Elevated (10 page)

The door flew open.

His mom stood there,

One arm waving,

Her voice saying,

“Go on, then. Leave if you want.

Leave!

Just like your father.”

I met Trav’s eye,

Saw the twitching in his jaw,

The resignation in his stature.

Heard him say, “I don’t want to leave, Ma.”

His mom didn’t look at me,

Didn’t say anything else,

Before bringing the door closed.

Jesse’s words about Trav haunted me—

He’ll never leave this city.

He’ll never leave his mom—

The same way Honesty’s sobs lingered in my ears

The day following our shopping trip.

“YOU’LL NEVER LEAVE CHICAGO.”

My voice fills the elevator,

Chases away the silence,

The comfort,

The peace.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Elly.”

“Tell me if Jesse was right.”

Trav sighs.

“About what?”

“About you,

About you never leaving this city,

About never doing anything different,

About never getting away from your mom.”

“I tried to do something different.”

He sounds defensive,

Wounded.

“I tried to do the right thing.”

“So did I,” I say,

Though he hasn’t exactly accused me otherwise.

“She needed more time,” he says,

“That’s all.

But we didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You mean once school started,” I say,

“
After you broke up with her
we didn’t do anything wrong.”

Why did it feel so wrong then,

After he broke up with her?

Why did we have to sneak around

After he broke up with her?

Meet at midnight?

Lie to our parents?

Why did I have to tell Honesty I had phantom study groups,

Or extra chem lab homework,

Or the flu

After he broke up with her?

“You wanted me to ask you out,

Take you on dates.”

Trav folds his arms,

Clears his throat.

“I tried hard to do the right thing.

Not counting last summer—”

He says loudly as I start to protest,

“Not counting last summer,

I tried to do the right thing.”

“We should’ve told her together,” I say,

The sound getting lost in the space between us.

“We were in this together,

And we should’ve told her together.”

“I agree,” Trav says.

“Then why did you tell her without me?”

He shifts closer to me,

Takes my hand between his.

“I felt responsible.

I tried so hard, Elly,

So hard to do the right thing.”

This time,

Those words ring with truth,

With power,

With love.

This time,

I can hear it in his voice,

Feel it in his touch.

“I know,” I say.

“Then why didn’t you call me back?”

He sounds like he might cry,

The same way he sounded the day Jesse left.

“Why have you ignored me for months?

Why are you going to California?”

Because you didn’t call me until after.

Because Honesty asked me to.

Because I can’t live here anymore.

“I have to.”

“But—”

“But nothing.

I can’t stay here.”

BEFORE MY FIRST REAL DATE WITH TRAV,

Mom reached into her purse,

Held something toward me.

“Take this. Just in case.”

Horrified, I choked,

“Mom—” I started,

Stopped when I saw what she was holding.

A cell phone.

I looked up into her eyes,

Searching,

Unwilling to believe.

“I think it’s time you had one,” she said.

“You’re a senior now,

And I can’t expect you to be home all the time.

Maybe I’ll worry less if you have that.”

A piece of the impenetrable brick wall between us crumbled away.

“Wow, thanks, Mom.”

I hugged her,

Escaped to my room to get dressed,

To figure out how to add contacts to the phone.

I spent too much time fiddling with my new toy,

Because the next thing I knew,

The doorbell buzzed.

I stuffed the phone in my skirt pocket,

Darted across the hall to brush my teeth.

Murmurs of Travis’s deep voice mingled with Mom’s higher tone.

She laughed;

He chuckled.

My heart flopped against my lungs,

Leaving me breathless and flushed.

I crept down the hall,

Felt so unsure of myself,

Like the ground in front of me might suddenly vanish,

And I’d fall into nothingness.

Trav stood behind the couch,

His hands casually stuffed in his jean pockets,

His mega-watt smile trained on my mom.

Paired with the jeans,

He wore a blue polo shirt open at the throat,

His trademark green Converse on his feet,

A leather jacket draped over one arm.

He looked good enough to eat.

“Hey,” I said,

Stepped into the room,

Smoothed down my skirt,

Adjusted my top.

Honesty usually dressed me,

And I had no way to know if I looked good or not.

I pushed away the nagging twinge of guilt before meeting Trav’s eyes.

They’d broken up;

We were free to go out together.

But it felt wrong that she didn’t know about us.

He scanned me once, quickly,

Before sweeping me into a hug that made my feet leave the floor.

“Hey, yourself. You look great,” he whispered in the split second

Before setting me down.

I cleared my throat,

Gathered my jacket from the closet.

Heard Trav say, “I’ll have her home by midnight, Mrs. Livingston.”

Mom nodded,

Her eagle eyes missing nothing.

I didn’t know what she thought she might see,

Just that she’d find it.

“REMEMBER OUR FIRST REAL DATE?”

I don’t know why I ask,

Now,

In this non-moving elevator.

Why I want to talk about this at all.

“Every second.”

That’s why.

