“Micah!” I call, stumbling into the back of the Barn, where rows and rows of horse stalls sit empty. It’s private, but only in the way public showers are. It’s where everyone goes to—you know.
It’s just where they go.
An arts groupie makes out with a stoner in the first stall, and in the second the drum major is feeling up the president of the KEY club. The third stall is empty—or at least at first it looks that way.
But then I see him in the corner, the back of his head ruffled, curls askew. For a moment I think he's just looking into the corner of the stall like the weirdo he is, but then someone's hand runs through his curls. He isn’t alone.
Hesitantly, I step closer.
I wish I hadn't.
He presses his hands against the girl’s shoulders, deepening their kiss. He’s taken one strap of her tank top off, she’s pressing her hands against his solid chest, drinking him in like a tall glass of lemon water.
I take a step back.
You know in those stupid rom-coms when the main characters see the inciting incident that changes their life forever? Time sort of slows down and everything turns gray around them, and the camera zooms in on their shocked, disheartened faces?
Well, that’s complete bull.
Because those bad moments are just as fast as the good ones—too fast.
So fast you almost don’t feel your heart shattering.
Almost.
Neither Micah nor Heather notice me. Their world consists of two people. Their only history is this moment. The moment I always wanted to be in.
Fisting my hands, I leave the stalls before they see me and return to the barn and the fight.
Billie has Mike in a headlock and LD is wiping blood from a split eyebrow. The chorus of “Fight!” and the bray of cattle are too much. I can’t stand it. People stand away from me like who I am is catching.
Like I’m a leper—or something worse. They’ve always known I could never be in that stall with Micah. Why didn't they ever tell me? Why was I stupid to think that I . . . that we . . . ?
My eyes are blurring. I wipe them hard with the back of my hand, and my mascara smears across my face. I've had enough of this.
“Get off him, Boo!” I shouted, using Mike Labouise’s nickname from elementary school. We used to be friends. His grandma and mine would go to poker nights together at the town hall. I don't understand why he hates me now—but I don't care.
I march up to the fight, people moving out of my way like the parting of the Red Sea in that old movie, and I force my sharp elbow between Mike and Billie. He releases Billie from the headlock, and I shove them away from each other.
“What would your grandma say, Boo?” I ask him.
His face breaks into surprise. “She’s dead.”
“Rolling over in her grave, too.” I drop LD’s handbag and turn to go. Billie locks eyes with me for a moment, begins to follow, but I don’t wait for him. I leave as fast as I can. He had this pity look on his face that I can't stand. Not right now. Not after . . .
Stop thinking, I chant to myself, wishing I could. Wishing I could freeze my brain and never think again.
I don’t know where I’m going, but it’s not to the gray Cadillac. And it’s not back to the Barn. Subconsciously, I guess I follow the blinking red light in the sky.
My North Star.
“I asked you for a good night,” I told it, following the road back to town. “Just one good one! Just one!”
But the blinking light doesn’t answer. Of course it doesn’t. I’d have to check myself into an institution if it did.
It’s a mile trek back to town, but it feels infinitely longer, like I’m on one of those desert highways that stretch for hundreds of miles. Everything looks so close, but it’s all so far away.
Whatever possessed me to think the Barn was a good idea? I pull my arms around myself tightly, although I feel like an imposter in my own skin. I can still hear them chanting and the bray of cattle. I know it’s just one of those things that happens, like Heather calling me “thunder thighs” in third grade and Mitchell Wilkins dressing up like me for a Halloween party in ninth. When a school is as small as Steadfast, escaping your tormentors feels like running on a treadmill.
I hate treadmills—you do all that work and never get anywhere. Like a hamster on a wheel. When I run, I want to go. I want to leave. But I never run too far. Just to the reservoir at the edge of town. And then I run back because I can’t get out.
I can’t leave Steadfast.
After a while of walking—maybe ten minutes, maybe thirty—the unmistakable sound of a car begins to fade in between the crickets and buzzing gnats. I turn just in time to watch the gray Cadillac crest over the hill and stop beside me.
Billie rolls down the window. He has a split lip and a pretty good shiner coming up on his right eye. He’s halfway drenched in beer, and I can smell it out the car window. “North . . .”
I wave him off. “I’m fine. I’m good. Everything’s good.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Of course it’s a lie!” I snap, and then bite my cheek. Don’t cry, I chant to myself. Don’t fucking cry. “I’m sorry, I just . . .”
“Yeah, I know. People are assholes.”
“Yeah.” I remember the third stall. I wish I didn’t remember. “You didn’t have to come after me. I'm not going to get sawed in half by Freddie Krueger or anything.”
“I know you’re good. I’m the one who’s not. I mean look at this face. It’ll never be the same again. Besides, it’s Jason who has the chainsaw.” He puts on a charming grin and oh, is he charming. Charming in the way good boys always are.
“It’ll be fine,” I reply, quickly looking away.
“Like you? How you’ll be fine?”
