How They Met, and Other Stories(40)
Author: David Levithan

Here. In his room. How had we managed to erase the rest of the world? Because that is what it took for us to crawl into the naked silence, into the truth of the thing, into the doomed and the brave.

Now the light is on and his mother is here and I am on the edge of his bed and my head is in my hands. My eyes are open and I’m not seeing a thing because I am so lost inside.

I hear the hit of the keys as she puts them down on the desk. I see her legs as she walks over. I feel the weight of her as she sits on the bed next to me, not touching.

“Peter?” she says gently.

And I say it again. “I’m sorry.” And again.

He is so far away and he doesn’t feel it like I do. He doesn’t feel it.

We sit there. Breathing, thinking.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” she says. “I’m just a little confused.”

I can tell from the sound of her voice that she’s not looking at me, just as I’m not looking at her. We’re both looking in front of us now. At the empty doorway.

“You miss him,” she says. And my first instinct is to deny it. Deny us. Deny her. Deny myself. To admit one thing is to admit everything. It has always been that way.

So instead I wonder what my silence says. Because even if I cannot say yes, cannot say so much, I also can’t bring my voice to say no, to say I don’t really miss him at all.

Quietly, so quietly, she says, “I know.”

I turn to her then. And her eyes are closed. Her coat is still on. Her left hand is gripping her right hand. Then she opens her eyes, sees me, and smiles. Not a big smile, or even a welcoming one. But a small, rueful smile. It could be kindred, or it could just be sad.

“It’s not easy,” she says, in that voice that mothers have, that mix of unwanted knowledge and small consolation. “Whatever you had—I don’t know exactly what it was, and that’s fine. But it must not be easy for you. You miss him, and that’s okay. But you have to figure that if it’s too hard to hang on, then maybe you should let go.”

I want to ask if he’s mentioned me.

“What is his room like?” I ask instead. “Up there.”

She looks at me for a moment, deciding something, then says, “It’s fairly small. Not much bigger than this room, but for two people. His bedspread is blue. It matches the carpet, which is something we couldn’t have known. We got him a refrigerator. One of the small ones. His roommate seemed very nice. I think they get along.”

“Does he call?”

She nods. “Yes. We talk for a few minutes. Every few days.”

If I had been the same age. If I had gone to the same school. If I was in that room right now. There’s no way to know if we would have lasted. There’s no way to be sure, and plenty of reasons to doubt it. I just wish I’d had the chance. That is one of the things I miss the most—the chance to make it work.

The whole time I thought that I was figuring him out, wearing down his hesitations. But really I was wearing myself down in order to spend that one last hour, that one last sentence.

“Peter,” Mrs. Baxter says. And it’s almost the way he says it. That mix of love and reproach. “You can’t do this. Look at me.” I do, and it’s not his eyes I see. No, it’s something completely separate. A different kind of concern. “Do you understand? You can’t do this.”

I start to say I’m sorry again. For using the key. For being here, when all she probably wanted to do tonight was take off her coat, sort through the mail, wait for the call.

“It doesn’t work,” she continues, unclasping her hands, smoothing her skirt. “What you’re feeling right now doesn’t work. You can’t wander around and think the wandering will call them back. Believe me. I know you don’t want to hear the long view, but let me tell you. You are so young. I know it’s none of my business. But still.”

She sounds surprised by her own urgency, by the fact that she is talking to me this way. I doubt she gets to give advice often. Certainly Cody never took it, to the point that he never mentioned her giving it.

She stands then. Puts her hand on my shoulder and lifts herself off the bed. Walks to the doorway, then turns back around.

“You can stay as long as you need to,” she says, “but don’t do this again. This is the last time.”

I know I didn’t come here to say good-bye. But suddenly it feels like it is.

She picks up her keys off of his desk and looks at me, at the room, one long time before she steps into the hall. I hear her bedroom door close behind her. Cody’s door remains open.

I don’t need any souvenirs. I’m sure there are things that I could take that he would never know were missing. But I already have an unlabeled collection of things that are ours. We would ink our skin blue and sign messages with our thumbprints. We bought our favorite movies for each other. We made our own yearbooks to sign for each other, a month or two before he left.

The yearbook I made could be with him now, or maybe just hidden somewhere in this room. I say good-bye to knowing the answer. I say good-bye to the sheets that don’t smell like him. I say good-bye to the robe that’s forgotten what I felt like. I say good-bye to the part of myself that misses him so much. I say good-bye to hope, but I also say good-bye to hope’s disappointment.

I turn the light off as I leave. Then I remember, and turn it back on. Leave the room as I found it, but not untouched.

I call out good-bye to his mother. She calls good-bye in return.

I head back down the stairs. I head through the kitchen. I open the back door, then close it behind me. It is only then that I realize I still have the key. I go to the flower pot, which I hadn’t moved back in place. It is dark now outside, but I can still see the outline of where the pot should be sitting, the faint impression left by the key. I return the key to its hiding place, then conceal it once more.

People say good-bye, and then they take one last look. I am a few steps away when I turn to his window. And there, as I watch, the light goes out. The door closes, and I walk away.

SKIPPING THE PROM

Our story was going to be that we’d overslept, but in the end we told the real story, which was better. Not more exciting or daring. Just better.

From the beginning, Kelly didn’t want to go to the prom, and neither did I. I think I would’ve gone if she’d wanted to, and vice versa. But we wanted to spend the night with each other instead.

We’d been going out for five months, and we knew we wouldn’t be going out in another five months. It was a conversation we had by never having it; in the same way we’d be graduating from school in June, we knew we’d be graduating from home in August, and that meant graduating from our relationship as well. We were sad about this, but not sad enough to change it. We wanted to be realistic. We prided ourselves on our realism.