To Know a Secret

We're blasting down the quiet weekday road, with the last dregs of summer light still clinging to the sky, at a speed that's probably too high and feels even higher to our rushing veins and beating hearts. A smile paints my face like something bright and unexpected, and I think—not for the first time tonight, either—that this is what I want. All of this is what I should have found so much earlier.

All of the windows and his sunroof are open wide, and Rush's “Tom Sawyer” is blasting from his iPod through the car speakers. It's already been mistakenly identified as a Journey song instead, so that later I will have trouble finding it when I go to look it up, but in this moment it doesn't matter. All that matters is that we are flying down the street with it singing in our ears, and I am smiling and maybe laughing, because who would have thought I would ever be in the back seat of this boy's car, with someone else holding my hand? It's incredibly surreal and a huge indication of just how far I've come. I look over at my boyfriend and—

And I'm struck by the feeling of something's missing. This moment is so beautiful, so purely happy, so alive, and as I look over to share it, I falter. It's not that he doesn't feel it. It's more like it doesn't count for him quite as much. Like there are other things that make him fly, things that summer nights and fast cars can never, ever touch.

My smile doesn't slip, but a small, hard pang of that same feeling—something's missing—settles into the middle of the moment and sticks there until long after he's kissed me goodnight and they're blasting away again.

I don't say a word about it to him later, either.

- - -

We've already sneaked him in and then out of my empty house. The timing was perfect and we've got all of our clothes in order again, but my nerves have gotten impatient, and we've slipped quietly out of the house just in case of a quick return of that shiny white Kia that isn't really all that new anymore. That missing feeling is back in the middle of things again, but I ignore it as we sway idly back and forth on the twice-mended chain-held swings.

“I haven't been down here in forever,” I reflect, gazing idly around from behind sunglasses that feel ever more foreign on my face. I can see the worn-out places underneath the nearby oak tree that we—a gang of five that no longer exists except in memories—made three or four summers ago, simply by sitting too much in the same places. The plain yellow monkey bars nearby, like a square with no bottom, are the site of lots of truth games and deep conversations between me and many, many different friends. I think of this with a muted degree of amazement as the list of names grows longer in the back of my mind.

I once weathered a summer thunderstorm here, a decision that I have never quite been able to bring myself to regret. I once ran through spring-time rain with my sister here, singing his songs and crying, sometimes doing both at the same time.

It seems fitting that my boyfriend tells me the news here. I am not supposed to know. He is not supposed to know, either, and I swear not to tell, but by the end of the night, after he's left us for the cloud of pot smoke in an over-crowded kitchen, I have already broken down and told somebody else. She listens to me cry in the middle of her kitchen while we make tacos for ourselves and for her boyfriend, who is in the next room. She tries her best to help, but I can't quite explain this odd cocktail of emotions that start mixing themselves here, on these twice-mended swings. I am happy and sad and desperately confused, and that is just the beginning.

A friend of mine—more than a friend, really, and I have to admit that, because for better or worse we are family, have always been family—is somewhere he does not want to be for reasons he doesn't think are reason enough. Someone finally did what none of the rest of us could do. He is unhappy, and I have been feeling it for a week or more. Feeling it like I have been unhappy, and like I have been running from demons which, in reality, I have already conquered. But he has not, and so they groan and roar and whisper in the back of my head as they do, at a much louder volume, in his.

My boyfriend keeps talking and I hear more, but I am not allowed to repeat it, because I am not supposed to know. I have already said too much, both to my friend making tacos in the kitchen later tonight, and as I write these words in what is, from my spot on the broken swings, tomorrow afternoon. I have said too much, I always say too much, but I know that it will never truly be enough. It has never been enough, not with all of the word I've written for him, to him, about him. There is always more to say, and maybe that's why I've never been able to give up hope—there is always more to say about him. His story is nowhere near over, and I wait now, on bated breath, to hear more.

- - -

I'm going to a party tonight.

I am going to a party, and for some reason or other, this is the first party that I can say I am going to and feel like I have chosen the right words. I know there will be people upon people upon people that I have never met and never heard of. I know that there will be alcohol; not under the table and in the closet, hidden in a we-will-not-speak-of-this kind of way, but a secret in plain sight, courtesy of a parent with the I'd-rather-have-them-in-the-house philosophy. I know that my friends—many part of my chosen family—will be there, and I know that my boyfriend will be there too. I am excited, and I am sort of nervous, and I am also a little bit scared. Because there is a voice in the back of my head that keeps speaking up at odd moments, the little voice that speaks in the familiar tones of my brother.

I'm sure the voice would have been there without him, but it has stolen his vocal cords, and that makes sense, because right now that voice's litany is relatively short and sweet and almost makes sense. One drink, it says. Just one drink tonight. You've never done it before, and you deserve it now because you're not emotionally fucked, but you're being stronger than anyone expects you to be right now. Just one drink. A reward. For everything you've done for all of them. Just one drink. Just one drink. I let the voice talk, because in all honesty, I can't find it in me to completely disagree. I cannot say with any degree of certainty that I will answer, or that the answer I give will be no.

And I wonder if my friend, my brother, had a voice like this once, saying the very same thing, and if he listened to it begging him, and that is why he fell so far.

Because maybe it all started with just one drink.