Lucy stopped and looked up at me. “Your house,” she said, as though we’d decided this in advance. “I can’t go home like this. My mother would kill me.”
I wasn’t sure my mother’s reaction would be any less extreme if she discovered me sneaking in at three a.m. with an intoxicated Lucy, but at least I would be clearly sober. I began to walk my bike down the hill after her, then stopped, feeling my heart start to beat a little bit faster, my adrenaline pumping in anticipation of what I was about to do. “Meet you on the other side,” I called down to her as I slung one leg over the crossbar.
“What?” Lucy asked, turning to look at me. I pushed off, pedaling full-speed down the hill. I passed her quickly, and made myself pedal even as I could feel gravity pulling me down faster and faster, forcing myself ignore the instincts that told me this was dangerous, that I was going too fast, that I was going to get hurt. I just kept pedaling, and before I knew it, I had reached the bottom of the hill, and my momentum was beginning to carry me up the other side. But I knew it wouldn’t last, and I started pumping my legs harder than ever. Sure enough, the climb began to get very hard very quickly, and I could feel my calves burning with the effort to bring me—and my mother’s ridiculously heavy bike—up the hill. But I didn’t think about giving up this time. Not only did I have Lucy watching me, but I’d already given up on myself once tonight. I could feel my breath coming shallowly, but I forced myself, gasping, to the top of the other side. Once I’d made it, I stepped down off the pedals and let myself collapse over the handlebars, breathing hard.
I looked down and saw Lucy making her way up the hill. But even from far above her, I could see that she was clapping.
“Shh,” I reminded Lucy as I kicked off my flip-flops on the porch and crossed to the door, taking my key out of my pocket.
“I know,” she said, stifling another yawn. “Don’t worry.”
I turned the knob slowly, and pushed open the door an inch at a time, hoping it wouldn’t squeak. I glanced at the clock on the microwave as we stepped inside and saw that it was 3:05 a.m.—not a time I wanted to be waking up either of my parents.
“Wow,” Lucy said, not as quietly as I would have liked, looking around, “it looks just the same.”
I eased the door shut behind us. “I know,” I whispered as I crept past her, motioning her down the hall to my room. “Come on.”
“No, I mean it looks exactly the same,” she repeated, even a little louder. In his basket by the window, one of Murphy’s ears twitched, and I realized the last thing I needed was the dog waking up and starting to bark. “It’s weird.” Her eyes fell to the ground, and the sleeping dog. “When did you guys get a dog?” she asked, now not even whispering at all, but just talking in a normal volume.
“Today,” I murmured. “It’s a long story.” I took another step toward my bedroom, hoping that she would follow me. But Lucy was still looking around, her mouth hanging slightly open. I realized as I watched her that she must have been feeling the same thing I had when I’d come back—like entering an odd sort of time machine, where nothing had changed in the last five years. If we’d been coming up here all this time, undoubtedly the house would have changed with us. But instead, it was perfectly preserved from the last time she’d been in it—when we’d been very young, and best friends. “Lucy,” I said again, a little louder, and this seemed to snap her out of whatever reverie she’d been in.
She nodded and followed me down the hall, but stopped short halfway to my room. “You’re kidding me,” she murmured. She pointed at one of the framed pictures hung along the hall, where Lucy and I, at ten, smiled out at the camera, our mouths stained red and purple, respectively, from the popsicles we’d no doubt just consumed.
“I know,” I said quietly, standing next to her. “It was a long time ago.”
“It was,” she replied. “God. Wow.”
I looked at the two of us in the picture, standing so close, our arms so casually thrown over each other’s shoulders. And in the glass of the frame, I could see us reflected as we were now, seven years older, standing several feet apart. After looking at it for another minute, Lucy continued walking down the hall again. And not until she opened my door did I realize that of course she didn’t need me to show her the way—that at one point, she’d known my house as well as her own.