Page 68 of Fate Fiction

I wasn’t sure exactly when the decision was made. It could have been after he lifted me up off the ground after I tripped, or after he tried grabbing my hand later that evening, or after I rid myself of any of the false walls I built and allowed him to kiss me. Truthfully, I could write novels about every moment I had lived since Sunday around two p.m. and I wanted, so badly, to immortalize this in the form of my writing. If I did, everything I ever wrote after would be tainted by the fantasy I was currently living in.

I turned my head to bury myself deeper into his chest, he smelled like the fresh water of the lake warmed by the sun above.

“By the way,” I said through a yawn, “don’t bring up the ‘selling your soul’ thing to Sue, she might actually believe you and not let you come back.”

“So I shouldn’t make a joke that I drink the blood of virgins every morning with my coffee?”

There are moments that seem to exist entirely outside of any true timeline. When one can’t remember if they’re eighteen or twenty eight or something else entirely.

It’s the kind of stretch of time that should last for years, not minutes. The twenty six minutes Evan and I spent driving from camp to our destination were a perfect example of those sort of moments. As trees and rocks flew past my SUV in a blur I had to glance over at the passenger seat to remind myself who was sitting beside me.

Every past version of me was on this drive, the angry sixteen year old who was still mourning the loss of a father I barely knew, the infatuated twenty two year old taking young love for a test drive, and now the twenty eight year old cautiously optimistic about slightly less young love.

After laying too long in the sun, I had gotten hot and antsy and wanted a change of scenery. There were still hours left to kill in the day. I had offhandedly suggested a drive to a secret location by the other end of the lake. Evan joked about the possibility of me sacrificing him to the famed hermit, to which I playfully punched him and suggested that I just might. We stretched and changed out of our swimsuits and as always Evan met me off my cabin doorstep. Hands intermingled on the short walk to the car.

I kept the location a mystery, though the destination was less of a draw than the journey itself. When Evan got in the car he twisted the thick turquoise heart pendant that hung from a silver chain on the rearview mirror in between his fingers.

“Sue gave it to me, when I was little I’d always say her necklaces were so beautiful and one year for my birthday she mailed me one. I used to wear it all the time but I outgrew it.”

Evan released it and it swung back and forth as they continued deeper into the woods.

I turned up the volume on my running playlist and rolled down the windows. As we snaked down the dirt road it slowly widened into flat logging roads and the tree cover lessened, sending beams of sunlight through the sunroof. These roads were less treacherous, but familiar, and I could put my foot on the gas and arm out the window without a single care.

Middle school anthems were interspersed with light conversation. Either casual observations of the landscape from Evan, a commentary on the previous song, or a random question and answer from each other. I wanted to know everything about the pieces of him that made him whole, and he gleefully obliged and returned the favor. Songs would make either one of us smirk and glance at the other, hoping for shared enthusiasm at the track. Our eyes kept meeting, a silent excitement at the parallel lines of our lives beginning to converge.

Evan’s hand slowly wandered to my thigh, and he was mindlessly drawing hearts with his index finger as the rest of his hand gripped the soft tanned skin of my leg gently. The same Fall Out Boy song that had sparked my initial curiosity regarding Evan’s interest began playing, and I felt Evan squeeze me slightly harder.

Maybe heaven was hands grazing upper thighs with wind whipped hair, soundtracked by the songs of our youth. It felt so high school in a way. I pondered that if we met all those years ago would he be the handsome lead in the play who fell for the quiet girl eating lunch in the art room? Would we steal glances and avoid each other in crowded rooms? Would he think of me when performing Shakespeare or would I hastily sketch his portrait in smudgy charcoal?

I leaned in to kiss him to remind myself he was still real, as these were the sort of moments that tended to only exist in one’s imagination. There were likely hundreds of fanfics regarding this exact storyline, alternate universes where the fictional lands and characters of the Sword of Thorndown are swapped for modern day, and the author and reader are both woven into the narrative under the vague pseudonym of “Your Name.”

They were the sort of fics that I would read in secret with my face illuminated by the glow of my phone, but never dared to write. I could only allow myself to conjure love with a fictional character when he lived in an ancient land far away, yet I’d happily devoured the words of others behind closed doors. Even still, feeling Evan’s touch felt sinful, knowing how many evenings I’d imagined exactly what it would be like while Nick laid asleep beside me.

Somehow, my most vivid fantasies and the most realistic writing couldn’t compare to the actual thing. The fic writers didn’t know about the small calluses that dotted his palms from years of hoisting a fake sword, or the birthmark on the inside of his middle finger, but I now did.

“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” Evan leaned into me a bit.

“I don’t have to, we’re here.” A cruel reminder that bliss was only temporary. I pulled off the road into a small parking lot, with only enough spaces for a few cars. From the looks of it, there hadn’t been any visitors in a while.

A weathered metal sign staked into the ground said, “Site of 1958 Everglen Lake Plane Crash.”

Evan looked curiously at it, squinting as he tried to read the faded paint. “This is the surprise?”

“There’s more than a placard, come on.” I led him down a small forest path and began the tour guide spiel. “In 1958 a pilot flying his plane with a few friends crashed deep into the woods here, because of the location of the crash it took local authorities hours to get to the site, and of the six people in the plane, only one ended up surviving. It was a national news story, and the entire region was swarming with reporters, the National Guard, even Eisenhower came up to pay his respects. Ultimately, they were unable to retrieve the body of the plane and large pieces of debris, leaving what was essentially a metal skeleton in the middle of the woods.” Small pieces of rusted metal showed through the brush and leaves, serving as trail markers.

I was morbidly obsessed with the crash when I was younger. I had read up on every piece of information I could find regarding it. After my father died I subconsciously sought out learning about deaths more tragic than his. A heart attack while in his car on his way to work was such an unceremonious way to die, that my younger self was embarrassed for him in a way. My adolescent brain believed he deserved a more interesting death.

Going out in an amber blaze careening toward disaster felt more honorable, though it countered everything I felt about keeping life predictable and safe. I craved danger in a way that one craved a food they were allergic to. I wanted risk, I wanted impassioned disaster, but I was too fearful of the aftermath. I didn’t want my life to end up like the ruins of the plane, rusted metal being overtaken by the earth as time passed.

The site had a solemn eerie aura about it, and as we walked down the path it felt like the birds had stopped chirping and even the mosquitos stopped buzzing around us. We reached the destination, the cylindrical body of the plane was reduced to mostly a steel ribcage jutting out of the earth.

Evan stopped a few feet behind, staring at the wreckage. “Imagine, your entire life ends in the middle of the woods in a matter of seconds,” he held a contemplative stare at the plane.

Both of us stood in silence, a few feet apart from one another. The steel ribcage remained still, but we both held our breath as if it were going to rhythmically begin to inhale.

“All this time this has been sitting on the other side of the lake, slowly forgotten by the world around it,” Evan said quietly.

“I used to be obsessed with the crash. I read up on the lives of each and every victim, and I make an effort to come and pay my respects every time I’m up at camp. I’ve been coming out here for over a decade and it still freaks me out. Not in the sense that it’s haunted, but in the sense that something so horrible now sits here quietly returning to the earth, you know?”