The town borderline closest to Owen’s neighborhood was located on the top of a hill, where a white sign and miles of apple orchards welcomed him home after work. Westview was golden with pale fall sunshine as he drove through streets as familiar as heartbeats, slowed down on woodsy backroads where slight glimmers of blue were visible between the trees.
He parked his newly repaired car in his friend Max’s driveway. Max lived at the opposite end of his street, just across from the place Owen always tried to pretend didn’t exist.
Don’t look don’t look don’t look he told himself now, like he did every time he passed by.
He forced himself to stop thinking about it and carefully lifted out the iced coffees he’d picked up for his friends on the way here. Focused on walking toward the house, his back to the road and the overgrown trees.
The living room windows were open. He could hear cheering inside as he approached the porch, long with old wooden rocking chairs and hanging baskets overflowing with tangled yellow flowers.
He knocked on the front door before opening it and stepping inside. He’d been coming here for almost two years now but he’d never quite gotten used to the way people flowed in and out of the house, coming and going without doorbells or curfews. Currently, the living room was filled with various friends and neighbors watching a football game on TV, cardboard pizza boxes open on the coffee table. His younger sister, Haley, was there in a blue jersey, sharing a chair with Max’s sister, Sophia. Owen waved to them before heading into the kitchen, where his friends were sitting around the table.
“Hey,” said Max, looking up from his laptop and taking the coffee Owen was holding out to him. On the screen was a draft of his latest movie review for the website he ran with Declan, who was sitting next to him in his usual baseball cap and TV quote T-shirt.
“Thanks for the coffee,” Declan said, taking his. “How was work?”
Owen shrugged. “The usual.”
He’d worked at Madison, a high-end department store in a neighboring town, since his freshman year and it was typical to see people from Westview there all the time. They’d always look directly at him, or maybe through him, faces unchanging, and he could never figure out if they were ignoring him or didn’t recognize him dressed in his crisp work clothes, hair slicked back. He didn’t know which was worse.
Owen took the last two coffees out of the cardboard carrier and placed one in front of Lucie, who was drawing something on a piece of paper with a focused expression on her face.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m working on a new logo for the site,” she explained. She slid the paper over to him. “Which one do you like?”
Owen studied the sketches, little drawings of Max and Declan’s faces, the site name written out in different letters. He pointed to one where she’d exaggerated Max’s glasses and Declan’s baseball cap. “This one.”
“That’s my favorite,” Declan agreed.
Max was leaning over now, pointing out his favorite design, and Owen sat down, feeling a familiar rush of gratitude toward all of them. He was lucky, he thought, that this was his life now, that these were the people he was going to finish high school with. Last weekend, they’d had an end-of-summer bonfire with people from the neighborhood and they’d stayed outside long after everyone else left, just the four of them, wrapped in shadows and sweatshirts around dying gold, echoes of their laughter against the woods. As they burned the last of the marshmallows, Lucie made them all promise to make this year memorable.
And now this was it, the beginning of the end. The last year of late-night coffees at the barn-turned-bar down the road and exploring the woods near Declan’s house and afternoons by the water, things that had been tradition for all of them much longer than they had for Owen. He was glad he’d found this group, that they hadn’t given up on him when it felt like no one else here cared.
He went into the bathroom to change out of his work clothes. When he came out, they were all waiting by the back door, bags in hand.
“Ready to go?” Max asked.
They followed him outside onto the lawn, footprints raising dust among strands of dead grass. Just behind an old swing set was a low fence and a yellow No Trespassing sign marking the transition into reservoir property, where thousands of trees protected the watershed.
It was almost impossible to go anywhere in Westview without seeing fragments of reservoir blue. It was everywhere, vein-like tributaries and smaller bodies of water like shattered hearts at the edges of neighborhoods, the biggest expanse of cerulean pooled like tears in the middle of town. There were two other towns in the state just like this, half-flooded in the early twentieth century, and another that was now completely underwater, a consequence of nearby cities growing faster and larger.
Once, Owen had seen a map marking all those towns, and others throughout New England and across the country. He’d seen lists of ones you could visit, some of their remains still visible in drought. They called them drowned towns, like a sibling to ghost towns, roadside attractions.
