You told me that you and Mark were secretly engaged. He wanted to get married as soon as you graduated-you were a grade behind us, so it was still a whole year away. You sat on the steel sink in Dairy Queen’s back room, surrounded by ice cream mix, boxes of rainbow sprinkles and glamour shots of the Buster Bar and the whorish, frothy DQ Float-Go ahead and splurge! Get it with Tab?! You told me how afraid you were, that you weren’t sure if Mark was the guy you were supposed to marry, how you thought love was supposed to hit you like a spark and you weren’t sure that had happened. ‘But I’m a good person,’ you always said when we pressed against the shelves of the walk-in, your lips tasting like caramel syrup. ‘I still do chores and everything.’ ‘It’s me, I’m the terrible one,’ was what I always said next. I wanted you to be blameless, pure. ‘He’s my best friend. I’m the bad person here.’ I touched the six freckles clustered together by your right eye, a constellation. I even gave the freckle-cluster a name, though I can’t remember it now. That’s probably a side-effect of what I’ve been through-so many precious memories have been yanked away forever.
The eighth time I told you everything about me. That winter, I took you to the old, abandoned drift mine, one of my favorite spots in all of Cobalt. We looked into the black, gaping mouth in the side of the hill to avoid staring at each other. You shivered and said coal mining had to be the scariest job in the world, trekking into those dark, uncertain caves. ‘I’m sure miners get used to it,’ I replied, but you shook your head and said you couldn’t see how. I told you that my father looked perfect on the outside, but he hardly ever ate dinner with us anymore. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d had a conversation. It was always sports on TV, or long hours at work, or time spent at the new golf club closer to Pittsburgh. He wanted me to play golf, too-he got me a membership to the country club a few Christmases before. ‘Golf is a good skill for your future,’ he said gruffly, ignoring my lack of enthusiasm. ‘I’m grooming you for better things.’ The only thing I’d wanted that year was a set of encyclopedias, but my father said I could just use the encyclopedias at school. When new encyclopedias showed up on our doorstep a few weeks later, my father frowned, thinking it was a mistake. ‘It’s not,’ my mother said quickly. She’d gotten last year’s set at a discount from a door-to-door salesman, practically for free. When my father turned his back, she winked at me. I read those encyclopedias cover to cover, starting with A and ending with Z. I loved M; it was so thick. There were so many fascinating things in M. Myelin. Mummification. Melanoma.
I told you about the scholarship to Penn State-first that I’d applied, next that I’d been interviewed, and that I was waiting to hear if I got it. ‘You will,’ you assured me. ‘But that means you’ll leave me.’ I told you I’d never leave you. I told you I’d take you to college with me. ‘I’ll pack you in my suitcase.’ I took your small, tan hand and said, ‘I’ll marry you right now.’ I said I’d go get my minister’s license so I could marry us myself. You took a whack at me-you liked to slap the air when things were funny-and said we would need witnesses. I said, ‘How about this mine? It could be our witness.’ The coal was as silent and solemn as God. You looked away then. ‘You know we can’t,’ you said. We were quiet for a while after that.
Then there was the party at Jeff’s house. I had gotten there late, so we met in the hall, me holding an empty cup, on my way to the keg, you holding a sleeve of Ritz crackers. I couldn’t wait to show you the letter I’d received that very day, the one I hadn’t shown my family or anyone else yet. It had Pennsylvania State University’s prowling lion logo on the top. I unfolded it, thinking you’d be proud of me, but your expression clouded. And then you told me-you just blurted it out, two words. I said, ‘Are you sure?’ And you said, ‘Yes.’ And then I was talking and not thinking, or perhaps thinking too much and talking to avoid saying what I was thinking. Just as your eyes started to fill, Mark approached. We straightened up fast. ‘What are you two talking about?’ Mark asked, swaying, his breath acrid and hot, so wasted and not even an hour into the party. He touched your boob right there in front of everyone, his beer sloshing over the lip of the cup.
Mark took your arm and you turned away. Jimi Hendrix came on the stereo. I walked over to the plate of crudités on Jeff’s parents’ kitchen table, but they tasted like sawdust. When the song ended, you found me again. ‘Mark wants to go, you said. But he’s…’