When the sun was just barely visible, I decided to ask River the question. It had been on my mind all evening. I didn’t want to ask it. I dreaded what the answer might be. But I needed to know.
“River. What are you doing in the fall?”
He didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “I don’t know yet.”
“You still don’t know? What about your traveling plans? Did you change your mind?” The sudden hopefulness was evident in my voice.
He only said, “I didn’t change my mind,” and the tiny sprig of hope that had sprouted up seconds earlier withered away. We were quiet again.
“Did you hear Riley’s going back to Seattle?” I said eventually. “She’s going to beauty school there.”
“Yeah, she told me.”
It surprised me to hear that the two of them had spoken to each other directly. I had it in my head that I acted as a mediator between them. But I guess after they attended the prom together, I should’ve understood there was more to their friendship than I’d originally thought.
“River . . . You seriously don’t know what you’re doing when September comes around?”
“Don’t you worry, Drew.” He was grinning at me, and although the sun was nearly gone, things seemed to lighten up right then. “I’ll figure it out at some point. For now I just want to enjoy the present. Like here, with you, right now.”
He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me nearer to him. I let my head rest on his shoulder. Then the sun went down.
◈ ◈ ◈
By the time fourth grade concluded back in elementary school, River was the best friend I’d ever had.
I’d never thought I could be friends with a boy, let alone best friends. I still spent some time with Chloe and Grace, but that time was dwindling, and I noticed myself enjoying it less and less.
Time with River was far more interesting. He was always coming up with fun things to do. Before fourth grade ended, he had managed to convince me it would be amusing if we tried to sneak into the third graders’ lines at recess. The third-grade recess always ended before ours, and those kids would be lining up on the playground, waiting for their teachers to come fetch them and lead them back to their classrooms.
Our strategy was simple: River and I would inject ourselves in between some of the kids in line and see if any of the teachers would notice. They usually did, as River and I were several inches taller than the third-graders, and the teachers would be shooing us out of the lines, back into the playground.
There was one time, however, that we made it all the way into Mr. Jackson’s classroom before he caught us. A couple of the third-graders had aided and abetted us by giving up their desks for me and River to sit at. Mr. Jackson got two minutes into his science lesson before he finally realized that invaders were present. The whole class burst into laughter when he banished us from the room. River and I laughed, too, practically for the rest of the day.
River and I hung out almost every day that summer. He lived close enough to my house that he could walk over. Sometimes his parents would drop him off on their way to work, early in the morning, when it was still dark out. My mom ended up making a spare key for him so he could let himself into our house on those mornings and sleep on our couch until I woke up.
My whole family loved River. My mom thought he was an angel, as he was perennially polite with his pleases and thank yous during dinnertime.
My dad was rarely home, doctor that he was, but on his days off, he liked to play basketball with River in our driveway. It was really my dad’s only chance to do such an activity, since Cambria and I didn’t care for sports.
And then there was Cambria herself, who loved River just as much as my parents did. I figured it was because he was always so nice to her, even when I wasn’t. That first summer River and I shared together, Cambria was only five years old. Back then, that age seemed the equivalent of a baby to me, and so that was how I treated her. River, on the other hand, never treated Cambria like a baby.
River would talk about his younger brother sometimes. One day he showed Cambria some magic tricks with a quarter and said, “My brother and I learned those in Hawaii.” Another time, he came over for dinner, and my mom had made barbecued chicken with watermelon slices on the side. River had commented, “My brother loves watermelon. It’s his favorite fruit.”
I hadn’t met River’s brother yet. I’d barely met his parents, and I hadn’t even been over to his house. He told me all of this was because his parents were always working, and his brother was always hanging with his own friends or going to tennis lessons.
Finally, I went to River’s house one day. It was the Fourth of July, that first summer together, when River was ten and I was nine. My family was having a potluck-pool-party and invited River’s family. But, as it turned out, River’s parents had other plans. They were going to get away to the nearest lake for the day, just the two of them.
They dropped River off at our house around noon, on their way out of town. I was peering out the thin strip of window in my front door, and I could make out River’s parents inside the SUV right before they drove away. It was just the two of them in the car, and they were both wearing dark sunglasses.
“Where’s your brother?” I asked River when he got inside the house.
“My parents dropped him off at his friend’s house. They’re doing fireworks and stuff there. The big ones.”
Before my family’s party had officially kicked off, I was eager to get in the pool and start playing Marco Polo before Cambria could realize we were doing something fun without her. But, we came upon a dilemma: River had forgotten to bring his swim trunks.
“Maybe I could borrow some of your dad’s trunks?” he’d suggested.
I giggled. “They’d be huge on you.”
“I don’t have to swim. I could just watch you.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I said the word the way my mom did, with emphasis on the second syllable. “Let’s just run to your house and get them.”
He didn’t seem very pleased with that idea, but it’s what we did.
River’s house was bigger than mine. I hadn’t expected that. Even at that age I knew my dad made a lot of money as a doctor. It seemed that River’s parents made a lot of money, too.
River ran upstairs to search for his swim trunks. He told me to wait downstairs for him.
His house was largely empty. I thought maybe that was because his family had moved in not too long ago. But then I realized they’d been living there for a little over six months. That should have been enough time to make their house feel at least a smidge cozier. Their living room had one couch, one accent table, and no TV. Gingerly, I approached the accent table to examine the single object it supported. It was a photo album. I cracked it open, feeling like I was committing a crime.
In the album, there were pictures of River peering down at a baby. His brother, I assumed. There were pictures of the two of them older and laughing. Pictures of the family of four all together, sitting on a checkered blanket, smiling. There were actually a lot of photos of River’s brother, and I examined each one carefully, since I’d never seen him in person before. Then, after flipping through about three-quarters of the album, I turned a page, and there was nothing. I looked at the next page, the next, the next, all the way to the end, but there were no more pictures. The pages were all white and blank.