The barn at the old Dayton Feed wasn’t much more than a cavernous structure with rotting wood and only half a roof, but a group of seniors had cleverly turned it into a party scene: strings of lights were crisscrossed along the beams, fresh bales of hay were stacked for convenient make-out corners, and an old carriage housed the kegs. Haley and I arrived when the gathering was in full swing. We recognized just about every person there—every group on campus was represented. And not just the typical jocks, but also the nerds and musicians, the math whizzes, the crafty girls, and the drama geeks.
Haley wrapped her arms around me from behind as we made our way through the crowd toward the carriage, where the kegs were. “Oh my god, Middie, this is it. This makes it officially senior year. Drink it all in.” She cast her gaze around the barn, allowing it to linger on several guys huddled in the center of the barn, quietly talking together. “Hmmm . . . I don’t remember Rick McKinnon being so tall.”
I found Rick among the group. He wasn’t bad-looking; fortunately, the shadows cast by the bare bulbs of the strung lights hid his acne. “Maybe he grew over the summer.”
Haley smiled wickedly. “You know what they say about tall guys with big hands.”
I snorted a laugh and felt a blush creep into my cheeks. “Hale! Geez.”
“What?” She was all innocence. “They wear big gloves.” She giggled as she drew two beers from the keg, handing me one. It was half foam, which didn’t truly bother me since I, the designated driver, wasn’t planning to drink it anyway. Nate and I weren’t big partiers. He didn’t even like the taste of beer.
Haley turned to me. “So . . . opinion? You think Rick could be Senior Year Boyfriend?”
“Do you want one?” That would be a new experience for her for sure.
“Maybe. I don’t know. Isn’t that a bucket-list kind of thing? ‘Have a steady guy in high school’?” She made air quotes with her fingers, still holding the plastic cup.
I took a small sip from my beer. Gross. Maybe I would put “Drink an entire beer” on my bucket list.
As we watched, two girls with matching French braids and gold hoop earrings approached Rick and his friends. The boys immediately made room in their circle for them.
“Rats!” Haley said with a laugh. “Time to seek out another target.” She took a sip of beer and together we watched the room swell. More and more kids were arriving, filling every nook and cranny of the barn. Haley was buzzing with excitement, while I just wanted to shrink into the hay bales and wait for it to be over.
Haley pulled out her phone. “Katrina and Debra should be here by now. I’ll text them to see where they’re at.”
Katrina and Debra wouldn’t miss a party if it were held on the moon. They never seemed to have curfew, yet they also managed to deftly skirt trouble.
“Stupid barn is giving me crappy reception,” Haley grumbled. “My text isn’t going through. Hang on. I’ll be back.” She slipped into the crowd with her phone held above her head, texting as she walked.
I took a seat on a hay bale to wait. Everyone milled around laughing and yelling, but also looking. Glancing out of their periphery or nakedly staring—trying to find someone. A person to hook up with tonight or maybe a hookup that would lead to something more.
I had found my guy, and I knew I was lucky. I didn’t want to be doing this: wandering the crowd, wondering who was around the corner.
My mother didn’t understand why Nate and I were, quote, “so serious at your age.” But what was the alternative? This? Was this supposed to be better?
Nate and I weren’t boring or predictable; we were solid. Comforting. And I wanted that for Haley too.
“Oh great, you’re here?” I heard someone say. I looked up from my beer foam as Lee Ryan approached. He was Nate’s best friend, but we’d never gotten along much; he was kind of a slacker, known to smoke weed and skip school. He was so unlike Nate, which really tripped me up: How could someone as disciplined and responsible as my boyfriend hang out with a guy who wasn’t much more than a surfer dude—without the surf?
Like Nate, Lee was tall but he slouched in a way that made it seem like he wanted to look smaller. He wore a faded brown T-shirt and jeans that hung off his hips, Converse low-tops with dirty laces. His sandy hair was shaggy, the style overgrown, and his high cheekbones emphasized his scrawniness. He might have been cute—even Haley’s Senior Year Boyfriend material—if he tried a little harder. But in his appearance, as in all things, Lee just didn’t seem to care.
He had a beer in each hand. I held up my own. “I already have one.”
“Who said this was for you?” He chugged one cup until it was empty and let out a soft belch.
“Nice.”
“You’re welcome.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Such a friendly greeting, Yoko, thanks,” he said.
I felt my face grow warm. I hated being called Yoko, as if I’d somehow prevented Nate and Lee from being besties. As if I had broken up the band.
