6.
“On the Heart’s Beginning to Cloud the Mind”
—1934
When the phone rings before six a.m., I know there’s no chance I’ll be driving out to Summit Lake. It means last night’s storm brought too much snow, too fast for the plows to have the roads cleared in time for the buses this morning. Which means no school either. I lie in the quiet dark of my room, relieved I don’t have to get up anytime soon.
Julianna’s words and my own guilt over reading them had run endless circles through my mind all night, keeping me floating in that strange, fitful space between sleep and consciousness. At some point the wind kicked up and the few flakes outside swirled together and multiplied until they became a solid wall of white that blasted my windows for what felt like hours. I took it as a sign that I’d somehow disturbed the balance of nature when I opened up that envelope. That’s how Shakespeare would’ve written it, anyway.
Now, in the calm of the morning, it feels like everything could’ve been a dream—the scholarship, the envelope with her name on it, and the journal inside. I almost wish it was, so I could pull my covers tight around me and sleep through the day. Or just enjoy it without worrying about anything else.
When I was little, snow days like this meant pulling on my boots and snowsuit and heading out into the white freedom. While my mom went off to her shop to do inventory or payroll or ordering (because God forbid she take a day off), my dad would switch his computer off and join me outside to build an igloo or sled run or snowman. It never took any coaxing, as he was well into his “writer’s block” stage by then and seemed to welcome any reason not to sit in front of his computer waiting for words to come to him. On those days we’d stay out in the snow until we were starving and our fingers and toes were numb, then come inside for tomato soup and grilled cheese, his snow day specialty.
Those days had a magic to them that I think came from him being free from the weight of expectation, and happy to be out in the fresh air with me, soaking up life instead of watching it from his office window. Until my mom would walk back through the door and see that he’d spent the day playing with me instead of writing his next award-winning poetry collection. Then the feeling would dissolve, and her silent disapproval would send him back to his office to “work,” and me up to my room to “read,” and we’d be back to the routine realities of life.
The knock at my bedroom door does the same thing. Before I can say come in, my mom does, bringing with her a cloud of perfume. Of course she’s already dressed, made up, and accessorized. If you want to sell expensive clothes to tourists, you have to look the part, and she does, all in black with her dark hair pulled back into a low bun. She wears sophistication well.
“Parker, you awake? No school today. I’m going to walk over to the shop and get some inventory done. You want to come with? We could go over your speech some more. I had a few thoughts—did you get a lot done last night?” She stops talking long enough to take a sip from her leather-bound travel mug, then glances meaningfully at my desk.
“Yep,” I lie, “I did.” It’s too early for the lecture I’ll get if I tell her I haven’t started yet.
Her face brightens and she steps fully into my room. “Want me to take a look at what you’ve got so far?”
“No, no, not yet,” I say, too quickly. I hop out of bed and put myself between her and the desk, swooping up my Robert Frost book in the process. “It’s really rough still. Mostly just notes. I’m actually thinking of working in a poem if I can.” I hold the book up like a shield, hoping the Post-its sticking out from every direction are evidence enough I really have gotten started. “Dad has all the best ones marked in here.”
Her smile falters, almost imperceptibly. “Oh. Well that’s . . . good. That’s fine.”
Immediately, I feel guilty. I’ve just pushed a button I didn’t mean to. The one where she somehow thinks I value his opinion over hers, like it’s a competition. Poetry over pragmatism. “Actually,” I add quickly, “I’m really excited, because I think I can find one that ties in perfectly with all the things you were talking about last night.”
She clears her throat and ignores my attempt to smooth things over. “I put a roast in the Crock-Pot for dinner. Keep an eye on it and if the liquid gets too low, add a little broth. I’ll be home around five.”
“Okay,” I answer. Without another word she steps back into the hall and reaches for the knob to close my door.
“Hey, Mom?” It surprises me when I stop her, but something in me wants to ask a question I thought about all night after reading Julianna’s journal.
“Yes?” She raises her eyebrows expectantly.
I want to ask if she ever let go of something she dreamed of or hoped for. If she had things she used to want to be, or do, that she never got to. Instead I say, “It’s sad that they died so young.”
She gives me a quizzical look.
“Shane Cruz and Julianna Farnetti, I mean. They missed out on so much.”
My mom’s face softens a touch. “They did,” she says, nodding. “It was very sad. And that’s why the family offers the scholarship every year—to give other young people a chance at everything the two of them missed out on.” She pauses and looks at my desk again. “Maybe that’s something you should keep in mind as you write your speech. You deserve that chance, Parker. Work hard today, okay?”
“Of course,” I answer. And I promise myself that I will.
The stillness of the house when I get out of the shower is both heavy and familiar. My mom’s boutique has demanded her time as far back as I can imagine, so I’m accustomed to being at home alone. Lots of times, I actually prefer it. But this morning it’s unsettling. Julianna’s journal is still sitting right there in my bag, and no one in the world knows I have it. No one in the world would know if I opened it up and read more about who she was and what she wanted, and all the things she missed out on. But I can’t, I tell myself. Or rather, I shouldn’t.
