Late July

I walk out onto the porch and see you there, and the air smells vaguely of thick honey - the kind my mom buys at the farmer's market that's infused with lavender. I have always associated summer with dusks like this one - that warm, thick scent to the air - as if the very tendrils of atmosphere are licking the bare skin of my legs beneath my cutoffs. The comfortable warmth wrapping around me as I walk home after dark, my shoulders bare. It's late July.

You inhale as I sit next to you, three inches of space between our thighs. I ask you what you're up to tonight.

"Dunno. Gonna head down to the railroad tracks. Jessie's having a thing."

I wish my stomach wouldn't convulse every time you said someone was having a thing. I wish my palms didn't go cold and fill with moisture. I wish my head didn't feel light, disconnecting from my neck. I wish I could move my hand from where it clutched the top step to wrap around your bare shoulders. I ask you what kind of thing.

"You know. Just a thing."

And I did know, but I didn't want to. I hated myself for knowing, and more so, I hated myself for permitting you to leave every other night to the railroad tracks that July.

~

It's May, and your cheeks are mascara-streaked. Graduation hangs huge and foreboding above your head - more like an expiry date than a doorway. I see the fear in your eyes as I open our thick maple front door to you. A garbage bag is slung over your shoulder, swelling. Edges poke at the black plastic, and I make out the spine of a book . Your spine is hunched, curled in on itself beneath the weight of your load. You hair is swept up into a bun on the top of your head, pieces coming away around your ears like a blonde halo, back lit by the five o'clock sun. You come in without a word and I carry the bag up to my room.

My mom asks what you're doing here.

"She's gonna stay for a couple of days."

She asks why. I feed her lies. My words hang thinly in the air between us and I see in her face that she doesn't believe me.

That night, your bag lies half-unpacked on my hardwood bedroom floors. My curtains are open and the oak tree across the lawn sways in the eleven o'clock breeze. I see your knees, scraped, and your palms, blistered from climbing its bark. Your hand plays through the darkened air, greyish light catching your skin from time to time as your fingers dip and twist. I ask what you're doing.

"Go to sleep, Katie."

~

It's the second week of June. You've been staying here for six weeks now, your garbage bag curled up in a corner of my closet, long forgotten. You graduate next Friday. I see the fear wrapped around your lips and inside your eyes and buried deep within your stomach. I ask you what you want your future to be like, one night, when we're sitting out on my lawn. I'm drinking iced tea and you're drinking a beer because my dad treats you like an adult.

"Well, Katie, I'd like to live in London. Brick Lane, you know, loft apartment. A nice guy, he has thick-rimmed circle-frame glasses and a beard. I want to sing. I think my voice is okay, and singing makes me happy. Aren't you supposed to try to be happy? I don't know. It all sounds like a pile of bullshit to me, but I can't exactly write that in the yearbook. I mean, what's the point of illustrating this idyllic future, this perfect man, these two and a half kids, this apartment with its imaginary claw-foot bathtub and authentic hardwood flooring? What's the point of it all? As if imagining it will somehow make it real. Well, Katie, I'll tell you what imagining's got me. A big pile of disappointments and a bucket load of expectations. And empty promises. To myself. Which are the worst kind, really. I know I won't end up spending my Saturdays walking through Hyde Park pushing a designer stroller while I put together perfectly engineered melodies for my new album that will undoubtedly go platinum in two point five seconds. That's not my life. We're all given a life at the beginning of this whole shit show, we're all given a script. And I've read mine from top to bottom. And I didn't like it. I tried different accents, different inflections. I've even added some small print in there, some actions. Done my best with what was written for me. But I'm no magician, none of us are. Don't believe those bullshit 'coming from nothing' motivational stories. That's what their script was, part of the larger plan to make us believe that there isn't a script, that we are in command of our own destinies. Well, I'll tell you something, Katie. Keep believing. Keep believing in the plan. Because I'll tell you what - when you stop believing, when you stop mapping this imaginary future out and stringing the lies you tell yourself on the cord you wear around your neck - well, when you stop all that, you'll be happy you were weaving a rope. Because you'll need something to get you out of here."

~

So it's late July and you're sitting on my porch while my mom makes dinner inside.  I ask if you're eating with us.

"Thanks, Katie bear, but no thanks."

You ruffle my hair. I cut it two days ago. Chopped off my long brown curls into a boyish. short back and sides thing. You said it made me look older than sixteen. I hoped you were right, because I've been waiting for some sign of womanhood to land upon me. You always seemed like some exotic, uncageable creature. But looking at you now, your face bare and your body small and feeble beneath your old tank top and cuffed shorts, you seem so human. I guess you always were. But the bravery you had, and I use past tense here on purpose, it made me think of you as something greater than that. The idea of you I harvested helped me forgive you, I think. Forgive you for the convulsions in my stomach every night you didn't come home. Forgive you for the sweaty palms and disconnect I felt whenever you said you were going to a thing.

~

Yesterday we went to the beach. We shared a basket of fries drenched in ketchup. The sun blistered our skin and you dared me into the swelling waves. You floated on your back for a while, your long hair splayed out around you. I tried hard not to picture you floating like this, your lips bluish, your face whitened, under more dire circumstances. But what you said to me that night before graduation gives me nightmares almost every time I close my eyes. I wonder if you know that.

~

"Want a cigarette?"

You hold one out to me, the slim stick between your thumb and forefinger. I say sure, all nonchalant, and hold it between my lips like I've seen you do. Your thumb flicks the flame to life and brushes it against the end. I inhale as it burns reddish orange. I pull it from my mouth with two fingers and exhale in a gasping sputter. You laugh as you light your own, and my face reddens. Somehow this makes me angry.

The cigarette isn't at all what I'd expected. It tastes like ash and chalky bitterness, and it scratches my throat on the way down. But for some reason I'm compelled to inhale again and again until the sky darkens and I stub it out on the deck like you do.

"Katie, I gotta tell you something."

You tuck your hair behind your ear and turn towards me. I notice the hoop pierced in your cartilage and the streak of rose by the nape of your neck. I say yeah.

"I won't be seeing you again."

I ask why, knowing you won't answer.

"I can't say. You'll hear about me, don't worry."

~

I don't know why I held out a sliver of an inch of hope that when you said I'd hear about you, it would be under better circumstances. Maybe you'd have moved to London after all and released a hit single and were going on tour. Maybe you'd written a book. I don't know. Honestly, I don't know.

But I sure didn't expect to hear of you like this, as I dropped my bowl of cheerios to the carpeted floor, as I saw you light up on the television, your graduation photo above your name. And behind that, a train stopped on the tracks. And behind that, a conductor being interviewed by a man in a nice suit. His brows are knitted together. I think he looks gravely sad. Maybe you'll haunt his nightmares now, too.