The Start of Me and You (26 page)

“We’re here,” he announced. Here seemed to be a field of wild grass, rising above a rickety wooden fence. I climbed out of the car, glancing around for any reason we might be here.

Max pulled a blanket out of the backseat and gestured for me to follow him.

“Are you going to murder me?” I said with a straight face, hoping to make him laugh.

He did laugh as he shook his head. “Come on.”

Pulling himself onto the fence, Max swung his leg over and landed on the other side. I followed him over through the tall grass until we emerged in a clearing—a wide circle where all the grass was matted down.

“Okay,” I said. “What is this about?”

“This,” he said, “is about airplanes.”

“Airplanes.”

“Yep.”

Max fanned the blanket out on the ground and lay down before the breeze could lift it away. I lay down next to him and took a deep breath. I could almost hear words rustling between the trees—
summer, summer, summer
. And then, I was acutely aware that I was lying down, inches from Max. It was enough to push my heart rate into a jumpy staccato.

“What are we waiting for?” The words hung in the air for a moment, and I wondered if he knew what I meant. I was still tiptoeing, not daring to cross the friendship line.

“Magic,” he said. “Any second now.”

The wind stirred through the grass, and when it settled, the whole world was quiet. I stared up at the gauzy clouds obscuring most of the blue sky. My stomach tensed with anticipation. And then I heard it, in the distance—a low rumble, building and building. Above us, an airplane tore through the sky, the sound near-deafening into my ears.

I gasped, staring up at the plane’s metal underside, which seemed to be hovering right above our bodies. Almost as soon as I’d processed what was happening, the tail of the plane was out of sight, and the sound was fading and then distant and then gone. Neither of us moved. My hearing fuzzed over, readjusting to the relative silence.

“You know,” Max said, “a Boeing 747 can weigh up to eight hundred thousand pounds at takeoff.”

Max Watson, king of romance. Comments like these solidified it: he saw me as a friend. I glanced over at him, hoping his facial expression would explain why he’d said that. It didn’t. He was still staring up at the sky with an incredulous look on his face.

“But it flies,” he continued. He turned to look at me, as if he was teaching me brand-new information. “It’s pretty improbable, when you think about it. We’re so used to seeing planes, but there’s something about them that defies reason. You wouldn’t think it could happen.”

“I guess,” I said, sitting up. I had to admit, seeing a takeoff close-up made it seem surreal.

Max rolled onto his side. “I thought you might want to see it. Because of … you know … how you are.”

“Excuse me?” I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Skeptical,” he said. “A realist.”

I couldn’t hide my frown. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Nope.”

He sighed. “I mean you’re always preparing yourself for the thing that is most likely to happen, instead of hoping for the thing that you most want to happen.”

When you’ve been blindsided by grief, you tend to
imagine the worst in all things. It seemed easier to prepare for bad news in a way that I couldn’t with Aaron. I just hadn’t realized I’d been doing it with everything. Max didn’t seem to notice my dumbfounded self-reflection.

“Anyway, we’ll have to come back in the summer, when the fireflies are out,” Max said, stretching his arms behind his head as he lay back down. “Looking up, you can barely tell the difference between the fireflies and the airplane lights and the stars. Tiny flecks of light everywhere. It’s unreal.”

So Max saw us hanging out, just the two of us, this summer. One point in the “more than friends” column. See? I could hope for what I most wanted to happen.

“Hey,” I said. “Question. Why didn’t you go today?”

“Um, honestly?” He moved back to his side, facing me again. My heart spun in circles, frantic with the idea that maybe he’d ditched Honors Excursion just to be here with me. “Because my dad got in touch with me yesterday. Wants to see me, et cetera.”

My heart came to a halt. “Oh my God.”

He rolled his eyes. “He does it almost every year, a few weeks after my birthday. Gets to feeling guilty, maybe. Who knows. But this year, it’s under my skin because …”

I stayed quiet and still, just watching him as he paused to bite at his thumbnail. “… because I’m seventeen now. And he was nineteen when I was born. It’s getting harder
to deny that he was basically a kid. Anyway, I drove to school, but I just couldn’t get on the bus to the water park. I needed a quiet day.”

