The Boy I Love (25 page)

There were days in that second semester at Williamsport High when I sure wished Tim and I had gone back to Cutty River with Allie and Jesse. Days when Devon would make a snide remark to me (he seemed to generally ignore Tim, which I guess was bad enough considering they used to be friends), or someone would slip a nasty note into Tim's locker. Tim had to get a new cell phone number because he kept getting crank calls, and he shut down his Facebook account.

Most days, though, people left us pretty much alone. Probably they were a little confused because Tim and I were still best friends, which to the outside world looked exactly the same as boyfriend and girlfriend. We both got parts in the spring production of
A Midsummer Night's Dream
. Tim played Lysander, which is the lead romantic role. Caroline Jones played Hermia, another big romantic role, and I played a fairy named Peaseblossom, which is pretty much the smallest role in the entire play. But it was fun to be back with the old gang for afternoon rehearsals, and those are the moments that I think I will miss when I happen to look back on my last year in North Carolina. This time, as you might imagine, Caroline Jones did not host the cast party. It was at somebody else's house, and pretty much as many people got drunk as at Caroline's, just not the same people.

For a while there was talk of Tim enrolling at Hillsdale and coming north with us. In the end it was Tim
who ended up saying no to that. He told his mother he would miss her too much, and that he wanted to stand his ground at Williamsport. I happen to know the real reason is that he and Jay have been meeting for walks and occasional breakfasts on the weekends—when Tim is supposedly going for walks or having breakfast with me. If you think this doesn't make me jealous, you are positively wrong.

Like the world, I still have a good deal of growing up to do.

*   *   *

By mid-June school let out, and most everything in our house was gone. Here's what we ended up keeping: Mom and Dad's wedding china, family pictures, most of our clothes, plus Dad's bird books, telescope, and binoculars, and Mom's and my saddles. We kept the laptop computer. We kept the station wagon but sold the Jeep. Pretty much everything else—the desktop computer, every stick of furniture and appliance and lamp and pots and pans and you better believe Dad's rifles—we sold or donated. It almost got so I couldn't wait to move; it felt like living in a ghost town. No matter which room I walked into, all I could think of was what used to be there. The last horses had been placed, and Pandora was already on her way up north. A Thoroughbred retirement center in New Hampshire had taken Sombrero, and they'd offered to give Pandora a ride up with him. The person who'd taken Sombrero was such
a nice man that he said he wouldn't make Sombrero available for adoption for at least a year, so that if we got back on our feet, Mom could adopt him back. In the meantime he'd be close enough so that she could go and visit and even ride him. Mom said that center had almost closed too, so he understood how she felt. One good thing about going down the tubes at the same time as so many other people: You find a lot of sympathy.

With all the horses gone, there was pretty much nothing to do at my house, so nearly every day Allie, Jesse, Ginny, and I met Tim at the Cutty River Landing swimming pool. Sometimes Caroline and Tyler would come by, but mostly it was the five of us, and we all got along so well it seemed even more a shame that we wouldn't be at the same school next year. What really drove me crazy was all the time we'd wasted. If Tim hadn't had to worry about keeping himself a secret, the whole misunderstanding between Allie and me would have been cleared up in an instant. It's amazing how much trouble gets caused just by people not wanting to mind their own business. No matter how many times I go through it in my brain, I can't think why anyone else in the world should care whether Tim Greenlaw likes guys or girls. If the one person in the world who happens to have a legitimate gripe about it—me!—is willing to accept him for who he is, then what's your problem? Not that you have a problem. At least, I
hope you don't, not after everything I've just told you.

The other day I saw a picture on the Internet of a man at a rally for marriage equality. He was holding up a sign that said, IF GOD HATES GAYS, WHY ARE WE SO CUTE? I printed it out and gave it to Tim. He showed it to his mother, and you know what she did? She hung it up on the refrigerator. Now that's what I call progress.

