Even in the night sky.
I felt Miles shift beside me. He was sitting up now, his arm lightly grazing mine. “You don’t believe in heaven?”
I shook my head. “I mean, I want to. Most people around here do, I guess. Sarah did. And I want to believe she’s …” I swallowed. “I want to believe there’s something after, but I just can’t shake this feeling that that’s just this fairy tale, you know? To make humans feel better about the fact that one day we’re all gonna die—that even Earth and our species won’t exist forever—and most likely that just means westop.” I took a deep breath and tried to blink back the tears burning my eyes. “What about you? Do you believe in heaven? Or anything after we die?”
Miles shrugged. “Don’t know. I don’t think about it if I can help it.”
“How do you manage that?” I asked, my voice already going raspy with the effort not to cry. “Feels like I can’t think about anything else.”
He didn’t answer, because there was no answer. Nothing he could say would erase my terror at the thought—not so much of dying but of ending. My anger that I’d been brought into existence, that I was a conscious being in my body, cursed with the knowledge that one day everything I’d done, every memory I’d made, would just vanish. And that I had no control over when or how that day would come. That I could die in pain, in terror, or in peace, and what difference would it make? I’d still be gone. And one day the whole world would be gone. And nothing, not a damn thing, any human ever did would matter.
My eyes were squeezed shut and my body was shaking all over. I was spiraling. It always happened when I got on this train of thought, which was almost daily back then. It still happens sometimes, though over the years, between therapy and the right medication, I’ve gotten better at shutting the thoughts down before they get quite that far. But the drum of existential dread is always with me. Always beating a steady rhythm at the back of my mind.
“Lee,” Miles said. His voice was close, right near my ear, but he didn’t touch me. “You’re still here.”
“I know but—”
He shook his head. “For now, you’re here.”
I don’t know if I would have survived those first few months without Miles. He didn’t try to hold my hand or comfort me or tell me that everything was going to be all right. I had plenty of people doing that. Instead, he just sat next to me through the long, anxious nights, reminding me every so often that, at least for that moment, I was alive. I was real. I was still here.
And that I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep.
Miles pulled himself up over the edge of the roof.
“Hey,” I said as he crawled over to sit beside me. I wasn’t surprised he’d come. It had been a while since I’d felt the need to climb up there in the middle of the night, but after my evening with Sarah’s parents, it felt like the only place I could go. And Miles was the only person I could be with.
“Saw you through the window,” he said. “You okay?”
“Not really.”
He put an arm around my shoulders and I sighed, leaning against him. Normally I wouldn’t have allowed this. Not because it made me uncomfortable, but because I didn’t want Miles to get the wrong idea. I didn’t want to lead him on. But at the same time, right then, I felt selfish. Greedy for comfort.
You’re probably wondering about Miles and me. The troublemaker and the girl next door survive a nightmare and grow close. Will they fall madly in love and end up together? Well, it’s more complicated than that. At least it is for me.
I’ve known for a while that I’m on the asexual spectrum. I figured it out about the time Sarah started sneaking around with Richie McMullen in the eighth grade. The way she talked about him—the way I heard older girls talk about their boyfriends and girlfriends—it never clicked for me. I’ve had crushes. There are boys I’ve had romantic feelings for, but I’ve never had any desire to do more than hold hands or maybe—maybe—kiss. It’s not that I find the idea of sex repulsive. I don’t, actually. In some ways, I find it intriguing. I’ve just never met or seen anyone I had any desire or even fleeting fantasy of doing it with. Not even any of the ridiculously attractive celebrities. I recognize that they’re aesthetically pleasing, but I’m also not daydreaming about ripping their clothes off.
And that made things with Miles complicated. I knew he had feelings for me, and if I’m being honest, I had feelings for him, too. But I’d decided a while ago that I wasn’t going to act on them. Not just because I was asexual, though that was definitely part of it. Sarah was the only person I’d ever come out to, and I didn’t know how Miles would react to the idea of a girlfriend who wasn’t sure when or if she’d ever be comfortable sleeping with him. And I cared enough about him and our friendship that I didn’t want to find out. But I also tried to keep him at a distance because come August, I was leaving Virgil County. I was moving to Los Angeles, and I didn’t know if I’d ever be back in this town.
Miles didn’t like to talk about life after graduation. His grandma wanted him to go to vocational school, though I could tell he wasn’t excited about this prospect. But he hadn’t applied to any colleges yet, and he never mentioned getting out of Virgil County.
So I had promised myself that, for both of our sakes, I was going to keep Miles at a secure, friendly distance. That had proven to be very difficult, though.
“Can I ask you something?” he said.
“Hmm?”
“Do you wanna go to prom?”
I sat up, pulling away from him so I could see his face. To my surprise, he didn’t appear to be joking. “Are you serious?”
He shrugged. “Could be fun.”
“I just never thought you’d be interested in something like prom.”
“I would be if we went together.”
I bit my lip and turned away.
