Meet Me Here (6 page)

Mallory’s hand is a blur across Steve’s face. “Shut up,” she says, her voice quiet.

That’s enough for me. I take Steve by the shirt, the way you would a toddler who’s about to run into the road, and drag him back to the fire with everybody following. I push him away, ready for him to come right back at me. Instead, he straightens out his shirt and cusses a guy who comes over to help.

Wayne comes up beside me, looking more than happy to get involved. But I don’t need him.

“Stay away from her,” I tell Steve.

“Yeah? And what are you going to do if I don’t?”

“Hey, Steve,” Wayne says. “You might need a pad of paper so you can jot down all the things my boy could do to you.”

This punctures the tension, and a few people laugh. Not Steve.

“I’d like to see him try,” he says.

Wayne is standing next to Steve now. He puts his hands on his shoulder and says, “Now, why are you going to go and ruin everybody’s graduation by getting yourself killed? Sin, get this man a beer.”

Sinclair grabs a beer and hands it to Steve, who, after
a second of hard staring at me, takes the bottle and says, “Whatever. Fuck him.”

Wayne claps. “That’s right, son. Live to fight another day.”

When I turn back to my truck, Wayne steps across the fire and walks with me. “What the hell was that about?”

“Nothing. Just Steve being an asshole,” I say.

Mallory is leaning against my truck, staring down at her cell phone. The screen lights up her face. “If Will comes up here, tell him we went to South Carolina or something.”

“Myrtle Beach. Hell, yes. If you weren’t leaving for the damned army, we’d be doing that shit right now.”

“I’m going to take Mallory home,” I say. “And then—”

Wayne gives me a salute, then laughs. He pulls me into a hug. “Shit, Bennett. Next time I see you you’ll be one of those sexy ass men in uniform types. Hell,
that’s
when we should go to Myrtle Beach.”

Mallory’s phone goes off, and she silences it. It rings again almost immediately.

“Be good,” Wayne says. “All right?”

One more hug, and Wayne’s gone, back to the fire. The last thing I hear him say is “I thought graduation was supposed to be drama free. Somebody—Sin!—beer me.”

Mallory is deleting texts off her phone, then voice messages, shaking her head the whole time. Without looking up she says, “I shouldn’t have slapped him. But he deserved it.”

“The way I see it, you’re two for two tonight,” I say. “Two assholes, two more-than-appropriate hits.”

She finally looks up from her phone and says, “Will’s not an asshole. It’s . . . complicated.”

She closes her eyes, the phone buzzing in her hands. I take it from her—Will, of course—and silence it. She looks up at me, and I try to explain what I’m feeling.

“Do you remember when my dad made me cut my hair?” I ask.

She looks confused at first, but then she smiles. “You worked so hard growing it out, too. It really did look nice.”

“Well, he’d argue that point with you—probably even today,” I say, trying not to get distracted. “I came to school the next day, and what did you tell me?”

She laughs out loud. “That I was going to shave my head, too. I was nothing if not loyal.”

“Wait.
What
?”

“I was going to shave my head,” Mallory says flatly.

“I don’t remember that!”

Mallory screws up her face momentarily and says,
“You don’t? We had that whole conversation about how scary I’d look.” As she says it, she cups the front of her hair and pulls it behind her hand, making it look like she’s bald. I laugh.

“God, I don’t remember any of this. But that’s not the point. What I remember is—” Her phone goes off in my hand, and I want to do something dramatic, throw it into the dark quarry. Instead, I silence it and put it in my pocket.

“I’ve got an idea.”

The playground is older but otherwise no different from when we were in elementary school. Mallory climbs the steps to the clock tower, which seemed impossibly tall to us as first graders and the height of freedom when we were in fifth grade. She runs her hand along the smooth wood, recently repainted. White as cotton. If I wanted to, I could jump and touch her hand.

“I always loved it here,” she says, surveying the playground. “Do you remember when I told everyone the wood had termites so nobody else would play on this thing?”

“That worked for about five minutes.”

