Famous last words.
I continued to watch and saw
the tip of Jordan’s board
barrel down the hill.
He hit the jump
and for a moment
you saw the pavement below
as Jordan and his board sailed over.
Then you saw
the front edge of his board nick
the guardrail
on the other side of the road.
There was a blur of whiteness
accompanied by numerous expletives.
When the camera came to rest,
it was staring back at the face of Ben,
who was howling with laughter.
“That was fucking awesome,”
he said.
Then you could hear Jordan say,
with a hoarseness,
“I think I broke my wrist, man.”
The video went black
and the screen asked us to replay.
I didn’t need the video to replay.
It replayed on its own
in my mind.
Except this time
I imagined Ben flying off that jump,
soaring across that road.
I imagined an oncoming truck
barreling down the highway,
the way my imagination
kept barreling down
this horror.
I tried to make it stop,
and I did.
But the fear
of being cold
and alone
resurfaced,
and I imagined
the sight of roadkill,
on the side of
a snowy mountain highway.
To self-destruct
“What were you trying to do, Jordan?
Self-destruct?”
I said.
“Always,” he replied,
turning back around in his seat,
and slipping his phone into a pocket.
I had this theory that our school was divided
into two types of people,
not between jocks and preps,
or honors and non-honors,
or popular and unpopular.
I had a theory that it was divided
by how we were programmed to live.
There were those of us like
Kitty, Ashok, and Laurel,
careful and contented,
pragmatic and happy.
They existed to wake up tomorrow,
always a new day,
because wasn’t that the way we were supposed to exist
as humans?
To keep living.
Then there are those of us who lived
differently.
Jordan, Miranda, and me.
We charged forward.
We took risks.
We strived for greatness
in every moment,
because every night we fell asleep thinking
this was it;
there wasn’t going to be
a tomorrow.
But every morning
when the alarm clock went off,
we would lie in our beds,
shocked
that despite everything we did
the previous day
to run our bodies
into the ground,
we continued
to wake up.
Ben was one of us.
He hid it so well,
and I loved him
and I hated him
for being this way.
He pretended he was happy
when he was sad.
He pretended he didn’t care
about anything,
not college,
not grades,
quite often
not even me.
He pretended everything
would magically work
in his favor.
He denied that he understood me at all.
“Why do you have to study all the time?
Why can’t you come over?”
he would plead on the phone.
But he aced the same tests as me.
He studied when no one was looking.
He fretted about his future
when no one was around.
He worried about his worth
alone,
like the rest of us.
Self-destruction seeped from his pores.
I knew this because
I smelled it.
It was the bourbon and beer
that excreted from his skin
in the early-morning hours on a Sunday.
When he rolled over in bed
and opened his eyes
after a hard night of partying,
I wasn’t the first thing he noticed.
For a brief moment
his eyes looked at me
with an expression of shock
that his own body was
still breathing,
his heart
still beating,
his eyes
Then Ben would smile awkwardly
and say,
“Morning, gorgeous.”
I could have died
every time
he said that
with half-drunk, groggy eyes.
But I never did.
Cursors
I see my empty heart,
which blinks like a cursor
on a blank white screen,
waiting.
I try
typing words:
I wish I could tell you why
I went up to that room
with Jordan.
I wish I could say
why I pine and pine
for you, Ben.
Is it enough to say
that the wanting
is the something
that holds me together?
It’s the hope that simmers.
But I stare at black marks
against a harsh white light
and like
nothing that I see.
I hit the backspace
until it becomes
a screen
of words unwritten,
of life unexpressed,
the moments we bury,
that feeling
we don’t feel.
A cursor
because
what is more lonely
than a solitary cursor?
Best party ever forgotten
The new girl was having a party,
and I was there
with Kitty and Ashok.
People said it was uh-mazing.
That there were signature cocktails,
or rather mocktails,
because her parents were
making the drinks.
People said there was a DJ
in the basement
from the fancier school
with an endowment
that could support
a small country.
People said he was hot,
along with the other guys
the new girl invited
from her old school,
which I never realized
until just now
was the same school
that Ben transferred to.
“Holy shit,”
Kitty said.
Her hand flew over her mouth.
“Don’t turn around, Nic.”
But of course
I turned around.
“Ben,”
I breathed.
The last thing you wanted
Was for your ex-boyfriend to look
so damn good.
Looking so damn good
Ben in his jacket and tie
that made him look like
a proper young man,
the kind you took home to your parents,
the kind you snuck out of your house
for,
the kind you ended up with,
for whatever forever means.
Ben with his floppy brown hair
pushed to the side,
which made him look
like he rolled out of bed,
effortlessly attractive,
effortlessly yours.
Ben with his coaxing half smile,
which you thought was saying,
Talk to me.
So that’s what you decided
to do.
When I stared into his eyes
I was not getting the
I’m-so-happy-to-see-you-I-want-to-be-with-you
eyes.
I was getting something along the lines of
We’re-at-the-grocery-store-and-we-ran-into-each-other-in-the-cereal-aisle-so-how-are-you
eyes.
“Hi.”
I broke the ice.
Literally.
Jamming a straw
up and down
against frozen cubes
in a glass
filled with ginger ale
and shattered dreams.
“Nic. Hey.
How’s the party?”
Ben said.
I could have asked him the same question.
I could have asked a million questions.
How are you?
What have you been up to?
Do you miss me?
But I stood there in front of him,
drinking from a now-empty glass
and gnawing on the end of a straw,
just staring and forgetting
that no words had come out.
