Author’s Note:
Hello readers! I’m excited to share the beginning of a story that’s been taking shape in my mind. “Chapter one” is the first installment of what I envision becoming a longer work.
I’ve decided to publish this story chapter by chapter, week by week, as it develops. This is a project that I’m excited (and a little nervous) to share with you. I don’t have all the answers yet about where this story is heading, and that’s part of the adventure. If you enjoy this first chapter, I hope you’ll follow along each week as new installments appear.
I’d love to hear your thoughts, theories, and reactions as the story develops. Feel free to leave comments, share your predictions, or just let me know how it’s making you feel. Writing is always better with company, and I’m so glad to have you here for the ride.
Now, let’s begin…
one
Silence had become my new normal. I used to find it eerie, to be the only one, and honestly, I don’t know when I stopped expecting to see people, but the streets were empty. They always were at this time of day. Part of me missed the sounds from my old neighborhood; footsteps crunching gravel as Ms. Wilburn waddled down to check her mailbox even though the mail never ran until the evening, or the sound of distant chatter coming from Mr. Geffory’s house as he blared the News at 6 from a squat television set that was tucked just inside his front door. I missed the sounds of life—the sounds that signaled that I wasn’t alone. Here, it was nothing. I tried to convince myself that it was because I walked at 5:30 in the morning. I had to push my time up by an hour when I moved out here; the commute was longer, so my days began earlier. That was it; that was why everyone’s curtains were drawn so tight that the rising sun was only an assumed reality for every house on my block. It was just the time, right? Three months ago, when it was summer, and I could start my walks later, I expected more. More sounds, more movement. More something, but it was the same. But maybe 6:30 was still too early, especially in the summer. I woke up later, so everyone else did too. My eyes darted around, searching the porches for a stray light or whispered sound squeezing out from under a door jamb. But it was the same as it always was. The houses were all perfectly still as the sun continued to creep through the sky. Just the sounds of my feet thumping against the sidewalk broken up only by the clock tower. Tick. Tock. Always there. A reminder that time marched on even in silence. I rounded the corner of the block and saw the peak of my roof. Six months ago, the sight of the bowed roof nestled under the branches of a wide oak made my breathing slow, my lungs expanding in ways they hadn’t before. Now, now the peak seemed to scrape against the branch, the sound sharp and grating, as if the house itself was shifting.
I moved here after Kyle broke off the engagement. I should have been sad. Kyle was my mother’s best friend’s son, and with the way they talked about our futures, you would have thought arranged marriages were the latest fashion. I don’t ever remember having a choice. Kyle was my first boyfriend, my first kiss, my first…well everything. It was nice, I guess. Everything was soft and comfortable, but I think we both knew. Knew we didn’t really want this, but the looming shadows of our mothers; their hopes for love, marriage, and grandchildren that would be some twisted version of them kept us together. But then she died.
Kyle’s mom had been driving home during a winter storm last December. The ice was thick; a comforter laid across a mattress. She had worked late, lost track of time, and drove too fast. No one else would have cared if she was late. But she did. Always on time. Always.
“No, no, no. None of that,” she had said, her voice rushed on the phone. She was already driving.
“Come on, Jules,” my mom had chided, “it’s just one dinner. We can do two next week. Let the weather calm down a bit. It’s not that big of a deal.”
“Sally, I’m coming. Stay there.”
And that had been it; the final word on the matter.
Aunt Julia was like that. Determining everyone’s path. She had picked out her and mom’s senior prom dates, the colors, the poses for the pictures. She had selected which college they would go to. Their degrees, careful to make them fit into their individual lives but still close enough to ensure that most of their classes would overlap. I swear Aunt Julia even picked my dad. Mom says she met Dad while Julia was off campus one weekend. She clings to that; proud she found him “all on her own.” I think I was the only one not surprised when we found out my dad had been one of Aunt Julia’s camp counselors. “Oh, what a small world,” my mother had gasped when the big reveal was made during our weekly dinner five years ago. Aunt Julia had stumbled across a camp photo while she was cleaning out the attic and couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw my dad, albeit much younger, standing beside her 8th grade class group. She had brandished the photo around the table, so delighted because it turned out that she had been a part of that choice too.
