Diana sat at the kitchen table, gripping the envelope in her hands. Her throat constricted as the name crashed like surf upon rock, bringing back the words of the night before. None of this could possibly be true.
That name — the name none of their classmates had ever known — still felt foreign to her. That name, paired with her own familiar address beneath, was nothing new to the young woman; for the past year she’d received scores of letters like it — but this was the first one she wouldn’t be able to give to him.
She recoiled from the very thought of slicing into the seal.
Her mother had left the article, like she had all the others, in a pile next to the phone on the desk. This little stack at the corner of the old desk, once populated by Stone Soup and Cat Fancy, had been Diana’s first taste of the outside world. But as she’d grown taller, the rest of the desk’s contents had multiplied in size and significance, and letters from her grandmother went unanswered.
Upon a worn wooden chair and cushion fading from red to pink, her parents opened bills, signed checks, and leafed through the yellow pages. At sixteen years old, she was still quite insulated from the barbs of facts and figures, but that is not to say she had no notice of the shadow looming over her shoulder.
“He left this morning?” her mother asked, noticing her daughter’s pained gaze. The coffee had long been cold, and she contemplated pouring another cup.
Diana faltered in her reply, wordless emotion hanging heavy over her mind. “Y-yes—” but she quickly rescinded her response.
“Er, no, he left late last night.” Diana could feel her face strain against the torrent of tangled feeling.
Her mother, the lynchpin that kept the family in ceaseless motion, had always been one for procedure and protocol. She dutifully dabbed at the bacon, removing the excess grease with a paper towel. “Did he take everything with him? The new birth certificate, his paystubs, the social security card? He’ll need—”
Diana’s attention lingered upon the bright emptiness around the greyish-black text. “Yeah, Mom.” She tried to find solace in the house number, then the zip code.
“I gave him everything we had.”
She looked again at the name printed on the envelope, iterating over each arcane symbol. He had not been known by this name, not then, nearly two years ago when she’d met him in the hallway of their high school. Had the stars not aligned as they did, none of it might have happened.
On that day in late August, she’d had her head buried in her schedule, trying to ingest the too-faint lettering when she’d lost her footing, tripping on her own clothing. The papers and books she’d been clutching to her chest scattered spectacularly, fluttering on turbulent air — while time seemed to slow like dripping syrup. As her knees painfully connected to the tile, something inside her suggested that this was precisely what she deserved.
This was her just deserts.
Everyone had walked on by with no concern for a careless little girl; they were all gossiping with their dear friends, perhaps laughing about something they’d recalled seeing on television the night before. It had been months since they’d walked these halls, and there wasn’t a second to spare. Shoes clomped past, discordant chatter crowded her ears. No one seemed to pay any mind to the freshman who’d pridefully refused the petite inseam. She clumsily crawled about on all fours, trying to balance while clawing for her possessions. None would dare lower their eyes to her station.
No one—
Except him.
He seemed to simply appear as if from the painted cinderblock, making no noise as he knelt and joined her in gathering the loose-leaf. She grabbed at the paper and diverted her eyes, instead noticing his pile of books sitting neatly next to hers. Among them, the blue tome for English that was assigned in the third year.
Her cheeks grew hot, feeling entirely out of her element. Who had stopped, in her unfortunate moment of vulnerability, to aim their gun at her head?
He took the last piece and she glanced at his shoes, scuffed and well-worn.
She stood and slung her purse over her shoulder and desperately tried to regain her cool. She tried to find his face, but the pain of embarrassment kept her restrained, chin bridled. She’d always had an instinctual aversion to people’s eyes, an apprehension of the weight that she would bear seeing past the iris and into the darkness between.
He handed her the schedule that had gone flying, and she accepted it, finally gaining the strength to look up.
He wasn’t smiling, exactly, but his face was bright and attentive. Green, she’d noticed right away, and piercing, his pupils were almost consumed with color, gaze seeming to focus on a point somewhere far behind her. His short hair was sandy brown, perhaps bleached over the vacation; the same shade as his intense eyebrows. What had once been neatly combed had been swept astray.
“Thanks—” she’d whispered, completely lost in those eyes, for a moment forgetting the chaos and din of the hallway, not to mention the rules of genteel interaction. She thought she’d revealed her teeth in an unconscious gesture, remembering that the metal had been removed last month—
And then the bell rang, shattering her reverie.
“No problem,” he’d said as time resumed its tireless march. “See you ‘round. Good luck out there.” and turned away, walking forward and fading into the crowd.
