What You Left Me Read online

  It’s her foot. Tapping along.

  Like David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar and every other random lead singer they’ve had, she comes in for the first line. “Dog it off,” she sings under her breath. The rest comes out as an incoherent mumble.

  The lyrics are so wrong I almost keel over and die laughing. I decide to bring my other hand in for a better drum section instead. This is too good to stop. GG takes over the humming, and I pick up the next line of the song (with the correct lyrics, of course) as if we planned it this way all along. We look at each other, her pounding the beat into the grass and me into my legs, and we sing together until we get to the chorus’s lead-in. Graduation Girl hits me with the most ridiculously wrong lyrics of all time, but she is one hundred percent committed to the feeling. When it comes time to speak the line before the chorus, I say it all cool, and then she echoes back the title with perfect timing, shouting it with the exact amount of power and feeling required. She throws her head back and laughs at herself. It’s like an ad for shampoo the way her hair falls over the edge of her chair, all long and curly and flowing.

  “Shut up!” the no-longer-sleeping guy on the other side of me whisper-yells.

  Graduation Girl and I laugh louder. “My dad loves that song,” she whispers, catching her volume. “We always just make up the words as we go.”

  “I can tell,” I say. “My dad loves it too. Official postseason anthem for the 1984 Cubs, baby. Big ups to two of the all-time greats, Rick Sutcliffe and Ryne Sandberg. Love you, Rick and Ryno.” I pat my chest and then blow a kiss to the Rick and Ryne in my head.

  Ms. Hornsby pulls her finger to her mouth and gives the loudest shush ever known to man. Graduation Girl straightens up.

  • • •

  This is outrageous. Four years of high school have come and gone without a single sighting of Martin McGee, now here we are singing our respective fathers’ favorite eighties rock anthem together on the football field. Ms. Hornsby has threatened to remove Martin from the ceremony if he speaks again. He’s mostly obeying. Just nudging me and tapping my foot with his.

  I can feel my head getting lighter, pulling me out of my seat and into the clouds, loosening the anchor at the bottom of my stomach. I’m fighting for gravity. Fighting to stop my mind from wandering and wondering about this kid that’s been one name away from me all this time.

  Come on, Petra. Stay ahead.

  You cannot piss off Ms. Hornsby now.

  • • •

  I play games on my phone to get Hornsby to leave me alone. I’d love to see her try and kick me out of here, but it’s more entertaining to sit next to Graduation Girl. We communicate through elbow nudges and impatient foot shaking. Sometimes you don’t need to speak to have a conversation.

  After a long while, my fingers get so hot from the sun beating down and my phone’s battery working overtime that I put it back in my pocket. Graduation Girl eyes me. It’ll be worth it to get kicked out if I can just get her number. Hell, even her name. “Hey,” I say.

  She glares at me.

  “I know. I know.” I knock it down to a whisper. “What if we played a game? You give me three letters of the alphabet to guess from, one of which is the first letter of your name. If I get it right in less than thirty tries, you have to come to my party.”

  “That sounds like a terrible game.” This girl cuts no corners.

  “You’re right. It does.” I nudge her shoulder. “At least I’m not our valedictorian, out here talking about how we’re all baby birds ready to leave the nest.”

  “Did you watch his nose when he spoke?” She sounds kind of mischievous when she asks. Clearly, I’ve chosen a solid topic.

  “Can’t say I was paying much attention to his nose, no. Why?”

  “His nostrils always do this flapping thing every time he breathes.”

  It’s not what I’m expecting her to say. I belly laugh. She wraps her hand around my forearm in a vice grip to silence me. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, almost breaking. “How did you even notice that?”

  “Steve Taggart is my archnemesis,” she answers in the most deadpan whisper I’ve ever heard. “Knowing everything about him used to be my life’s mission.”

