Golden (5 page)

I set the envelope down and run my fingers over her name again. I wonder what things Julianna Farnetti kept for herself. What things she chose to write down or leave out. Maybe things she never had a chance to find out, or do, or be. If I think about it this way, it seems almost honorable to want to know who the real Julianna was. The girl behind the myth. It also gives me a reason to pick up the envelope again and slide my finger beneath the flap and the tape that has sealed it shut for a decade. When I do, the sound of it tearing away from the paper is the only audible thing in my room.

Carefully, I slide the black-and-white composition book out of the envelope, then turn it over in my hands. The edges of the pages aren't yellowed, like I expected. There's no musty smell to it. In fact it looks brand-new. Like it could've been written yesterday. The floor creaks on the other side of my closed door and startles me so much I nearly toss the journal out the window. It's nothing, though. Just my own guilt and the knowledge that if I actually open Julianna's journal, there's no undoing that act.

It makes my chest a little tight when I look down at it in my hands. Her name is written on the cover in the same loopy handwriting as the envelope, but over all the
i
's are little spirals instead of dots. I run my fingers over the rounded corners, lift the front cover away from the pages, just barely, then let it fall back into place where it belongs. Then, for the second time today, I feel like what I'm about to do is
wrong—but I do it anyway. The first page steals my breath. It's dated May 20.

Yesterday, ten years ago.

May 20

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?”

—
MARY OLIVER

I love this. Mr. Kinney had it written on the board this morning when we came in. Once we all sat down, he read the words out loud in his booming voice.

“Tell me,” he said, looking us over, “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? As seniors, this is relevant to you, isn't it? You're about to go out into the world and show it who you really are. What will you live for? Be passionate about? Define yourself by?”

He threw all of these big, rhetorical questions out, and no one said a thing, but I was thinking about it.

How do you begin to answer something like that?

“I want you to ponder these things,” he said. “Don't just give them a fleeting thought—take a careful look at yourself now. Then think about the question some more:
What will you do with this one wild and precious life of yours? There really is only one.”

He held up a handful of composition books as he went on. “So when the answers and ideas start coming to you, I want you to write them down in these.

“This is your last assignment in my class. You have from now until graduation day to write about who you are right now, who you want to be, what you want most—all of these things that will make up your one life.”

He stepped to the first desk in my row and handed Jenna a stack of journals to pass back, then moved on to the next one. “Be idealistic, dream big—now's your chance. You can write as little or as much as you want. Draw pictures, compose poems, it doesn't matter. I won't ever see them, and you won't earn a grade. But this—this is your most important assignment. It's for you and nobody else. When you're finished, you'll seal your notebooks up, and I'll pack them away. And ten years from now, the lives you've imagined for yourselves will come back to you—in your own words.”

I got goose bumps when he said that.

I love the idea of writing all these things down for ourselves to read later, but it's scary, in a way. How many people have gotten older and forgotten about the
things they hoped for and dreamed about when they were young? Or given up without ever taking a chance, or settled in life because it's easier, or they're scared, or whatever other excuses? How many people need a reminder of who they once were?

I don't ever want to be someone who needs to be reminded. I want to be someone bold, who takes risks and has no regrets. I want to have a life made of beauty and love and chance.

I can't know exactly what my life will be ten years from now. But whatever happens, when Kinney sends this journal to me, I hope I recognize myself in it. And that I see the beginning of something wild and precious, not some sad reminder of what could have been.

I close the book, wanting to take it back, what I've just done. This trespass is too sad. Ironic in the worst possible way, because I know how this story ends. I know the answer to her question about where she would be. An image of Julianna and Shane, suspended in the blue of Summit Lake, crystallizes in my mind, her blond hair splayed wide around her, her fingers entwined with his, both of them frozen in time, forever young, just like on the billboard.

A shiver runs the length of my body, and I shove the journal back into the envelope, then into my backpack. Zip it up tight. Slowly, the idea that I still have a chance to do
the right thing untangles the knot of regret in my stomach. I know exactly what to do with her journal now. Tomorrow I will seal it up again and send it back to Julianna, like she was promised ten years ago. I won't need any address or postage. Just a drive out to Summit Lake and something with enough weight to sink it all the way to the bottom.

“On the Heart's Beginning to Cloud the Mind”

—1934

When the phone rings before six a.m., I know there's no chance I'll be driving out to Summit Lake. It means last night's storm brought too much snow, too fast for the plows to have the roads cleared in time for the buses this morning. Which means no school either. I lie in the quiet dark of my room, relieved I don't have to get up anytime soon.