By the end of the day, she hadn’t forgotten those little words, instead playing them over and over again in her memory, trying to carve the event into permanency. In stark contrast, the introductions delivered by her instructors washed over her like a falling tide, her remaining faculties of reason resolving to read over the syllabi at some later time. There would be many more days like these, she found herself bargaining—
But she regretted her arrogance, knowing the grim truth.
She ambled through the course boilerplate in a daze, barely cognizant of the reason she was present. By her fourteenth year, this job had become muscle memory; she needed no redirection to comply with exactly what was expected of her. She went on without thought, without resistance, as she had always done, as she felt she had been born to do.
And then, like something she’d read in a book, he inexplicably showed up last period in the math class she’d been dreading, seated third from the front on the far side.
She feigned nonchalance and scooted between the rows, trying to glimpse him through her peripheral vision as she walked. She tried to grasp at an approach, a strategy, anything to comprehend this reality.
‘He’s in here — with me?’
Against her usual pattern, she sat in the back of the classroom. She prayed no one would attempt small talk or ask her name, perhaps noticing she hadn’t sat for the prerequisite last year.
She was a freshman where none were supposed to be found.
Soon after the toll of the bell, the teacher stood at the front and began giving her spiel. But Diana’s mind bounded about as a dust bunny among clouds. She watched the tawny-haired upperclassman dutifully scrawl in a spiral notebook, never deviating from the quiet determination she had seen in those eyes — verdant, glossy, endless.
For the first time in her life, an existence that had been dominated by docility, obedience, and going with the flow, she felt compelled to make an effort. Perhaps there was little virtue in making oneself invisible. And maybe a fleeting embarrassment would sting less than the ageless ache of being forgotten.
In the days that followed, she went out of her way to wave at him when they passed in the hallway. Every afternoon, she tried to arrange herself in the ideal seat so that she might get a glance at his worksheet passed down the row. She sat up with rapt attention when he was called to demonstrate a solution on the chalkboard. But none of that was enough. She could not let him just walk on by.
When the first exam approached, propelled by instinct and heady with the advice of the sages, she asked if the two of them could get together in the evening to study. They had several times before shared short conversations, always focused on school, but this? This would be something different. She repeated in her mind yet another trite idiom — something about the supposed fortune of the bold.
He had looked upon her again with those infinite eyes. But this time, his face otherwise still, he’d blinked in ponderous uncertainty, obscuring the color.
“Your place?” he asked, his voice quavering just perceptibly.
‘Yes,’ Diana remembered. ‘My place.’
Those months afterward seemed to scatter away as sand on the wind. Despite the two years between them, they became friends. More afternoons slipped into memory and she moved her seat to sit behind him, banishing her shame. Their conversations became habit rather than privilege. They used to trade notes when they thought the teacher wasn’t looking. He had tidy, careful handwriting that reflected his pensive nature and she, for her part, used to focus intently on her responses, putting forth her best penmanship and trying to affect wisdom beyond her years. He was always kind and patient; polite, she observed, but with a distance she could never quite place.
She supposed early on that he didn’t share the same fluttering feeling of infatuation that she felt for him. His eyes didn’t travel down her body or linger on the hallmarks of her female form. He never made crude comments when a classmate violated the dress code. And not once did he ever mimic the slurs or hateful speech carelessly thrown about by their peers. He had no aspiration to earn praise from the jocks or to blend into their lackeys, and Diana respected this as evidence of his sense of self.
But she secretly despaired: the very things that kindled her affection seemed to also indicate that despite her heart being so hopelessly fixed upon him, his mind was somewhere else entirely.
By the end of that year, the pieces of the puzzle began to fall in place. What little she witnessed suggested that the true picture was far more tragic than she ever could have imagined.
In May, the school held an awards ceremony with the intention to honor those who had done notable work throughout the year. Diana’s stellar performance in Algebra II had earned her the esteem of the math department, while the upperclassman had earned the favor of the French teacher. They, along with the other honorees, were expected at the auditorium in the evening, where the school’s officials would give a short speech about each award recipient and present a certificate.
Each student was to sit with their family. Most brought their mother, father, or both, some had their siblings, some came with their aunts, uncles, or grandparents—
The upperclassman arrived alone.
Diana saw him seated near the front, with a space to his right adjacent to the aisle. She had, at this point, rarely allowed the matter of his parentage to enter her mind.