*   *   *

So finally it loomed right in front of us, July 2, the day we'd leave North Carolina for good. On top of everything else it would be the first birthday that I could remember not spending with Allie. She and I decided to have a last celebration a little early. We batted around different things to do, like having a small party, or maybe camping at the Old Farthing Road, but that didn't seem much fun without horses. So in the end we just planned on going out to dinner and then sleeping over at her house. I drove to the restaurant myself, all the way from Leeville.

Allie sat waiting for me at a table by the window. She had a little wrapped box with a bow on the plate in front of her. Even though we were celebrating my birthday, I'd brought a present for her, too, and I fished it out of my bag as soon as I sat down.

“You first,” I said, as she handed me my present, and she went ahead and opened it. It was an antique frame I got at a special shop. “I thought you could frame your
first picture in it,” I explained. “You know, from a magazine.”

“Hey, you have great timing,” Allie said, beaming. Then she smiled even wider. “Because guess what? I have a job!” She told me she was going to be photographed in a local tourist brochure for Wilbur Beach. “If the pictures are good, I might even be on the cover,” she said.

Wow! “That's amazing,” I said. “You have to promise you won't forget me once you're a supermodel.”

“If you promise not to forget me once you're a Yankee, and a famous Broadway singer. Here,” she said, moving the little box to my plate. “Open mine.”

In the box was little silver necklace with a pendant that looked like a heart that had been ripped in half. She'd had it engraved with her name, Allie, in pretty script. When I looked back at her, she grabbed the necklace she was wearing and held up the pendant. It was the other half of the heart, and it was engraved with the name Wren.

My eyes filled up with tears, and as soon as they did, so did hers. She reached across the table for my hand, and I gave it to her. “Oh, Wren,” she said. “I'm so sad you're moving away just when things are getting right between us. I'm so sorry about everything.”

I almost said,
It's okay
, then remembered that I hadn't been the best friend in the world either, and the better thing to say was, “I'm sorry too.” And I
was
sorry, for the time
we'd lost, and that we wouldn't see each other again till who knew when. But mostly I just felt glad, and relieved, that the two of us were friends again.

*   *   *

By our last night in North Carolina I had said good-bye to everyone who needed saying good-bye to. Holly and Tim both came to spend the night, to say good-bye to the farm and to us. Dad went out to get barbecue from Casey's. Before he got back with the food, Tim and I walked through the house with Holly. Now that the place wouldn't belong to us anymore, Holly could take this one evening to remember the things she loved about it. “Mama used to sew in here,” she said, standing in the empty room that used to be Dad's study. “She made my prom dress, do you believe that? I went to prom in a homemade dress, like a real country girl.”

Tim and I left her to say good-bye to her old room—which would soon also be my old room—by herself, and went out to join Mom and Dad at the picnic table. After a bit Holly came down too, her eyes red like she'd been crying. By now Mom and I had cried so much for this place that our eyes were finally dry. Dad had just come back with the food, and we sat around the picnic table and ate it off paper plates, with plastic sporks and knives.

We stayed out there, talking and eating, until the sun went down. Then Dad went inside and came back with an
old Mason jar. He knelt down and started digging dirt with his hands and pouring it into the jar. When it was half-full, he sealed it up and gave it to me.

“I'm at peace leaving this place behind,” he said. “But Wren, I think you ought to take this bit of it with you.”

I could feel Daisy's tail, thumping across my feet. That familiar home-smell of Confederate jasmine wafted through the air. I didn't look at the jar with the dirt in it. Instead I turned around and looked out over the fields, which used to have cotton and rice but as long as I lived here had only been used to graze horses. I looked past the magnolia and trumpet tulip trees, to where the river ran under a canopy of moss and vine. I thought of all the times I had walked or ridden up and down our dusty driveway. It seemed to me that I had done all the thinking I could stand doing about what had happened here, so many years before I was born. Losing this land, plus all the deep sorriness in my heart, was all the penance I could bear to pay. At least for right now.

