Then I did something I’d never done before. Something I’d never wanted before. I stepped closer to him again, and then slowly, gently, pressed a kiss to his lips.
He didn’t tighten his hold on me. He didn’t try to hold me to him or push the kiss any further. Instead, he just smiled. A broad, goofy smile that made a giggle rise in my own throat. A smile that assured me that that kiss, quick and chaste as it had been, was enough.
I eased away, squeezing his hand as I backed slowly off the porch. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.
He nodded. “See you tomorrow.”
“Miles?” I was off the porch now, standing in the grass. But I hadn’t been able to turn away from him just yet.
“Yeah?”
“I love you, too.”
I don’t know what the future holds for Miles and me. Since that night, we’ve exchanged a handful of short, light kisses. I’m not comfortable with anything more. Maybe that’ll change one day. Maybe it won’t. Maybe there will come a time when he needs more than I’m willing to give. And maybe there won’t. I don’t know. Neither of us does. And I’m starting to think that’s okay.
I’ve spent so long keeping him at a distance, scared of ruining the bond we have. And there’s a good chance that once I leave this town, once I’m thousands of miles away, we’ll have to go back to just being friends. But I’m starting to think that no matter what happens, we’re going to be connected forever.
Not just Miles and me, but all of us. All of the survivors. No matter how angry Ashley is at me, no matter how much Kellie—or Renee or whoever she decides to be—wishes to be rid of us, we’re tied together now. They are bonds of pain, sure, of a shared trauma. But they are also bonds of hope and comfort and an understanding that only the six of us will ever have.
No matter what happens with Miles, I’m comforted to realize that we’ll always be connected. That he’ll always be the one I can call when I’m at my most nihilistic. When the starless sky feels like falling into nothingness. Whether it’s the fifth or tenth or thirtieth anniversary of the shooting, we’ll be in touch. Even if this … whatever it is, between us right now doesn’t last.
But for now, this feels right.
I’m writing this a few days before I leave for California. He’s going to drive with me across the country with all of my things, then fly back to Indiana once I’m settled in. I’m dreading that part. The part where I won’t live next door to him anymore. I won’t be able to climb onto my roof and know he’ll be there shortly.
But I think it’ll be okay. We’ll both be okay.
We’ve survived worse, after all.
If you look up Coach Nolan’s obituary you’ll find out that he was forty-two, single (divorced almost a decade earlier), and had no kids. He’d coached both football and track, and a good chunk of the trophies in the glass cabinet near the front office of the school were thanks to him. When people in town talk about him, they mostly refer to his coaching, all the victories he led VCHS to. But they never mention him as a teacher.
Which, really, is pretty strange, since literally every student had to take at least one of his classes. We all knew Coach. We all cracked jokes about how formal he was, referring to all of his students by their last names, always wearing a jacket and tie in class. Pretty much everyone had done a Coach Nolan impression to amuse their friends at some point.
At the same time, though, almost everyone respected him. He was tough, but fair. I remember the first time I got back an essay I’d written for his class. There was a giant C at the top in red ink. I’d been mortified. I was no straight-A student, but I’d never gotten below a B before.
I went to his desk after class, nervously clutching the graded paper while Sarah waited for me by the door.
“Can I help you with something, Ms. Bauer?” he asked.
“It’s, um, about my grade,” I said, laying the essay on his desk. “Why did I get a C?”
“Because that’s the grade you deserved,” he said simply. He could have dismissed me then and there, but instead he pulled the paper toward him and plucked a red-ink pen from the desk drawer. “Come here.”
I hovered at the edge of the desk and watched as he marked up my paper, showing all of the places where I’d gotten dates or names wrong or where I’d repeated myself in order to meet the assigned word count. In the margins, he wrote out things I could have included, facts I’d missed. Then he handed the paper back to me.
“There was some good material in your essay,” he said. “But not enough of it to warrant a better grade.”
“Can I redo it? For a higher grade?”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. This isn’t middle school anymore, Ms. Bauer. Things are going to be tougher. What you can do is use all of the information I just gave you as a road map for how to write a better essay next time.”
At first, I was angry. It was the first semester of my freshman year. He was being way too hard on me, I thought.
But then, when our next essay was due, I did pull out the marked-up copy of my old assignment. I doubled-checked my names and dates, instead of repeating myself I found new material to work into the essay, and I actually used sources beyond just our textbook. And a week later, when Coach Nolan handed it back to me, he did so with a smile. There was a red A at the top of the front page.
Well, A-minus. His class wasn’t going to bethateasy.
I’d never felt so proud of myself for a grade before. And I think that was his goal. He made us work hard so that, when we succeeded, it was a real triumph.