Trav provides the confidence I need,

The anchor in the storminess of life,

The promise that no matter what,

He’ll know what to say,

What to do.

“I want to take you out again,” he says,

“Start over. Find a new forever together.”

I don’t answer,

Can’t answer.

So much has changed.

Can I really start over—here?

In this same,

Stale,

Place?

With this same,

Broken,

Boy?

I don’t know,

But as my chest expands with a new breath,

I feel hope—something I haven’t entertained for a long time.

DINNER WITH TRAVIS HAPPENED IN A GREASY DINER.

I ordered my favorite food:

Cheeseburger and fries.

He ate the right side of the menu.

We laughed,

Joked,

Talked,

Like best friends do.

We walked downtown,

Me with my hands in my skirt pockets,

Him with his hanging loose,

Because I was afraid of holding his hand

Under the wide, open sky,

Afraid of claiming him as mine where everyone could see.

In the park,

Everything looked new and alive,

Because I was with Travis.

The trees towered taller than I remembered.

The grass smelled sweeter.

The moon shone with more silver.

Everything with Travis felt higher,

Better,

More.

Like I could be higher,

Better,

More.

Because he was.

We wandered,

Went to a movie,

Blasted the music in his car with the windows rolled down,

Played with the heat waves of summer.

After his typical bad parking job,

We waited for the elevator with shy glances,

With awkward,

Shifting feet.

Once in the security of the elevator,

Travis and I reached for each other at the same time.

His lips pressed warmly against mine,

He seemed to have more than two hands.

He cradled my face,

Ran his fingers through my hair,

Slipped one hand under my shirt to the small of my back.

Faintly,

From somewhere far away,

A
ding!
sounded.

As if in a dream,

I felt Trav pull away,

Heard him swear and punch one of the elevator buttons,

Before he reclaimed my lips.

After that, nothing else mattered.

The next day,

I timed how long it took to get from the lobby to Trav’s floor:

Three minutes, twelve seconds,

With an additional twenty-nine seconds to get to my floor.

I couldn’t believe I’d only kissed him for three minutes and forty-one seconds.

It felt like three lifetimes and forty-one degrees of infinity.

I’M CERTAIN IF TRAVIS COULD SEE

What’s written on the shattered pieces of my life,

He wouldn’t be so quick to promise me forever.

There are still secrets he doesn’t know.

If I tell him,

I might lose him.

Just like I lost—

Enough,
I scold myself.

Dr. Tickson doesn’t believe my theory

That the truth brings destruction.

He says that’s not why the people I love most have experienced tragedy.

Coincidence, he calls it.

He doesn’t have to walk down Senior Row

With an empty space at his side.

Doesn’t have to see my dad lying in a hospital bed

With legs too short.

Doesn’t have to feel the tightening in my abdomen

When I think of Trav.

I keep the secrets bottled up,

Unwilling to take the chance.

I wish Travis were more like me in this respect.

“I had to tell her,” he says in the elevator.

“I made a resolution.”

“Congratulations,” I say.

Most people resolve to lose weight,

Or get out of debt.

Trav decided to come clean about our relationship.

“You should’ve talked to me first.”

“I didn’t give her specifics.”

“She wasn’t stupid, Travis.

You told her you’d started dating someone else.”

“She was fine when I left,” he says.

“She was fine?”

I cross my arms.

“Trust me, she wasn’t fine.”

I think of Honesty’s eyes when she opened the door.

Red,

Puffy,

Bloodshot.

I should’ve known something was off right away,

But I wasn’t thinking properly by then.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say out loud,

To convince myself.

I rub my eyes,

To erase the image of her tear-stained face.

“I’m sorry, Elly.”

He rests his hand on my elbow,

But I yank away.

“That’s not enough,” I answer.

Besides, I’m right.

It doesn’t matter.

Forget that we’d planned to live together,

Attend the University of Illinois.

Forget that we’d been best friends for ten years.

I kissed her boyfriend while she vacationed in France.

I started dating her ex-boyfriend without telling her.

Some things are unforgivable.

Some things erase a decade of memories.

Some things obliterate a lifetime of plans.

THE OVERHEAD LIGHT FILTERS DOWN IN DIRTY WAVES OF YELLOW.

Still, the elevator doesn’t move.

Nothing in my life seems to move the way I want it to.

That’s why
I’m
moving,

Why I have to leave Chicago.

I wish I could’ve been more like Honesty.

In a lot of ways, actually.

When she didn’t understand French,

She switched to Spanish.

When her previous boyfriend dumped her,

She started flirting with every guy she saw.

I envy her.

More than I hate myself,

More than I dream about Travis,

More than I wish I could go back and erase the last twelve months,

I envy her.

Because she’s gone,

And I’m still here.

AFTER HONESTY’S ACCIDENT

I cut Travis off.

I blamed him as much as I blamed myself,

As much as I blamed the snowstorm,

As the driver of that van,

As God.

With Trav’s absence my isolation grew.

I remember it like it was yesterday,