The morning is crisp, and the muddy ground is still solid from a colder-than-usual night. My Converse high-tops land hard every time I stride, but this is still the shortest way to Izzy’s house, and when my mom said ten minutes, she sounded serious, like she was going to stand in the driveway by the moving van and count until I reemerged from the woods. Even though she’s never the one to count. That’s Dad’s thing, and mine, ever since he taught me how to measure the tomato plants three feet apart, and how to plant the seeds 1/8 inch below the surface and cover them lightly with soil so they have the chance to break through when they start sprouting.
My dad’s always been in charge of our family garden, and 350 days ago he used to work on a team that renovates houses too, measuring new spaces for windows and doors, and the distance between each stair leading to the basement. For those things you have to be exact. I like being exact.
My best time to Izzy’s house is three minutes, seventeen seconds. Guthrie and his friends cleared this path two summers ago so they could mountain bike through the woods, and it cut the time between our house and Izzy’s by a whole two minutes.
Even with the cool conditions, no warm-up, and my trail running shoes in the bottom of a box, I think I’m beating my best time, which is good because I like to win. My legs stretch long, and each foot strikes the ground just enough to spring me forward.
The early morning air fills my lungs easily. Roots and leaves and pinecones stick up through the traces of mud, so I keep my eyes one step ahead. Anticipate. I can hear Coach Scottie’s voice in my head, like I always do when I run—Eyes up the hill. Hut hut hut!—until I veer off the path, past the tree house my dad designed for us in second grade. He measured, and cut the wood, and hammered around the trunk of a sturdy oak tree, and we still sleep in it on hot summer nights. Seven long strides past the tree house and I’m in Izzy’s yard.
Three minutes, twelve seconds. It feels good to break something, even if it’s just my own record.
Izzy will be leaving for the bus stop in three minutes, which is about how much time I have to say goodbye, if I run my fastest time back to our house too.
I knock three times hard on her door. “Iz!”
“Rain!” The door swings open fast, and before I can even say anything we’re hugging so hard and my eyes are burning, and after such a short run why my legs are buckling and giving out is a big who-knows. And then we’re in a big heap on her front step.
“I can’t believe you’re really—”
“I don’t want to—”
“How will I get through the rest of sixth grade without you?”
“I won’t have anyone.”
And then I cry. It’s the first time I’ve cried since the memorial that spilled out of the high school auditorium where Guthrie used to play his guitar at talent shows, across the parking lot, and into the baseball fields behind the school. Here I have all those people, a whole crowd of people, who want to read poems and sing songs and tell funny stories about how my brother was the best. And maybe it feels pretty terrible to have all of his old teachers look at me with big sad eyes in the hallway and ask me if I’m OK all the time, but starting tomorrow I’ll have no one. Not any sad-eyed teachers, not Coach Scottie, not Izzy, not our backyard garden, and not Guthrie’s bedroom floor.
I hug her tighter. “I have to go. My mom said ten—”
“Screw what your mom said,” she snaps. “This is her fault. She really needs a new job right now? At the end of the school year? In a whole different state?”
“Yeah.” I sniff. “Screw her,” which are definitely words I’m not supposed to say, but I don’t really mean it, because not even Izzy knows what I know. She doesn’t know that I said OK to moving, and that none of this is my mom’s fault.
“I have to go.”
We stand up from the front step and she grabs her book bag. “I’ll miss you so much.” Tears are still wet on her cheeks.
“I’ll write,” I say. “Real letters, with paper and envelopes and stamps and everything.” My mom says that we develop empathy when we turn off our devices, have actual conversations, read books made of paper, and write long letters to people we miss, thinking of them the whole way through. Sometimes I write Izzy letters and send them in the mail even though I can run to her house in three minutes, seventeen seconds.
“I’ll keep an eye on the mailbox,” she says.
I hug her one more time, then I take off through her backyard, past the tree house, and onto the path. I breathe deep the smell of pine and wonder what would happen if I just keep running, curve with the path down toward the Morrisons’ house and on as far as my brother and his friends cleared, until the mud warms and sloshes up my Converse. I wonder what would happen if I just keep running instead of popping out in our yard, and through the sliding door of the moving van.
I can feel the corner of his guitar pick against my thigh each time I lift my leg. It feels good knowing I have something of his. It’s sticking and chafing just enough to remind me over and over that I have it. It’s there.
I slow down when I get to our yard.
Their voices reach me before I can see them.
“We don’t have to get there exactly at three.”
“Henry. We get the keys at three o’clock. They didn’t say ‘around three’ or ‘whenever you get here.’ They said three o’clock.”
“If we leave in thirty minutes and drive sixty-five miles per hour with one ten-minute stop, we’ll get there at three o’clock.”
I smile big because that’s exactly what I was thinking.
“Aren’t we just getting the keys from the superintendent anyway? Doesn’t he live in the building? I’m sure it’s fine,” he says.
“The furniture is supposed to arrive between five and six. I’d like to be settled before then.”
“We don’t have anything to settle.”
She shakes her head and points at his shirt. “Fix your buttons.”
“Seriously?”
Then Mom looks up and sees me. “Good. There she is. Let’s go!” She’s waving me over, and Dad isn’t fixing his buttons.
The back of the van is packed tight with our thirteen boxes.
And for a split second I think if there isn’t a seat for me, I’ll just live with Izzy and her family. I’ll tend our garden, go to my regular school, and run in the Vermont state championships in sixteen days while Coach Scottie and all the sad-eyed teachers cheer me on. Even though I’m only eleven, and only a sixth grader, I know I have a shot at winning. I’m faster than any of the eighth graders at my school, and Coach Scottie says I’ve been training smart.
But then I remember Dr. Cyn and how maybe this move is our best shot at a good, fresh start. And maybe it’ll make Dad open his door and make Mom stop hustling off and stay in one place, one place where she doesn’t have to walk by Guthrie’s room every day, even if I want to.
“Where do I sit?” I ask.
Mom slides into the driver’s seat and pats the spot next to her.
“In the middle?” I ask.
Mom yanks on the belt. “Three seats up front in this truck.”
“Van,” I say. Then I scooch into the middle and scrunch my knees up toward my chest. Dad slips into the passenger seat, closes the door, and settles back against the headrest.
“Ready?” Mom says as she shifts the van into gear.
Screw you! I want to yell. But instead I try to make myself smaller, pulling my shoulders in and sinking down, smushed between my parents. I give my knuckles a good crack, and look up at our house. I try not to think of the time Guthrie and I dropped bubble-wrapped and marshmallow-padded eggs out his bedroom window for his physics project. I try not to think about burying my dresses in the backyard.
I try not to think of that night.
We back out of the driveway and start off down our street, and I’m watching our house grow smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror until we turn, and it’s gone.
“Goodbye,” I whisper.