I felt relieved that I was no longer lying down on the blanket. It was too tempting to press myself close to him. To be so connected but not touching felt incongruous. And he looked so lost and lonely, in that moment. “So, do you think you’ll see him? Your dad?”

“Nope. I’m not there yet,” he said. We sat there for a few moments in the silence because, really, what could I say to that? Max gave me an almost self-deprecating smile. “All right. Enough of my drama. So why didn’t
you
go today?”

I pushed my bangs off my face. Of course I’d tell him after what he just told me. “Because of That Look.”

“What look?”

“The face people would have made when they saw Aaron Rosenthal’s girlfriend at a pool, where drowning opportunities abound.”

Max nodded, processing this.

“It’s lose-lose,” I continued. “Either I sit out of the pool, like I would have, and everyone feels sorry for me. Or I get brave and get in, and then everyone stares at me, wondering if I’m thinking of Aaron.”

“No one would think that,” Max said, as if he could have possibly known that. “You wouldn’t have gotten in?”

I hadn’t exactly meant to admit that part. “No. I don’t … can’t … swim anymore.”

Max sat up now, cross-legged on the blanket. “I didn’t know that.”

I shrugged. “I have a recurring nightmare about drowning. Apparently it’s pretty normal, a posttraumatic kind of thing.”

I could feel him looking at me, working through something for a few moments. “Is that how you think of yourself? As Aaron Rosenthal’s girlfriend? That’s what you said, before.”

“Ha,” I said. “No. But to everyone at school, I am.”

“Not to me.”

“Well, you weren’t in school when it happened.”

He dodged that one. “Why don’t you ever talk about him?”

His eyes read mine like the lines of a book—left to right and back, searching—and I had to glance away. “You’re full of questions today.”

“I brought you to my secret spot,” he said, gesturing around us. “I feel I’m owed a secret or two.”

“I didn’t know Aaron that well,” I admitted. This was a phrase I said in my head all the time but almost never out loud. “More of my life has been affected by his absence than his presence, and that’s a strange thing to deal with.”

Max nodded, the wind ruffling his hair. “You knew him
for a few months, but you’ve dealt with his death for much longer.”

“Right,” I said. “He, um … he changed me, completely. But it was his death that did that, not his life. It’ll be two years in July—two years of grappling with all this gray area. One-half of high school. Nearly one-eighth of my entire life.”

He glanced over at me, and I pushed a few strands of tousled hair behind my ear.

“You think about it a lot,” he said. “Enough to do the math.”

I nodded.

“When do you think you’ll be okay?”

“What makes you think I’m not?” I was so careful to seem okay to the rest of the world, carefully disguised by my
I’m fine
mask. But Max saw more than that, saw the cracks beneath the surface.

“You didn’t go today. You still fear drowning, still dream of it.”

He wasn’t wrong, but I felt the need to defend my efforts. Because I
was
making efforts. “Yeah, well. It’s on my list. I’m going to try to swim again. Eventually.”

“You have a list?”

“It’s just some things I’ve been trying, to help me move on.” I pressed my lips together. There was one fear that trumped drowning, the only fear I’d never spoken out loud.
“I mean, I’ve moved on from him, as, like, a boyfriend. But I’m not over his death. He was fifteen. It’ll never be okay. And so maybe I’ll never be okay, either.”

Without looking up at Max, I knew that his eyes were on me. I stared down into my lap, waiting for him to say something. There was a part of me that wanted to look up, to hope for what I most wanted to happen, but it wasn’t the time. I couldn’t let a conversation about Aaron lead to something with Max. I needed them to be separate.

We sat in silence for a moment more, my hands clammy. But I knew it was time to say it out loud—one last, dark truth about the day Aaron died.

“The part I can’t get past,” I said, “is that the people who were there—they said Aaron was messing around at the edge of the ravine. And they said he jumped. But what if he didn’t? What if he was joking around and fell?”

Max frowned. “Does it matter? I mean, wouldn’t it have …”

“Ended the same? Yes.” I stared at the grass, still avoiding Max’s eyes. “But that matters to me—whether it was a jump or a fall.”

“The difference being … ?”