She quickly felt quite small, realizing like drowning how often she’d babbled about her own family and how little he’d spoken of his. And she had not thought to ask. Perhaps, if she’d stitched together the details she’d gleaned sideways, she supposed he lived with his mother. She wasn’t sure there had ever been anyone else.
Diana asked her family to sit near him and her parents cheerfully made small talk to make a play at normalcy, pretending they could provide in this moment what he lacked. Her mother and father were gentle people, and she didn’t mind them. Maybe, she even liked them. She didn’t know any other way.
The lights lowered and the show began.
It was quiet and monotonous, as these things always were, an essential mockery of pomp and circumstance. The microphones were poorly tuned, and some of the verbose details were lost in the ether. But everyone knew when they were supposed to clap, and they all did so dutifully. Going along with expectations made the whole thing seem to pass more easily through the needle’s eye.
Few had much in mind but tame observance when, about twenty minutes later, just as the impatient succumbed to the temptation to eye their wristwatches, the doors to the auditorium opened with a clatter. Disturbed by the interruption, many looked back, but none truly understood what their eyes beheld.
A lone woman stumbled in, her gait difficult and irregular, as if she were intoxicated. Though the lights ignored the interruption and remained fixed toward the front, a number of those in the audience noticed their attention drift from the ceremony. No one recognized her, and, even if they had, none had the bravery to admit their knowledge. Her clothes were wrinkled and disheveled, defiant of any customary dress-code, and it looked as if she’d neglected to brush her hair. And the audacity of her late arrival — the gossip spoke for itself.
Diana, in her shining youth, had momentarily forgotten herself, eyes widened to observe she who entered. Darkness obscured the woman’s identity, and yet something about her seemed familiar.
Without hesitation, and uttering no word to beg excuse, the upperclassman rose to his feet and entered the aisle, held out his hands and helped her to an empty seat.
Diana felt the pain of revelation.
‘His… m-mom?’
The woman clad in the poison armor had barely sat down when the French teacher called the young man to the stage. First seeming to wordlessly ask his mother’s permission, newly-arrived as she was, he moments later stood placid in the spotlight as the instructor spoiled him with garish anecdotes, complimenting his dedication to learning the language.
Diana looked at him, thumbs hidden inside the pockets of pale khakis. On either side, his fingers curled in a loose fist, and he shifted every so often, enduring, rather than absorbing, the praise. Despite no fourth year program offered at their school, the teacher implored him to continue practicing on his own and presented him a textbook for him to keep. They exchanged canned smiles, shook hands, and he returned to the crowd.
Before he could even sit down, the next student was called to the stage, the inertia of the event desperate to hurtle onward. His mother turned her head, looking neither at the stage nor even at him, choosing instead the diagonal space between. She spoke without restraint, her harsh whisper not masking a tone caustic and derisive.
“You done?”
He paused.
The upperclassman looked at Diana for a moment, eyes obscured in the shadow.
He turned back to his mother.
“Yeah. We can go.”
Uncomfortable with the recollection, Diana’s mind returned to the present day, and, amidst the racket of her own mother washing dishes, back to the name typed on the letter.
He had concocted the idea. As he had approached his final year of high school, Diana had begged him to consider a path through university to elevate his prospects. A degree would give him a career, a livelihood, a way out. But he had refused, insisting that the loans necessary to fund higher education would tie him even more firmly to that which he must shed: his home, his origin, and even—
His name.
She had balked at the concept at first, plainly ignorant of why anyone would risk a blank slate. To rid oneself of the negatives, that she had begun to grasp. But to cut off the nose to spite the face? She could not understand what it was to embrace the abyss.
But his resigned silence at her protestations spoke more than any argument could attempt. With quiet determination, he insisted that this is what he had wanted since the very beginning.
It was not easy or simple. Diana, with the help of her compassionate family, volunteered to provide assistance. In their pity, they allowed him to use their address as if it were his own, even vouching for him as he constructed a new identity — a man that had never yet existed — and prepared to slip into his shoes.
Diana, too, became so involved with the plotting and planning that she thought only to keep moving forward. It felt good to be helpful, and she fixated on what needed to be done and ignored the oxygen leaking from her lungs.
Months disappeared as her parents escorted him to government offices. There, Diana had no business, and she stared in vain at her coursework alone in the house. When verb conjugations and conic surfaces could not keep her attention, she wondered what else it was that she didn’t know.
What did he say when an official invariably asked why he was here and for what purpose? She shuddered to think what kind of crime could cause a child to forsake his own mother. Her mother had always packed her lunches, mended her clothes, tended to her needs when she succumbed to illness. Father was gone early each morning and returned late, but he never shirked from kissing her forehead or beaming with pride when she claimed checkmate.
