9.30

I didn't stop him. Let me put that right there for you to see. But

I'm not quite sure how to begin the story of an end. Of course up until now it has been love and happiness and joy and light, but the story of an end is like describing the inside of a cave when your last light goes out, or an overcast night in the woods, or the inside of a closet when your father is drunk. I might try to use traditional phrases like I couldn't see my hand in front of my face, but see the problem is that when the blackness is so dark you're swimming through it and your eyes invent lights for you to see and you've been blind for so long that it feels like you'll be blind when you see light too, well that's what it's like describing the story of an end. I can't really bring myself to do it.
So I'll do it anyway.

After the hallway, things weren't quite right for us. We tried to talk about what happened because that's what you do, you know, make stumbling apologies and try to explain what you felt and somehow nothing helped. She never told me why she didn't push him away. I asked if she still had feelings for him, but she said "no, he's I've hated him but no that's not right I never want to hate" and all of her shuddered as her emotion passed out of her like the last breath of a dying man who says to his friend that he should go to his house do you remember where it is of course you do you used to come over during the summer and go to his house and tell his mother about this and how beautiful it was and how he didn't regret anything and then he says that he doesn't regret and he rattles and shakes and can't talk anymore and his friend just holds him as his life drains away and his breath passes out of him like the last emotion of a dying girl, sitting in one corner of a cafeteria looking at a wall and trying to explain to me what she felt. And so I just looked at my hands (gosh I was angry) and I said how sad I was (gosh I was angry) and how much I wished I could have done (and I was angry then, too) and how I wanted to help (she doesn't want to know how angry I was) and I couldn't because I just couldn't, can't you see? It didn't seem like my place, and I didn't look up for a very long time.

We went through a tough period when we knew we wanted it to work, and we tried to make it work. You know how some boys try to take the legs off of spiders and the spiders don't get it and they don't give up, they just keep walking? Well that was us I guess, just a spider with one leg walking and finally the history teacher found a seating chart that worked (we were four seats away, I mean I could still see her but it wasn't the same) (I could see her ear poke out from under her hair as she listened to the lecture and read her book and I cried almost every day in history class so much that the teacher actually asked me what was wrong once and the whole class turned and looked at me and I just sniffed really loudly and said that everything was and why didn't he just mind his own business and ran out I ran out of that room and just kept running until there wasn't any more hallway and I sat down and cried for an hour. She found me then, because she left choir to find me and found me at the end of a hallway and we sat there against the wall and cried together and tried to hold hands but it didn't work (maybe you've not done that, you know, the trying to hold hands and failing because you have to let go every four seconds to wipe your eyes). She asked what I was crying about and I said you dummy and she laughed but not enough and there were no bells in it anyway.

That weekend Sam showed up at her house.

She's never told me what happened then but her mother likes Sam and didn't know about Sam and let Sam into the house and let Sam into her room and that's about all I know now. That's more than I knew then. I blame her mother. She blames herself. It's stupid that neither of us blame Sam. Sam probably blames Sam but that's more humanity than I'm willing to give him.

I kept trying to be the man I was, and she stopped even pretending that she was the woman I knew. It just felt like everything deflated, like all the air in a balloon that you find two weeks after the party, and it's wrinkled and sad and all the good air is gone, replaced with bad air, and the whole thing smells like sadness that's sat in the sun too long. I told her things, and she nodded. I asked her things and she smiled. I took her hand and she found reasons to need it back. I'm not stupid. I knew how things were.

One day in the middle of winter we cut history class and went out to walk in the snow. It wasn't falling any more, but there was enough of it to cover most of the grass and part of the buildings and things looked white and still. The wind cut straight through me and out the other side. I tried not to shiver. She said things were different since and I said things were strange. She said she loved me and I said I love you and she said she loved me and I kind of figured out that we weren't talking about the same thing at all. Her cheeks were bright pink and her lips looked soft and warm and I could tell by the way she walked that she still was there under her coat and I knew I was about to lose that. And she said she wanted me to be happy and she knew I would be happy and I was the best guy she'd ever known and I knew I was about to lose that. And I told her that she should go on and be a pediatrician and help people and save children and run her foster home and do all the things she wanted and loved and I knew I was about to lose that. The snow screamed under our feet because it was so dry and so cold, every step made me scream inside because I still had time but couldn't do anything and we couldn't stop walking because it was going to be the last time we were an us. I said she was the best girl I had ever known and she said I was the best guy she'd ever known and she was lucky to have known me, Tom and she said Tom and I knew it was over I mean I stopped there even though I should have kept walking and I didn't move my feet any more and I cried like something broke inside and I cried so hard my face hurt and she cried with me but we were crying about totally different things.


The only time I regret that I cried was about twelve years ago, you know, during that age of innocence when your hormones kick in and anything that happens is a disaster so great and so tragic you know someone will have to write a book about it. You know what I'm talking about.

I'm sure you were fourteen at some point. Everybody was, but only some of us were ever in love.