I’ll Meet You There
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Authors: Heather Demetrios
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For Mom, Dad, and Papa
Contents
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase
each other
doesn’t make any sense.
—Rumi
The Mitchells’ backyard was packed, full of recent and not-so-recent grads in various
stages of party decay. The girls leaned against one another, wilted flowers that looked
on while the guys got louder, sweatier.
I craned my neck and scanned the crowd for Chris, but my wingman had disappeared.
“Shit,” I muttered.
Like I needed any more confirmation of my loner status. I moved purposefully through
the crowd, on a mission. The last thing I wanted was to have some drunk dude notice
I was alone and try to hit on me.
A girl to my right stumbled, spilling her beer on my All Stars. I had to reach out
an arm to steady her before she stabbed me in the toe with her stilettos. I sighed
and shook my foot.
“Thanks!” she said, more to the air than me, as she turned back to the knot of girls
beside her.
“Skylar!”
I turned around—Chris was over by the keg. When I raised my arms like,
WTF
, he turned over his empty cup, then made a sad face and pointed to the line of red-faced
guys in front of him. Obviously he hadn’t taken me very seriously when I’d said,
Let’s get out of here as quickly as possible.
I pulled out my phone and started texting Dylan while I made my way to Chris. Knowing
her, she was probably in the back seat of her boyfriend’s beat-up Chevy Malibu, but
I wanted Brownie points for coming out at all. Really, I was only here to see Josh
Mitchell, this Marine I used to work with who had just come home from Afghanistan.
I could have waited to see him some other time, but it seemed like a dick move; someone
comes back from fighting a war, you go to their homecoming party.
U still here? Looking for Josh.
No answer.
People stumbled through the Mitchells’ back door, probably looking for the bathroom
or somewhere to hook up. Every now and then, someone would wander out grinning stupidly
from Reggie Vasquez’s hastily rolled joints. Linkin Park blared inside the house,
and I wondered what the night would feel like if someone switched the soundtrack from
angry kick-the-shit-out-of-stuff to Ben Harper or the Chili Peppers.
I stopped by the doorway when I saw a flash of long blond hair, but it wasn’t Dylan
so I backed away, ignoring the
what’s she doing here
looks people were shooting at me. They weren’t mean-girl looks—I just didn’t belong.
Didn’t want to.
Drunken laughter erupted from groups of partiers at regular intervals, but not because
anything was funny. It was like laughter was just something you were supposed to
do
. I scanned the faces around me: the usual crew of locals from my high school. There
were also a lot of slightly older faces—Josh Mitchell’s friends, partying with the
teenagers, doing the same thing they had done every Saturday night since they were
in junior high: Drink. Smoke. Screw. Repeat.
Chris walked toward me, sipping on his frothy beer as he picked his way across the
lawn. He was wearing the shirt I’d given him for graduation, the words
mathematician
and
ninja
under the heading
CAREER
GOALS
. He held out a can of Coke like a peace offering.
“Dude,
you never, never leave your wingman
,” I said. “Didn’t you learn anything from
Top Gun
?”
I had this thing about
Top Gun
—it was my dad’s favorite movie, and I’d been obsessed with it since I was six.
“I told you I was getting a beer! I thought you were behind me when I made the turnoff
at the kitchen.” He gave me the puppy-dog eyes that always got me laughing, and I
grabbed the Coke, trying to keep my lips from turning up.
“Well, thanks for this.” I hit the can against his plastic cup. “To graduating,” I
said.
“Hell, yeah, to graduating!”
It had only been three hours since the ceremony ended, but it looked like any normal
Creek View night. I shouldn’t have expected it to feel different. I knocked the Coke
back like it was eighty proof, keeping my eyes peeled for Josh Mitchell.
It’d been no surprise when Josh joined the Marines two years ago. Like most of the
guys in Creek View, his choices had been limited: the military, truck driving, or
crappy part-time jobs along the highway. We lived in a blink town—blink and you’ll
miss it—off California’s Highway 99. It was just a trailer park, a few run-down houses,
a couple of businesses that barely made enough to keep their doors open, and the Paradise
Motel (aka my part-time job).