But that wasn’t true. Nate designated time for each of us. They did their thing—whatever that was—and Nate and I did ours.
“This is a party for seniors,” I pointed out, “and you already graduated.”
He put one foot up on the hay bale beside me and bent forward. I smelled yeasty beer on his breath. He wagged a finger at me. “Did I, Meredith? Does anyone ever truly graduate from high school?”
“Uh, yeah, you did. And you were so wasted you didn’t even stand up when they called your name at graduation.” Nate had had to shake him to get him to the podium to accept his diploma.
“Wasted?” He cocked his head to one side and considered me. “I’m pretty sure I was just napping, but you may be right.” His smile was lopsided and lazy. “So, what’s new with our Nate?”
Our Nate. I bristled. “He’s good. Talked to him last night.”
Lee’s hazel eyes lit up. “So did I! He’s in Tegucigalpa.”
That startled me. Which it shouldn’t have, I realized. After all, best friends talk.
“We did FaceTime,” I told him.
“So did we. I told him he needed to shave.”
For some reason, this irritated me even more. Not that I had any proprietary hold on Nate, but neither did Lee. And I was the one who had to kiss that face.
“It was crazy, huh? Not hearing from him for so long?” Lee asked.
I felt my mouth tighten to a line. Lee held my gaze, and I saw a twinkle of delight crease the corners of his eyes. Was he trying to tease me—or bait me? I took a deliberate sip of my beer and made a face. I couldn’t help it. It was disgusting. Lee laughed.
“Gotta love a cheap keg,” he said. He chugged some too and then flung the rest of the watery stuff on the ground, where it was soaked up by bits of straw. “You seniors really know how to party.”
“Not up to your standards?”
“Nope.” He pushed his foot off the bale just as Haley emerged from the crowd with Katrina and Debra, giggling and sloshing beer in their cups as they tried to drink and walk at the same time.
“Whoo-hoo! Seniors!” Haley called out.
Lee raised one sandy-blond eyebrow in their direction. “Wanna introduce me?”
“Not really.”
Lee’s eyes widened in surprise and so did mine. That came out a lot harsher than I had intended.
He waved me away with his empty cup. “No worries. I’m not looking anyway.”
As in I’ve got a girlfriend? Now that was surprising. I stopped myself before I could say anything rude. But it didn’t matter. Lee read the unspoken thought on my face and his gaze hardened.
“See ya around, Yoko,” he spat before he left. I was relieved to see his lanky figure disappear into the crowd. He wasn’t supposed to be here anyway.
“Too bad you’re not the one in Tegucigalpa,” I said to myself.
Over the next couple of days, I called Nate a few times to wish him luck on his first day of work, but each time I received the CALL FAILED message. His mom had the same result when she tried contacting him, but as she reminded me, the village was remote and cell coverage spotty. We would certainly hear from him within a few days.
Fortunately, it was delivery day at Roseburg Community Farms, and the farm’s manager, Abby, gave me plenty of work to keep my mind occupied. Long wooden tables were set up in the back of the office, where we filled orders for the local deliveries, ranging from small businesses like a senior group home to individuals and families around town.
When I arrived, the produce was already on the tables and Abby was handing out the list of orders to be filled. A few older ladies and one man were seated in chairs around the tables. I couldn’t help but notice I was the only youth volunteer. I supposed without Nate, there wasn’t much incentive for other volunteers our age to come.
The lone man glanced up at me, his hands filled with heads of romaine lettuce. “Nate not with you today?” He pushed a pair of black-rimmed glasses higher up his nose with the back of one hand and came away with a smudge of dirt on his chin.
The woman beside him scowled and wiped the dirt off for him. “Nate’s away now. You knew that, Harry. We had a party, remember? The cake?”
Harry nodded. “Oh yes, the cake. It was good cake.”
After a few minutes of catch-up chatter, we settled into a quiet rhythm and the only sounds in the back office were the soft scraping of the cardboard boxes sliding along the table, the crinkle of paper bags as they were folded and stapled shut, the occasional punctuation of “Roseburg Farms!” as Abby answered the phone in the front.
“. . . she’s in there,” I heard Abby say. Feet shuffled across the concrete floor and we all glanced up from our work at the interloper who was disturbing our meditative silence.
“Hey, what’s up, old people?” Lee said. His eyes scanned the room, ignoring the scornful looks from the so-called old people he’d just insulted. I cringed when I saw how quickly he’d turned the room against him. “Middie! Hey, Middie, it’s me!” he shouted, waving.
