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Teeter. Teeter. Emotionally, Ryan is the kid on his bike leaning on its training wheels. He doesn’t know what will happen when they fall off. Will he fall, too?
Avery takes his other hand. The DJ returns to a fastsong, a song everyone loves. There’s a cheer and an eruption of bright movement around them. They stand there looking at each other, their arms an imperfect circle.
“I’m glad I’m here,” Avery says.
When the training wheels fall off, the thing you have to do is pedal forward. Pedal like you know it will work. That way, you don’t fall. That way, you soar.
Ryan lets himself believe Avery.
Inside the song, they soar.
The DJ does not relent. He knows which songs have that magic to them, the ones that lift you to the mountaintop and show you the view. The dancers cede their heartbeats to the greater thrum. They are awash in smiles and sweat and soul. The sweetest deliverance is a shared deliverance, and in this ugly municipal center, about a hundred teens from a hundred-mile radius are reaching for the beauty and attaining it. Their cares, their fears, their petty dramas can’t help but fall away as the music draws them to a pure elevation. For three minutes, five minutes, they can love the entire world, because the entire world is right here in front of them, and it’s vibrant.
Ryan and Avery ride these songs together. Their touch, their hold, their smiles, the opening of their eyes and the closing—all of it makes these moments shared, makes their experience of each other inseparable from their experience of the music.
There is no better place to be.
—
Time can becounted in the number of songs that pass…but who’s counting?
—
Finally, there isthe comedown, the song that doesn’t quite live up to the others. Ryan becomes aware of the sheen across his forehead, the trickle down his back. Avery catches his breath. They both look a little worn out, but not disagreeably so.
“Want to step outside for a second?” Avery asks.
“Sure,” Ryan says. “I can give you a tour.”
Immediately, he’s worried he’s going to run into people from town, people who’ll want to stop and talk, who’ll want introductions. (He doesn’t know that Alicia, seeing what is happening with the pink-haired boy, has told everyone else to give them space.)
They stop at a water fountain. After Avery guzzles down as much as he can from its tepid offering, he asks, “Is there a pool here? Is that what I smell?”
“Yeah,” Ryan says. “I’ll show you.”
It only takes a few turns for them to be away from everyone else, for the sound of the dance hall to move offshore. The first stairway they come to is locked, but the second one isn’t, so Ryan can lead Avery down to the basement.
“Have you lived in Kindling your whole life?” Avery asks.
“Yup. So I’ve been coming here for as long as I can remember. A couple of the rich families in town have theirown pools, but most of us use this one. I remember coming as a kid in the winter, and how weird it would be to step outside and have my hair freeze. I’m sure that wasn’t healthy, but I’d do it on purpose, you know? Leave my hair wet, just so I could see if I’d get icicles when I stepped outside. I was that kid.”
“Makes total sense to me.” Avery can tell the pool is getting nearer because the chlorinated smell is overpowering, almost ammonia-level.
“We have to go in this way,” Ryan says, gesturing to a door that saysMen’s Changing Room.Avery follows him in and it’s super eerie—a bare-minimum fluorescence keeping the lockers and the shower stalls from total darkness.
“Who knew these rooms could get even scarier?” Avery jokes.
“Sorry,” Ryan says. “We’re almost there.”
He hurries them forward to the source of the scant light—a swinging door that luckily opens when it’s pushed. The pool is lit from below, so it first looks like it’s the entire floor of the room, a gently wavering blue.
“Ta-da!” Ryan says. He sounds relieved to find it’s still here, that he hasn’t let Avery down.
“Lo and behold,” Avery replies.
There isn’t anywhere for them to sit; this isn’t the kind of pool that people lounge next to in deck chairs.
Ryan feels self-conscious. Is this really the best he has to offer? What is he doing?