Everyone with memories of what Westview used to be had since died, but whispers about all this water and who to blame had been passed down through generations, names you weren’t supposed to trust, grudges and rumors part of the town’s pulse. And the pieces of reservoir land that weren’t frequently patrolled for trespassers were an open secret among bored Westview teenagers. For most of them, it was just part of the landscape now, a story they’d learned once in school, the Witneys at the center of it all.
Stepping over the fence, they continued through the trees toward the water, crystal-blue and glass-smooth. As they walked, Owen thought of all those other towns like this, the same story.
He knew that history could be a lot of lies depending on who was telling it. And what he’d learned was that most of the story here wasn’t true.
If he ever told anyone, he didn’t know who would believe him. Because he was one of the names you weren’t supposed to trust.
They’d reached the shore now. Owen and Declan took off their shoes, let the cool water trickle across their bare toes.
“You two are going to freeze,” said Lucie. She spread out a blanket across the ground, then sat down with Max, both of them reaching into their bags for the snacks they’d brought with them.
“It’s not that bad,” Declan replied, splashing water in her direction. His phone chimed and he took it out of his pocket, scanned the screen. “Ava says the renovations at Insomnia are done so they’re open again as of tomorrow. They’re moving trivia nights to Thursdays at eight. Do you want to go?”
“Definitely,” Max answered immediately; Lucie nodded in agreement.
“I don’t know,” Owen said. “I already have a lot of homework.”
“School just started,” Max protested.
“I need to keep my grades up. Make up for all the time I spent slacking.”
“Come on, Owen,” Lucie pleaded. “It’s one night a week. It’s not going to destroy your GPA.”
“I know—”
“You can’t let the mistakes you made before keep you from having a little fun now. It’s our senior year … you just promised to make it memorable,” Lucie continued. “You’re going to need a distraction every once in a while. And we need you if we have any hope of holding on to our winning streak.”
It had taken months of similar sentiments from Lucie for Owen to accept an invitation to spend time with the group outside of school. He still didn’t know why she hadn’t given up on him. He’d known the three of them since elementary school the way he knew everyone in Westview but even before he reached the age where parents stopped planning parties and playdates, he’d just let himself fade into the background. It hadn’t been hard to do—Angela’s family and their friends had already turned all the parents in their social circle against his family over what he now understood were longstanding resentments and an obsession with appearances, which quickly trickled down to his peers. All he had to do was drift away from the few people who didn’t care what the Witneys said.
And then, for different reasons, his world imploded into nightmares and it was easier not to care about anything.
Sophomore year, around the time he decided he needed to reinvent himself, he’d worked on a Spanish project with Max and Lucie and without realizing it, he became part of their inside jokes and easy laughter. But at the time, academic success was his priority so it had taken him a long time to really let them in. Owen had never tried very hard in school before then but was determined to change that, filling the empty hours with coursework when he wasn’t at work or volunteering for the Westview Historical Society. And when he started getting good grades, he’d surprised his mother and his teachers, but mostly himself.
When he found out that he’d been recommended for honors classes for his junior year, he’d almost thought it was a mistake because his own accomplishments didn’t quite seem real yet. One of his teachers asked him to tutor a freshman student who was struggling and as they went over the material together after school in the library, as he helped him study for tests and create thesis statements, Owen realized he wanted to be a teacher. For years, he’d felt on the verge of falling apart, a frantic frenzy of what am I doing? beating in his head so loudly he just wanted to sleep it away. He’d felt like everyone had given up on him, let him fall through the cracks once he’d gained a reputation as a slacker. Proving them all wrong felt good, like he was on his way to putting the pieces of his life back together.
But it was really this group that made him whole. Westview had never truly felt like home, but they did.
“Okay,” Owen relented. “I’ll go.”
Lucie looked triumphant. “Good. We need to make the most of this year.” She sighed. “I’m already so tired of hearing about college applications. We’ve only been back in school for a week.”
“How many people in our class do you think are almost guaranteed a Walcott acceptance letter anyway? Are you sure you don’t want to apply there, too?” Declan said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.
He looked like he regretted it the instant he said it. They all knew it was a bad idea to talk about Walcott around Lucie.
