Sprout

for this book ending up in a high school library. Which is kind of ironic when you think about it, since that was one of our favorite places to have sex.
    The lightbulb in the closet wasn’t strong enough to reveal who blushed most deeply between me and Ian and Ruthie. But I’m pretty sure it was me. Only Ty didn’t blush. His face turned so white it looked blue. Without a word, he pushed past me and ran from the closet. All three of us watched him run down the hall, and first Ian and then Ruthie turned to me to see if I was going to go after him.
    I didn’t.
    The sound of Ty’s shoes squeaking on freshly waxed terrazzo grew fainter and fainter; a door crashed open, and then the squeaks were gone.
    Not to be outdone, Ruthie put her hand on her stomach and sighed dramatically.
    “So? Eee tell you the news? I’m preggers.”

This is the last part!
    “Did you disappear,
or were you just misplaced?”
    —Sleater-Kinney

He’s still gone
    It’s times like this when all the things you learned in school, all the science and history and civics and above all the language, seem completely useless. I suppose I could use a word like inadequate or insufficient , but when you’re taking the time to say how you feel, when you’re putting it all on the line, exposing yourself, you want to make sure you get it exactly right. I’m not going to fake it, or water it down. This is too important. This is love, and love lost, and I’ll tell you straight up: no words are equal to the task.
    And don’t misunderstand me. This isn’t how I feel. These words. This is just me saying that I don’t know the words to say how I feel. That’s, well, that’s another blank page, like the previous chapter. Feel free to draw a picture on it, or write something yourself. Maybe about me, if you think you understand me, or about yourself, if you think that’s easier. Maybe you want to write an ending for Ian’s story, or Ruthie’s, cuz God knows they each deserve a book of their own at this point. But I have no idea what to put there. The only thing I want to put there is Ty, and Ty’s gone.
    I mean, is it worth saying that I miss him? Is it worth saying that I cried? That I went to all the places we went together, that crazy hole we dug, the pond where his brother drowned, the tree where we had our first kiss? The river where we first had sex, the nidus, Carey Park? That I even went to his dad’s house? Walked right past that “Trespassers WILL Be Shot” sign and pounded on the door so hard that the God Bless Our Home
And CURSE the Homes of Sinners!
    sign fell off its hook and broke on the ground? The man who opened the door wasn’t what I expected. On the one hand, I mean, he was: crewcut, white shirt buttoned to the collar, drab polyester pants. What I didn’t expect was that he would have Ty’s face. His chin, his cheekbones, his eyes. His defiant, frightened stare, which took me in from my Nikes to the Yankees cap I’d used to cover my hair and saw me for the sinner I was.
    “Yes?”
    “Is Ty—” I began, and he cut me off.
    “No,” he said, and closed the door.
    Yes; no. Opposites, right? The far ends of a line that should contain everything between them, like New York and California. Yet here I was in Kansas, smack dab in the middle of the country, and it seemed like I could reach out with my right and left hands and grab either coast and wad the whole damn continent together like a single sheet of paper. Throw it away and start over. Or, better yet, leave everything blank.
    And here we are again.
    I don’t know what to tell you. You want to know how it feels? Turn back to the beginning of this book and read all the way through, and when you get here go back to the beginning and do it again.
    Then do it again.
    And again.
    Again .
    When you think you finally understand—or when, like me, you just don’t have the energy to go through it one more time—then, well, go ahead and turn the page.

Homily to honesty
    Mrs. Miller said she’d pick me up at four in the morning to drive us to Topeka, but neither she nor my dad mentioned anything about him coming by too. But he was there on the loveseat at 3:30, cheeks smooth, hair parted and combed, pants sporting the same ironed crease Mrs. Miller’s had. He nodded towards a Kwik Shop cup surrounded by a small mountain of sugar packets and creamers.
    “I brought you coffee. I hope there’s enough sugar and cream.”
    “I take it black,” I said, which is