Chapter 10

CHAPTER

10

SIXTEEN YEARS AGO

Less than two weeks after camp had ended, a bubble envelope from Pennsylvania arrived at my parents’ house, wedged inside the mailbox alongside a credit card offer and an AT

Date: October 14, 7:52 P.M.

Subject: THANK YOU!!

Body: Thank you for sending the CD!! I listened to the whole thing already. Some of the songs you put on there are kind of intense, but I did like one of the ones you put at the end, once I got past the shouting and all the stuff about stakes to the heart. I think it was track ten.

How are you liking the book? I figure it’ll be easier to write out our thoughts on here instead of talking about it on the phone, because on the phone my brain gets all scrambled and I can’t remember all the things I wanted to say.

From: Theodore

Date: October 14, 10:06 P.M.

Subject: Re: THANK YOU!!

Body: Clara,

The song you’re referring to is “Vampires Will Never Hurt You” by My Chemical Romance. It’s about not wanting to be part of the crowd. I thought you might like it. If you like that one, I could burn you a CD with some of their newer stuff.

I read the introduction to Hegel but I’m not sure I really get it—he’s not really writing about history, more about the history of people studying history? It seems overly complicated to me. Why not just write about the history itself?

Sincerely,

Teddy

From: Clare Bear

Date: October 15, 9:06 A.M.

Subject: Re: Re: THANK YOU!!

Body: Yes, please send more!! I would just download them myself but I got in trouble last year for using LimeWire after I accidentally downloaded a virus and then we had to hire this guy to come reinstall Windows and fix everything and my dad only just started letting me use the computer again, sooooo. xD

He does talk about actual history eventually, but I agree that Hegel is sorta confusing. Maybe we should start with something else. I’ll look through my books tonight and mail something tomorrow!!

333

Clara

From: Teddy

Date: October 16, 12:33 P.M.

Subject: Re: Re: Re: THANK YOU!!

Body: Clara,

What does xD stand for?

Best,

Teddy

My selection of history books didn’t cater to any one particular interest. Mostly, I read whatever I could find for a couple dollars at the local thrift store, often not geared toward high school reading—sepia covers of Images of America , pop history paperbacks curling up at the corners, textbooks with yellow USED stickers slapped over the spines. Sometimes I understood the stuff I read just fine, sometimes I didn’t, but maybe something with more exciting subject matter would be a good starting place for Teddy. I unearthed one of the books I’d read during my short-lived pirate phase, Under the Black Flag , and stuffed it into an envelope.

While my first book recommendation might’ve fallen flat, Teddy’s music certainly hadn’t; I found myself listening to the same CD on repeat during my walks to the library, and then, when the weather turned, blasting it from the stereo in my bedroom. When the next bubble mailer arrived, it sent me further down the rabbit hole: burned copies of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge and The Black Parade, the track listings inked in that familiar blue Sharpie.

“So is this your favorite band, or something?” I asked Teddy the next time we talked on the phone.

I could practically hear him lift his shoulders, shrugging it off. “It’s one of them, I guess.”

But it didn’t really matter whether they were his favorite or not, because they were quickly becoming my favorite band. I wasn’t even sure I was their target audience—I didn’t always relate perfectly to the lyrics, but they sucked me in anyway. Instead of December evenings spent hunched over the coffee table working on thousand-piece puzzles, I spent hours watching YouTube videos and scrolling through forums. I rented The Lost Boys and Interview with the Vampire from my local Blockbuster because a lot of the songs referenced vampires. I asked my mom to get me an iPod for Christmas, which was met with some hesitation, and I also asked whether I could dye my hair, which was met with outright distress.

“I don’t understand where this is coming from,” she said in the middle of peeling potatoes over the sink for Christmas dinner. “It’s already such a pretty color.”

Pretty was relative, I thought. It was a dull sort of dishwater color, perhaps the most noncommittal of all hair colors: Was it blond or was it light brown? No one seemed to agree. “I was just thinking maybe I’m ready for a change,” I said.

She thought about it for a few seconds, potato skins falling from the peeler in curlicues. “No, I don’t think so,” she said finally. “Once you dye it, it’s impossible to get it back the way it was. You’ll only end up regretting it.”

I tried arguing with her, telling her that she couldn’t possibly know whether I would regret something or not, but it was no use. I woke up Christmas morning to a refurbished iPod Nano—“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Dad explained—and a set of colorful clip-in extensions, much to my chagrin.

Teddy and I called each other on our neighboring birthdays, just like last year, but we didn’t see each other again until March, when he got his license. He asked if I could convince my parents to drive me to meet up somewhere for a day, and so I hopped into Mom’s Jeep and we met in the middle: Middletown, Delaware, fittingly enough. It was a forgettable town with few things to do and fewer places to eat, but we got Hardee’s and went to a park, where we sat on swings damp with last night’s rainfall, and he told me he was going to enroll at his local community college over the summer.

“But you’re only sixteen,” I said.

He dragged his feet, carving deep ruts into the cedar chips. “Yeah, but it’s not like I have anything stopping me.”

