I could accept that my parents weren’t going to reconcile. They’d fallen out of love and their divorce was as good as final. I’d even seen the official papers sitting on the counter, waiting for them to sell the house so they could sign them and dissolve our family. But my father had been the one man in my life I’d looked up to, and he’d let me go on thinking it was all my mom’s fault, when he was the one who’d cheated. I didn’t know if I could ever forgive him.
I ate a sandwich and then walked to the mailboxes at the end of the street. It was still early for college acceptance letters to begin arriving, so I was surprised when I shuffled through the stack of bills and other junk and found an envelope from Amherst. The crest stood out, bold and burgundy on the upper left-hand corner, emblazoned with the school’s motto: Terras Irradient. Standing there in front of the bank of mailboxes and the notice board covered with pleas for dog owners to pick up their pets’ poop, and invitations to the next homeowners’ meeting, my heart sped up. It beat so rapidly my ribs rattled like the storm shutters covering the windows during a hurricane. And then it stopped. Just like that. It’d been beating so hard I could feel my pulse throbbing in my neck, and then nothing.
Is this what death feels like?
No, I wasn’t dead. I was still standing. If I’d died, my legs would’ve buckled and I would have fallen and remained on the ground until some minivan-driving neighbor found my cooling corpse in the middle of the road.
I was still breathing. And then my heart began beating again. It sputtered to life and I lurched to the side, my vision dimming and then everything becoming too bright. I needed to sit. I stumbled to the grass behind the mailboxes and plopped down right beside the begonia bushes everyone in the neighborhood hated but refused to spend the money to dig up and replace. The grass cooled my bare legs, and I held the Amherst letter in my trembling hands and just stared at it.
The letter held my future. My decision to stay or leave was purely hypothetical until I found out whether any of the colleges I’d applied to accepted me. If they all rejected me, it wouldn’t matter whether I wanted to stick around Cloud Lake or leave. If I decided to wait for Tommy, I needed to know it was because I’d committed myself to that path and not because it was the only path available.
It didn’t matter how big or small the universe was right then; that slender envelope contained the entirety of my universe.
I lacked the courage to open the letter. I needed Lua, but Lua and the band were working on their demo. I didn’t want to call Dustin, because if I’d gotten in, it would only remind him that he was stuck going to a state school. I would’ve even settled for Renny.
But the only person I could count on was Calvin. I needed to see Calvin.
? ? ?
I drove straight to Calvin’s house without calling or texting first, hoping he was home and would answer the door. The Amherst envelope lay on the passenger seat, and I kept glancing at it as I drove, expecting it to disappear or explode, blowing me and the car to flaming bits and leaving a crater in the middle of Calvin’s subdevelopment. I held the letter like it was radioactive as I walked to the front door. I barely remembered the drive over. Had I run a red light? Maybe. The minutes between leaving my house and arriving at Calvin’s existed as a dreamlike blur.
Mr. Frye opened the door a moment after I knocked, almost like he’d been waiting for me. He wore dark blue pants and a Cloud Lake Fire Department T-shirt that revealed his hairy, tanned arms.
“Hi, sir,” I said, surprised I remembered how to form words. “Is Calvin home?”
“Ozzie, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Enough with the ‘sir.’ Call me Pete.” He opened the door all the way to let me in. The house was the cleanest I’d ever seen it, and the smell of bleach lingered in the air. “As a matter of fact, I’m glad you’re here, Ozzie.”
All I wanted to do was climb the stairs to Calvin’s room and show him the envelope. He’d know what to do. He’d know what to say. “You are?”
Mr. Frye nodded. “Come on and sit for a second.”
I didn’t want to sit and talk to Mr. Frye, but I sat in the recliner perpendicular to the couch anyway, still clutching my envelope. “What’s up, Pete?” I felt weird calling him by his first name. He probably wouldn’t have been so nice to me if he’d known what his son and I had done in my car in front of his house on New Year’s Eve.
Mr. Frye sank into the couch. He held his hands together like he was praying. I waited for him to speak, because I had no idea what all this was about. What if he did know what we’d done? Oh God, please tell me he wasn’t about to give me some kind of sex talk. I couldn’t handle that right now.
“I need to ask you something, Ozzie, and I need you to answer honestly. Can you do that?”
“Sure.”
Mr. Frye took a moment, sighing and scrunching his face. I saw little pieces of Calvin in him. His hair and eyes and the way the space between his eyebrows wrinkled when he was thinking hard.
“Have you noticed anything odd about Cal lately?” he asked when he was ready.
“Like what?”
“Strange behavior? Him doing or saying things out of the ordinary?”
“Honestly, sir,” I said, “I haven’t known Calvin that long. To me, he’s always been odd.”
Mr. Frye chuckled, but it came out forced. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s Cal.” He paused, then said, “But I’m talking about more specific stuff. Like, has he seemed angrier or more withdrawn? Has he tried to hurt himself that you know of?”
I didn’t think Calvin had cut himself since we’d begun working together—I hadn’t noticed any fresh scabs—and I’d believed Calvin when he’d told me he hadn’t been trying to kill himself. The cutting was a pressure release valve, nothing more. If I told Mr. Frye the truth, I didn’t know what would happen to Calvin, but I suspected it wouldn’t be good. I’d pieced together that Calvin’s change in behavior over the summer probably had something to do with the teacher he’d been having sex with, and maybe that was something Mr. Frye ought to know, but it’d mean betraying Cal. He’d probably hate me, and he’d definitely never speak to me again, and I needed him too much to risk it.
“No, sir,” I said. “Nothing.”
Mr. Frye stared into my eyes for so long he made me nervous, and I nearly forgot why I’d come over in the first place. Then he blinked. “Good. That’s good, Ozzie. Just, if you notice anything like that, you let me know, all right?”
“I will.” I felt weird agreeing to spy on Calvin for his father.
Mr. Frye stood and clapped me on the shoulder. “You’re a good kid, Ozzie.” He motioned toward the stairs. “Cal’s in his room. He was a little under the weather today, but I have a hunch he’s well enough for a visit from you. I have to head to work. There’s some money on the fridge if you boys get hungry.”
“Thank you, sir. I mean, Pete.” I stood, anxious to get away from Mr. Frye and his intrusive questions, and bounded up the stairs. Calvin’s door was shut, so I knocked.
No answer.
“Calvin?” I called through the door. “It’s me, Ozzie.” I knocked again. “Cal?”
“What?” His voice sounded muffled and irritated.