I CAN’T LOOK at her.
And I can’t look at Gabe, either. He’s got those big goo-goo eyes like E.T. It’s so pathetic it’s almost cute. I’m watching Charlie as he makes his speech. It really is heartfelt. And by the time he’s done, I’m close to forgetting about everything. I’m close to feeling like I can breathe again.
Unable to help myself, I look at Gabe. The smile on my face is real. I love these guys. I love Gabe, even if it’s not the way he wants me to love him. Charlie’s been my closest friend since we were in diapers. And Kim … well, that’s where it gets complicated.
“Who’s hungry?” I ask. I have the plastic cooler hooked on my elbow. Inside, the Coke bottles clink together.
“What do you got?” Charlie hops down from what was once the SS Daggerwhisp. Finally. That whole moment was sweet, but …
I don’t know. I’m starting to realize that maybe this won’t last forever. We have one more year of high school together, and after that we’re all taking off in different directions for college. I’m going to MIT. I have to. My mind is already wandering back to my house, to my newly installed computer and the software coding I want to be working on. How am I supposed to prepare myself for that future when Charlie is trying to anchor us all to Windale? How do I move away and stay here at the same time?
“Sone?” Charlie says. He’s beside me, bumping his shoulder into mine. The sun flashes across the lenses of his glasses and hides his eyes. But I can see the concern in his frown, the way he digs his hands down into the pockets of his ridiculous vest. “You okay?”
“Uh … yeah,” I lie. The four of us are walking now, leaving the trail behind. At the end of it, the old Chevelle that used to belong to Gabe’s dad is parked near the picnic table, where we’re actually supposed to eat. But we know this hill and the forest that creeps up the side of it like no one else in Windale. Even though Gabe got his license last year and is perfectly willing to cart us all wherever we want to go, we always find ourselves up here anyway. There’s comfort in the familiar, I guess.
“Good,” Charlie says. “You gonna tell me what’s on the menu or is it supposed to be a surprise?”
“Like Mystery Meat Monday at school?” Gabe says over his shoulder. That coaxes a laugh out of me, but I keep my eyes pinned to the back of his striped polo shirt so I don’t have to see how proud of himself he is. My cheeks burn under his gaze until he finally looks away, trudging ahead with Kim at his side.
“It’s not Mystery Meat Monday,” I say, brightening as best I can. I shoot Charlie a playful grin. “It’s Fancy Feast Friday. Mrs. Garber gave me her best cans of paté, just for you, Charlie.”
“That’s not even funny,” Kimberly says, giggling for probably the first time all day. “I’m positive there really is cat food in some of her recipes.”
“The meatloaf,” Charlie muses.
“The beef nuggets,” I add, cringing.
“The lasagna,” Gabe says.
“The lasagna,” we all groan together. And then we’re laughing. It feels easy and real because it is. Then I have to go and ruin it.
“Well, at least we only have to endure one more year of the cafeteria food,” I say, almost naturally.
Just like that, the laughter dies. I feel my heart squeeze, and it really hurts. These are my best friends in the world. I’d do anything for them, and I know they’d do anything for me. We’ve all lived in Windale our entire lives, stuck at the bottom of this sinkhole of a town because the world beyond it just seems too far away to reach. I’m the only one of us who has ever been outside of Pennsylvania, and that’s just because my parents are rich and like to travel. If I could have taken Gabe and Charlie and Kim with me on those trips instead of my parents and my little sister, I would have done it in a heartbeat. Leaving my friends behind after we graduate is going to be the hardest thing I’ll ever have to do.
But I also can’t wait.
I can’t wait for a fresh start. To have the freedom to explore parts of myself that I’m only now beginning to understand. There’s a whole other version of Sonya Gutierrez waiting in a dorm room at MIT. She’s a person my friends here would never relate to, would never be able to comprehend. She doesn’t keep secrets from the people who are closest to her. She doesn’t keep secrets from herself by pretending they don’t exist. And she sure as hell wouldn’t be deliberately pushing her best friends away because it’s just easier to give up and move on than it is to keep clinging to the only life she’s ever known.
This thing with Kimberly is only part of it, but it’s a big part. How do I explain who I’m capable of loving? To Gabe, to my parents. To anyone. How do I tell them that whoever I’m into doesn’t necessarily have to be a guy? They don’t have to be a girl, either. They don’t have to be anything. It doesn’t matter what they look like or where they’re from. The only thing that matters is their heart and the way it speaks to mine.
She glances back, flashing a tiny smile, right as I’m thinking about her. Of course. Every time she looks at me, I can feel Kimberly’s heart talking.
When we cross into the clearing, the sun is still shining. Dapples of light drop down through the trees and ripple across the brush, in sync with the hot breeze. We scatter and sit. I open the cooler, pull out the Cokes and sandwiches. Charlie sets his Walkman down in the grass. When he flicks it on, Axl Rose is yelping the last few lines of “Patience” on WKED (“The Wickedest Rock Radio in the Commonwealth”). Kimberly sinks down and puts her back against a tree at the edge of the clearing. Gabe hunkers next to Charlie, and they start talking about Ghostbusters II tonight.
“You guys are nerds,” I jab, tossing each of them a sandwich.
The boys laugh.
“Yeah, right,” Gabe says. “Because you totally didn’t buy your ticket this morning.”
I laugh, too, because he’s right. I stopped at the Sunrise before we met up at the diner. My ticket is in my pocket as we speak.
With the other two baggies and bottles of Coke in hand, I leave Gabe and Charlie to discuss whether Sigourney Weaver and Bill Murray will finally hook up in this one, and I go to Kim.
She’s not paying attention. Her knees are up against her chest, arms wrapped around her legs, hugging herself. She’s watching the storm clouds sweep over the valley. They’re heading our way for sure. But it’s not like we’ve never been caught out here in the rain before.
“Hey,” I nearly whisper. I squat down in front of her and offer one of the sodas. “You with us?”
“Huh?” she replies, blinking. “Oh. Yeah. Sorry.” She smiles in a sad way that I can’t quite pin down, but she takes a bottle and pops it open with a hiss.
“You sure? You seem like you’re not really here today.” I’m pressing, which I know she hates, but I can’t help it.
She finally looks me in the eye, and there’s a hint of a real smile at the corners of her lips. “I’m good,” she says. “Promise.” Her eyes tick down, looking away. My cue to leave her alone.
“Okay” is all I say. I start to stand.
She surprises me, though, reaching out to grab my hand before I get all the way up. “But,” she starts, then pauses, glancing over at Gabe and Charlie, who are in their own little world. “Maybe we can talk later?”
My smile is automatic. “Of course.”
“Okay,” she sighs, almost relieved. “Okay, awesome.”
When I stand up, taking a bite of turkey and swiss on wheat, I feel a little lighter. There are all these unspoken lines of communication between the four of us, like a network of information that’s been built up over so many years. Nothing is ever fully resolved. It’s just covered up with a new layer of something else. We’re always checking in, trying to figure each other out even though we already know so much. It’s both beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
It makes me think of something my dad was talking about a couple of months ago. His own job is very private, but he loves to bring home bits of information he’s picked up from across the scientific community, as if that’s something all families talk about over their TV dinners. He said some scientist in Switzerland was proposing a global space for shared information. Something called the World Wide Web. I still don’t really understand what it is, but I know I want to be a part of it. Especially if it turns out to be anywhere near as lovely and complicated as this friendship has been.
Has been. There I go again thinking it’s over between the four of us.
We eat our lunch together and talk about nerd stuff, the same as we’ve done for years. Only a mile or so to the northwest, thunder is rumbling closer.