I noticed as she was standing there, smiling at me, that in her ears were what appeared to be the same silver stud earrings she’d worn back in fourth grade. It gave me fleeting flashbacks to when we were little, bouncing balls around on the playground together. Chloe had grown up to be beautiful. Not in the way that Grace had, which, if you looked closely, was mostly just layers of makeup and bleached hair. Chloe had a more natural beauty, a soft kind. Her frame was tall and slender and probably exactly what modeling agencies looked for.
“I can sign yours, too,” she suggested as I accepted her yearbook into my grasp. I really didn’t care if Chloe signed my yearbook or not, but for the sake of politeness, I fished it out of my bag and gave it to her. I located a miniscule blank space in her book but had no idea what to write. We had been friends in the past, but I knew almost nothing about Chloe Gibson at this point.
I looked up for a moment to find her scribbling away on a page in my book. What could she possibly be writing with such vigor? Realizing I better hurry and come up with something before she finished, I jotted down: Elementary school was fun. Have a nice life!
I practically grimaced as I wrote the words.
We returned each other’s books, and then she said, “We should hang out sometime this summer.”
“Oh. Sure.”
That seemed highly unlikely.
Right then, Riley found the two of us. She stepped in between us with an amused sort of grin. “Hi, Chloe,” she said.
“Hey, have you signed my yearbook yet?”
“Yep,” Riley answered.
“Oh, okay. Well, we should hang out this summer.”
“Definitely.”
“See you guys.” Chloe skipped off toward a cluster of people, leaving me and Riley to ourselves. Riley was trying to not laugh.
“What’s up with her?” Riley said. “Like we’d ever hang out in a million years.”
“What’d you write in her yearbook?” I asked.
“I didn’t sign it.”
Finally, I made my way out the doors, Riley striding by my side. The day was gray and overcast. Not the sunny, celebratory weather I would have expected for my last day of high school.
“I didn’t know what to say when she asked,” I remarked. I was still talking about the yearbook-Chloe-Gibson situation. “But I didn’t know how to say no. It’s like everyone wants to pretend we’ve all been friends this whole time.”
“Yep. Did you sign Ingrams’s book?” She shot me one of her glances. She had forced me to spill the details on what had happened that night at Summer Trent’s party. Her enthusiasm on the matter far exceeded any excitement I felt. She kept pressing me to talk to Aaron, and I couldn’t explain it to her, but somehow I knew it was something I should just leave alone.
“I didn’t see what the point would be,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I’m over him.”
“Well, I’m not sure, but okay.”
We arrived at my car in the parking lot. Riley lived two blocks away from the school and always walked home, but she stood there as I threw my bag into the backseat. When I turned back around to face her, she was moving her lips from side to side.
“Drew?”
“Yeah?”
“We’ll hang out this summer, right?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t we?”
“Well, I’m not exactly going to be around the whole time.”
“What do you mean?”
She cleared her throat. “I’m going back to Seattle, I decided. I’m going to live with my cousin over there and attend this beauty school she’s been going to.”
This was complete news to me. The last I’d heard, Riley had been talking about going to the community college south of Rockwood.
“Riley! That’s amazing. I didn’t even know you were into that stuff.”
“I don’t really know what I’m into,” she said. “I’m not like you. You’ve known what you wanted to do basically since you were born. It sounds like fun though, to do hair and stuff, at least for now. And I miss Seattle.”
“When are you moving?”
“The end of the month. It’s a twelve-month program, and I just want to get going on it, you know? Start making some damn money.”
I hugged her. “I think that’s amazing. I’ll miss you, though, Riley Banks.”
“And I you, Drew Caldwell. You need to come visit me in Seattle. Or else.”
“I will. Definitely.”
“I mean it, Mermaid Dragon. Not like when Chloe Gibson says, We should hang out, and everyone’s like, Yeah, for sure. You really have to come see me, okay? Deal?” She stuck out her hand.
I shook it firmly. “Deal.”
◈ ◈ ◈
River and I were at the apple tree again.
It was the first Saturday of June, a perfectly warm evening. We’d graduated just a few hours earlier. My parents had wanted to throw me a party that night, but I’d convinced them to have it the next day. I was glad I’d made that decision, because this was exactly where I wanted to be after the whirlwind of graduation. Out in our quiet meadow, under those green leaves.
River and I sat with our backs against the tree trunk as the sun was beginning to set. There was no one else around—there never was.
“Wow,” River stated. He turned and smiled at me.
“Graduating?” I asked.
“The sunset. I guess graduating was okay, too.”
I laughed. “Your speech was really good, River.”
“Yours was better.”
I was my high school’s valedictorian, which required delivering a speech in front of all the students and family members at the ceremony. I’d been so nervous about it, I almost wished I hadn’t earned all those perfect grades. River hadn’t been valedictorian or salutatorian, but he’d been asked to give a speech, regardless. People were always doing things like that when it came to River.
“You made people laugh,” I retorted. “My speech was boring and predictable.”
“Did I make you laugh?”
“You always do.”
We sat there awhile. The sun was falling little by little behind the barn.
“My sister tried to convince me to let her come tonight,” I said. “To the tree.”
“Why didn’t you let her?”
“Why would I have? That would be weird.”
“You should’ve let her.” He said it stiffly. It made my body stiffen in turn.
“Cambria and I just aren’t that close. Four years between us feels like a lot.”
Cambria had just graduated from middle school and would be starting her freshman year of high school the following year. Her eighth-grade graduation had been a week earlier than my high school graduation. For her event, my family had attended the ceremony (River included), we had snapped some pictures, and then gone out for pizza. When Cambria learned that my parents wanted to throw me a graduation party with balloons and cake and gifts, she started complaining that I was always overshadowing her achievements. I didn’t agree with that analysis, and I told her so. A high school graduation was just a bigger deal.
“That’s not good, Drew.” River responded to my earlier statement with a flatness, amplifying the uneasy feeling that had risen up inside me. I didn’t say anything back, and minutes of wordlessness passed.