Steadfast High’s prized football stadium (which is a green field with three whole rows of bleachers on either side—it’s been standing for half a century, nourished by the blood of opposing teams) is packed with parents of the twenty-three graduating seniors and the rest of the town come to watch the spectacle. You know the saying, “It takes a village to raise a child”? Grams raised me, but I learned to ride my first bike from Micah’s dad, Mr. Perez, and I learned how to bake banana bread from Miss Seltzer (who never married) while she babysat LD and me when Grams and LD’s mom went to knitting parties. They’re all in the stands, their faces glistening in the mid-morning blaze.
I heave a sigh of frustration, half-tempted to rip this stupid cap off my head to fan myself with it. Of all the colors for Steadfast High to pick for our polyester robes, they had to go with black. Even the balmy eighty-degree weather can’t keep us from roasting.
I never said our town bred geniuses.
All twenty-three seniors are actually sweating buckets even before we sit down in our assigned chairs. Mike Labouise shoots me a repulsive glare as he sits down in the row ahead of me. He has a nice bruise on his cheek from the fight last night. It feels like everyone who was at the barn is staring at me, which is practically everyone except Natalie Bowman, whose parents are so religious the only friends she has are in a church group half an hour away. And even she starts to stare just for the sake of staring.
Well nothing like feeling like the elephant in the room. Or the cow in the stadium? Whatever.
I find my chair. Micah’s already sitting beside me. Being North and Perez, we’ve always been seated together. Which I've loved—until now. I sit down, trying to pretend nothing is different from yesterday.
Micah tugs on the collar of his robes. “You think anyone’ll notice if I start fanning my balls?”
“You still have those?” I ask.
He gives me a sharp look. “What’s got your panties in a wad.”
I glance back at him, swallowing the real retort I want to give. “Sorry. I just . . . it’s hot out here.”
“Yeah, it is. You guys skipped out early last night. Did you make it home okay?” he asks, dipping close enough so I smell his AXE body spray and motor oil musk. He must have done an early shift at his dad’s auto shop. Every spare minute he has he’s fixing up his old Honda motorbike or the mayor’s ’57 Chevy.
His scent makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise. I fist my hands tightly, nails biting into the palms of my hands. My mind goes from Normal Teenage Girl to Lobotomized Invalid in less time than it takes for Han Solo to shoot first.
I wonder what would happen if I kissed him?
“Ingrid?” he quirks an eyebrow.
I quickly look away, clearing my throat. “No, Billie just took me home is all.”
LD leans back in her chair in front of us. She bedazzled the top of her hat to say, “SUCK IT, MIKE.” “Ooh, look, our golden boy’s about to make his speech! You know I wrote it, right? You both know I wrote it.”
“Yeah, yeah, you wrote it,” we intone.
“Must be so tiring for Billie to be good at everything. Except speechwriting,” Micah adds.
LD sniffs loudly. “Is that envy I smell?”
“Envy? I’m just stating the facts—right Igs?”
I open my mouth, then close it again. Micah isn’t wrong—sometimes with all of Billie’s achievements my head starts to spin, too, because how can anyone have time to be good at everything and still be popular? I remember our fight in the sunflower maze last night. “He just has it all together, I guess—”
“Oh, oh—here he is!” LD interrupts.
The golden boy looks like a solid brick wall in his black graduation robe as he ascends to the podium. He takes a few note cards out from his sleeve. His yellow tassel swings in his face as he bends toward the microphone and gives all of us his wide, white smile. “Hi, class.”
“RAGIN’ FOURTY-EIGHT! GO FOUR GO!”
Billie’s football nickname.
The entire class erupts into applause like he’s the star of our small-town sitcom. The principal shoots a disapproving look into the sea of black robes, and the one idiot with “SUCK IT, MIKE” on her hat.
Billie’s smile grows wider. “So, guys, let’s talk for a minute. There’s a reason I never ran for football captain, and why my vice president, the beautiful Heather Woodard,” he points back at Heather—the same Heather who was with Micah last night—sitting with her legs crossed under her chair, “did most of these speeches over the past few years . . . because I suck at them. But like Principal Monroe said, ‘There isn’t a better way to experience high school than to do all the things you thought you couldn’t.’ So, here I am . . . and please forgive my terrible speech.”
LD mutters, “Terrible, my ass."
A few people in the stands cheer, and someone—I think his mother—begins chanting the Steadfast High Hornets fight song, and other parents join in. I cover my face with my hands. If I never had to hear this stupid fight song again, it’d be too soon.
“All right! All right!” Billie laughs.
I peek out through my fingers.
Billie motions for them to quiet down again, and they do. He’s like a maestro commanding a symphony. And he never loses his cool, not once. He looks perfectly comfortable in his skin.
What’s that like?
“Thanks, Mom,” he adds between his smile. Then he looks out into the audience, as if he’s trying to find an anchor to land. “So, not many of you may know this about me, but I like to climb. I’m not talking about trees or ladders. I mean I like to climb. I like to parkour up walls. I like to scale buildings. The higher, the better—and yeah, Mom, I know it’s dangerous, but most of the things that are dangerous are the ones that make us feel most alive, you know? There’s this one place in particular that I like to go. It’s not crazy high . . . but it has this view. It’s the view of everything I’ve ever known. The sunflowers. Main Street. Den’s Diner—”
We howl at that.
“—the tree where I got my first kiss. The parking lot where I . . . did other things.” Behind him, Principal Monroe begins to stress-sweat. Billie doesn’t stop searching the audience, looking out over every one of us as though he were in that lookout tower, looking down at the maze we called high school—at all of us, sitting in our stuffy black robes.
Then his roaming gaze settles on me, and for a moment I can still taste the Diet Coke and Twizzlers and feel the sweet midnight breeze as it rustled through the sunflowers.
He takes a deep breath and quickly looks away. It feels like he pulls a fish hook out of my heart, because he’s leaving. He’s actually leaving at the end of the summer. Our Billie.
LD snakes her hand back and takes mine in her grip, and squeezes it tightly.
Our golden boy is leaving us.
From his height, I wonder how small we already look.