Sarah

When I was sixteen I went over to her grandparents house to borrow a lawn mower and she told me I reminded her of someone she knew. I told her we had never met and she said, yeah obviously, and I thought she sounded very grown up when she said it. When I took the mower back later that day, she asked me if I was the one that mowed her grandparents yard and I said yes. Do they pay you? she asked. No, I do it for free, but they let me borrow their mower sometimes. Oh, she said. We stood there for a second and then she asked me if I wanted to hang out and I said okay. I smelled like diesel fuel and sweat and there were little blades of grass stuck to my skin. I was conscious of my body, of my feet and my head and how they moved when I walked, as I followed her into the house and down into the basement which was carpeted and well lit and nice. We sat on a blue fabric couch and watched an episode of a black and white TV show while she laughed with her feet tucked up under her.  Afterward I asked her how long she was visiting for and she told me the summer. Then she asked if I wanted to see her room. Sure, I said. It wasn’t really a bedroom but it had been made to resemble one and she had hung a flowered sheet between her bed and the rest of the space. I said it was nice and she laughed at me. She sat on the bed.

What do you do for fun around here? she asked.

Um, I don’t know. Drive around, or go to the bluff. 

She seemed to appraise me. I was standing at the edge of the sheet and trying not to stare around at her things. I did see a bunch of dainty glass figures arranged on a shelf and some notebooks or diaries or something spilling over a cardboard box. She had a willful aura about her- I don’t know how else to call it. She looked at me like she was seeing my thoughts and I think I must have flushed because she smiled then, this humorous superior smile that I instantly felt in my body. 

Do you have a car? she asked.

Yes, I lied.

She was sitting up against some pillows with her legs crossed. We could drive around later and you could show me the cool places, she said.

Okay. 

When I walked home across the field and down through the ditch I was thinking about how I would ask Logan to borrow the truck, really casually like I didn’t care that much if he said yes so he wouldn’t be a dick about it. He was always worse if he knew I really wanted something. It gave him a sense of power to deny me things I wanted. Hey Logan, I would say, I might take the truck if you won’t need it tonight. Go over to the Sheller’s. I repeated this in my mind in various pitches and tones until I passed through Mrs. Patterson’s yard.

My mom was working and the jeep was gone, which meant Logan was out, too. Maybe spending his day off at Buck’s fixing up the camper or something. I felt relief then and the careful phrasings dissolved with the feeling. 

***

I drove us out to the landfill where the methane pipes burned blue like otherworldly beacons. It was a long night of early summer. The truck was loud and we had the windows rolled down, so we didn’t talk until I parked on the overlook. There were some other people there, nobody I knew, drinking and smoking weed. Older kids, looked like. She got out of the truck and we walked down to sit on one of the rocks like a wide hat brim. The sun was getting lower and the trees and the landfill were striped with long thin shadows.  

I meant what I said, you know. That you remind me of someone.

Who? 

I don’t know, she said thoughtfully. But I feel like I’ve known you a long time.

Hm. 

Do you believe in past lives? she asked.

No.

Me neither.

We talked until the sun was down and there were only a few people left making noise in the parking lot. It was easy to talk to her. She didn’t seem to take anything I said very seriously, like I might always be joking, and I started to feel like maybe it was a special thing between us, the way the words fell off my tongue and the laughter rolled out of her mouth. 

When she kissed me three days later in the truck in the front of her grandparents driveway I didn’t move at all, not even my lungs. Afterward I said something humiliating, like ‘that was nice,’ and she just put her tongue between her teeth and said ‘only nice?’ in a way that made me feel fiery all over. 

That night when I pulled the truck into the driveway, Logan was in the shed with the light on.

Who told you you could take that truck? he said. He was holding a long piece of rubber like a fan belt. The yellow light framed him from behind. He was short and thick legged and had a cigarette dangling from his lip. 

No one, I said. I just figured no one was using it-

That don’t belong to you, he said. You don’t go taking that without asking again, you hear? 

I felt myself go rigid all over. It doesn’t belong to you either, I thought. 

Yeah, sorry. 

What’s that? He moved his head to one side and dropped the cigarette butt to the ground. 

Yes sir. Sorry. 

He turned and went back into the shed and I walked up the porch steps. My mom was inside.

Hey, what have you been up to?

I looked at her. She looked tired and like she was trying to be cheerful for my sake and my hate for that man in the shed rose up in my mouth. Getting shit on by that piece of trash boyfriend of yours, I wanted to say. 

I was out.

I went to my room and shut the door. 

On my plastic cell phone I typed out a message. 

Want to run away sometime?

I sent it and waited, full of anticipation, for her reply.

Sure, she wrote. How bout 2morrow.

Where? I typed back.

Hmm Mexico.

Sounds great, I wrote. I’ll pack my sandals.

lol.

***

For a month we spent every day together. After I finished mowing lawns we would drive out to Oxford springs or over to crab orchard lake and swim if it was really hot, or just sit on the bank and talk. I told her I had never talked that much to anyone in my whole life and she said she had that effect on people. I introduced her to my friends and I could tell they thought she was kind of weird but they didn’t say anything to me about her, and we all hung out together.

One night Kody Camden had a bonfire at his parents’ lot down in Doppler county and we all decided to go. Ashley was driving and playing music that we all thought was really good at the time, and Jonathan had brought some rum and a two liter of coke and we were taking swigs and passing around the bottle in the back seat. 

Oh shit, there’s a cop! Jonathan said. He was joking and we all laughed. We showed up at Kody’s and there were already half a dozen vehicles parked in the field. People were standing around with the red-orange blaze at their center like it was a ritual. 