“I still hate Miss Hoffman for ruining that scam.”

“We were prodigies, obviously.”

She finally smiles. “Something like that.”

I stand on the bottom of the slide, coming eye level with Mallory. “But it’s finally worked out,” I say. “The whole place, all to ourselves.”

She rolls her eyes. “C’mon, I want to swing.”

I pull myself up, over the railing and follow her across the suspension bridge, still able to hold both of us, and down a second slide that’s barely wide enough for me. And then she’s sitting on the swings again, just like I remember. She could have scabbed knees and a fist in my face the way she’s hanging on to the swing’s chains, leaning forward as she talks.

“Five bucks says you quit before me.”

I look at the swing and think about the 120 pounds that have come to pass since I’ve last been on it. But Mallory doesn’t wait; she pumps her arms and legs, sweeping back and forth in front of me. I jump on my swing and try to catch up.

The wind mutes her laughter, the shriek of objection when she realizes I’m going higher than she does. She tries to change physics, but the extra work she’s doing only slows her down. Soon we’re moving together. Our feet
almost touch heaven, and then we come back, falling just as quickly as we rose. Over and over again we rise and fall, making eye contact each time our backs are at the sky. On the next push forward, at the height of the swing, Mallory lets go.

When she lands, I’m sure she’s broken something. The notebook, which has been in her pocket, ends up a few feet away. Her body convulses on the ground, and I leap off my swing after her. But once I kneel down next to her, I realize she’s laughing.

“Did you see that? I never got this far as a kid.”

“You almost hit the monkey bars.”

“Exactly. Third graders ain’t got nothing on me.” She struggles to catch her breath before saying, “Life was better when we were kids, wasn’t it? Do you remember how long it took for Christmas? For our birthdays? A year took
forever
. You had to figure out all kinds of things to do while you waited. Now it’s just like”— she makes a zipper noise and swipes a finger through the air—“zoom. Done. You make a decision, and it happens. You barely have to wait for anything.”

“I don’t know. Look at Sinclair. He’s going to be waiting for NASCAR for a long time.”

I realize too late that when she laughs this time, it’s different. It turns to tears, which quickly turn to all-out sobbing. She grabs my neck and holds tight. I can feel her tears on my shirt.

“It’s stupid,” she says. “I was so stupid.”

“It’s going to be okay. You can call him. Right now, if you want.”

This makes her cry harder, and when she shakes her head, I’m confused. Before, I would’ve thought it was your typical graduation breakup. Or maybe it was just a fight that got out of hand. But Steve was so adamant, such an asshole . . . it doesn’t make sense.

A phone vibrates, and Mallory touches her pockets until we both realize it’s mine. She lets go of me and wipes her eyes, as I look at the screen: Mom. I silence the phone, and it’s not dark two seconds before it lights up again, buzzing angrily in my hands.

“You should answer it,” she says.

“They just want me to come home,” I say.

She’s quiet for a second. “Maybe we should. You’ve got so much going on. You don’t need all of this.”

The truth of her statement feels true, a blanket securely wrapped around me. But she still looks so lost, enough
that I have no idea how I could even begin to help her—even if we stayed out all night and a hundred more after that. Whenever I got this way, her answers seemed effortless. Her plans, perfect. And now that it’s finally my turn, I’m coming up short.

“Well, we need to go bury the can before we go home,” I say.

It’s all I’ve got. Every card, on the table.

She sniffs, nods. “And the sign, too. That way it’s always there. Our little secret.”

I want to take her by the hand, put my arm around her, something. But when she stands up and wipes her legs off, it feels like an ending, a natural stopping point. Something neither of us can deny. As we walk to my truck in silence, that same hollowness that’s filled my stomach for months returns. All that’s left is to go home, take my lumps, and then wake up in the morning and finally leave.

When we get to the bridge, I park the truck in the same place as before. Mallory opens her door, carrying the coffee can and sign with equal reverence. We bury the can in its original hole first and then wrap the sign in an old T-shirt and start digging a bigger, wider hole together.

