Harris Salinger claimed Evan had been cold and distant to Garrett over the last few weeks, uncharacteristically so. Shane spoke in great detail about Evan trying to choke him. Him, a frail, disabled boy, all the while screaming threats, “I will fucking kill you!” And then Jared Piltcher’s family filed their own lawsuit for assault.
It piled on top of Evan, accusation after accusation, and I could do nothing to stop it.
Evan waited out his trial in county jail. While he was in custody, they wouldn’t let me see him or call him. I walked the halls of the high school like a ghost. I talked to no one and no one talked to me. Not even Marnie or Adam. Whispers followed me down the corridors, sounding soft and unthreatening, but cutting me to the bone.
Planerville was less discreet. They talked themselves hoarse, gossiping about the situation. They breathed a collective sigh relief when the verdict came back and Evan was sentenced to five years at the minimum security North Central Correctional Facility. A sentence that forever ruined his chances of becoming a firefighter. Destroyed his dreams, and ground them to dust. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.
I turned in the final version of my love poem to Ms. Politano.
I waited until the class had cleared out, then went up to her desk. My hair hung around my face in unwashed strands. I’d been wearing Evan’s blue and black plaid shirt every day and every night. The cuffs were grimy at my wrists as I laid a crumpled and tear-stained piece of paper on Ms. P’s desk.
“Jo,” she said, her voice heavy with grief. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about Evan. I just wanted to say—”
“Here,” I said sliding the paper closer to her. “This is my assignment. So I can graduate.”
She took the paper and I watched her eyes skim the uneven pen scratchings that crawled down the page like an erratic waterfall.
“It’s a mess,” I said dully. “It has no form or structure. But it’s the truth. That has to count for something, doesn’t it?”
She drew it to her slowly, her eyes never leaving mine. “Yes, it does, Josephine.”
I nodded, willing myself not to break, hugging myself tight. But the tears broke free anyway. A scrape of the chair legs and then Ms. P was holding me. I clung to her, great wracking sobs tearing me in two.
I cried and cried, not coming close to the end of my tears. I pulled myself out of Ms. P’s embrace, and walked out of her room without another word, down the hallway out of the school.
Nothing was left for me in Planerville, or in all of Iowa, now that Evan was lost to me. He and I had been on the verge of something beautiful. Something extraordinary. And then it was all ripped away with a violence that shattered me so that I hardly recognized myself, even years later. I lost Evan and lost myself. Faded away like a photo left in the sun too long.
They say all who wander are not lost. But some of us are. We’re really fucking lost, wandering until our feet bleed, and it feels like we’ll never find our way home again.
I Never Told You
You can fill a book with everything I never said Or the lines of a poem
Or an empty pool
Or an empty bedroom,
the candles all blown out
I never told you
how the reflection of myself in your eyes Was the only mirror I could bear to look at Or how I fought every day
To transfuse the girl I saw there with the girl I am I tried to breathe in the words you made me: beautiful
good
brave
I tried to be them for you even though
they were weighted with impossibility
I never told you
how I always feared the rough edges of myself were too sharp for you And how I fought every day to blunt them To bring down the walls
To let you in
without cutting you because I could never bear to hurt you like the others did
Every day
a fierce pride roared in me
I was so lucky to know the truth
I was the beneficiary of your radiance
I basked in it and felt special
And if not for the pain of your solitude I would have been content to be the only one
I never told you
How your touch made me feel like laughing and crying and singing all at once
How your hand passing over my skin where atrocities Had not yet sloughed off,
Skin cells remembering the worst touches, Was like a tide washing over the ruddy sand And leaving it whole and smooth
You made my skin forget
Gave me new memories
New sensations that didn’t drag the shadows from the past In your arms I could start again,
Start over.
There is no greater gift in all the world Than you
to the wreckage
that is me…
I never told you
How I longed to kiss away your every bruise until there was no evidence
No ghosts of your own suffering
To put your pieces back together
Seal the cracks
Vanish them like they never were
And never, ever
Leave a scar
I never told you
I would take your pain if I could
I would drink it down
And take my comfort
In making you ache a little less
For a little while
Did I?
I’ll never know because I never told you that I loved you
I love you
I love you
I love you
It’s too late to say it now
The time has passed for words
How pathetic and small and weak
On the phone
Or on a piece of paper
Starving
Without the force of my own vitality