I didn’t have a counter for that, despite a strange sort of discomfort bubbling beneath the surface. What would happen when he made older, cooler friends in college? What if he got a girlfriend? Where would that leave me? “What do you think you’ll major in?” I asked instead. I didn’t wait for an answer before adding, uncertain, “ Do you choose your major at community college?”

“I think you can. And I’m not sure yet. I guess I haven’t really found my calling.” He swung his swing sideways to nudge my foot with his, shooting me a wry smile. “But that’s what college is supposed to be for, right? Figuring it out. Plus it’ll get me out of the house. Away from my parents. Mostly my dad.”

“Tell me about them,” I said, without really thinking. He shot me an odd look. “It’s just that you’ve mentioned them before. It sounds like you don’t really get along.”

“I get along with them just fine. It’s more…” He seemed to hesitate, searching for the right words. “They don’t really get along with each other. They got married pretty young, I think. My mom, she always wanted to open a restaurant, but he didn’t want her to work. He said it was the way Harrisons had always done it, the man works, the woman stays at home and takes care of the kids. So she stayed at home. Didn’t fight it.” He scrunched up his face against the bright gray overcast. “I’ve always wondered if she decided to homeschool me just because she didn’t have much else to do.”

It was a familiar story—familiar enough, at any rate. My mom had given up her career to raise me, though she did take night classes to finish her degree when I was a toddler. But my parents didn’t resent each other. They were happy, I was pretty sure. “What sort of restaurant did she want to open?”

“Greek,” he said. “But not, you know, one of those places with the blue shutters and a mural of the Hill of the Muses or anything. We’d always pass by this empty brick building downtown and she’d describe it to me, the way she pictured it. All fancy. White tablecloths and chandeliers and stuff.”

“Too fancy for Allentown, Pennsylvania?” I guessed.

He held back a smile. “Maybe. Somebody finally rented it out, a couple years ago. It’s an office space now.”

We sat in contemplative silence for a minute, the swings creaking faintly.

“So, you go to college, build a career, and rent it out for her,” I said, hoping to lighten the mood. “Help her realize her dream.”

He chuckled under his breath, but he was staring at his feet. “More like I don’t let anyone stand in the way of my goals. I can’t imagine anything worse than just”—he shrugged, but even for a shrug, it lacked gusto—“repeating their mistakes.”

I nodded. I thought maybe I understood. Going to college early was proactive. Smart. But there was also this nagging feeling that our friendship had been a mere convenience, superfluous once he got out in the world and started meeting all sorts of interesting people. People who slotted in to the life he envisioned for himself with ease, like they were meant to be there. I wasn’t that person. We lived hours apart.

Over the past year, Teddy had become my closest friend, and above all else, I was terrified of losing that.

But I shouldn’t have worried.

Summer came and went, and my world didn’t come crashing down around me. When he mentioned his classmates, it was mostly in reference to group projects they were forced to work on together, or an answer he disagreed with—apparently, they weren’t all that interested in befriending a sixteen-year-old homeschooled kid. And when September rolled around, he signed up for all late-start classes so that he could still come to camp.

It was the third year in a row that they’d dragged us on a mandatory foraging hike along the Appalachian Trail—so, naturally, rather than spend another afternoon hunting down dandelions and wood sorrel and wild strawberries so small you could fit them in a thimble, we snuck off on a hike of our own, and Izzy and Darvish followed, both outright refusing to be left behind. We clambered over rocks and fallen branches up a steep incline, following the route that promised the best view. It was the third week of September, and some of the trees had started to turn, casting a warm golden glow over the trail.

“These fucking mosquitos,” Darvish moaned, swatting at the air. “They’re eating me alive.”

“Language,” Teddy muttered. “Have some manners.”

Izzy was leagues ahead of the rest of us, hardly breaking a sweat in her cut-off shorts and a bucket hat with the drawstring tightened beneath her chin, but our voices carried out here in the woods. She turned around to walk backward and spread her arms wide. “What, just because we’re girls, you can’t cuss in front of us?”

“I’ll cuss for you,” Darvish called up at her, clutching a hand over his heart and reaching out to her like Romeo in Capulet’s orchard. “I’ll say whatever you want me to say.”

“Sorry,” Izzy called back, “not my type.”

I bumped Teddy with my shoulder. “I’ve heard the sort of music you listen to. They’re not exactly shy with the word choice.”

“Just because I listen to a few songs doesn’t mean I say them.”

“How old are you again?” Izzy asked from her perch atop the jagged stump of a fallen tree, the decaying bark riddled with moss and lichen. She was already tall on level ground, but now, she towered over us.

“I’ll be seventeen in December,” he said.

She hopped down from the stump, landing back on the trail with a crunch. “Have you ever said the word ‘fuck’?” she asked as we kept walking. We were nearly to the top of the hill.

Teddy hunched his shoulders. “Once or twice.”

Izzy and I looked at each other, wide-eyed. “He totally hasn’t,” I stage-whispered.

“I’ve said plenty of… words,” Teddy protested. “I just prefer to save them for when I need them. You know, when I’m actually mad about something.”