He was deliberately aggravating. The room was all of about four hundred square feet, but he was flapping his hands around like he was calling to me from across the Grand Canyon. I wanted to sink straight into the floor.
Reaching for a handful of potatoes, I avoided meeting Lee’s gaze. “What are you doing here?”
“You ask that same question every time I see you.” His gaze took in the room and he waved at each of the volunteers, who glared at him in return. I shoved the potatoes into a box. Why was he here? Just to annoy me? Or was he actually a new volunteer? My heart sank at the thought.
He leaned over my shoulder and began rearranging the vegetables in the box.
I pushed his hands away. “Don’t touch my potatoes.”
Lee grinned exaggeratedly. “That’s not what the other girls say.”
I felt my cheeks blush despite myself. “Seriously, Lee—”
“Chill, it’s no big deal.”
I continued to work but peeked sideways at him when he wasn’t looking. He was wearing a black T-shirt with the words Mötley Crew over a silk-screened image of a pirate playing a guitar. His blue jeans had holes in the knees and frayed hems, and his low-tops were decorated with green and blue Sharpie.
“You’re staring at me,” he said coyly as he waved his fingers in front of my face.
I felt the eyes of Harry and the others on me. “Please. If you’re going to stand there, make yourself useful.”
“Whatever you want, Yoko.”
I pressed my lips into a line. “Do not call me that.” Then I grabbed a pen and pad of paper with the words From our farm to your table—Roseburg Farms written in scarlet script at the top. “Write down what’s in each box very clearly and then tape it to the side.”
His head lolled lazily toward me, and he jerked his chin at the box. “I can’t see inside. Tilt it. No, more this way. A little more.” He shrugged. “Still can’t see.”
I sighed. He was exasperating. I scooted closer to him and showed him the contents of the box. He licked the tip of the pen and began writing.
“Dear Veggie Lover—”
“Don’t write that!”
“Dear Vegetable Lover?”
“Just list the items in the box.” I held up a tomato. “One tomato.”
“Is that with one e or two?” I grabbed the pen from his hand and he grabbed it back. “I’m helping!”
“No, you’re not.” I dropped my voice to a whisper. “You’re being a pain.”
“In your ass?”
I felt my lips start to twitch into a smile. Stop that, Middie! I turned my head so he couldn’t see me blush. “I think you should go.”
There was a long pause. “Fine.” He stood up and waved to the group. “Bye, peeps! That means ‘people,’ in case you don’t know.” He turned in a circle. “How do I get out of here again?”
Ugh. “Come on.” I led the way from the back room through the office and into the parking lot. Once we were out in the sun, Lee stopped and glanced around, shading his eyes.
“Now, where did I park . . . ?”
Oh my god. “There are five cars in this lot. One of them is—”
Lee snapped his fingers. “Oh, that’s right, I don’t have a car. I have a motorcycle.” He pointed at the space between a Honda and a Toyota.
“That’s not a motorcycle,” I told him when I saw where he was pointing. “That’s a scooter. It has a kickstand. And it’s about a hundred years old.”
His ride was a slate-blue Vespa with a leather seat that could fit, at best, one and a half riders. It had a pair of round mirrors jutting out above the handlebars, attached by chrome rods, with a single headlight in the center. A chrome handle wound around the seat for that half person to hold on to.
“Looks pretty motorcycle-y to me. It has a motor and two wheels . . . with which to cycle.”
He swung his leg over the seat as if he were mounting a huge Harley. With one foot braced against the splashguard, he turned the key in the ignition and the engine gently putt-putted before catching.
He revved the engine, which sounded less like a dangerous beast and more like a swarm of angry hornets. He flipped up the kickstand with his heel. “Well, take it easy.”
That’s it? I grabbed the handlebars before he could turn the scooter around. “Why did you come here today, anyway?”
He stopped and squinted as the cloud cover shifted, revealing the sharp circle of sun against a pale blue skyscape. “Oh yeah. You talked to Nate?”
I shook my head. “No reception. You?”
“Nope. I sent him an email. He might get it if he can find a landline.”
“I’m sure he’s just between towers,” I said, echoing Mrs. Bingham’s optimism.
“Yeah. See ya round,” he called out over the buzz.
Shielding my eyes with my hand, I watched Lee pull out of the lot and away from the farm, sweeping the dirt road in a lazy S-shaped pattern.
Helmet, I thought with a start. He wasn’t wearing a helmet.
Then I stifled a laugh.
Big, tough no-helmet guy—riding off on his puny little scooter.