Mallory is quiet, but the work unearths something inside me, kinks in my memories of these sorts of moments. They always had an old-movie nostalgia to them, a fuzzy warmth. But more often than not, when we found ourselves here at the end of the day, it was always just like this: wringing out one more hour before I had to go catch hell for whatever reason.

The hole’s plenty deep, but I’m still digging. Still trying to figure out why my dad has always pushed Jake and, in a different way, me. I see so many people at school who have succeeded in sports or academics, who are tough and brave, and they don’t have to worry about this shit. The expectations they carry begin and end with personal happiness.

Mallory reaches out and touches my arm. I’m dirty, out of breath, and on the verge of tears. She picks up the sign, holding it high for both of us to see one last time, and gently puts it in the oversized hole. It only takes a few seconds to cover it back up. Like we were never here.

“We need a rock to mark it. Unless you want to make a treasure map,” she says. “Sixteen steps north. When you see the hooked nose rock, turn left and stand on one foot. That sort of thing.”

I don’t say anything, and she bumps me once with her hip.

“I don’t think anybody’s going to come looking for it,” I say.

“No, for when
we
come back,” she says. “Next time.”

I have to look away, staring into the dark field as she
searches for a rock. We didn’t come out here much at night. Fourth of July, the rare times when our parents left us alone with Jake as a baby-sitter. Even then we had to be sneaky. We had to move quickly and deliberately. Half the time the sneaking out was the best part.

That’s how it comes to me.

Mallory’s putting a large river rock—I have no idea how it got down here—on top of the recently overturned dirt. When she sees me, I must look insane because a flash of panic comes across her face quicker than I can get the word out.

“
Snap!
”

Mallory’s face transforms, her eyes wide and alive. “I know you just didn’t drop Snap! on me right now, Bennett. Jesus. Snap!”

The game isn’t complicated. Run into the darkness and hide. Whoever can sneak up on the other one first and whisper, “Snap!” wins. The beauty of the game is that you can play with an entire neighborhood or just two or three. A lot of kids wanted to get Snapped! early so they could go back and sit on the porch with their friends. But forget that noise. Winning Snap! was better than money back then. Of course we played in the neighborhoods; who
didn’t? But the field was ours, and we never invited anyone out here to play with us.

“We should play Snap!” I say, looking out into the dark field. Like a broken ankle waiting to happen.

Still.

This is the card I can play for her. For both of us.

“I don’t know,” Mallory says. “Your parents are going to be pissed at me.”

“One round, and then I’ll take you home,” I say. “It shouldn’t take long, seeing as I’m undefeated.”

“Okay, slow down. You may need to look up the definition of
undefeated
.”

I feign surprise, offense. “I seem to remember you refusing to play and running home. Multiple times.”

Her face twists into actual shock. “Are you kidding? That was
you
.”

“No way. I never did that.” But then it comes back to me, and I pause just long enough that Mallory starts nodding enthusiastically.

“Yeah, you know. Own your shame.”

“Well, before that I was definitely undefeated.”

“I feel like you’ve been doing a lot of drugs since we last hung out,” she says. “Even in the most backward of
memories, how does that happen?”

She’s laughing, looking out into the field, likely already planning a strategy. Despite my talk, Mallory was preternatural in her abilities. She makes no sound, and her body seems to fold into the shadows. I want to play so badly. I want to win.

She sighs. “Fine. If we’re going to do this, we need to stretch first. We’re old now, and safety needs to come first.”

She makes a show of touching her toes. As soon as I bend over, she laughs. Then she screams, “Go!” and takes off running into the darkness, laughing as she disappears.

I move quickly, but carefully. Mallory always liked hiding just outside my vision, whispering “Snap!” when I passed and ending the game minutes after it began. But I can’t see anything now, so I move toward the road, away from Mallory’s initial line.

I know exactly where I’m going, but I still move carefully through the darkness. There are two strategies in Snap! The first is to move, to glide across the play area like a shadow, snapping every person you come across. The second—the patient player’s tactic—is to find a spot, hunker down, and pick people off as they come by. And
that’s what I plan to do: wait until she gets frustrated and starts hunting.