“Yeah, like how I’ll be fine.”
We both know it’s a lie.
He says, “Are you sure you don’t want a ride?”
“Will it require talking about my feelings? Because the Juice has a one-week exclusive on them.”
“Naturally. I wouldn't want to steal your story,” he tries to joke, and then nudges his head into the car. “Hop in, North. Your chauffeur will take you anywhere you want to go.”
He doesn’t mean that but the possibility makes my heart balloon anyway. Anywhere—it sounds like a magic spell, a key to the iron bars around my life. I’ll go anywhere, absolutely anywhere, as long as it isn’t Steadfast. But I know he won’t go too far. He’s cautious like that, weighing everything before he ever takes a single step. When Iowa offered him a full scholarship for football, so did Nebraska, and South Carolina, and Florida. It took him a month to decide, and when he chose Iowa he didn’t tell anyone why.
He nudges his head toward the passenger seat, and I give in. I open the door and pause. LD is lying in the backseat, a bunch of tissues stuffed up her bloody nose. I begin to ask if she’s okay when Billie waves me off. “She’s fine. Passed out the second I shoved her into the backseat to come find you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. She pregamed pretty hard before we picked you and Micah up.”
Just the mention of him sends prickly needles up my spine. “And where’s he . . . ?”
His eyes soften. Ah, so he knows, too. Instead of answering, he takes LD’s purse out of the passenger seat and dumps it on the back floorboards. “Hop in.”
I slide into the passenger seat and buckle up. From the backseat, LD snores softly.
Billie adjusts the rearview mirror. “So, where to, madam?”
“Can we just drive?”
“Anywhere?”
A knot forms in my throat. I nod. “Anywhere.”
“Okay, I know just the place.” He puts his old Cadillac into gear and sets off through Steadfast, where all the windows are dark and all the shops are closed. Streetlights line the old cobblestone roads to the main square. No one is awake, everything so still and quiet it looks frozen in time. I press my forehead against the window and watch the shops pass. He drives straight through town, slow and steady, the radio mumbling rock and roll. His forefinger taps in time to the beat.
I like the silence between us, the subtle agreement not to talk or tell. LD is too nosy—if she was awake, she’d demand to know what I saw, and I’m not ready to tell anyone yet.
Maybe I'm overreacting. It was just a kiss, wasn't it? It didn’t mean anything.
It couldn’t.
But what if it did? What if it meant everything?
We drive straight through town to the other side. Steadfast is surrounded by sunflower fields and turbines as far as the eye can see. Sometimes dustings of cotton pepper the gaps between, sometimes ranches with horses, but always somewhere in sight are vast fields of yellow. You can get lost in them.
He finally stops on a dirt patch on the side of the road. He kills the engine and gets out. I look around me. There’s a huge dilapidated sign on the side of the road that reads “Sunflower Your Day.”
“Old McKeaney’s sunflower maze?” I ask, perplexed. “What’re we doing here? It hasn’t been open since he died.”
“Open and existing are two different things. Remember when we used to come here in middle school?”
A small smile tugs at the edges of my lips. “Micah used to always hide in the stalks and scare the piss out of you.” But at the mention of Micah, my heart throbs like a fresh wound. I just want to go home. I hug myself tightly, the smile dropping from my face. “Why’re we here?”
“Come on,” he nods his head in a signal for me to get out.
Hesitantly, I do. “You’re not going to kill me in the middle of nowhere, are you?”
“If I was, I would’ve done it back in middle school when you put gum in my hair.” He gives me one of those side-eyed looks.
I chew on the inside of my cheek. “It wasn’t my fault I wanted to see if my gum matched your hair.”
“It was berry Dubble Bubble,” he replies flatly. “Of course it’d match.” Popping the trunk, he takes a flashlight out and slings a backpack over his shoulder. Then he heads toward the sunflowers. I don’t follow. “Come on, North,” he says. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of an old maze.”
“Like any sane person, I’m afraid of getting lost. . . I mean the paths can’t possibly be there anymore . . .”
He rolls his eyes. “You said anywhere, remember? To take you anywhere. What does it matter if it’s on a path or not?”
“I didn’t mean ‘Let’s get lost and let the children of the sunflowers eat us!’”
“I won’t let us get lost.”
“Oh yeah? Can you read the stars or something, Golden Boy?” I wave my hand up at the night sky. It’s so clear and bright, he doesn’t need a flashlight.
He points his flashlight beam toward my radio tower. “That’s the only star I need to see. Now will you indulge me?”
Saying no means going back to town, it means climbing the stairs to my bedroom and falling asleep, and waking up the next morning no different from tonight, with my heart on the verge of aching because of something I thought I’d always have a chance to have. A chance with . . .
It was just a kiss.
It was just a kiss.
“North, come on,” he says again. “We won’t get lost.”
Standing there framed by the sunflower, he looks for the first time like anywhere could be a place—a haven.
Hesitantly, I take his hand.
And he pulls me into the maze.