Page 19 of Never Forever

She smiled then with her whole mouth. Her whole face. She was brighter than the streetlights across the street. Brighter than the moon that was coming up over the roof of the hotel. My whole life I would never find a person who shone so bright.

“Maybe I’ll see you at the bandshell again. You know, if you run by there sometime,” she said.

5

When It Almost Ended

Matt

That summer I ran by the bandshell every night.

Just to see if Carrie was there. And most of the time she was.

Sometimes she was rehearsing lines, sometimes she was practicing her singing. She didn’t get that shampoo commercial. But her mom had gotten her an acting coach and a vocal coach that she saw once a week in Portland and her voice had really started to improve.

Sometimes Annie came with her too, but Annie sat in the corner with her books and ignored us.

I always stopped to say hey and then we would talk. For hours.

We talked about anything. Everything. We never stopped talking.

“I’m never living on an island again,” she said. We were sitting on the edge of the stage, our legs dangling off, hands behind us. “It’s so boring. All those stupid birds.”

“What about Hawaii?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“Fiji? Everyone wants to live in Fiji.”

“Not me. I want to live in a forest. Where there are animals. Not just birds. I want to see deer in my back yard.”

“You can get those fake ones.”

“No. I want real deer. And bears and black squirrels. Plus, a big bathroom. With two sinks and a fancy jacuzzi tub and one of those mirrors with the lightbulbs around them like you see in movies.”

“Bears and fancy mirrors.” I said, like I was making a mental note for future construction.

“What do you want?”

“A fireplace,” I answered. “And bookshelves. Lots of them.”

“That’s it?” she asked, like she didn’t believe me.

“It’s all I need.”

I didn’t say the other part of what I was thinking. That I also wanted someone to talk to. To share with. To read the books I read so we could talk about them.

We talked about serious stuff too.

Her dad, my mom.

Both assholes, we decided. We both knew it wasn’t our fault that they left, even though we agreed there were times it felt like it could have only been our fault.

One parent leaving made us both feel very responsible for the one we had left.

“All Dad has is me,” I said, putting a finger through the hole in the hem of my tee shirt.

“Mom has all of us, but all she wants is me,” Carrie said with a dramatic sigh. Carrie was really good at dramatic sighs.