His head tilted.
His brow furrowed.
“Are you okay?”
Ben asked.
Of course not.
“I’m great,”
I said.
I smiled.
I wish I felt
the realness of a smile
on my skin.
But I was numb.
He nodded tentatively.
I opened my mouth to say something else,
maybe to change the conversation,
maybe to say I’m sorry,
but I closed it again,
swallowing thick air.
Ben’s eyes changed.
The tension he held on his brow melted.
In all the years I had known him,
I had never seen the expression
he now bared on his face.
It was like all the questions
had been answered.
It happened
Ben was in love.
And he wasn’t looking at me.
She had pale skin,
auburn hair,
a crooked smile,
and slightly crooked teeth.
She was fucking
adorable.
“Nic, this is . . . ,”
Ben began,
but I didn’t want him
to finish the sentence.
I didn’t give a shit what her name was.
I know
As I walked away
Jordan muttered,
“You can’t have him back, Nic.”
He stood at the edge of the room,
by the doorway
that led to the foyer,
that led to the front door.
“I know.”
I more than knew.
I felt it.
It was like snuffing out a candle
with a pewter cone
and watching the smoke
curl around the underside
of my heart.
It was like smoke
slipping away
through my stomach.
“You were watching us?”
I said to Jordan.
“You knew about her?”
Jordan leaned arrogantly
against the doorframe,
like the transitional space
was his
to own.
But Jordan reached out
for my hand
and squeezed it
like it meant something,
and maybe it did, because
I exhaled, not realizing
I was holding
my breath.
“We broke him,
Nic,”
Jordan whispered.
And maybe
a small part of me
escaped.
Honda Civics
I folded over
like a ball of kneaded dough
in the backseat of
Kitty’s Honda Civic.
“Um, what’s going on back there?”
Ashok said to Kitty
from the passenger seat.
Passengers,
weren’t we all just passengers
in life?
“Nic, are you okay?”
Ashok asked.
“I’m fine.”
Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine.
“She’s not fine,”
Kitty said.
“She saw her ex-boyfriend with . . .”
With that adorable fucking girl,
the girl Ben—my Ben—was in LOVE with.
“That girl is so basic,”
Ashok said.
“I can hear you.
I’m still back here.”
Ashok turned around.
“Real talk, Nic.
You’re so much more.”
I was more than basic,
that’s for sure.
More complicated,
more precarious,
more flawed.
Ashok turned back to face
the windshield.
“I hope you take that
as a compliment,
by the way.”
Attempting not to text someone
I wanted, I wanted, I wanted
to text
Ben.
To say all the things
I should have said to him
at the party,
when we were together.
Kitty and I sat in my driveway
after dropping off Ashok,
the car still running
but me not wanting to move
from the backseat.
Kitty eyed me from the rearview mirror.
She knew everything.
She turned around.
She grabbed for my phone.
“Don’t do it, Nic.
It’s not worth it.”
I loosened my grip.
The phone fell
into her hands.
“I miss him so much.
I love him.”
She sighed.
“I know, Nic.
You might always love him.”
The phone buzzed
I rolled over to check it.
I still wanted it to be Ben.
Every time.
Jordan.
Hey.
Hi?
Come over.
Why?
. . .
I watched until the screen went gray
and then black.
I set the phone down.
I rolled over.
I pulled a pillow over my face
so I wouldn’t stare at the ceiling,
so I wouldn’t wonder why
Jordan said, Come over,
at one in the morning.
Like I was his.
We should talk.
. . .
I got out of bed,
slid on a pair of jeans,
pulled a sweatshirt out of the laundry,
and put on a good bra—
the black lace kind.
The stalker
I opened the front door
to no parents,
no Jordan.
I slipped through the halls
and up the stairs
to where I remembered
his room.
He lay in his bed,
alrea
dy asleep,
snoring, guttural.
I felt like a stalker
invading his space,
his privacy,
as I lay my head
on Jordan’s chest.
How many of us knew
that Jordan breathed from his stomach
in spurts, in a struggle
between diaphragm and lungs?
It was like an old car shaking
with not enough gas.
I was wide-awake and listening,
and wanting
to know
why I was here.
But I knew
why he texted me,
why we were supposed
to talk.
I knew in the way
he squeezed my hand,
the way he breathed
unsteady.
I was here
because we broke
Ben,
and in doing so,
we may have
broken
ourselves.
I listened
to Jordan sleep.
At some point, something
rattled loose.
The struggle was over.
His chest rose and fell, steady
breathing
like a normal person.
Silence lingered
In the morning,
I listened for signs of life.
Dishes being unloaded.
Voices hushed or hummed.
Bare soles plodding on hardwood.
Coffee grinding.
All I heard was Jordan.
The air pushing
its way through his nostrils
into his chest
into his lungs
and back out again.
Jordan slept,
and I untangled myself
from the sheets.
I picked my clothes
off the floor,
clothes that landed there
after Jordan awoke
in the middle of the night
and found me
curled next to him.
When we held each other
fiercely.
When we wanted so badly
to feel.
I fished under the bed,
as I had done before,
for a shirt,
and slipped out of his room.
Downstairs, nothing
looked like the Parker house
I remembered.
Unopened mail
lay in toppled stacks.
Dishes
remained unwashed.
A wall clock
with an hour hand
stuck between twelve and one.
There were signs
of family,
but no one
was home,
except Jordan,
alone.
I knew the sound
of silence
that lingered
in the halls
of an empty home.
And for a moment I felt
like my heart was a sponge for sadness,