Julianna's words and my own guilt over reading them had run endless circles through my mind all night, keeping me floating in that strange, fitful space between sleep and consciousness. At some point the wind kicked up and the few flakes outside swirled together and multiplied
until they became a solid wall of white that blasted my windows for what felt like hours. I took it as a sign that I'd somehow disturbed the balance of nature when I opened up that envelope. That's how Shakespeare would've written it, anyway.

Now, in the calm of the morning, it feels like everything could've been a dream—the scholarship, the envelope with her name on it, and the journal inside. I almost wish it was, so I could pull my covers tight around me and sleep through the day. Or just enjoy it without worrying about anything else.

When I was little, snow days like this meant pulling on my boots and snowsuit and heading out into the white freedom. While my mom went off to her shop to do inventory or payroll or ordering (because God forbid she take a day off), my dad would switch his computer off and join me outside to build an igloo or sled run or snowman. It never took any coaxing, as he was well into his “writer's block” stage by then and seemed to welcome any reason not to sit in front of his computer waiting for words to come to him. On those days we'd stay out in the snow until we were starving and our fingers and toes were numb, then come inside for tomato soup and grilled cheese, his snow day specialty.

Those days had a magic to them that I think came from him being free from the weight of expectation, and happy to be out in the fresh air with me, soaking up life instead of watching it from his office window. Until my mom would walk back through the door and see that he'd spent the day
playing with me instead of writing his next award-winning poetry collection. Then the feeling would dissolve, and her silent disapproval would send him back to his office to “work,” and me up to my room to “read,” and we'd be back to the routine realities of life.

The knock at my bedroom door does the same thing. Before I can say
come in
, my mom does, bringing with her a cloud of perfume. Of course she's already dressed, made up, and accessorized. If you want to sell expensive clothes to tourists, you have to look the part, and she does, all in black with her dark hair pulled back into a low bun. She wears sophistication well.

“Parker, you awake? No school today. I'm going to walk over to the shop and get some inventory done. You want to come with? We could go over your speech some more. I had a few thoughts—did you get a lot done last night?” She stops talking long enough to take a sip from her leather-bound travel mug, then glances meaningfully at my desk.

“Yep,” I lie, “I did.” It's too early for the lecture I'll get if I tell her I haven't started yet.

Her face brightens and she steps fully into my room. “Want me to take a look at what you've got so far?”

“No, no, not yet,” I say, too quickly. I hop out of bed and put myself between her and the desk, swooping up my Robert Frost book in the process. “It's really rough still. Mostly just notes. I'm actually thinking of working in a poem if I can.” I hold the book up like a shield, hoping the Post-its sticking out from every direction are evidence enough I really have gotten started. “Dad has all the best ones marked in here.”

Her smile falters, almost imperceptibly. “Oh. Well that's . . . good. That's fine.”

Immediately, I feel guilty. I've just pushed a button I didn't mean to. The one where she somehow thinks I value his opinion over hers, like it's a competition. Poetry over pragmatism. “Actually,” I add quickly, “I'm really excited, because I think I can find one that ties in perfectly with all the things
you
were talking about last night.”

She clears her throat and ignores my attempt to smooth things over. “I put a roast in the Crock-Pot for dinner. Keep an eye on it and if the liquid gets too low, add a little broth. I'll be home around five.”

“Okay,” I answer. Without another word she steps back into the hall and reaches for the knob to close my door.

“Hey, Mom?” It surprises me when I stop her, but something in me wants to ask a question I thought about all night after reading Julianna's journal.

“Yes?” She raises her eyebrows expectantly.

I want to ask if she ever let go of something
she
dreamed of or hoped for. If she had things she used to want to be, or do, that she never got to. Instead I say, “It's sad that they died so young.”

She gives me a quizzical look.

“Shane Cruz and Julianna Farnetti, I mean. They missed out on so much.”

My mom's face softens a touch. “They did,” she says, nodding. “It was very sad. And that's why the family offers the scholarship every year—to give other young people a chance at everything the two of them missed out on.” She
pauses and looks at my desk again. “Maybe
that's
something you should keep in mind as you write your speech. You deserve that chance, Parker. Work hard today, okay?”

“Of course,” I answer. And I promise myself that I will.