My little sister, Emma, at nine, was at the tail end of her Brownie career. More than anything, she wanted to be older. And crucial to her growing up was me moving out. Not for the room of her own, which she had now, but for the solitude of being an only child. I couldn’t imagine what that was like. Allison had it for a little while before I arrived, and Emma would have it soon, but me? I am the middle child. I have always been surrounded by others.
“You’ll miss me when I’m gone,” I liked to tell Emma whenever she pounded on the bathroom door.
“No, I won’t! I’ll watch all the cartoons I want and eat candy on your bed!”
She would miss me, though, just as I missed Allison. Sure, we chatted online and she came home for visits each semester from Willamette University, but it wasn’t the same without her around. I was the older sister now, the one Emma had to look up to. And it wasn’t easy, especially when it came to projects for her Brownie troop.
“You’re not doing it right!” Emma fumed as I attempted to iron a patch onto her Brownie sash.
“It’s fine.” I pressed the tip of the iron against the patch, finished the edging, and held it up in front of me. “Look, it’s perfect.”
Emma inspected it more closely. “Not perfect. But . . . okay.”
The ironing was something I’d happily taken over when Allison left. I was afraid Emma would burn herself or her bedspread if she did it on her own. And besides, there was something soothing about pressing all the wrinkles out—making a sheet or a cotton shirt crisp and perfect.
While I ironed, Emma told me all about her next Brownie task, which would get her a leadership patch. I wasn’t so sure Emma wanted to be a leader as much as she wanted to gussy up her sash.
“I have to write a story,” she told me as she carefully hung the sash near her beloved Brownie uniform.
I shut the iron off to let it cool and settled in among the pillows on Emma’s twin bed. I stretched my legs in front of me while Emma arranged and rearranged the items in her closet. “To be a leader, a Brownie has to inspire others,” she said with a proud tilt of her chin. If it hadn’t been for the flowered headband on top of her shimmering blond hair, I’d have thought she was already a teenager the way she carried herself. “I need a story that makes other people inspired.”
“Like . . . ,” I prompted her. “What have other Girl Scouts done?”
“Brownies, Middie. We are Brownies. Not Girl Scouts.”
I made a rolling gesture with my hand. “Whatever, Emma. Just tell me.”
She flopped onto the twin bed next to me and stretched her legs out as I had. The lace-edged pillows engulfed her tiny head and muffled her voice. “My friend Cynthia’s story was about her uncle who was in a war.”
“That’s good.” While she gave me the rundown on all of her friends’ inspirational tales, my gaze wandered the room. Not long ago we had shared it: our twin beds side by side, a single lamp on a table between them. We’d had one alarm clock too, which meant Emma rose at the same time as I did. We’d even shared Allison’s old vanity and its rickety ladder-backed chair. Now all of this was Emma’s alone. My room, which once belonged to Allison as well, was on the other side of the house, its windows facing the street. Here, we had a view of the garage and a backyard surrounded by trees.
“You know, I have to write a story too,” I told Emma when she stopped to breathe. “For college applications they have these—”
“Don’t use Nate!” she said, her eyes wide. “He’s mine!”
“He’s . . . what?”
“He’s my story.” Emma sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “He’s all smart and always helping people and he’s my friend even if he is your boyfriend and I can use him as an inspiration to other people because maybe other people will want to volunteer and help the misfortunate and maybe I will too because of him!” She finished with a gasp for air.
“Unfortunate. The people are ‘unfortunate’ not ‘misfortunate.’”
“Whatever.” She mimicked my get-on-with-it gesture, which was a little annoying coming from a nine-year-old.
“I’m not using Nate,” I said. “I have to write a story about me.”
“You? You’re not inspiring.”
“Well, thank you very much. Do they give out badges for being rude?”
“I don’t think so.” She glanced up at the ceiling in thought. I could see the wheels turning in her head: Can I get a badge for being rude?
“So as I was saying, I have to write an essay about myself for my college applications.”
Specifically, the Lewis & Clark application requested an essay that told them something that defined me, an event or experience that had made an impression on my life. I had absolutely no idea what I would write about.
My sister gave me a begrudging nod. “All right, as long as it isn’t about Nate.”
I shook my head. “Don’t worry, it won’t be.” Emma had always known Nate, I realized. We’d been friends and then dated for ten years of my life but all of hers.
Back in my room, I turned on my laptop and carried it with me to the bed. As soon as the Wi-Fi connected, a message popped up from Allison. She was online and wanted to chat. I opened a window and typed a greeting. Hey, Ali!
