Summer in the Invisible City (22 page)

Sam and I are walking through the woods. We aren't on a trail so much as a narrow path of matted dirt. It looks like a person or maybe a deer has been here earlier, and we follow the places where the tall grass has been crushed. Overhead, trees canopy the forest, layers and layers of leaves denser than anything I've ever seen. Light slips to the ground in small, shimmering patches.

Sam keeps checking to see if I'm okay. He's walking a few steps in front of me, clearing the way. He pushes through a dense patch of brush and then he holds a small tree branch back and lets me pass, like opening a door. As I walk past him, my elbow grazes his stomach and his skin is warm.

The clearing comes without warning, a curtain being raised on the world. A pale, grassy field ringed with pine trees. Everything here is more beautiful than I have dreamed.

“This is it,” he says. “My favorite place in the world.”

I left New York at six this morning, and Sam picked me up at the bus station in New Hampshire seven hours later. First, we went to his house where I dropped off my things and met his mom, who it turns out looks exactly like Sam. I'll be sleeping in their guest room for the three nights that
I'm here. That's what our moms agreed on when they spoke on the phone last week to make the arrangements.

“This is beautiful,” I say to Sam, gazing at the long field of soft green grass. I already love it here. I love the way the sky is blue all the way down to the place where it touches the tops of the trees. Not like in the city, where it always seems scorched around the edges. But I love the dirty city sky, too. It's okay, I think, to love both.

Sam lies down in the tall grass and I lie down beside him.

Mosquitoes hum and the grass is itchy on my skin. But I don't mind. Everything is messy and imperfect and exactly how it's supposed to be. That's the thing about falling in love: It's not about illusions, it's not about pretending everything is perfect. It's about seeing things for what they really are and wanting them anyway.

I roll onto my side so I can see Sam better.

“I've known you for two months exactly,” I say. “Isn't that weird? It sounds like so little.”

“It's not long,” he agrees.

“But it feels long,” I say. “Remember that day at the beach? What did you think of me then?”

Sam laughs. “You're kidding.”

“No. Tell me.” I giggle, flicking a loose chunk of dirt in his direction.

“I thought you were smart.” He shrugs. “And cute.”

“You did?”

“And I still think those things,” he says. “I just think it even more now because I know it'
s true.
”

“You do?” I ask, blushing. I know it's stupid, and that I'm
fishing for compliments. Over the last week, Sam and I have talked on the phone every night and said things to each other I never thought I'd hear or say aloud.

“You are out of control right now,” he says.

I laugh.

I remember the first time I looked into Sam's green eyes. I wonder if that one moment held within it all of the moments that would follow, the way that a seed, buried within the snow, holds inside it the tree it will become.

Or maybe that moment didn't contain anything that happened after. Maybe there is no inevitable sequence of events. Maybe you make things happen by fighting for them. That's why I didn't mess up my order by having sex with Noah. There is no order. There is just one day followed by another.

—

Sam's hand finds mine in the grass and our fingers weave together. “What do you want to do tonight?”

“I'll do whatever,” I say. “What do you want to do?”

Sam doesn't answer, he just bites his lip. The way he's looking at me makes me flush all the way down to my toes.

I feel the sun and the sticky September air and I hear crickets and faraway birds. Maybe tonight, Sam will sneak out of his room and crawl under the covers on the foldout couch to be with me. Maybe during Thanksgiving break, he'll visit me in the city. There is no way to know what will happen.

Sam rolls onto his stomach. There's a patch of dirt behind us where the grass has died and disintegrated and Sam smooths out the dirt with his palms.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

Without answering me, Sam starts writing something, carving it into the dirt with his pointer finger.

He drags his finger like a snake and makes an
S
. Then, he writes an
A
and then a
D
and then an
I
and then an
E
.

I don
't say anything, or even move. It's just my name. It's the most boring, familiar thing in the world. But now, written in the dirt in a place I've never been, each letter touched by Sam's hand, hovering in the air between us silently, it's like something I've never seen or heard before. Brand new.

“Sam,” I say.

I reach for him at the same moment he reaches for me. He winds his fingers into mine and then we are kissing in the grass, and I don't know anymore whose breathing is whose. The earth and the sun and the bright afternoon light and the hot darkness that comes when I close my eyes, all mingle together into one picture. An arrangement of light and shadow all my
own.

Logan Garrison and Stacey Friedberg, once again, you are the most amazing. Thank you for all your care and work. This book would not exist or be what it is without your tireless reading, editing, insights, and ambition. Also, at Penguin: Namrata Tripathi for your notes, Theresa Evangelista and Samira Iravani for the cover, and Rosanne Lauer for the copyediting.

Special thanks to Manya Fox for the crash course in 4 x 5 photography. And to Lily Simonson for reading an entire draft in Antarctica.

And to my loved ones, you know who you are, thank you times infinity. Especially to my own father, John Romano. Thank you for building me an imaginary room to write
in.

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