for them. They have either accomplished it or they haven’t at this point. Graduation is tonight, and the Yearbook Club will have a booth for all those seniors wanting to get their last-chance yearbooks. I told Leslie I would come and help out, since she would be there and I don’t want to be in the house alone.
***
I ride in the van with Leslie, Tommy, and Jay. I sit in the front seat because the guys can’t seem to be too far away from each other or their conversation gets interrupted. The back-row seat has been taken out to make room for three boxes of leftover yearbooks, a folding table, a cash box, and a sign. We arrive at the school, and it doesn’t take us much time to set everything up in our designated spot on the football field.
Tommy and Jay leave us and make their way into the crowd waiting for the graduates to arrive. Leslie and I hold down the fort, doing business in small spurts. In between customers, I look around at all these people that I have seen around town. The women in dresses; the men in trousers and button-downs—some even wearing suits. I see Tommy and Jay in a clear space, kicking the soccer ball back and forth. I can almost hear them talking, laughing at all the inside jokes that come with being easy and comfortable with each other. Leslie passes me a book, and I hand it to a waiting parent while she takes money from another. Then I go back to people watching.
Off in the midst of a small group, I catch sight of the Bancrofts, Kelci’s parents. Her dad is one of the men in suits, and her mom is wearing a pale lavender dress that makes her look like one of the students. My focus is intense on her, thinking that Kelci will be a senior next year, not this year. They are just representing, and I let out a low snort, a sound I picked up from my mother, at how pretentious they are. There can’t be a graduating class without having the mighty Bancrofts in attendance to oversee it. I am about to turn away, equal parts irritated and amused, when I notice who is standing with them: Vaude and Jake Winthrop. Dylan’s parents. My stomach drops as I watch them through lowered lids, half turned away. The confusion wars in my heart. I want to go to them and throw myself in their arms and tell them I have missed them, but I know I can’t do that. I know I wouldn’t even if I could. I make myself remember the way they think of me—they know I am trash—and the warnings they gave Dylan to steer clear of the likes of me. They don’t believe I can ever be anything good because of what my mother is. Was. I turn my back on them and see the graduates coming from the clubhouse in a wave of burgundy robes, swaying around their ankles as they walk.
Then, he is there. I see him, and my blood hums: mine, mine, mine. He is walking with the rest of the graduating seniors, in his robe, his mortarboard placed at a precarious tilt on his head. He is laughing, talking, his smile easy, his motions liquid. I miss him. My stomach pulls tight with missing him. I miss him in every cell of my body. My mind flashes to the night my mother threw me out and I had run to his house, in the rain. I found him playing his guitar in the sunroom, and he had given me his bathrobe so I could get out of my wet and dripping clothes. I almost see us, there on the couch, our mouths against each other’s, his hands inside the robe against my skin, and my blood sings out again: mine, mine, mine.
“Hello?” The voice penetrates, and a hand waves in front of my face, forcing my eyes off of Dylan, my mind back to the present, where I am standing behind a table full of yearbooks waiting for purchase. My cheeks flush, and I close my mouth.
“Sorry,” I mumble. “How can I help you?”
“I want to buy a yearbook,” he says in a tone that implies what-are-you-stupid?
I give him my best smile, the one that implies you don’t matter, you mean nothing to me. I take his money, handing him a copy of the yearbook. His zits are red and engorged, and I want to tell him that I hope he’s not in the yearbook often, because how awful to have a record of his awkward, zitty self to share with his wife and kids one day. I want to say maybe some zit cream or a bar of soap would help him out, too, but he is done with me and moves on, and my mumbled little insults are mine and mine alone.
I look for Dylan again, but can’t find him now that they have moved through the crowd. Soon they will be heading into the rows of seats for the graduates, and then I'll be able to find him again. When all the activity at the yearbook stand lulls to none, I step away, leaving Leslie to man it alone. I don’t go into the crowd, but edge along the rows of graduates, behind the band, out of sight, until I finally see him, sitting toward the front, as his status as an honors graduate dictates. I watch him, my eyes caressing every line of his face, my mouth remembering the pressure of his lips, the taste of his tongue. Susan Garcia gives the valedictorian speech, about reaching to the stars and how the future is all theirs. I completely believe her. These kids have the world at their feet, and they will travel away, leaving Charleston and me behind. He will travel the world and leave me behind. Tears fall, and I set him free, I set him free of me, just as my mother set me free of her—less dramatic, but just as permanent. I step back, and when they start calling the graduates, one by one, I pause only long enough to hear his name, “Dylan David Winthrop, graduating with honors.” I cheer from where I stand, so proud of him. My friend. I want to yell out: MY FRIEND!
He was, once. But as he crosses the stage and my vision blurs, I turn and head out of the stadium, leaving the lights of graduation behind. His crossing that stage takes him somewhere entirely different. He is no longer just a boy; he is a man, going off to college in the fall, going into the world. His life has changed forever. I think about him, all the way back to Leslie’s house. I remember the first time I met him, I remember riding his horses through the trails and up to Donovan’s Ridge. I remember the day my mother spilled out of the trailer to offer us lemonade, as drunk as a walking person could ever be. I remember him telling me about his brother who died in a boating accident and how his dad used to be a drunk, but got sober. I remember kissing him and wanting him to make me his. I remember the feeling of his hands on my skin and the heat of his mouth on mine. I remember telling him, the last time I saw him, that I had to figure it out on my own. I remember him leaving, and I fear, suddenly, that I will never see him again. I remember, I remember, I remember.
My mind hiccups as it hits on the image of my mother, and I walk past the street that leads to the little ranch house, which has been the most “home” place I have ever stayed, and continue on toward the square, where our apartment has still not been released by the police.