The closer we get to school, the slower we walk. There are parents with giant bouquets, wearing cameras around their necks. There are kids from my class who don’t look like kids today, but they’re not adults, either. It reminds me of that Alice Cooper song: “I’m Eighteen.” It’s all about being stuck between being a boy and a man. That’s exactly how I feel: stuck in the in-between, floating, waiting to land somewhere. And I won’t know where until Bridge says her peace.
We stop by the classroom with A–H posted over the door and Bridge ducks in and comes out with our caps and gowns. We put them on and I feel kind of stupid, standing in front of her in a bright purple gown, but she looks at me like I shouldn’t feel stupid at all. I wish this could be a normal day for us. I wish our parents were in the audience, all four of them, smiling and snapping pictures. I wish our families could go to Nina’s together after the ceremony, and I wish we could go back to my house and there would be a Publix sheet cake in the refrigerator, and it would say CONGRATULATIONS, BRIDGE & WIL in blue icing, because this is real and important.
I wish.
We gather outside the gym, all of us, milling around, strange and nervous. Se?ora Thompson lines us up and inside the gym, the band starts playing. My whole body constricts.
I follow Bridge inside, down the shiny aisle, and onto the fake stage that sounds like it might collapse under so much potential. The principal is standing at the podium with a big plastic smile. We wind down a row of metal folding chairs, and once the whole class is on the stage, we sit.
I hear a stifled sob in the crowd, and I know it’s her. My mother is a broken woman, and I don’t think that will ever change. If I could rewind us, change some tiny thing in history to make her whole again, I’d do it. Even if it meant my parents never meeting. Me not existing. I’d do it.
“Today,” the principal says too close to the microphone, “is the first day of the rest of your lives.”
Damned if he’s not half right. Today could be our first day, or it could be our last. Bridge is holding us—Real Me—in her hands, and there’s no one I trust more, and still I’m scared as hell. For days now, I’ve had this panicked feeling moving through me, this cold adrenaline flood. It’s the exact same feeling I got when Bridge and I swam too far past the breakers as kids. By the time I realized we’d gone out too far, I’d almost lost her.
Truth is, I’m scared of losing her more than I’m scared of anything else that could happen to me. I’m small, compared to the ocean, compared to the whole world. What happens to me doesn’t matter, as long as Bridge loves me, still. I’ve told myself a million times: Whatever she decides, I’ll take it like a man. Even though I want what I want so bad it burns. I want her to go to college and I want to work on the boats and I want us to be an everyday kind of happy. I think my dad would say that’s too many wants, and he’s probably right.
I wait. I wait while the principal talks about horizons and making an impact, and he even says something about the future being so bright, we’ve gotta wear shades, and some of the parents laugh and none of the kids do. I wait while Ned Reilly stammers through a speech about how we are all one, how the successes of one of us are the successes of all of us, and the struggles of one of us are the struggles of all of us. I feel a hot, quick flash of anger. Ned Reilly knows nothing.
“And now, for the distribution of the diplomas. Please stand when I call your row,” says the principal.
I watch my classmates cross the stage, one by one, until it is Bridge’s turn, and then mine. We flip our tassels. We toss our hats in the air like purple Frisbees. My mom and Christine and Micah are waiting in the back corner of the gym. When I hug my mom, she squeezes the air out of me. She grips my head in her hands so hard, she might crack me open. She looks at me with wild eyes, and she wants to know. I try to tell her silently, but she doesn’t understand. My dad and I are the only ones who had that kind of connection.
“You kids want to go to brunch somewhere?” Christine asks. She slips her arm around my shoulders and squeezes. “Nina’s, maybe?”
“Oh, ah—” I stiffen. Glance at Bridge.
“Can Wil and I have a second, you guys?” She clears her throat, and looks at everyone but me. “Just to talk?”
“We’ll wait by the car,” Christine says, and she loops her arm around my mother’s shoulder and gives me a wink.
“Wil,” my mom says.
“Mom,” I say.
We edge out of the gym, past Leigh and her buttoned-up parents, past Ana and her nightgown dress, past Se?ora Thompson and the pitying smile she pitches at me every chance she gets. The courtyard is quiet and empty. Leigh’s mural is neon in the sun: a cartoon version of Florida. Lime-green palm fronds and a lemon sun and foamy waters. We slide down the wall, next to each other, and stare past the parking lot.
“Do you want to go to Nina’s or—” It’s the only thing I can think to say.
“Wil,” she says in a way that stops my heart. “I love you.”
I clench my teeth until my head throbs. “He would’ve killed me. Both of us,” I say, and I think it’s the first time I’ve said it out loud. Those words are the most awful words I’ve ever spoken.
“I know,” she whispers, sending tears down my cheeks. “You had no choice.”
“I didn’t. I didn’t.” I can feel my whole body collapsing into itself. I need her to hold me up. I need her.
“I know,” she says.
I close my eyes to stop the tears. It doesn’t work. “You’re going to the cops.” My mother will be alone. She’ll be completely alone. She won’t survive. I dig deep, mining for anger, for the thought how could she do this to me, but it just isn’t there.
I hear the swish of her hair as she shakes her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know yet.”
“What do you know?”
“I know I love you. I know . . . I forgive you.” She sounds surprised at her own words.
“Okay, then. Okay.” Relief. I wipe tears with the heels of my hands.
“I have to think. I need time, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I need more time.” She kisses me, hard, her wet salt lips slipping against mine, and then she scrambles up and trips across the courtyard, her hair flying behind her. I watch her for as long as I can. I burn her image into memory: the girl with the fire hair and ice skin, the girl I won’t stop loving, no matter what.
BRIDGE
Summer After Senior Year
HE gives me time. I know it’s killing him.
It’s what I asked for, and I hate it. I feel the time away from him physically, deep inside: It’s the sharp sting of stepping on a broken shell, unrelenting. The choice I have to make is impossible. If I tell, it will end him. If I don’t, it will end us.