Almost instantly, I received a reply: u up?
Duh. Yes.
Can u look in my closet for a skirt?
I grinned. You mean MY closet
topshop, black mini
I’m busy
Go Now
“Fine, I’m going,” I said to my computer as I hauled my butt to the closet. Despite having left for college two years ago, Allison maintained an extensive wardrobe in my room, taking with her only one season’s worth of clothing at a time. It wouldn’t be so bad if we were the same size, but she was quite a bit taller than me.
I fanned a hand through her side of the closet, searching for a black miniskirt that had wide, flat pleats and a hidden side zipper. I knew exactly the one she was talking about because I’d tried it on when she was gone.
My phone rang before I’d had a chance to look for more than five seconds. I snatched it from my dresser. “What?”
“Are you in front of my closet?” Allison’s voice greeted me.
“Stop calling it that. And yes, I am.” I poked my head in farther, inhaling the scent of cedar that lined the walls of the closet.
“Do you see it?”
“Oh my god, give me a chance to look!” I put the phone back on the dresser and pressed Speakerphone. I could hear my sister breathing on the other end of the line. “Why do you need to know if it’s here? It’s not like I’m going to mail it to you.”
“Why not?”
I laughed. “You live two and a half hours away.”
“You’re going to drive it up here, then?”
“Ha! No.”
“Then get thee to the post office, sister-friend.”
“Can’t you wait till you come home?”
“Nope. Hot date.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Really? Who?”
“Whom.”
“No. It’s ‘who.’ Just because you’re in college—”
“He’s no one. Just a guy.”
I stepped deeper into the closet and called out over my shoulder. “A guy you have to put on an awesome black skirt for.” I was up to my neck in Allison’s clothes, but I still couldn’t find the skirt she wanted. “Even if I do find it, you’re not gonna get it till next week.”
“Overnight it.”
I had to laugh. “Is this guy worth an expensive FedEx delivery?”
A long pause and then I heard her sigh. “You’re probably right. Forget it.”
I grabbed my cell and took her off speaker. “Wait! I was just kidding. You sure?”
“My skinny jeans are pretty hot,” she joked. “They’ll have to do it for him.”
I laughed and pulled a chair up to the window. I cracked it open to feel a cool breeze on my face. Climbing through the closet had made me sweaty.
“You know, Al, I’ve never been on a date,” I told her. It was weird to say it out loud, but it was true.
My sister snorted. “You’ve been on plenty of dates.”
“Not really. Not like you. I knew Nate for five years before we got together. It wasn’t ever him asking me out and me getting all nervous. Is it fun?”
“It sucks! You gotta worry if the guy likes you, if he has another girlfriend, if he wants a girlfriend, if he just wants a booty call—”
“A booty call? You? No way.”
“I could be a booty call,” she joked. Her voice was haughty. “When it works out, yeah, it’s, I don’t know . . . exciting.” She paused. “Anyway, you don’t have to worry about it.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” But I did have something to worry about—and that something was gnawing at my brain. “Hey, what’d you write for your application essay to Willamette?”
I tapped the screen of my laptop and opened the application. Every field had been filled in—my name and address and so on. But the space for the essay was a big fat blank. “I can’t think of anything to write.”
“Hmmm . . . I can’t remember. It must have been good, though. I mean, I got into three colleges.”
“Gee, thanks.” I flopped back on the bed and rolled onto my side. On the other end of the line, I heard voices calling to my sister.
“Oh, hey. I gotta go, Mid. Talk later?”
“Sure, okay.” I was always reluctant to let Allison go. It so often seemed like she was on the verge of sharing something really important. I clicked off the phone and returned to my computer, paging through my bookmarks until I found one of my favorite websites, a vintage clothing reseller. I loved the looks of the dresses on these pages even though they were styles and textures I’d never worn before: soft and flowing with layers of chiffon over silk, lace over cotton, lovingly embroidered with flowered appliqués and trails of beads.
These dresses were completely impractical and I loved looking at them. I imagined myself at my wedding with Nate, dressed in a diaphanous cream-colored gown with a beaded bodice and velvet trim, pulled in tight at the waist, with loose, flowing sleeves. I’d even bookmarked a photo of one I especially liked, but I’d never shown it to anyone, not even Nate.
I glanced at the time on my phone. It was just about ten where Nate was. I dialed, fingers crossed the call would go through. After three failed attempts, each one crushing my optimism a little more, I texted him instead.
Miss u, love u, NM4eva.