  She’s so close I can smell her again; this flowery, honey scent is wafting right up into my nostrils. I’m glad she seems to refuse to ever look at me because I might be doing the Steve Taggart thing too without even knowing it. “I think I need to make it my life’s mission to know more about you.” I say it before realizing how much it sounds like a terrible line. I didn’t mean it to be that way.

  More than anything, I want to be her friend. And I want her to want me as a friend.

  Still, it backfires. She balls up into her seat and starts picking at her nail polish again. The sun becomes so instantly and unbearably hot I have to loosen my tie.

  Dammit. I can never get it right when it counts.

  • • •

  It needed to end. There is no room in my life for a boy like Martin McGee. Not even as a friend. It would just be another distraction. I’m already well stocked.

  Ms. Hornsby walks by and slips me a satisfied smirk, as if she knows I’ve just gone cold turkey on Martin. He must be trouble. Is every boy trouble? My vision blurs at the thought.

  Names drone on. People graduate. The world keeps spinning, even when I push against it, trying to set it back the other way.

  • • •

  Graduation Girl’s presence is a force. I wonder if she knows that. She’s not doing a single thing, barely even breathing it seems, and still it feels like she controls time itself. Right now, it stalls for her. The announcer guy reads in slow motion gibberish. Kids walk across the stage like their legs are sticks and the ground is mud. In my head, I go back to listing Cubs managers, and I swear I almost make it all the way to the late 1800s before another minute passes.

  Then, like a finger snap, she sets the world back on track with one sentence. “Isn’t that your friend?”

  Spitty’s waving at me, pointing to his wrist. Like he’s ever worn a watch in his life. Once I acknowledge him, he starts pretending to chug and toss imaginary liquor bottles. Your ten-dollar bill is mine, bitch, he mouths. His smile is an explosion of metal fireworks.

  “Best one I’ve ever had,” I say to Graduation Girl.

  “Is it wrong for me to hope you win this bet?” Her voice is so soft I have to piece the sentence together afterward. She’s looking everywhere but me, trying to see if Hornsby is watching us.

  “I’d never tell you how to feel,” I crack off. “But you’re on the right side of this battle, for sure.”

  “Well, I’d never feel the way you told me to, anyway.”

  “Good.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Great.”

  “Prodigious.”

  Out of nowhere, Hornsby pops up. This woman is everywhere. She looks right at Graduation Girl. “You really can’t afford to be making so much trouble right now. I can only do so much,” she tells her.

  “I have no idea what prodigious even means,” I say when Hornsby’s gone.

  Graduation Girl doesn’t acknowledge me. She’s slunk down so low into her robe she’s almost a turtle. It doesn’t even make sense. Hornsby just treated her like high school still matters. And Graduation Girl is acting like Hornsby is right about that. But we’re at graduation. It’s very confusing.

  Graduation Girl doesn’t say or do anything until it’s our turn to stand up and graduate, no matter how many times I clear my throat or pretend to notice something really interesting in the sky or the grass or next to my foot or whatever.

  Our favorite shushing teacher motions for our aisle to rise and start walking toward the podium. I do a big stretch and let out a yawn, hoping Graduation Girl will react. We’re on the move. Maybe she won’t feel so bad about talking now?

 
After my fourth time twisting my torso back and forth like I’m preparing to run a marathon, Graduation Girl sighs. “You are ridiculous,” she says.

  “Come to my party. Please.”

  Graduation Girl doesn’t answer. Instead—and I didn’t know this was a thing real humans did, I’ve only ever seen it in movies—her eyes flutter, like she’s batting her damn lashes. She laughs a private little laugh that loops in my head like a victory song. Of course her yellow robe has turned her into the Sunshine Statue of Liberty. She seems powerful and serene and a little sad, which is probably exactly what Lady Liberty feels like posted up all by herself in the water. I realize she’s standing in front of Brittany McMahon. I forgot I know Brittany McMahon. She’s one of those people who makes you go, “Oh yeah, you. You were in my day care back in the day, weren’t you?”