My eyes slowly adjust to the night, and I begin to see Mallory everywhere. A bush looks like her hair on my right, and I swear her elbow is showing behind a tree twenty feet in front of me. But Snap! turns every branch breaking, every chirping insect into Mallory about to attack. I crouch down, looking across the field. Nothing is moving, so I go—probably too fast.

I don’t see the dip in the grass and nearly fall right into it. I stagger into a crouch, breathing hard and scanning the field for any sign of Mallory. My entire body shakes with anticipation as I try not to move.

When I was a kid, I’d hide behind trees and jump over streams. Running from, toward, invisible enemies, the kind my dad always talked about. I never thought about dying or how it would feel to be pinned down as bullets cut the air above me. Lately I haven’t been able to think about anything else. And as I crouch here, watching an ant crawl across a blade of grass, I work to slow my breathing.

Footsteps like cannon fire come across the quiet field, and everything else disappears. To my right, a shadow moves, matching the footsteps. She sounds like a bull
moving through the field, which surprises me enough that I almost stand up and ask her if everything’s okay. Instead, I wait until she’s standing ten feet in front of me and whisper, “Snap!”

Will turns around and yells. I do, too, which makes me wonder where Mallory is—if she’ll come running.

“What the hell are you doing?” Will asks. And then, almost immediately: “Where’s Mallory?”

“Me? What are
you
doing out here?”

“Where’s Mallory?”

I scan the field as casually as I can. “She’s not here.”

“But you know where she is.”

“Man, c’mon. I dropped her off at her house and haven’t seen her since.”

Will studies me, but the lies now fall easily from my mouth. He looks angry and hurt. “I know you were up at the quarry,” he says.

I try to make my voice even. “We went up there with Wayne and Sinclair. We talked about you, actually. And then your friend Steve started acting like an asshole.”

Will nods, looks around the field. “Well, that seems about right.”

“If you want my opinion, give her some space. For
tonight at least.” He starts to object, but I talk over him. “You can’t keep calling her. I mean, you know what she’s like.”

He sighs and says, “She’s making me crazy. All I want to do is talk to her.”

“So you thought you’d come search for her in an empty field?”

He looks confused. “What?”

“You’re in the middle of a field at midnight.”

He thinks about this for a second and says, “So are you.”

I hesitate, long enough to make it seem like I don’t know why I’m lying down in a field in the middle of the night. I go with the old standby.

“I’m leaving for the army in the morning and wanted to be alone.”

He eyes me and says, “I get that. Still, it’s kind of weird.”

Something moves in the distance, and my entire body becomes a knot. I suddenly have visions of Mallory walking up, having it out with Will right in front of me. I don’t know if I want them to make up or not—at least right now. Because then it really would be over.

I say, “So . . . why are you out here?”

Will reaches toward his back pocket. “I lost my wallet when the car got stuck. I just realized.”

He pauses, and I look at the ground, feeling bad for a moment. I kick at a rock and say, “Yeah, sorry. I didn’t think you guys would be stupid enough to follow me into the field.”

“Jeremy is pissed. They had to tow the car out.”

I can’t help it; I laugh. So does Will.

“I don’t know what he was thinking.” And then something switches on his face, like he realizes we shouldn’t be having such a casual conversation. “If you point me in the right direction, I’ll see if I can find it. You can get back to your, uh, alone time.”

I’m trying to mask my indecision: let him wander around by himself or go with him. Neither option is ideal, but I’m pretty sure I can’t convince him to leave without his wallet. So I tell him I’ll help him search for it, and he agrees after a moment of apprehension.

It takes only a few minutes before I see where the car entered the mud, as well as the wide swath carved when it was pulled out. As we walk up, I am struck by how perfect a place this would be to hide in a game of Snap! And then I’m worried because maybe Mallory is here, hidden in the
mud like a B movie commando. But as we pick our way through, both of us with our eyes down, her hand doesn’t come shooting up from the ground to grab our ankles. Still, I half expect to hear her voice in my ear, to win the game without Will’s ever knowing she was here.