I was feeling happy, and wild. My hands were swinging by my legs as I walked and I reached out and brushed Sarah’s fingers with mine. She glanced at me, but I looked forward like I hadn’t noticed.

It got late. I was feeling something from the rum and a beer that someone had given me. I was talking to Jake and Jonathan and watching the branches of trees that had collected over the summer burn into ash. Sarah had been talking with some seniors that were friends with Kody’s sister. One of them was Brett Rambert, a basketball player everyone in town knew. When I looked over at them everyone was gone except him and Sarah. He was taller than her and had his head bent towards her and she was laughing at something he said. I felt something bitter rise up in me and I thought of Sarah kissing me in the truck and how I had felt it on my mouth for days after. Now it seemed like that was a lifetime ago and she was someone else and so was I.

We didn’t see each other for a few days. I told her I was busy and I was; helping out my grandpa hauling hay from the Biggs’ field. I hefted bales onto the trailer until my arms were spent and my back ached and my whole body felt broken down like an old mattress, and when Grandpa asked if I was ready to quit I said no, let’s do one more pass. When we stopped for the night when the sun was down and my vision was all shadows and shades of black and gray. Those few nights after hauling hay I showered and ate and watched tv in my room. I didn’t talk to my mom, except when she came to tell me good night through the door. I thought about how if Sarah had come during the school year she would have become friends with the important people right away, and she and I would probably never have spoken. A lot of nights that summer I would lie on top of the covers with the window open and the cicadas drowning me in their sound. And I would think about Sarah and how she was lying in her makeshift bedroom behind her flowered sheet with those dainty glass figurines on the shelf above her. And I would replay the moments I spent with her that day: how she had swung from the handle to climb into the truck, how she smiled when I mimicked the way she said “both” like there was an L in it. Then I would imagine myself saying even funnier things the next day, or impressing her by jumping off the cliff at the springs. The nights after the bonfire I couldn’t picture her doing anything. She was like a smeared oil painting in my mind. 

I saw her when I mowed her grandparents yard the next Tuesday. She came out into the backyard without any shoes on while I was putting the mower back in the shed. 

You missed a spot, she said.

I looked around. Where?

She grinned. No where. 

I walked towards the front of the house and she fell in step beside me.

Hey, she said.

Hey.

What’s up?

Nothing, just heading home.

You wanna do something? she asked in a friendly voice.

No, that’s okay. I should mow the Horns’ before it rains.

She stopped walking.

What’s the matter? she said.

What? Nothing. 

I stopped and turned the side of my body towards her. 

You’re acting weird.

I’m not trying to.

She was looking at me with concern. 

Are you mad at me or something? she asked.

No, I’m not mad. I just don’t think we should hang out all the time because people might get the wrong idea.

Sarah made a scoffing noise and folded her arms. The wrong idea? What, that we’re friends? 

No, I don’t know, that we’re more than that.

Are people saying that? she asked. 

I shook my head. No, I’m just- it’s just some people might think-

Whose business is it anyway? she demanded.

No one’s.

Then why do you care?

I thought she looked hurt and I felt guilty. 

Look, I didn’t mean- I just think you should be careful.

What? 

Just how you act around people.

What are you saying? Her face was hard then and I was regretting saying anything.

Nothing, I don’t know. 

We were silent for a few second and I felt what had been between us dissolve into nothing.

I’ll see you later, I said. She didn’t respond. She went into the house and I walked home. 

***

I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I was angry at myself, angry at her. I was driving the backroads, I didn’t know where I was. My hands were clenched on the wheel. I thought about how I had told her once about my dad, how much I still missed him, how my mom never wanted to talk about him because it made her start to cry. We had been sitting on the bridge at Oxford creek and she had touched my hand. 

I don’t actually know if I’m going to move home again, she had said. The light was coming sideways and her profile was in shadow toward me. My mom’s doing pretty bad, she continued, and I might have to live with Grandma Jean and Pop a while longer.

I felt a selfish surge of desire that her mom wouldn’t get better and Sarah would have to stay, but I knew it was a shitty thing to feel. 

I’m sorry, I said. I wish I could make you feel happy.

I do feel happy, she had responded, and she had leaned her shoulder against mine. I feel happy when I’m with you. 

***

The wind chimes were sounding as I walked up the porch steps and knocked. The air felt charged like 

 a storm was coming, and the grass and the tree limbs were trembling in sudden gusts. Sarah’s grandma answered and let me in. She hollered down the basement steps and Sarah’s voice returned saying I could come down.

I descended nervously and the steps creaked.

Hey, I said.

Hey.

She was still mad. She was braiding a strand of hair and not looking at me. 

I got you something, I said. I handed her a brown paper bundle. She looked skeptically at me. My throat was dry.

She sat on the edge of the bed and unwrapped it.

She didn’t say anything right away; then, wow. It’s so pretty. 

She held it carefully aloft and the light sparkled through the glass. It was a carousel with three horses. Their manes were gold.

Where did you get it? she asked. She was looking at me and I felt myself buoyed upwards by the expression in her face.

I got it at the antique market in Rockford. 

She was turning it in her hands. 

How much did it cost?

I shrugged. Not that much, I lied.

She set it upon the shelf, moving aside a turtle with a blue glass shell and an orange tulip.

She turned back to me. I’m still mad at you, she said.

I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I did. I didn’t mean it.

She was quiet. 

There’s only a few weeks of summer left, she added. 

I know, I said. Do you want to drive around or something later? 

We were both quiet and she looked at me and then she made a knowing smile and I smiled back by accident.

Yes, she said.