“I was mad about the mosquitos,” Darvish said, but it went largely ignored because we crested the hill. A few yards away, the tree line ended in an outcropping of rock, and beyond that, sloping mountains stretched into the distance. The treetops were a mosaic of greens and golds, darker wherever the shadows of clouds passed over them.

Darvish bounded right up to the edge of the rock, so thoughtlessly that Izzy and I both let out sounds of protest. He planted his hiking boots wide, cupped both hands around his mouth, and shouted so loud it echoed across the mountaintops. “FUCK!”

A pair of chickadees skittered out of a mulberry bush, alarmed by the sudden sound. I turned to Izzy, my mouth agape. Her eyebrows were so high, they’d disappeared somewhere inside her bucket cap. For a few seconds, we just looked at each other. Then we burst into a fit of giggles.

“Real mature,” Teddy grumbled, plopping himself cross-legged on the stone.

In a flash, Izzy had joined Darvish at the cliff, throwing her arms wide enough that she almost smacked him in the face. “Son of a bitch!” she yelled at the sky.

“Come on.” I nudged Teddy’s shoe with mine, standing in front of him so that my body cast a long shadow. He squinted up at me, but he wasn’t saying no. “There’s no such thing as bad words,” I pointed out. “Just bad intentions.”

“I’m not sure that’s true,” he said, but by the muscle twitching in his cheek, I could tell he was holding back a smile. Wordlessly, I offered him a hand, and he accepted. With our fingers interlaced, I couldn’t tell whether it was my pulse or his that raced as I dragged him to his feet and led him over to the edge. Izzy and Darvish had probably already scared off any wildlife within a ten-mile radius. I let go of Teddy’s hand, held my hands to my mouth, and shouted at the top of my lungs. “Asshole!”

Teddy scrunched his face in the bright sun. “This is so childish.”

“What?” I teased. “Are you too mature for the rest of us, now that you’re a college student?” I poked him in the ribs and he flinched.

“No,” he said, covering his ribs with a protective hand.

“Then say a bad word.”

“What are you, five?” he asked, but he was laughing now.

“Say a bad word, Teddy!”

On his opposite side, Darvish had started a low-but-rising chant of “Say it, say it,” and Izzy joined in. Teddy’s gaze remained locked on me. The chanting got louder. I arched a brow and he shook his head, almost imperceptibly, but he was leaving me with no choice here. I joined the chant.

“All right, fine,” he said, exasperated. He took a deep breath and held it, his jaw working as he seemed to mull over his word of choice. Then he released it all at once, in a half-hearted, “Crap!”

Darvish gawked at him. “Man. That was weak. ”

Teddy mumbled something under his breath.

Izzy curled a hand around her ear. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

“I said ‘That’s bullshit,’” he said, a little louder this time.

“You have to shout it!” I said. His gaze flicked over me, at the excited way I was bouncing up and down on the balls of my feet, and he held back a smile. “Please,” I added, because suddenly this felt like some sort of ritual, binding our friend group together, and if he didn’t participate, I was worried that meant he already had one foot out the door.

He shook his head, holding my gaze for just a second longer before he turned to face the overlook.

And this time, he shouted as loud as he could.

We stayed at the overlook for most of the afternoon, shouting until our voices were ragged. We started the hike back down a couple hours before sunset, to give ourselves plenty of time to make it back to camp before it got dark. Darvish insisted that he and Teddy hike ahead, “just in case there are any bears or mountain lions or anything.” I didn’t have the heart to point out that there were no mountain lions this far east, and I was pretty sure neither of them was any match for a bear, but I hung back anyway. Izzy alternated between staring down at her dust-covered boots and throwing odd, covert glances at me, like she was trying to parse something out.

“What?” I asked after a while, feeling antsy beneath her gaze.

“You like him.”

I turned to her like a deer in headlights, startled into inaction.

“Teddy, I mean,” she clarified, nodding at the trail ahead, where Darvish had picked up a fallen branch and was brandishing it at his friend like a rapier. “I had a feeling last year, but I wasn’t sure, and then today, the way you guys kept looking at each other—”

I didn’t say anything, but her declaration made my heartbeat stumble, clumsy and awkward in my chest. Because it was true, but I hadn’t wanted to admit it even to myself, put words to this nervous jealousy that had taken over my life the past few months. I wasn’t just scared of Teddy meeting other friends. I was scared of him meeting a girlfriend, because then everything would change. But I was equally terrified of speaking those feelings out loud, because then our friendship would change anyway.

Slowly, I nodded.

“I knew it,” she hissed. “Oh my god, you have to tell him.”

Panic rose in my chest. “No,” I said, grabbing her sleeve. “Izzy, you can’t say anything, promise me.”

“Okay, okay,” she said, holding up her hands in surrender. “I won’t say anything.” After a moment’s hesitation, she added, “But you should.”

I shook my head, swallowing around a fist-sized lump. “I can’t.”

It was safer this way. Better to preserve what we already had than risk ruining it by admitting to something I could never take back. Something that didn’t quite fit into his careful life plan. It was only a crush. It would probably go away.