Then: never.
You fold it into a tight square. Put it in your back pocket.
Later, you go up to your room. You have a blue portable CD player, and you put on the mix CD he made you last summer. Track four is “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” Track seven is “Since U Been Gone.” You lie on your bed and hold the folded paper over your heart.
“You’re really leaving?” you ask, even though you know the answer. The U-Haul is already half-packed. A futon mattress leans against a cardboard box marked KITCHEN – FRAGILE . Stay -2005-
He writes it on a torn piece of notebook paper. The same paper you’ve passed notes on in Mr. Hendricks’s history class. Do you like me? Check yes or no.
“Yeah. That’s the point.” He kicks a loose pebble. It skitters under the U-Haul. “No memories there.”
He gets in the Jeep. The engine coughs to life. For a second, he just sits there, hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead. You think maybe—maybe—he’ll cut the ignition. Maybe he’ll get out. Maybe he’ll say You’re right. Stay. Then: never
He hugs you. It’s clumsy. His chin digs into your shoulder. He smells like gasoline and laundry detergent and something else—something that’s just him . You close your eyes and memorize it. The way his heart beats against your ribs. The way his fingers press into the small of your back.
“I’ll call,” he says.
The year is 2005. The air smells of rain on hot asphalt, cheap cherry lip gloss, and the faint, sweet burn of clove cigarettes. You’re seventeen, and you’re standing in the gravel driveway of a house you’ve only been to twice before. His name is Cole. He has shaggy brown hair that falls into his eyes and a carabiner clipped to his belt loop, holding keys to a Jeep he rebuilt himself. Later, you go up to your room
You stand there until the streetlights hum on.
miss you already. stay who you are.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, you pull out your silver Motorola Razr. The one with the scratched screen. “Give me your new number,” you say, trying to sound casual. Like your whole world isn’t pivoting off its axis.
You look at the house. At the dented mailbox. At the porch light that’s been flickering since you were both twelve. Stay , you want to say. Just stay. We can figure it out. We can sleep in my basement. We can get jobs at the mall. We can—