My cap kept slipping down my forehead while PJ sang “Fields of Gold,” the graduation song. The valedictorian, some tech kid named Matt McDonald, who I’d never spoken to, gave a speech about friendship and knowledge, which made my hands sweat. Friendship and knowledge were so big, like impenetrable stone walls.
The “diploma” Principal Deftose gave me at the ceremony would be an empty sheet of paper. The administration decided I could walk at graduation, but that I needed to complete summer school in algebra and biology to earn my actual diploma. The sheet of paper was symbolic, meant to save me from embarrassment, but also to keep me in Hopuonk a little bit longer.
But I wasn’t embarrassed. I was kind of proud, to be honest. My other secret was this: I threw the packet from Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in the trash that morning without checking if I’d been accepted. Sandra, and everyone else, should have known better. I barely remembered to floss my own teeth. I didn’t care if I graduated from high school. I thought it was kind of funny that they couldn’t claim their shining star as an actual graduate.
Kristen Duffy was sitting almost directly in front of me at the ceremony. There was an entire pinecone stuck in her hair. I reached out to remove it, and as soon as I touched her, she spun around.
“How can you not notice that there’s a pinecone in your hair?” I said angrily. I snatched it and handed it to her.
She took it, and instead of throwing it on the grass, she put it in her pocket.
“It’s things like that, you know,” I said. “Keeping pinecones that came out of your hair. Wearing safety pins as earrings. That’s why everyone thinks you’re weird.”
Kristen looked like she was about to cry—her chin crinkled up like a walnut.
“That,” I said, “and the fact that you wear pit-bull collars as jewelry.”
“Why are you such a bitch?” she whispered.
“You better leave Corvis alone,” I said. Then I dismissed Kristen forever.
Corvis spoke as salutatorian, and I couldn’t get myself to pay attention to her actual words, except the end. I just watched her mouth moving, and though I wanted to, I didn’t cry.
“Synonyms for the word ‘commencement,’” I heard Corvis say, “are ‘beginning,’ ‘dawn,’ ‘threshold.’ I wish you all, all of my classmates, a good morning. And while you’re out in the world after high school, I hope you all remember where you came from.”
She was talking to herself, really. Most of the kids sitting in front of her were not leaving Hopuonk. But Corvis was afraid of forgetting, and so was I.
While I listened to Corvis’s voice, I realized LA wasn’t for me anyway. I decided I would try to get to San Francisco instead: Where D.J. and Stephanie Tanner lived. Where there were mountains and gay people. Where there were coffee shops everywhere. I knew how to make coffee.
The Last Check
Later that night, I realized that I didn’t own a suitcase. Of course I didn’t—why would I? In my imagination, I saw myself packing a leather suitcase full of not clothes but trinkets—turkey feathers, seashells, shards of sea glass, even sand—and maybe some jewels that had been in my family for generations, though we had none of those either.
In reality, I packed the overnight bag with a few pairs of underwear and Stinky Lewis’s dog food, examined it, and decided it looked neither beautiful nor useful, and left it behind. At the last moment, in the darkness, with the sound of the waves lapping the shore of Humming Rock Beach outside my window, I decided that I would figure out what I needed while I was moving.
I did, for some reason, grab the prom crown and put it on, and Stinky Lewis followed me. I brought only the chocolate box of cash and his food. Then, at the last minute, I grabbed the German sex toy that Corvis bought me in Provincetown.
I tiptoed into Sandra’s room, where she slept curled on her side. The sun was just rising, and a slant of pale yellow hit her cheek. I walked over to her bedside, lifted the hair from her face, and leaned down to kiss her cheek.
“I have to go,” I whispered. She was angry with me for skipping out on the photo shoot, and she planned to let me live with her only while I finished summer school. I didn’t tell her about my plan to leave, or that I wasn’t visiting Johnny Moon. I didn’t want her to try and stop me, so I figured I would find a pay phone somewhere along the way, maybe in Arizona or some other unimaginable place, and tell her then.
I hadn’t told anyone but Stinky Lewis.
Sandra stirred but didn’t wake up. Tears burned my eyes, because she was so beautiful that it was sad, because she looked small and young, because I didn’t know whether she needed me.
“I love you,” I whispered, running my forefinger down her arm. I saw, on her cheek, the shadow of my prom crown.
“I love you too, honey,” she whispered back, still asleep, and rolled over.
I would stop at Emmylou’s for my last check, and then I would drive away.
* * *
—
I got to Emmylou’s just as it opened.
Heather stood behind the counter, her eyes red, arranging the pastries. Just before graduation, her father moved into a house on the beach and bought himself a small airplane. Today, I noticed a stain on her Emmylou’s shirt, something she usually never would have let happen.
The sun hadn’t finished rising, and I’d always thought the darkness outside gave the bright lights and color scheme of Emmylou’s a sinister feel. Now, looking around for the last time, my heart pulled slightly at my chest. I didn’t realize how great my love was for the small pockets of Hopuonk that I felt belonged to me, and I was beginning to understand that the feeling of homesickness would hit me later, in moments when I didn’t expect it.
“I’m leaving today,” I said to Heather. “I came to say goodbye.”
As those words left my lips, I realized that they weren’t true.
Holding out a plastic-wrapped cinnamon bun, Heather said, “For the plane.”
“I’m not flying,” I said. “I’m not going to LA.”
My Volvo was parked out front, and Stinky Lewis sat shotgun, ears up, waiting for me to come back. We stood staring at each other, and then “As I Lay Me Down” came on the radio again.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Where are you going?”
The cinnamon bun hung between us. I leaned over the counter, put my hand on her wrist, and gripped her tight.
“I was thinking San Francisco,” I said. She didn’t move her wrist, so I held it tighter. Her personality was so big that it was easy to forget how thin she was, how fragile.