I took a seat next to him and reclined against the hard trunk. Up to that point, I’d had my hair tied back in a ponytail, keeping it out of my face. It was starting to feel tight and uncomfortable, so I loosened the scrunchie and let my strands fall down freely. My hair was dark like my dad’s, so dark that it looked black most of the time. In the sunlight, you could see that it was really just a very dark brown, like coffee grounds. River’s hair was brown, too, but much lighter than mine.
I looked over at River and caught him staring at my hair. He had that serious look on his face again.
“I like your hair down,” he stated, his gaze remaining on my locks.
His compliment caught me off guard. Probably because he had never really complimented me before. Not anytime recently, anyway. There had been one time he told me he liked my Halloween costume when I had dressed as an alien. We had been twelve years old, and he had dressed up as Harry Potter.
I tried to think of something to say in return, which usually wasn’t a problem for me when I was talking to River. He ended up beating me to it when he said, “What are you thinking about, Drew?”
Again, caught off guard, I looked him in the eyes. His stare revealed how he genuinely wanted to know the current inner-workings of my mind.
“I don’t like my name,” I responded, feeling reticent and not knowing how to explain what I had actually been thinking. “Drew Caldwell.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“It sounds like a man’s name. Or like the name of a president or something. I don’t understand why my parents gave me such an ugly, masculine name. And then Cambria got something cool and girly.”
“Cambria Caldwell.”
“It even has alliteration.”
“Your name’s not bad, though,” River grinned. “It’s different. And I don’t think it sounds like a man’s name exclusively.”
“I looked it up on a name website. It means strong and manly.”
He laughed and said, “Well, I still like it.”
The spring air picked up a brisk breeze. I drew my knees up to my chest and looked up at the mass of branches above us.
“So, since we’re playing the What are You Thinking Game . . .” I said. “What about you—what are you thinking about?”
River was quiet for a moment before speaking. “About graduation, I guess. We’re only a month away.”
“That’s so crazy. Have you figured out where you want to go to college?” Earlier in the year, River had mentioned to me that he was having a hard time deciding where he was going to apply.
“I made up my mind,” he said. That declaration caused my head to swivel around to face him, a smile forming across my face. But the next words out of his mouth changed my facial expression entirely.
“I’m not going. At least not right away. I want to go exploring, you know? I want to see some new places before I get locked down onto some rigid path.” He paused for a few seconds and glanced at me. “I mean, not that what you’re doing is a rigid path.”
“It’s okay.” I looked away, inhaled, and felt my spine lengthen against the tree trunk. “It is a rigid path. But that’s just my personality—rigid. I need that structure.”
Both of my parents worked in the medical field, my mother a nurse and my father a family care physician. I had always planned on going into the medical field myself. With graduation approaching, I’d made the decision to go into nursing like my mom. I would go one town over to the university, work hard to achieve a perfect GPA, and then hopefully get accepted into the nursing program.
“I don’t know if that’s true.” River gave me an amused look. “I don’t know if you need that structure. I think some lack of structure would do you well, Drew.”
I shook my head at him, smiling. “I think that you could use more structure, River. Are you sure you want to go off exploring? Where would you even go? How would you get by?”
“I’d get a job wherever I went. Just minimum wage work, live cheaply. I don’t know where I’d go exactly. I don’t want to plan it out too much.”
“Of course not.” I smirked. “I know you’re not one to take much advice, River. But I don’t know if you should go.”
“Why not? Would you miss me?”
My head spun around to look at him, and my smile fell. He was leaning closer to me than he had been a minute ago. I realized that his arm was resting on mine. His skin felt warm. I faced forward again, pretending to be focused on the meadow that surrounded us.
“Of course I would,” I answered. “You’re my best friend, River.”
I felt him retreat from me slightly, his arm no longer touching mine.
“This is a cool tree,” he stated.
“Yeah. I like it.”
“I like how big it is.”
“Me, too.” Our sentences seemed to be getting choppier and choppier by the second.
“We should come back here sometime,” he said. “It kind of feels like . . . our place. Like it’s our tree. You know what I mean?”
I surveyed the meadow, the barn, and tilted my head up to view the umbrella of blossoms and leaves.
I knew what he meant.
◈ ◈ ◈
On Monday morning, I headed into school quizzing myself mentally, trying to remember the origins, insertions, and actions of forty different muscles, seeing if I could recall the locations and names of bone landmarks—things I’ve since forgotten but needed to know for my exam. I fetched some books from my locker, and when I slammed it shut, Riley Banks was standing there, causing me to startle.
“You have a good weekend?” she asked. She was chewing gum. Her blonde hair was in a top knot on her head, looking somehow messy and immaculate at the same time. She was wearing a plaid button-up shirt with a graphic top underneath.
“It was okay,” I said. “How was yours?” She grabbed me by the arm and started moving both of us down the hallway.
“Mine was lame. We should’ve hung out or something.”
“I was hanging with River a little, but mostly studying.”
Our school didn’t have a very large population—maybe five-hundred or so kids—but the hallway still felt crammed. There were bright posters everywhere, crowding the wall space. All the seniors were bustling about, a mix of excited and nervous voices echoing around us. Were we more than ready to graduate, or not at all? I didn’t know the answer.
“Oh, of course, you and River. Why don’t I get to hang out with you guys? When do I get to join your club? It’s been almost four years.”
Riley hadn’t grown up in Rockwood. She’d moved here from Seattle at the beginning of freshman year. Our peers thought that was the epitome of cool at first, and there was all this intrigue about her. But then, for whatever reason, she decided to be my friend and just blend in, like I did. The two of us were close. Not in the same way River and I were, but Riley and I had our own friendship, nevertheless. A different friendship than what River and I had, since Riley and I were both girls.
It was true what she’d said about her not hanging out with me and River. There were times that the three of us did spend time together, but for the most part, River and Riley were like separate friends to me, two different worlds.