“I’m not Vanessa,” she said and her voice betrayed a little bit of sadness that made guilt flash across Declan’s face.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“I was right about her. As soon as she went to Walcott, I told you she was going to turn into one of those people,” Lucie said bitterly. She looked across the reservoir in the direction of all the arches and cul-de-sacs, everything in white. “All she’s ever wanted was to be someone like the Witneys—”
“Come on, Lucie, that’s not fair,” Max said.
“She acts like she’s too good for our family. We used to be so close and now the only time she talks to me is when she needs help with the wedding. I’m surprised she even wants us there.”
“You’re her sister, of course she wants you there,” said Max reassuringly.
“Anyway,” said Lucie, “I could never get into Walcott. And even if I did, it’s so expensive.”
Over the summer, Owen had visited colleges near Westview and narrowed it down to three he wanted to apply to. Enfield College and Lenox University, both good schools, both affordable options, both close enough that he could live at home and commute to save money. Lucie had the same plan.
The third school was Walcott, which he’d been keeping a secret from his friends because if you grew up in Westview, you either loved Walcott or hated it, and they all fell into the latter category. He hadn’t even thought about it as a possibility until one of his teachers suggested it, and even then, he hadn’t really taken it seriously until he visited. He’d heard that Walcott had a well-known history department but it seemed so far out of reach. His grades were good but he wasn’t a legacy student like so many of his classmates and his family didn’t have the kind of money you needed to attend a school like Walcott.
But when he arrived on campus, he fell in love with everything. Tangled ivy and sun–kissed brick. The passionate way the faculty spoke about their work. The sense of community that permeated the whole place, the students he’d met that were proud to belong there. But mostly, he was determined to prove to himself that he was good enough. Good enough for Westview, good enough for Walcott. And a part of him he wasn’t entirely comfortable with wanted to prove that to everyone else here, too.
“Speaking of people going to Walcott,” Lucie was saying now, “I heard Angela Witney was at your house, Owen.”
He felt all their eyes on him. He groaned inwardly. Haley, who hadn’t said a word when Angela was there but barged into his room to ask questions later, had probably told Sophia because they both admired Angela. And Sophia told Lucie everything, even though Lucie and the rest of their friends had never liked families like the Witneys, who in their opinion, represented everything that was wrong with Westview.
He stepped onto the shore and sat down next to Lucie. She narrowed her eyes at him and stretched out on her back, sliding on a pair of fuchsia-framed sunglasses. Owen could see sky and clouds moving lazily across the lenses. Declan emerged from the water to join them and sat, completing the circle.
“She gave me a ride to the tricentennial talk,” Owen explained. “That was the day my car broke down. She’s on the committee too because of her parents so Jan sent her over to get me.”
Lucie looked at him for a moment without saying anything. She was so perceptive sometimes that he wondered if she’d figured out how he felt about Angela. He’d tried so hard to keep everything about her a secret—their long-ago friendship, the way he couldn’t stop thinking about her now, the things he knew about her family.
“She didn’t exactly seem thrilled about it,” Owen added, feeling a little defensive.
Lucie sat up again. “You’re not going to abandon us for her, are you?”
The way she said it was like a joke, lighthearted, but he could still see the hurt there, lingering from the way Vanessa had moved out of the house and out of her life to become someone like Angela. A girl with a life that looked perfect, leaving Lucie behind.
“Of course not. I promise.”
He felt guilty saying it, like he was already breaking his promise with his Walcott application. The beginnings of the essay on his desk at home shouldn’t have felt like a betrayal, but now, the half-formed sentences and scribbled thoughts seemed shameful.
“Good.”
She was smiling at him now. It made his stomach hurt.
This time next year, Owen thought, they would have all moved on from Westview High School. He wondered if they would all be as close then or if afternoons on the reservoir shore would become a memory rehashed for tradition’s sake, stolen hours between other commitments as they drifted further away from Westview and even each other. Over the years, they’d built jokes and memories into their language, certain words and phrases like codes that translated into laughter. He didn’t want to think about that being undone.
He tried to picture it, all of them a year older. But all he could imagine was Walcott, the only place in Westview where you couldn’t see the ripples of blue that whispered all over this town.