Though we’d worked together at the Paradise and I’d grown up around him, I’d been
weirdly shy when Josh came up to me in his uniform, his head all shaved, calling me
ma’am. I’d asked if he was scared, and he said no, that this was as good as it would
get for him. He couldn’t wait. For a minute we’d just looked at each other and then
I kissed his cheek—which surprised both of us—and told him good luck. Then he was
gone.
“Have you seen Josh yet?” I asked.
Chris shook his head. “No, but I wasn’t going out of my way to hang out with a jarhead
the night of my graduation.”
“Insensitive much?”
Chris snorted. “Josh Mitchell is a dick. I’m only here for the free booze.”
“That’s pretty much why everyone’s here,” I said.
“True that. Listen, since we’re stuck in this backyard until the American hero graces
us with his presence,” Chris said, “I vote we get shit-faced and freak out the squares.
We can tell our grandkids how we got all crazy when we were youngsters.”
This was our little joke, calling the Creek View kids
squares
when I’d never had a sip of alcohol in my life and we were probably the only virgins
over the age of sixteen in our zip code.
“I bet you’ll look good with bifocals and a walker,” I said. “Grandpa Chris.” A smile
sneaked onto my face.
“You having a moment?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m having a moment.”
“Nice.”
I’d been like this all night; we’d be doing whatever and then I’d remember we were
finally getting out of Creek View. Hopefully for good. And I’d get these mini joygasms,
like,
yes
. Even the girl throwing up into an overflowing trash can a few feet away couldn’t
really kill the buzz of satisfaction that had been humming inside me all day.
I took another sip of my Coke, then set it on a broken lawn chair. “But me getting
sentimental doesn’t mean I want to waste any more of my life at this party. Josh has
gotta be here somewhere.”
“Mitchell!” a voice yelled over the crowd. “Hook me up!”
Wrong Mitchell.
Blake, Josh’s brother and my sort-of ex, was walking through the back gate, a twelve-pack
of Bud on his shoulder and another one dangling from his hand.
Why, why,
why
had it seemed like such a good idea to hook up with Blake after an entire adolescence
of pretty much zero boy action? And
Blake
, of all freakin’ people!
As if reading my thoughts, Chris patted me on the back. “Hey, you could have done
worse. Imagine if you’d spent spring break making out with
Josh
instead of Blake? You chose the better brother by far.”
I glared at him. “
Not
comforting.”
It was still hot, but a cool breeze swept through the party, and I rubbed my arms
to erase the goose bumps that scattered across my skin. California tricks you like
that—a scorching hot day, and you still need a sweater once the sun goes down.
“This is the most anticlimactic graduation night in the history of graduation nights,”
I said.
“Agreed.”
“What’s up, bitches?”
I turned around: Dylan was dancing her way toward us, shaking her hips to the music.
Whoever was playing DJ had switched from Linkin Park to hip-hop.
“Hey, Mama.” Chris whistled, and Dylan did a little pirouette as she got closer.
“Hey, hey,” she said.
“Where’s Seanie?” I asked, my eyes automatically straying to Dylan’s left hip.
Sean was Dylan’s six-month-old. I’d been helping take care of him, insisting on Dylan
doing her homework so that we could graduate together, on time.
“The little man is with his grams—probably watching so much
CSI
he’s gonna become the youngest serial killer in the history of murder, but whatever.
This mama had to get out.”
A stab of sadness shot through me at the thought of saying good-bye to Dylan at the
end of the summer. Dylan had been my neighbor since we were little, but she became
family after she punched someone in the face for calling my daddy a drunk. That someone
had been our Sunday school teacher. I’ll never forget how nine-year-old Dylan had
rolled her eyes at the blood spewing from our teacher’s nose, then turned to me and
said, “She puts the
trash
in white trash, huh?” It was a favorite saying of her mother’s.
I didn’t want to think about days without Dylan’s brassy commentary on everything
from tamales to tampons. I had the urge to grab her in a bear hug, but I didn’t know
how to explain missing her while she was standing right next to me.
Dylan looked over her shoulder, then leaned forward. “Did you hear about Lisa?”
