Page 27 of Given Our History

She thought about it for a few seconds, potato skins falling from the peeler in curlicues. “No, I don’t think so,” she said finally. “Once you dye it, it’s impossible to get it back the way it was. You’ll only end up regretting it.”

I tried arguing with her, telling her that she couldn’t possibly know whether I would regret something or not, but it was no use. I woke up Christmas morning to a refurbished iPod Nano—“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Dad explained—and a set of colorful clip-in extensions, much to my chagrin.

Teddy and I called each other on our neighboring birthdays, just like last year, but we didn’t see each other again until March, when he got his license. He asked if I could convince my parents to drive me to meet up somewhere for a day, and so I hopped into Mom’s Jeep and we met in the middle: Middletown, Delaware, fittingly enough. It was a forgettable town with few things to do and fewer places to eat, but we got Hardee’s and went to a park, where we sat on swings damp with last night’s rainfall, and he told me he was going to enroll at his local community college over the summer.

“But you’re only sixteen,” I said.

He dragged his feet, carving deep ruts into the cedar chips. “Yeah, but it’s not like I have anything stopping me.”

I didn’t have a counter for that, despite a strange sort of discomfort bubbling beneath the surface. What would happen when he made older, cooler friends in college? What if he got a girlfriend? Where would that leave me? “What do you think you’ll major in?” I asked instead. I didn’t wait for an answer before adding, uncertain, “Do you choose your major at community college?”

“I think you can. And I’m not sure yet. I guess I haven’t really found my calling.” He swung his swing sideways to nudge my foot with his, shooting me a wry smile. “But that’s what college is supposed to be for, right? Figuring it out. Plus it’ll get me out of the house. Away from my parents. Mostly my dad.”

“Tell me about them,” I said, without really thinking. He shot me an odd look. “It’s just that you’ve mentioned them before. It sounds like you don’t really get along.”

“I get along with them just fine. It’s more…” He seemed to hesitate, searching for the right words. “They don’t really get along with each other. They got married pretty young, I think. My mom, she always wanted to open a restaurant, but he didn’t want her to work. He said it was the way Harrisons had always done it, the man works, the woman stays at home and takes care of the kids. So she stayed at home. Didn’t fight it.” He scrunched up his face against the bright gray overcast. “I’ve always wondered if she decided to homeschool me just because she didn’t have much else to do.”

It was a familiar story—familiar enough, at any rate. My mom had given up her career to raise me, though she did take night classes to finish her degree when I was a toddler. But my parents didn’t resent each other. They were happy, I was pretty sure. “What sort of restaurant did she want to open?”

“Greek,” he said. “But not, you know, one of those places with the blue shutters and a mural of the Hill of the Muses or anything. We’d always pass by this empty brick building downtown and she’d describe it to me, the way she pictured it. All fancy. White tablecloths and chandeliers and stuff.”

“Too fancy for Allentown, Pennsylvania?” I guessed.

He held back a smile. “Maybe. Somebody finally rented it out, a couple years ago. It’s an office space now.”

We sat in contemplative silence for a minute, the swings creaking faintly.

“So, you go to college, build a career, and rent it out for her,” I said, hoping to lighten the mood. “Help her realize her dream.”

He chuckled under his breath, but he was staring at his feet. “More like I don’t let anyone stand in the way of my goals. I can’t imagine anything worse than just”—he shrugged, but even for a shrug, it lacked gusto—“repeating their mistakes.”

I nodded. I thought maybe I understood. Going to college early was proactive. Smart. But there was also this nagging feeling that our friendship had been a mere convenience, superfluous once he got out in the world and started meeting all sorts of interesting people. People who slotted in to the life he envisioned for himself with ease, like they were meant to be there. I wasn’t that person. We lived hours apart.

Over the past year, Teddy had become my closest friend, and above all else, I was terrified of losing that.

But I shouldn’t have worried.

Summer came and went, and my world didn’t come crashing down around me. When he mentioned his classmates, it was mostly in reference to group projects they were forced to work on together, or an answer he disagreed with—apparently, they weren’t all that interested in befriending a sixteen-year-old homeschooled kid. And when September rolled around, he signed up for all late-start classes so that he could still come to camp.

It was the third year in a row that they’d dragged us on a mandatory foraging hike along the Appalachian Trail—so, naturally, rather than spend another afternoon hunting down dandelions and wood sorrel and wild strawberries so small you could fit them in a thimble, we snuck off on a hike of our own, and Izzy and Darvish followed, both outright refusing to be left behind. We clambered over rocks and fallen branches up a steep incline, following the route that promised the best view. It was the third week of September, and some of the trees had started to turn, casting a warm golden glow over the trail.

“These fucking mosquitos,” Darvish moaned, swatting at the air. “They’re eating me alive.”

“Language,” Teddy muttered. “Have some manners.”

Izzy was leagues ahead of the rest of us, hardly breaking a sweat in her cut-off shorts and a bucket hat with the drawstring tightened beneath her chin, but our voices carried out here in the woods. She turned around to walk backward and spread her arms wide. “What, just because we’re girls, you can’t cuss in front of us?”

“I’ll cuss for you,” Darvish called up at her, clutching a hand over his heart and reaching out to her like Romeo in Capulet’s orchard. “I’ll say whatever you want me to say.”

“Sorry,” Izzy called back, “not my type.”

I bumped Teddy with my shoulder. “I’ve heard the sort of music you listen to. They’re not exactly shy with the word choice.”

“Just because I listen to a few songs doesn’t mean I say them.”

“How old are you again?” Izzy asked from her perch atop the jagged stump of a fallen tree, the decaying bark riddled with moss and lichen. She was already tall on level ground, but now, she towered over us.

“I’ll be seventeen in December,” he said.