  We start walking down the aisle. The dry grass of the football field is pressed flat from all the people before us. As we make our single-file line on the left side of the podium, I look out into the crowd to try and spot Spitty or Turrey or, hell, even Chris, but no one’s paying attention to anything. It’s like boredom is an actual disease, and everyone is a couple of breaths away from dying of it. I put my head down and stare at my kicks, looking fresh and ready for their official graduation debut. Getting the chance to put them on this morning was one of the only things that got me out of bed. I’d say they’re the only things I care about right now, but if I’m being honest with myself, this Graduation Girl has my head kind of spinning.

  I refocus myself by limbeing up for my planned dance across the stage. Spits was supposed to dance too, but he chickened out. I knew he would. He walked across like he was balancing a book on his head, all proud, acting the part of Spencer Alan Kuspits Jr. I should’ve bet money he’d do that. Then I wouldn’t lose my ten bucks.

  The sleepy guy before me goes across to dead silence. Good. I’ll spice it up. Mama Dorothy doesn’t know what quiet means. Two of my aunts are here, and they’re super loud. Then there’s my sister Katie and her husband, and I swear they get paid to be professional sports fans. They’re always at some game or another. They’re going to be screaming.

  “Martin Frederick McGee.”

  I walk up the three steps in total silence. I’m going to win the bet with Spits. I don’t want to win the bet anymore. I want to lose my ten dollars. I want to make Graduation Girl laugh again.

  I look up into the bleachers to find my family. They’re starting to stand, with posters in hand. “I love you Marty McFly!” yells Mama Dorothy.

  Phew.

  Everyone holds a different letter. M-C-F-Y-L-! My aunts look at each other and switch spots. M-C-F-L-Y-! My sister puts down her letter and holds up her phone. The version of “Fly Like An Eagle” they use in the movie Space Jam starts playing, and I’ll be damned if that song doesn’t make me believe I can. I run in slow motion toward my diploma, airplane wings on and a dramatic spin here and there, just like the singer Seal would want.

  Damn. Guess Taggart is right. I am a bird.

  GG stands at the steps, waiting to cross after me. As I spin, I catch her cupping her mouth, a smile showing at the corners.

  Success.

  • • •

  Martin McGee surely went out how he went in, a funny dude skating by on wild antics, always going over the top for the joke, never passing up an opportunity to make an impression. He shoots me a wink. I can’t help but laugh. This boy. He really does seem so good. Can it be true? Do they exist?

  Against my better judgment, the corners of my mouth stay pulled upward. Nothing will get my face to calm down, not scolding or biting my cheek or the thought of algebraic equations.

  “Petra Margaret McGowan.”

  That sobers me right up.

  I step up the stairs. An almost serene silence accompanies me, allowing me to hear every meaningless thank-you from the faculty members as we shake hands. The last one gives me my empty diploma holder. Everything I’ve ever worked for, my entire life really, is now represented by one missing eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet of cardstock. It’s all been for the very piece of paper I don’t yet have. The anchor in my stomach scrapes along my intestines as it sinks deeper. I’d be stuck standing in the middle of the stage for the rest of my life if not for the simple, powerful fact that no other graduate knows this black folder is empty. To them, I am just a girl in the middle of the class. I smile and smile and smile and smile until I’m down the steps on the other side of the stage.

  I’d always pictured this whole thing ending here, as if I could throw my cap in the air and head straight to a painful family dinner at Olive Garden. But it isn’t over when I walk across the stage. It’s over when all 868 students walk across the stage. I’m merely the halfway point. So back into the line I go, en route to my assigned seat, my leaden legs propelled forward by the promise of seeing Martin again. He’s there, cheesing like someone’s let him in on the best, most exciting secret known to man.

  “Petra, Petra, Petra,” he says when I walk down. “Petra riding the Metra. You betcha, Petra.”

  “So you know my name now,” I say with an eye roll, mostly because making any kind of real eye contact with him seems deadlier than the boredom afflicting every student within a fifty-mile radius of this football field.

