The Geography of You and Me

“Sure it is,” he said, because it was true, possibly the truest thing about him. Sometimes it seemed as if his whole life was an exercise in waiting; not waiting to leave, exactly, but simply waiting to go. He felt like one of those fish that had the capacity to grow in unimaginable ways if only the tank were big enough. But his tank had always been small, and as much as he loved his home—as much as he loved his family—he’d always felt himself bumping up against the edges of his own life.

New York City wasn’t the answer. What Owen wanted was something wider, something vaster; he had applications ready for six different colleges that ranged up and down the West Coast, from San Diego all the way to Washington, and he couldn’t wait for the day when he could take off to start a new life out there, crossing through states heavy with vowels beneath skies flat as paper, through the impossible bulk of jagged mountains, all the way to the silvery ocean.

For as long as he could remember, he’d felt the pull of the road, an itinerant streak that chimed from somewhere deep inside him, perhaps inherited from his once-restless parents. One day, he hoped to find their kind of peace, too—a home that was nothing special until they’d deemed it so—but that would come later, and for now there were thousands of places he burned to see, and next year would just be the start of it.

He could feel Lucy’s eyes on him, and when he turned to face her, she dipped her chin. “Okay then,” she said matter-of-factly. “Everywhere.”

“What about you?” he asked, and she considered this a moment.

“Somewhere.”

He grinned. “How is that a better answer than everywhere?”

“It’s more specific,” she said, as if this should be obvious.

“I guess that’s true.” He looked down at his folded hands. “You know, I’ve never really been anywhere. New York, obviously. And Pennsylvania. We went to the Delaware shore once when I was little. And crossed through New Jersey a few times. That’s what? Four states.” He shook his head and smiled ruefully. “Pitiful, huh?”

“What about next year?” she asked. “College seems like a pretty good excuse to get out of here.”

“It is,” he agreed. “I’m looking at a lot of places out west. California, Oregon, Washington…”

She raised her eyebrows. “Those are all really far.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s kind of the point. They’ve all got pretty good science programs, too.”

“Ah,” she said. “So you are a science whiz.”

He shrugged. “Whiz might be taking it a bit far.”

“What about your dad?”

“What about him?” Owen asked, but he knew what she meant, and he felt something go cold in his chest at the thought. There were so many parts of this—this lonely next chapter—that he dreaded now, most of them having to do with his mother: that she wouldn’t be there to watch him walk across the stage at graduation, or to help him pack, or to make the bed in his new dorm room the way she always did at home. But the worst of it was actually this: that, after dropping off his only son, his dad would have to come back to this miserable basement apartment on his own.

That was the part that knocked the wind out of him every single time.

He swallowed hard and raised his eyes to meet Lucy’s.

“Won’t he miss having you nearby?” she asked, and he forced himself to shrug.

“He’ll come visit,” he said with as much confidence as he could muster. He felt beside him, where there was a small piece of gravel, and then used it to scratch absently at the black surface of the roof. “What about you?”

“Will I miss having you nearby?” she asked with a grin, and he smiled in spite of himself.

“No,” he said. “Tell me where you’ve been.”

“Well, New York, of course,” she said, holding out a hand to tick off her fingers as she counted. “Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Florida. I was hoping to get to California when my brothers left for school a few weeks ago, but they ended up just driving out together. My cousin’s getting married there in a few months, though, so I guess I’ll be able to add it to the list then.”

“Pretty good list,” he said with a little nod.

“Oh, and London,” she said, her face brightening. “Almost forgot about that. Just twice, though. It’s where my mom’s from, so…” She shrugged. “But that’s it for me. Not all that impressive, either.”

He sighed. “When my parents graduated from high school, they bought a van and saw the whole country. Two years on the road. They went everywhere.”

“I’m more interested in going abroad,” she said, her voice unmistakably wistful. “I want to see all the places on those postcards. Especially Paris.”

“Why Paris?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “All those beautiful buildings and cathedrals…”

“You mean all those postcards.”

“Yeah,” she admitted. “All those postcards. They’re very selling.”

“What do you want to see most?”

“Notre Dame,” she said without hesitation.

“Why?” he asked, expecting to hear something about the architecture or the history or at least the gargoyles, but he was wrong.

“Because,” she said. “It’s the very center of Paris.”