How They Met, and Other Stories(39)
Author: David Levithan

I remember these things. They are my proof that we actually happened. He wouldn’t have told me these things if I hadn’t meant something to him. I have to hold on to all the truths he gave me. Even when they seem so incomplete.

I drive past this house all the time. I’ve made it on my way to school. Sometimes I slow down. I don’t know why. Only that it’s where he once was, back when we were.

We’d said we’d keep in touch. But touch is not something you can do from a distance. Touch is not something you can keep; as soon as it’s gone, it’s gone. We should have said we’d keep in words, because they are all we can string between us—words on a telephone line, words appearing on a screen. But they cause more complications than clarity. On the phone, there are always voices in his background. On the screen, there are always the sentences saying he has to go.

I know he is gone, but this house is not. That’s the best way I can explain it. I cannot touch him, cannot press my hand against his body, cannot feel the warmth spread from his skin. The best I can do is touch the things he has touched the most. I just want a moment in his bed. To trace.

The stairway is lined with photographs. He is every year old. That night, the one that’s slowly becoming a lifetime ago, he walked me through all the class pictures, all the bad haircuts and awkward smiles. Him as a seven-year-old ring bearer and him as a fourteen-year-old on the lip of the Grand Canyon. That night, he held up a flashlight and he told me about the photographs like they were words in a long sentence. Then he turned the flashlight off. He took my hand and led me forward.

His room looks the same. His parents always leave the light on. To ward off burglars. To pretend someone is home. I don’t have to touch the switch. I don’t have to do anything but walk inside. I know he took things with him. I was there when the car left. I stood there camouflaged by his other friends in a group good-bye. I saw the milk crates of books and the sheets and the toiletries crammed into the backseat and the twine-tied trunk. But the room doesn’t seem to have suffered from the subtraction. Most of the books remain on the shelves; I see a copy of Demian and wonder if it’s the one I gave him or the one he already had. I take some solace that there aren’t two, that a book he would associate with me has made it to his room at college. I cling to the associations.

The bed is made, ready for his return. I put my face to the pillowcase, hoping it might smell like his echo. Instead it smells like laundry. I take off my shoes. I curl up on top of the sheets. I clutch.

We fought over who it would be easier for. He said I was lucky to be in the same place, to have such a familiar world around me, to have the friends here and the knowledge of where I was. I said he was lucky to be getting a new beginning, to be moving on.

I don’t know what I thought I’d find by breaking in here. An envelope with my name on it, awaiting my arrival? Cody himself, standing in front of the closet, deciding what to wear? An entirely empty room, as robbed of his presence as I am? No, not really. Maybe all I wanted was what I find now: rest. Simple, uncomplicated rest.

The light fades. The day ends. The door opens, and I’m asleep. It isn’t until she’s in the room that I stir. I sense her presence before I can register it. She stands there for a beat before saying anything.

“Peter?”

I open my eyes. There is light, there is color, and there is Mrs. Baxter standing in the doorway, looking like she’s come home to find all the furniture rearranged.

I am surprised she knows my name. I’ve met her probably a dozen times, but it was always in passing. I was a sound in another room, a door about to close, a phone call answered before she got to it. I’d never felt like a boy with a name to her. Cody had wanted to keep me separate.

“Hi, Mrs. Baxter,” I say, sitting up and turning out of bed. Staring at my shoes unlaced on the floor.

“Is Cody here?” she asks. But she’s looked around. She knows the answer.

“I don’t think so,” I tell her. If I bend over to put on my shoes, I will have to turn my head entirely away from her. That seems rude, so I just sit there.

I always thought Cody looked more like his father—the same shoulders, the same dark hair. But there’s something in Mrs. Baxter’s eyes that looks familiar. I don’t know whether it’s their shape or color or just the way she’s looking at me now, trying to piece the situation into sense. I get that glint of Cody from her.

“How did you get in?”—this is said calmly, almost kindly. She’s not alarmed. I don’t get that from her.

“I used the key.” I’ve let go of it, lost it in the folds of the blanket. I reach over for it now, hold it in my palm for a moment before offering it back to her.

She doesn’t take it. She has her own keys in her hand. Unjangling car keys and house keys and probably office keys. Her hair is shorter than I remember. When Cody left, she must have cut her hair.

I reach for my shoes and then stop. I feel the key in my hand and I stop. I don’t look right at her and I don’t look all the way away from her. She is standing next to Cody’s desk and I am looking at the photos on the bulletin board. I am looking for me. I am looking for some sign of me.

If we were strangers, she would be calling the police. If I had been a part of her life, if she had known me, we would be talking. But instead we’re somewhere between strangers and familiar. So the questions fill the room in their silence.

He pulled away from her. He never told me that, maybe didn’t even know it. But all the times Cody talked about his father and everything his father did wrong, he never said anything about his mother. Not to me.

I know the situation is my fault, so maybe that’s why I finally say, “You’re probably wondering why I’m here.”

And she doesn’t say anything. For just a moment, she gives me a look that makes me think that, yes, it’s possible she does know exactly why I’m here, more than I know myself.

“I’m so sorry,” I continue. And it’s like the last word is a hurdle and I can’t leap it, because something in the word snags my voice and suddenly I am giving everything up. I am letting my shoulders fall and I am feeling myself become the absence, feeling myself become that gasp and sob.

I could never say what I was to him. He never let me know, because maybe he was afraid that if I knew, everyone else would know, too.

But keeping my guard up has taken too much. Now I just want it to end. I’ve always wanted the happy ending, but now I’ll just settle for the ending.