  “Not just your first name. I know your whole name.” He taps the boy in front of him on the shoulder. “Excuse me, man, I just wanted you to know that this girl here is my best friend, Petra Margaret McGowan. Petty Margs, I call her. I know you heard our singing earlier. I think our music’s so good we just might start a band with that name.”

  “Dude, get over yourself,” the boy says as he shrugs off Martin’s touch.

  Martin tosses a half grin my way. “This guy clearly doesn’t know classic rock like we do, Petty Margs.”

  “I can’t with you.”

  “No one can.”

  We’re waiting for the rest of our row to graduate so we can walk back to our seats in, quote, “uniform fashion.” With every name called, I remind myself to breathe. I’m supposed to be sulking. This is supposed to be torture. But it isn’t. No matter what I do, I can’t shake the Martin McGee I’m wearing all over my mood.

  • • •

  I’m supposed to be bored. This is supposed to be torture. But it isn’t. There’s a Petra Margaret McGowan–size light shining on me, and it’s brighter than anything the sun is trying to make happen up in the sky right now.

  Wow. I can be cheesy.

  Whatever. I own it.

  It’s so strange though because I can’t even remember the last time I felt this charged up. Maybe when I tried to get Holly Paulson to go to the seventh-grade dance with me. My sister Katie and I stayed up all night making a shoe box diorama of Holly and I holding each other on the dance floor. I had to carry it with me the entire school day because the only class I had with Holly was my last one. By the time it rolled around, she’d already heard about the box from everybody else, so there was all this expectation, and when we finally saw each other, neither of us really knew how to go about it all. I ended up saying nothing and just handing her the diorama as if that was enough. She looked at me like I’d shown up to school in just my underwear, because the project featured Popsicle stick people with our school pictures pasted onto their heads.

  It’s like that—like I’m holding an obvious question but unsure how to really ask it. My words are glue, stuck inside my mouth.

  Oh, and Holly said no, by the way. So there’s that too.

  • • •

  Somehow, Martin and I get stuck in a silence so weighted it lassoes around my throat. Something between us got lost up on the stage. Or maybe found. It’s hard to tell with all the loaded silence blocking my peripherals. I study the intricate details of my yellow robe, distracting myself by imagining what it might be to finally, maybe, let myself like a boy again. Why are cere
monies practically designed for this kind of introspection? It’s as unavoidable as the brightness all around me.

  Ryan Hales emerges, like a light that’s been turned on in the attic of my mind. The squareness of his face, so symmetrical that you could slice him down the middle and come up with mirror images. He’s rubbing his hands on his jeans, asking me on a date in front of my locker. His hands stop when I say yes. He’s kicking the rocks outside of the tennis courts, waiting to give me a ride home, stopping when I walk up. Tossing my homework out the window when I tell him I have too much, stopping when I panic.

  We’re in the back seat of his car. Sweat is pouring down my back.

  “Your eyes look like pancakes,” Martin says finally, after what could be years or milliseconds. He dissolves Ryan into nothing more than a mirage I never meant to chase.

  “What?” It’s such an absurd sentiment that my laughter doesn’t feel like too much of a giveaway. I’m laughing at Martin, not with him, I assure myself. And laughter is a great distraction from the aftershock of surfacing memories.

  “I mean maple syrup,” he corrects.

  I still don’t let myself look at him, but the heat radiating from his cheeks burns stronger than the sun. I can’t help but soften. “Petty Margs and the Maple Syrup Eyes. Our official band name.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see his shoulders relax. “Available for weddings, birthdays, and graduations.”

  Ms. Hornsby signals for us to walk back to our seats. I stare at my feet as we start moving, thinking about everything and nothing at once. When I look back up, Martin is nowhere to be found.

  • • •

  Sneaking out had no unforeseen difficulties. Zig when everyone zags. Easy as that. Spits waits for me behind the bleachers. He pulls two travel-size bottles of whiskey out from beneath his robe and hands one to me.