And then there was Kyle and me. Aunt Julia had planned the pregnancies, well as much as she could. She ordered the latest fertility pills. She created a routine and made mom and dad swear to follow it to the letter. Days, times, number of rounds, positions. My skin crawled as I remember finding the laminated calendar tucked in the back sleeve of the baby book mom gave me when I turned 18. She had apologized when I expressed my complete discomfort with the discovery, but she thought I would want to know. Know how dedicated she and Julia were to us. When I was thirteen, Julia and mom planned our first, official, unchaperoned date. There was an age-appropriate romance movie showing at our local theater, and Aunt Julia was convinced that it would be the catalyst for the affection that had yet to bloom between Kyle and me, much to their ever-growing dismay. I remember watching my mother curl my hair in the mirror. The movie didn’t start until 6, but mom wanted to have extra time in case the curls needed more adjusting once they settled. She was wrapping the final clump of my hair around the barrel of the curler, when I asked what would have happened if Kyle and I had both been girls or both boys. I watched as the worry lines formed around my mother’s eyes. After a moment, she looked up from my head, her hand still holding the end of my hair around the barrel, and met my eyes in the mirror. “Oh, Evie, I’m sure we would have thought of something.”
I never quite understood what she meant by that. I remember telling Kyle about the conversation years later. We were 16 and had just slept together for the first time, the final concession to our lives being intertwined. It was okay. Awkward and fast. I am sure it didn’t help knowing that our mothers were there leaning over their cups of late-night tea while they discussed wedding themes, flipped through bridal magazines, and googled destination locations. I knew they weren’t actually there, in the room with us. We didn’t have many lines, and the ones me and Kyle had managed to scrape into the ground were faint, but even our moms wouldn’t cross this particular boundary. Still, it felt like they were there. Watching and giggling as their great, big plan came together. I wish I could say that the feeling went away. That after the first few times, it was just me and Kyle, but it never felt right, not to me. I never asked Kyle if he felt like that too; I was afraid of what he would say.
Aunt Julia and mom were there for pretty much everything else. Every basketball game. Every school outing. Our junior and senior proms, orchestrated by Aunt Julia and chaperoned by mom. Both proms were preceded by hours of dress shopping desperately searching for something that would morph me into the perfect size and shape, one that would snap into Kyle like a puzzle piece, completing Aunt Jules and mom’s vision. I couldn’t wear pink because it clashed with Kyle’s eyes. I needed heels because I was five inches shorter than him, but too high and we ran the risk of my head falling out too close to his. Aunt Jules said it would ruin the pictures. “Smile, this is fun.” My mother reminded me over and over again. Smile when Kyle opened the door to pick me up. Smile as he slipped the corsage onto my wrist. Smile as mom’s camera flashed over and over again. Smile as we rushed out the door into the car. Smile because this was meant to be.
Senior prom was everything it was supposed to be. Kyle and I arriving on time, laughing as we gathered our senior gifts, me tucked under Kyle’s arm as we posed for pictures, us dancing with Kyle’s friends to music picked out by our moms. It was Junior prom all over again. Then Henry, a boy who sat behind me in second hour, asked me to dance. Kyle had left the table, claiming he needed fresh air. I should have followed him, but I stayed instead. After a few minutes, I saw Henry begin to work himself across the dance floor. My brain would not believe he was headed in my direction until he stood in front of my chair smiling down at me.
“Hey, Evelyn. I thought maybe you’d like to dance. Ya know just until Kyle gets back.” His eyes darted around the room.
Me and Kyle’s future was not a secret to anyone. For the past three years, Kyle and I had all the same classes. Our only breaks came during our extracurricular hour when I would go to gym class and him to basketball practice. Then Senior year came, and things changed. My gym class had been moved to a later hour, which meant that Kyle and I had to have two classes without each other. I remember cringing when I handed my schedule to mom.
I knew she had already spoken to Aunt Julia; Kyle had called her on the way home. Over the years, he had taken to breaking any news that was not Aunt Jules approved via the phone. I think it was because of the security the distance yielded. I remember her voice, shrill and clipped flooding through the line and spilling over into the small cab of Kyle’s pickup. Then came my mom’s rushed reassurances. “Jules will figure this out. Can they do this?” I was sure that by the first day of classes, I would have a different schedule, one that was lined up with Kyle’s, but the first day came and nothing had changed. Two hours. I remember tracing the words printed on the schedule and feeling my shoulders release. But on my first day of Senior year, Kyle’s absence during second hour was almost painful.