To imagine an alternate reality made her blood run cold.
She had thought all of their plans would be dashed when they learned that name changes had to be publicized in the local newspaper. A little notice would be printed for several weeks leading up to the court date, clearly identifying him and revealing his intentions, allowing the public time to consider an objection.
But he had laughed, the bleak dismissal startling her.
“You think my mom reads the paper?”
While Diana worried about the PSAT, he was calling lawyers and researching legal procedures, trying to make sure that when he was finally ready to leave, he would never have to turn back. He spent any free moment he had working, throwing every penny into a bank account he soon intended to empty.
Attention turned elsewhere, his grades suffered and he often came to school haggard from lack of sleep. He took shifts late into the night, stocking shelves for minimum wage. He fell from his rank at the top of the class, but, Diana supposed, where he was going, none of that would matter anymore.
Winter soon faded, spring disappeared into early summer and he graduated, not even bothering to attend the celebration. The long sun passed overhead and the nights seemed to fade into nothingness. He quit his job, cashed out his savings, and spent much of his last week with her. They drove around town, saw a couple movies, shared moments they knew they’d never share again.
The school, his employer, everyone who knew him called him by that old name. Even Diana, despite letter after letter bombarding her with the truth of his future, could not bring herself to call him something else. So, instead, she took to calling him nothing at all.
She thought about telling him how she felt. In all this time, the butterflies had never gone away; if anything, they had multiplied and viciously beat against their cage. She had long become accustomed to their persistent pleas, and yet, she too yearned to be seen: no longer a clumsy freshman upon the floor, but a woman who would stand strong upon her own two feet.
As she anticipated their last meeting — he had promised to come see her at home and say goodbye on his way out — she knew this was her last chance. Her last chance to stop hiding and admit her vain hope. Her last chance to know whether he had ever felt anything tender for her beyond the scope of friendship.
Those anxieties buzzed in her mind as she waited on the old tree swing outside her house. It had long been too small for her, but she refused to give it up just yet. Maybe she would sit here until the thing gave out.
His car sputtered and rolled up the driveway, the gravel crinkling in a wave beneath the weight. It stopped, the driver’s door opened and closed again, and he walked up to her in the fading light. She could hardly stand to look at him, anticipating so acutely the pain of leaving. She noticed two hardcover books in his hand, each shiny with the library’s protective measures.
He stood before her for a minute while she sat in silence, now looking down at her knees.
“Hey, I—” he began, but paused.
The seconds of quiet made her nerves ache. Her hands wrapped tight around the coarse rope.
Gathering her courage, she straightened her neck and looked up at him. She needed to hear his voice, something, anything, but she was frozen with the fear of what he would say. Or, more likely — not say.
She smiled weakly. In his pale t-shirt and faded jeans, he seemed transcendent, otherworldly. His tennis shoes bore old dinge, and yet, they too seemed to repel the dirt in which he stood.
“I wanted to say thank you. It’s not enough, it never will be, but… Thank you, for everything.”
She struggled against the threat of tears, unable to find words. She was absorbed in the sight of him, even as water crowded her vision.
His face was calm, relaxed; something in him warm like she had never before witnessed. His eyes shone in the setting sun.
“Could—”
“Could I ask you one last thing?”
Her face softened, a tear falling unbidden upon her cheek.
She realized, gravity pulling an icy stream down her face, that in spite of the myriad feelings swimming in her heart, in spite of what she’d rehearsed, and in spite of all that had happened since she’d met him two years ago — there was nothing left for her to say.
He had given her those nine short words in the hallway on that day now seeming to fade into eternity. And though he stood before her in the present, the blanket of night threatening to consume their sight, she found herself returning to that place. That was where she had seen what he could be. The rest of it didn’t matter anymore.
He held out the books, but her eyes would not move from his.
As the tension in her eyes relented, feeling the promise of those little words he had given so freely, she found the only two that she could return to him.
“Of course.”
For years she would return to this sunset in her mind and try to feel again that peace she had felt awash in his presence amidst the Sun’s farewell. But she knew that when the Earth would spin ‘round again and the stars would fade into the cerulean sky, she would never see the same light again. This goodbye would dissipate and become memory, and like memory, someday fade into entropy. But she held tight to those words, the very act of grasping remaining as the scant impression that perhaps, just… maybe — she was more than a vibrating speck of dust in the uncaring vacuum of space.
‘They were all I had.’