What I should do, what I need to do, is actually get started on my speech. A week and a half isn’t a lot of time to write something that so much depends on, so I sit down at my desk and turn on the computer. While it powers on I crack my window to let the fresh air in, and I light the vanilla candle on my desk, both of these things part of my work ritual. And then I take a deep breath, open a new document, and close my eyes a moment to focus. How to begin? A strong opening line. I open my eyes and the cursor blinks impassively on the blank page. I think of Julianna’s handwriting.
“Tell me, what do you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
I type the question and let it float there in black and white. Wonder for a moment what my most honest answer would be, if it were all up to me. Then I delete it and the blank page seems fitting. I really don’t know.
Downstairs I pour a bowl of cereal and eat it at the counter in front of my mom’s laptop. It’s open to her e-mail, which I close before checking my own. Nothing. I try Facebook, hoping maybe Kat sent me one of her slightly inappropriate messages there. Again, nothing. Just for the heck of it I type Trevor Collins’s name in the search box and click on his page when it comes up.
Apparently I’m not the only one awake early with time to kill. He’s just added a new album entitled Going Big. I smile and open it, curious. It’s all snowboarding photos, which makes sense. He’s carved out his own path in the snow since he got here, one that’ll take him around the world for competitions after we graduate.
In the first one he’s in his race uniform, leaning hard into the mountain to make a turn at an obviously ridiculous speed. Following that is a shot of him holding up a trophy, eyes bright and cheeks red from the cold. I click on the next one and it literally takes my breath away.
It’s of him impossibly high in the air, back arched against the blue of the sky, hand grasping his board behind him. The photo itself is impressive, but that’s not what gets me. It’s the expression on his face, a mix of intensity and pure love for what he’s doing at that moment. It makes me wonder if I ever look like that doing anything. It really is impressive, and it’s no wonder he’s got sponsors lining up. And girls, for that matter. I click away quickly at the thought, like if I stay too long, he might be able to tell I’ve been there looking. Thinking about him.
I close the computer and sit back on the couch, restless. I don’t know what to do with today, let alone my one wild and precious life.
Julianna seemed to, though.
I get up and climb the stairs to my room, justifying what I’m about to do with every step. And this time, when I sit on my bed with her journal in my hands, it’s surprisingly easy to open it up.
May 22
Mr. Kinney said he wants us to write about who we’ll be in life, starting with who we are right now. Honestly, that seems like an impossible thing to do. I don’t know if you can ever truly see yourself in the present. It’s too close. It’s easier to see who you were in the past. If I look back, I can see exactly who I was four years ago, before I met Shane.
I showed up here beyond shy, not trusting anyone, and scared of everything—from all the kids who seemed like they’d always known each other to having to start over when life as I knew it had just ended. I was an outsider in this school, with what felt like no chance of fitting in. The first day was the worst of my life at that point. I learned what it meant to feel like I was utterly alone, to go an entire day without talking to anyone, to feel invisible. It’s crazy to think, but I might’ve stayed that way, become a totally different person than I am now, if Shane hadn’t seen me the next day. That was when I learned what it felt like to walk down the hallway with him by my side, and that changed everything.
I was late to school that day. He was too, and we met in the office. He asked if I was all right (I’d been crying), I said I was fine, he said I was a liar, and it made me smile. He walked me to class and I didn’t protest, but I didn’t speak, either, because he was so perfect. I didn’t want to ruin it. When we got to the door, I didn’t want to go in, and I could tell he didn’t want to leave, but he said he’d find me at break, and he did. He was waiting for me outside of my next class, and we had our first date in the school cafeteria over undercooked cinnamon rolls and lukewarm hot chocolate.
He claims our first date was actually a few days later, when he brought me to the top of the mountain in a gondola and we ate Chinese food out of cartons and watched the lights from town twinkle below us while the stars spread out like tiny lights far above us. I remember that night too, because I felt like someone different. Better than who I was before.
But that first day we met is one of those things you look back on, and see, so clearly, that it was meant to be. He saved me from being lost and out of place, and that’s what he’s been doing ever since. I showed up here in pieces. He put me back together.
He was the first person to really see me, and he’s been my first everything since then.
My first kiss—in the rain, under an umbrella of pine trees, with the smell of the rain rising around us. My first “I love you,” whispered soft as the snowflakes that fell all around a few months later. He’s the first person I’ve given every bit of myself to, and the only person I’ve ever truly loved.
After four years we know each other’s hearts and souls. We’ve grown and loved and fought and everything in between, which is why, to talk about who I am, I have to start with him. The person I am now, and who I want to be in the future, is wrapped up tight in Shane, and in us together.
I can’t imagine it, or me, any other way.
I close the journal, but the last line lingers. I can’t imagine it any other way either, not at all. It’s impossible to picture her the way she described herself before Shane, so scared and alone. I wonder, for a second, the same thing she did. Who would she have been if she hadn’t met him that day? Would her name have been one in the box that I passed over without a second glance? The things she wrote about in her journal, her entire life, might have been different. She might never have been any of the things she was with Shane. They might both still be alive instead of ghosts in our town.
As tragic as the end of their story is, I’m glad it started out this way. A real-life, meant-to-be love story. I don’t want to stop reading. I flip through the pages, decide I could definitely finish it in a day, and make myself a deal: I can read it, but when I finish, I’ll seal it back up and take it to Summit Lake. Back to Julianna, like I’d decided before. I won’t talk about or show it to anyone. I’ll act like it never existed.