I'll Meet You There

And maybe some people are like collages - no matter how broken or useless we felt, we were an essential part of the whole. We mattered.

If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be?” I opened my mouth to say San Francisco or maybe Madrid—somewhere exotic. But what came out was, “Here. Right here.

I don’t really know what it means to move on, but lately, with Sky, I’m starting to feel like I want to because when I look at her, I don’t see you or the war or any of the shit in my head. I just see her, and it’s like suddenly I can breathe again after holding my breath for so long.

He was the parts of the day where I smiled.

I had to tell him we were like a collage. Pieces that could be put back together in a new way, a better way. If I didn’t say it now, I never would.

What am I supposed to do when I’m bad for the one good thing in my life?

It’s not every day you get to watch the two people you care most about in the world fall in love.

It gave me hope: if you could make a beautiful piece of art from discarded newspapers and old matchbooks, then it meant that everything had potential. And maybe people were like collages--no matter how broken or useless we felt, we were an essential part of the whole. We mattered.

When the store was empty again, I buried my head in my hands. I hadn’t realized how much Josh had been helping me get through the summer until he wasn’t there anymore. I wanted him to ask me how the Sky was. And then I wanted him to make it stop raining.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.

The Josh I grew up around, with two legs and an ego that couldn’t fit through the door? I didn’t love him. I didn’t even always like him.” One corner of his mouth turned up. “This is who you are. The real you.” I rested my forehead against his. “And I want you so fucking bad.

It occurred to me that we were the same, in a way. Both of us treading water, pushing against forces we couldn’t control.

Maybe all those years when Josh was running around town, acting like an idiot, he was just trying to find a way to escape. Maybe that was what all of us were doing, in our different ways.

Everything—the moon, the fireworks, the fields—had an otherworldly beauty, and I shivered, greedy for these bits of loveliness the universe was throwing our way tonight.

How could someone hurt you so bad but you still wanted to hold him and tell him it was going to be okay?

I needed to hear her voice because everything was getting dark in me and she’s the only light I’ve found since all this shit happened. I just thought, if she would answer, if she would answer, maybe I could, I don’t know, just tell her in the right way why I was so messed up.

I didn’t want to go there, to those places he was describing, but I didn’t want to be where he wasn’t.

Read it. Just—don’t lose it. It … belonged to a friend of mine.

Kind of. Just—we don’t know what happens when we die, right? I mean, maybe we go up to some perfect place in the sky, or maybe we turn to dust, or we’re spirits and can still think and hear and go places. So talking to the person that’s dead isn’t crazy. They could be listening to you. Right?

But my life had suddenly become a Taylor Swift song: breakups and heartache and other girls.

Why is it that some people in the world get to wake up in beautiful houses with fairly normal parents and enough food in the fridge while the rest of us have to get by on the scraps the universe throws at us? And we gobble them up, so grateful. What the hell are we grateful for?

Did he realize how he was sometimes able to say the perfect thing? Because if he was trying to get in my pants, it was working.

My movie tastes are more boy meets girl, girl falls in love with boy, and everything’s happy at the end,” I said.

I didn’t want him to go home and leave me to wrestle my demons alone.

Chris pointed to himself. “This is my Not-Convinced face.” “ This is my Shut-Up face.” “This is my Oh-My-God-Sky-Is-Getting-It-On-With-Josh-Mitchell face,” Dylan said, looking comically scandalized.

Might as well,” she spit. “You know what it feels like, being friends with you guys? Do you have any idea how it sounds when you talk about how crappy this town is and how you’d rather die than end up saddled with a baby, living in a trailer park, broke as hell? Every time you say that, you’re describing my life. A life I’m actually okay with—I’m sure as hell a lot happier than either of you.

Chess and you taking a picture of me reading Slaughterhouse-Five, telling me I’d need proof someday because nobody in Creek View would ever believe I had actually read a goddamn book, let alone five. Talking about God and why there’s evil in the world and bitching because the Steelers won the Super Bowl. Camp Leatherneck, me not missing home at all and you missing it like crazy, always talking about going to college and how when you had leave you were gonna marry Hannah. And you wanted kids, and I said I didn’t because people like me, we just end up disappointing one another and I’d probably be like my dad, and you told me I had to get over it, get over my dad and my mom and how screwed up everything is because you said, Josh, you’re gonna have it all. I know it. You’re gonna have it all. And for the first time, I’m almost believing that.

Crap.” Like I could just go out and buy a new one—Look at me, I’m so rich I can throw calculators around! I stood and picked it up, shook it. Still worked.

I really wish that the boy I’m in love with hadn’t slept with three-quarters of the Creek View population,” I said.

Was this what it meant to grow up, to move on?