I stumbled out of Mr. Jenkins’ math lecture numb and confused. I hadn’t known what to do, where to sit, who to talk to. Who was I without Kyle? The thought swirled through my mind as I walked towards Mrs. Whitaker’s classroom. I made it just inside the door before I froze. I didn’t think I could do this again. Make another decision on who to sit by. Last hour I had chosen Charlie. She was a safe bet, Kyle’s best friend’s girlfriend, but as my eyes feverishly searched the rows of seats but there was no one. No one who was connected to Kyle; no clear answer for me to make. It was always Kyle, and now, here I was feeling nauseous as a wave of embarrassment crested over me. I must have stood in the door longer than I thought because my classmate’s eyes started finding mine more frequently, causing heat to spread across my cheeks. I tried to move, but my feet stumbled. More whispers. I felt my body retreat, draw back from the unknown space, and then he was there. He saved me.
“None of the seats bite, ya know”
I could hear his smile. His breath on my neck, causing a single jolt to blur across my spine. I glanced over my shoulder, and there he was. Henry. He was almost six feet tall, so his shoulder-length brown hair fell lightly on my shoulder as he stooped to reach my ear. The strands around his face slightly curled in, framing his green eyes. We had been in the same grade school, and of course we’d had high school classes together, but we had never really interacted. Kyle had always been the wall that kept everyone at bay. The wall that was preordained by my mom and Aunt Julia to circle around me, immovable. But now, here was Henry, and there was no Kyle. I felt my smile spread, and the heat in my cheeks intensified.
“Come on,” he said as he looped his arm through mine and pulled me across the room to the furthest row of seats just as the tardy bell rang.
Two weeks later and 2nd hour was a treasured secret; one that I did not dare whisper to anyone. I didn’t want to risk losing it. Losing the warped blue desk that hugged the wall as opposed to the second row that Kyle always chose. Losing the power to tap my pencil during exams without fear of glancing up to find Kyle’s eyes boring into mine. But more than that, I couldn’t lose Henry. Henry, who sat behind me tapping out rhythms to songs I could never guess. Henry, who drew pictures on my back while Mrs. Whitaker prattled on about whatever war our ancestors found themselves in for the week. Henry, who always hummed as he filled out our daily worksheets. Henry. Henry, who gave me space to be me and only me.
And there he was, hand outstretched, sweat beading up on his brow. His feet bouncing a little as he waited. Waited for me. My mouth opened, but before any noise escaped, I closed it again. Where was Kyle? I wanted to glance around the room, look for an easy way to explain this away, my nerves, the feelings that were bubbling up threatening to turn into a boil, but I couldn’t pull my gaze from Henry. His green eyes that were stained brown on the edges, his outstretched hand, his tall frame wrapped in what had to be his father’s tuxedo with sleeves slightly too short and a bright, purple tie tied crooked around his neck. This was Henry. My secret. I took a deep breath and opened my mouth again, but as I felt the first syllable form on my lips, a sharp movement snagged my attention. There in the corner of the room slightly to Henry’s left was a blonde, plump woman scooping punch into outstretched cups. Mom. There was no choice. My words slipped too easily, and I felt the word “no” rush out of me. It was too loud. Too harsh. Henry dropped his hand back to his side and nodded. My breath hitched as his eyes dropped from mine. I felt my eyes start to burn as he nodded again and turned, moving back across the dance floor. I tried to pull my gaze from his back, but part of me tried will him to turn around, to ask me again. I just needed another chance, but then Kyle was back. He settled into his seat beside me, resting his hand on mine. I jerked my hand from his, the contact feeling like a flame held too close for too long. Kyle went ridged at my reaction.
“Sorry,” I stammered, my eyes seeking shelter with every passing person. “I just—” my throat bobbed as I swallowed, the words like bile in my throat. “I just—” and then Kyle raised his hand. The movement felt slow, and I held my breath as I forced myself to meet his gaze. Kyle tilted his head, holding my eyes for a moment longer, and then he nodded. That one movement seemed to break the spell over me. The next thing I knew I was curled up in a bathroom stall clutching my knees, trying desperately to find my breath.
Ink & Interruptions 
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