“Thanks, Dad,” I said. “But I don't think I need to take this dirt. I have enough under my fingernails to last me my whole life.” I pushed the jar back across the table. He looked at me a long minute, and then he opened up the jar and spilled it on top of the grass beside him.

“Okay, Wrenny,” he said. “Okay.”

Mom stood up and started sweeping all the paper plates
into a garbage bag. We had to eat everything, because there was no place to keep it—my parents had gone and sold the refrigerator. I'm not sure if the new owners knew how much they'd be starting from scratch out here. When I stood up, my belly was so full that I thought I might have to sit directly back down. But Tim said, “Do y'all mind if Wren and I take a walk?”

“No,” Dad said. “Bring Daisy with you.” As if we had a choice! The second we headed down the road, Daisy bounded after us, her collar jingling.

The night felt hot and close and muggy. Mosquitoes buzzed around our heads, and the crickets and southern toads were whooping away the night like it was some giant party. Tim grabbed my elbow and steered me toward a little clearing beside the river. The two of us sat down together on a wide tree stump.

“Have you ever been to New Hampshire before?” Tim asked.

“No. New York is the farthest north I've been.”

“Washington, DC, for me.”

“I've seen pictures of the school, though,” I said. “Lots of pine trees. I guess there's no jasmine, though.” It was hard not to think of this last fragrance, since it bloomed all around us, rising into the air with the sounds.

“There'll be other things,” Tim said.

“Maybe you can visit me there.”

“And you can come back here.” He put his arm around me, and we stared out at the river, not saying what we knew was the truth of it—that two teenagers probably wouldn't be doing a whole lot of traveling on their own. I thought about telling Tim how much I was going to miss him next year, and how glad I was for his friendship, and maybe even that I loved him. I thought about saying,
Tim, you were my first love, and right now you're my only love, and I'll never be sorry.

But I didn't, because just then I saw on the river what I'd thought was a log, floating near the top, and a pair of eyes, peering out of the water, watching us.

“Tim,” I whispered, pointing.

He squinted through the semidarkness, and I heard a little intake of breath. “Dang!”

Without saying anything, we managed to agree on what to do, which was jump off that stump and tear back up to the house. We'd barely gone fifty feet before we started laughing, which got Daisy barking. So that's how we got back to the house, nearly doubled over and panting from running and laughing like two nutcases, while Daisy ran in mad, barking circles all around us.

Mom, Dad, and Holly spilled out of the house in a ribbon of light.

“What, Wren?” Mom said, grabbing onto me. “What on earth?”

“The alligator's back,” I said, gasping, laughing.

It's hard to explain, exactly, why I felt so happy. But I broke away from my mom and fell into Tim's arms. He held me tight while I laughed against his shoulder, the two of us holding on for dear life, not thinking about how we'd have to let go in the morning, just glad to have each other right now.

Tim's arms felt old-Tim strong. I pulled back, away from him, staring into his freckly face, drinking in the smiley happiness that had started to return to it. I looked at that face, Tim's face, and I thought how I loved him. Then I let myself be honest, for a moment, about how I wanted the world to be.

I wanted my family to keep our farm, and all our horses, and never have to say good-bye to Leeville. In this dreamworld, Tim would not be gay. He would be my boyfriend, the best boyfriend in the whole world, staring back at me with all the desire I had in myself for him.

But seeing as the world was not that way, I saw something else in Tim's face. And it made me stand a little taller. Because maybe nothing would ever be exactly the way I wanted it. But if Tim had the courage to stay here, in this imperfect place, then the least I could do was have the courage to leave it.

“I love you, Tim,” I said.

“I love you, too, Wren.”

And you don't need me to tell you that
I love you, too
is never quite the same as
I love you
. But that was all I had, so I took it. Along with everything else I'd learned from him, to face the unknown future, waiting just a day away.

*   *   *