Grad

After we've all crossed the stage one by one, Mina and I both stand to present senior speaker remarks, which, this year, is our video. As it plays, we stay onstage, but off to the side. We get to watch everyone's faces change when they hear their own name. Jim Ferraby, Mina's square dancing partner from eighth grade, tells his best friend he's in love with her and hopes he's told her in person by now, and I want to laugh at how big my own feelings are to me, and how obvious and unoriginal they are when you zoom out, even in my tiny hometown. Lorraine tells Ruby she wishes she could do with words what Ruby does with a camera. She thanks Ruby for seeing her. Jamie Garrity thanks me for always holding the side door. At some point, I don't remember deciding to, but I take Mina's hand. I keep it close between us, folded in our robes so no one can see, just in case she'd be embarrassed.

When Quinn's face fills the screen, he says that Hollis is every human person's dream girl, and then he says, "Nah, nah, retake that, I can't say that," and it gets a standing ovation.

(Later that night, I hear from him, and Mina hears from her: He confessed to Hollis at the big grad party at Noah's lake house that he's actually never had full sex, technically, to completion, and he really doesn't want to go to college a virgin. So they do it in the parents' master bathroom, right in the tub, and then they take a bath together and make a giant mess. Quinn told Hollis it was the greatest night of his life, and she laughed so hard she got water up her nose. She told him she didn't know about the greatest night of her life, but that it was actually probably the best sex she'd ever had.)

When people stand for Quinn's video, Hollis stands, too, and takes a bow.

Then there is Mina, looking everywhere but the camera, elusive as always, saying that I am everyone's favorite person. And there's me, saying that she is mine. For one second, my stomach drops, to see my face so huge, open, and saying something I didn't even know was so true at the time, but I look down at Mina, and she is making the same face for me. I put our hands up in the air together, and everyone absolutely loses it. Then she gets this gleam in her eye. She's looking at me and shaking her head like she can't believe something, and then she kisses me, right onstage, in front of everyone. If graduation had been inside, the roof would have blown. The sound hits the stratosphere. Birds take off. Quinn is standing on his chair, wolf whistling and giving us both his middle fingers. A teacher has to pull him down, but there isn't much else they can do. They've already given him a diploma.

We let our moms take the cars, and we walk home holding hands. I don't think we've let go once since we started. People cheer for us as we pass by, friends and strangers; it's graduation day, and everyone is out on their porches to see the seniors on their way.

When we get to Corey Street, it's quiet. I tell her I love her again. She tells me she's taking a gap year and moving to New York. She is going to leave with Hollis to drive east as soon as next week, but she doesn't drop my hand while she says it. She tells me that if she stays for the summer, like this, with me, she will not be able to say good-bye. She will follow me to Michigan, and then everywhere, for the rest of her life. I want for one second to get down on my knees and beg her to do exactly that. Instead, I put my hand up to my face, because the sun is setting and bouncing off the houses' windows into my eyes, and I hum a bit of "Some Other Time."

She tells me she missed her dad today. She says she wishes he could know how she turned out, what she decided, and where she's going and not going. I tell her he would have been proud of her. I tell her he is proud of her. And then, because I want her to laugh and not cry, I tell her if she's leaving in a week or less, we have to have sex one hundred times before then.

Neither of our families are home yet, so we go up to my room and do it one and a half times, and then we start to fall asleep with all the windows open, because for one more day, we have nothing else to do. She is quiet, breathing on my chest, and I want to stop time, but the sun keeps setting. A slant of golden light slides down my bedroom wall. The room goes dark.

"You never fall asleep with the sun," I say into her hair. She smiles like she's already dreaming. "I don't need you to give me the summer or the rest of our lives, but thank you for this, right now."

She says my name.

She tells me she loves me for the first time.