Page 28 of Goodbye Days

“Do you want to go home?”

“No, to where we can see the skyline. I’m still not used to getting to see skyscrapers every day.”

We walk to the other side of the park, where we have a view of Nashville’s skyline, twinkling in the humid distance. Jesmyn sits in the grass.

“Not worried about chigger bites?” I ask.

“Not really.”

I sit beside her. “I’d hate for us to have any unshared tribulation.”

“I can see why Eli liked you so much.”

“You can?”

“Yeah. You use words the way a musician uses surprise chords in a song.”

“That a good thing?”

“I’m not going to insult you after you’ve enriched my life by showing me squirrel rodeo,” Jesmyn says with a half smile.

“Did you and Eli talk about music a lot?”

“Does ninety percent of the time count as a lot?”

“Talking with me must be pretty beach-in-November.”

She shakes her head and stares at the buildings, rising bone white into the sky. She looks distant. Haunted.

I study her face. “Sorry if I said something dumb.”

“You didn’t.”

“What then?”

She keeps her eyes fixed on the skyline. She takes a deep breath. “I’m scared. School starts in two days and I’m not sure I’m ready anymore.”

“Me neither.”

“Even with Eli gone, I have one more friend going in than I expected. But I’m still terrified.”

“I have a lot fewer friends than I expected. So I get it.”

Jesmyn shifts position, sitting cross-legged. She picks at blades of grass. “And now I’m scared of dying before I do all the things I want to do in life. Seventeen years isn’t enough. There are so many pieces I want to learn. I want to record albums and perform. I never used to obsess about dying.”

“Me neither. I sometimes look at my bookshelf now and think about how someday I’m going to die without ever reading a lot of the books there. And one might be life-changingly good and I’ll never know.”

Jesmyn reaches over and gently picks a ladybug off my sleeve. “Will you go with me on the first day of school? Like walk into the school with me?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

Jesmyn lies on the grass with her hands behind her head. I stay sitting.

“I have an idea,” she murmurs.

“Yeah?”

“We should make a rule that we only spend some of our time talking about the past.”