“It could be anywhere,” Will says, bending over to squint at the ground for a moment before standing up. “Perfect. Exactly how this night should end.”

I walk softly, trying not to step on his wallet, at the same time making as much noise as possible just in case Mallory hasn’t figured out what’s happening yet. Saying his name whenever I address him and as loudly as I can without seeming even more weird. Every few seconds Will lets loose a shallow exhale. I can’t help myself.

“What happened between you two?” He sighs again, this time long and emphatic. Even in the limited light he looks scattered. “I don’t know. I thought everything was great. If she’d pick up the phone and listen to me, I’m sure we could figure it out.”

He pulls out his phone and gets ready to dial. I jump toward him and say, “Hey, good idea. Use that to find your wallet.”

I reach in my pocket and power down Mallory’s phone
at the same time. Too close. I walk over to him and say, “On second thought, you should probably do this in the morning. When you can see.”

“I need my wallet,” he says, and it doesn’t look like he’s in any hurry to leave. He walks slowly, bending over to check the ground like he’s on the beach hunting for shells. I try to tell him I need to go home and pack. When that doesn’t work, I take a shot and say he’s probably making it worse by walking around.

“You could step on it and grind it in. You’d never find it,” I say, hoping my logic penetrates his melancholy. Behind him, I think I see a shadow moving across the grass. When I look again, it’s gone.

He nods but doesn’t move. Instead, he stares at me for a long time, finally saying, “You’d tell me if she was here, right?”

“Yeah.” I’m unsure if the sick feeling in my gut is from the lie or the truth of her proximity. But he nods again and hesitates before offering his hand to me.

“Good luck.” He says it sheepishly, like I haven’t heard it before. Still, I shake his hand.

“She used to talk about you,” he says. “Not a lot, but every so often. She missed you, I think. Maybe you could
give her a call when you get back. She’d like that.”

Then he turns around and walks away. As he disappears into the night, I’m not sure if I’ve won something or not.

I tear through the field once he’s gone. I check the ditch by the road, the tall grass near the tree line, but she isn’t in any of her old spots. When at last I come back to the bridge, she’s sitting on the tailgate of my truck, staring out into the field.

“Hey,” I say, out of breath, “Will was here.”

“I saw.” I expected anger, but her voice is soft. “Is he gone?”

“Uh, yeah. He was looking for his wallet.”

“What did you guys talk about?”

“What else? World politics,” I say. When it doesn’t get a laugh, I add, “I had the best hiding spot ever, and he pretty much ruined it because he walked across the field and I thought it was you, so I Snapped! him. Let’s just say we were both surprised to see each other.”

She smiles this time, rubbing her eyes.

“So he thinks you’re out here playing Snap! by yourself. That’s . . . wonderful.”

“I told him I wanted to be alone. In a field. In the middle of the night.”

This cracks me up.

“It happens,” she says, and this gets her laughing, too. “God, tonight is so messed up. I’m sorry about this.”

“What else do I have to do? Join the army?”

This time, though, she shuts down, staring at me the way Will did, a kind of hurting disbelief in her eyes. And for a moment we’re both quiet, looking at each other, waiting for the other one to say something that will give the conversation momentum again.

Mallory shakes her head, like she’s trying to forget a bad dream, and says, “Do you ever worry that you’re going to miss out on something by leaving? Like, obviously the army’s a good decision—something you want to do. But do you ever wish maybe you had decided to go to college?”

“I don’t know if I could get into college,” I say.

“Even community college. Just anything other than what people expect.”

A familiar tightness pulls at my lungs. If there was a time to tell anyone, this is it. It would be so easy—open my mouth and say the words.

I’m not going to the army.

“I went and visited my sister down at Chapel Hill last year,” she says. “And I know it sounds stupid, but that weekend was kind of a revelation. I didn’t want to come back.”