Love like that didn’t die. Love like that didn’t write a letter and leave.
I tried to envision the love of my life, but there was no one at school who even came close. So he’d have to be new, from somewhere else. He’d come up to me while I was at my locker, put his arms around me and say, ‘Summer Davis, forget about all of them. Forget about everything. I’m here for you. I’m all you’ll ever need. Never let me get away.’
And I wouldn’t. I’d know something good when it was there. Just as my mother should. We were right in front of her, after all. We were here.
The next morning, I teetered through the double doors that led from the courtyard to the school hallways, balancing four cups of hot coffee wedged into a corrugated cardboard holder. A bunch of guys shoved their way in front of me, and I didn’t catch the door before it closed. It knocked against my legs, tipping me sideways. I watched helplessly as the coffees dislodged from the carrier and fell to the ground, their plastic lids popping off, the coffee slowly glugging into the cracks in the sidewalk. Steam waltzed through the chilly air.
Students stepped daintily around the spilled coffee, barely noticing. I peered into the hall; the girls in my French class were leaning against the water fountains, waiting for me where they always did. By the looks on their faces, I was pretty sure they’d seen the coffee spill, too.
They were tall and straight-haired and pink-cheeked, with perfectly manicured fingernails and bra straps that didn’t fall down off their shoulders to mid-arm. Ever since Claire joined them at the back of the bus, I’d watched them with envy. Summer should have more girlfriends, my mother had whispered to my father in the kitchen. Does it really matter? my father had replied. But yes, yes it mattered. It mattered more than he would ever understand. That we were talking, that I was getting them coffee; it all seemed like such a step in the right direction.
The coffee trickled into the sewer grate. The girls’ eyes narrowed, their mouths went slack. I turned back to the coffee cart, thinking. I had lunch money in my wallet, but it wasn’t like I was eating much lunch these days. I could use it to get the girls new coffees, gratis, to make up for my mistake.
But when I looked over my shoulder to see if they’d like this plan, I saw the girls had turned for the stairs, laughing and wrapping their arms around their shoulders. Slowly, more and more students separated me from them, and after just a few moments, I couldn’t see them at all. Something occurred to me, then: What if my mother chose this moment to walk into school, this moment to see me? I was alone. As usual. There was as much chance of her seeing this as there was of her seeing something good. It wasn’t as if I had any control.
The bell started to ring, but I didn’t move. I wasn’t sure I could move. As the courtyard cleared out, a janitor emerged from a utility closet, carrying an empty red bucket. He met my eye. ‘Don’t you need to get to class?’ he asked, motioning for the door.
He was an older man, with long gray tufts sprouting out of his oversized ears. There was a name stitched over the right breast of his blue jumpsuit. Stan. I liked his functional black shoes, the gold class ring he wore on his right hand.
‘If a woman takes off from her family without really saying where she’s going, she’s coming back, right?’ I blurted out before I could stop myself.
Stan blinked his watery blue eyes, just a few feet away. ‘Sorry?’
‘I mean, she left all her clothes here. And her shoes and her bags and her cat.’ I swallowed. ‘She left a lot of…other things, too.’
He didn’t say anything, just gave me a sad smile and turned for the double doors. By then, the courtyard was completely empty. I’d never lingered in the courtyard after the bell had rung; I always thought a police officer would appear, pushing everyone where they belonged. I looked around, then took a few careful steps toward the wrought-iron gate. It wasn’t locked. When I pushed on it, the gate creaked open easily. No one noticed.
So I left.
And still nothing happened. The gate made no noise when I shut it again. The cars on Lincoln Street swished by, oblivious. To my left, eventually, was the park. I started walking.
I walked up Lincoln and took a right on Eighth Avenue, looking right and left. It didn’t take long before I realized who I was looking for. But she wasn’t there. She wasn’t anywhere I thought she’d be.
Snow began to swirl down. My backpack jostled against my lower back, and my toes prickled with the cold, shielded only by a thin strip of flimsy loafer leather. People streamed past, none of them her. I walked under the Grand Army Plaza arch and crossed the street to the park.
‘Summer?’
I stopped, my heart speeding up. But it was Claire Ryan across the road, standing at the park’s entrance. She was smoking a cigarette. Her red jacket and jeans were enormous.