“Choice,” I said. “Falling implies that it’s involuntary. A jump is intentional. I just wish I knew for sure that it was the latter. I want to believe that he felt happy as he hit the water. Not shocked or afraid.”

There was nothing Max, or anyone, could say to assure me either way. It was something I’d discussed in therapy, at length. I had accepted that this question would sit inside me, maybe forever, and that would have to be okay. But still, like everything else, it felt better to tell Max.

“Okay,” he said, standing up. “Let’s go. We’ve gotta make one more stop.”

Chapter Twenty

I expected Max to take us to a restaurant for a late lunch or maybe drive to Alcott’s to spend the rest of the afternoon reading and drinking coffee. I did
not
expect him to pull into the parking lot of the YMCA.

“What are we doing here?” I asked, climbing out of the car.

Max spun his keys around his finger. “You’ll see.”

“I haven’t been here since I was little,” I rambled as we walked into the building. “For swim lessons.”

That’s when I realized what we were doing there.

“Max,” I hissed, grabbing his arm before he could open the door. “Why are we here?”

“I just want you to see the pool,” he said. “Maybe dip your legs in.”

That seemed reasonable enough, but I didn’t like it. In Max’s glasses, I could see my pulled-together eyebrows, trying to trust him. He must have known my decision because he pushed the door open, and I followed him in.

“I’m not a member,” I said as my final effort.

“I am,” Max said, waving at the guy at the front desk.

“Hey, Max,” the guy said.

“Hey, Gus,” Max said. “Pool open?”

“You betcha,” he replied. “But no lifeguard this time of day, so be careful, eh?”

At this, I smacked Max’s arm. Hard. He ignored me, giving a nod to Gus before heading toward the pool. I remembered it, vaguely—the high ceilings and walls painted to look like blue waves.

The indoor pool was deserted, and the water lay so still that I could see the perfect lines painted onto the bottom, marking swim lanes. Humid air and the thick scent of chlorine filled my nose and lungs.

“No way.” I planted my feet just beyond the door. “I don’t even have a bathing suit.”

“That’s okay.” From the lifeguard station, Max grabbed a big beach towel with YMCA stamped on its corner.

He sat down by the deep end of the pool. He pulled off his sneakers, rolled up his jeans and slipped his legs in the water. From behind him, I crossed my arms, trying to grow roots into the cement floor.

“See?” he said, turning to look at me. “We don’t have to miss out on all the pool festivities. Plus, it’s the first warm day of the year. What could be better than dipping your feet in the water?”

“
Not
dipping my feet in the water.”

Max patted the tile next to him, and I stepped closer. Putting my feet in the water was no big deal. It was the idea of putting my
head
underwater that stoked a fire in my chest, the burn of phobia deep inside me.

I popped my shoes off before I could change my mind. Shoving my jeans up, I sank my legs in the water. It was warmer than I thought it would be, and it felt almost soothing, the way it did before I associated water with death.

“You good?” Max asked.

I nodded. Our legs were nearly touching, and he kept quiet, as if he knew I needed a minute.

Finally, I said, “It’s weird. You’re supposed to associate water with cleansing. And I guess I always did, before Aaron. I used to love to swim.”

I swirled my legs in circles in front of me. “It’s still so weird to me that it was
water
that killed Aaron. Somehow, I think coming to terms with the idea of death somehow got linked to water. Like it had betrayed me, or something.” I heard my words as they were spoken and how crazy I sounded. “I guess that’s weird.”

“No, it’s not,” Max said. “I was
pissed
at cancer after
my grandpa died—it was Cancer, with a capital
C
. Like it was a person who I could punch in the face, if I could only find him.”

In my peripheral vision, I saw Max turn to look at me. I glanced over at him, our shoulders just an inch apart.

“You should jump in,” he said.

“No,” I said hotly. “No way.”

I retracted my feet from the water, spooked at the very idea. I scrambled up, taking a few steps back from the pool. I hadn’t expected Max to spring this on me, to ambush me into overcoming a fear after I’d stayed home from Honors Excursion specifically to avoid it. He stood up, too, turning to me.

“I just … I know you, Paige.” At the sound of my real name, I knew he meant business. That one word—more persuasive than anything else he could have said. “This is something you can do. You don’t have to miss out on things like you did today.”