Saturday, September 24, 2016

My mom decided to release me from my grounded state on my eighteenth birthday. While I was relieved, I was also a little nervous to be around my friends outside of school. It had been almost a month since I'd hung out with anyone, other than the afternoon Kaitlin came over. At school, I saw Kaitlin, Laura and Sophie everyday at lunch but the conversation was stilted and topical thanks to my mysterious disappearance at the end of the summer that I refused to discuss. Eventually it mostly went unmentioned, other than when Sophie took a stab at guessing where I'd been.

Her theories included:

"You were kidnapped, and you can't talk about it because your kidnapper threatened to kill your family if you did."

"You joined a cult, but fled when your initiation was to include the sacrificial killing of an innocent animal."

"You went to a convention in another state for some kind of embarrassing subculture."

"Meth house."

"You took off with your secret boyfriend, but left him when you discovered he was a possessive asshole."

Then she'd tell me to blink three times if she'd guessed correctly, and when I didn't, she went back to icing me out. I couldn't blame her for being pissed at me. Sophie covered for me that summer when I went missing for a night here and there, but using her family vacation as my cover to go missing for five days without telling her was too far.

Laura had always been generally more understanding and forgiving than Sophie, and her reaction to my lies was more concerned than angry. But I grew tired of catching her looking at me like I was a person she didn't know anymore.

And Kaitlin checked in on me, tried to cheer me up, and offered to listen anytime I needed to talk. I did the same for her.

My birthday fell on a Saturday on a weekend I was staying at my mom's, so I was free to hang out with Kaitlin after the haircut appointments she'd made for us. I'd also agreed to go to a bonfire at Laura's boyfriend's house that night, which I was less excited about. But it was my eighteenth birthday, and I didn't want to disappoint my future self by staying home. Or my mom, who'd spend the entire evening asking pitying, probing questions about my social life if I didn't go out.

I planned to walk out of the hair salon that day with the scraggly, summer-lightened ends of my long hair trimmed, but instead left with a shoulder-length bob and bangs. The bangs were Kaitlin's idea.

She said they made a statement.

I huffed a short laugh. "The statement being, 'I am having an emotional crisis.'"

"No, that's crap. The statement is that this is just hair," she grabbed a handful of her own for emphasis, "and it's mine and I'll do what I want with it. And if I want to chop the front of it, or the back of it, or all of it, I will. And if anyone says shit about my decision that I've made about what to do with my hair, that's a reflection of their own self-doubt."

"That's quite a statement. You know what? Either way, I'm sold."

Kaitlin ended up having several inches of her blonde hair chopped off and the rest dyed cotton candy pink. We both felt a bit lighter when we stepped back out in the warm late September afternoon and squinted in the sunlight.

"Lou's?" Kaitlin suggested, as she put on a pair of lavender cat eye sunglasses and grinned.

"Um." I stalled as I glanced up the side street where Sophie's car was usually parked when she was working at Louisa's Cafe. I spotted her cobalt blue car immediately. "How about the Starbucks in Meijer?"

"Traitor." She sighed and walked toward her car. "You've gotta do something about this lingering uncomfortable tension with Sophie."

"I was thinking I'd ride it out till we graduate and then it won't be a problem anymore," I said with false cheer.

"Come on. You really think that's a good idea?"

"No," I admitted. "But it's my only idea."

"You could always tell her the truth. About where you were. You do realize that if you tell her, she'll probably forgive you. You know she hates secrets."

"I'll think about it." I was definitely not considering telling her the whole truth. But I was thinking about telling her... something.

"I hope so. The atmosphere at the Meijer Starbucks will never compete with Lou's."

Once she pulled onto the main road out of town, Kaitlin put the windows down and turned the volume up on the radio. We sang along and moved to the music in our seats. The hula girl on her dashboard wiggled along with us. The river was a sparkling sapphire blue and dotted with boats. People were out biking and pushing their kids in strollers. We were all grasping at the last days that felt like summer before winter's frosty fingers gripped Michigan for six months.

We both spotted a familiar face jogging on the sidewalk.

"HRG!" we announced in unison and laughed.

Hot Running Guy, or HRG, was one of the people in Palmer whose actual name was a mystery, but we saw around enough that we felt the need to call him something. HRG appeared suddenly one winter, running daily like his life depended on it. He ran in snow, rain, extreme heat and any time of day or night. In addition to his dedication to running and his hotness, HRG also was notable because instead of running in polyester moisture-wicking athletic wear, he seemed to run while wearing a wide range of everyday clothes. It was as if he'd dropped whatever he was doing and decided to take off running.

In addition to HRG, we had names for other weird and wonderful local characters, such as Earth Momma, Bones, and Eighties Guy. Some were regulars at Lou's and others were people we often spotted walking around our town where almost nobody walked anywhere. Most residents of Palmer preferred driving a few blocks in their oversized pickup trucks and SUVs in climate-controlled comfort.

Earth Momma wore flowy patterned maxi skirts and carried her baby against her chest in one of those complicated looking fabric wraps. Sometimes she'd breastfeed her baby in Lou's. When uptight customers complained about it, Lou would serve their drinks in a mug she had custom-made that said "Breastfeeding in public is a legally protected right" in cheerful red script, with the actual name and number of the law written on the back.

Bones was a wisp of a girl with long stringy hair who claimed she was twelve but looked about nine. We called her Bones because she seemed scrappy and tough, and had the gravelly voice of a lifelong smoker. Whenever Bones spotted Sophie and I walking Sophie's dog, she'd ride alongside us on her bike and chatter the whole time. One day in the summer, she followed us all the way back to Sophie's house and asked if she could use the hose to cool off because the water and electricity were shut off at her house. I gave her money to go to the pool a few times and Sophie put together a bag of snacks for her that she claimed no one in her house would eat. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the trampoline in Sophie's backyard brainstorming how to make the world a better place for kids like Bones.

Eighties Guy was just a guy who looked like he'd forgotten to change out of the outfit he'd worn to an 80s costume party. He was always walking around town in acid-washed jeans, a brightly-colored windbreaker and big headphones over his curly, possibly permed hair, seemingly lost in his own world.

Another Lou's regular was Senior Discount Coffee Guy. Everyday at four o'clock he'd be there, either to take his coffee to go and or to one of the leather chairs in the corner where he'd settle in to read a newspaper. Because I hadn't been to Lou's in awhile, I hadn't seen him since the day in the summer that I'd realized he was Pete's friend, Jimmy, and nearly spilled my coffee all over him. That was probably for the best.

At Meijer, Kaitlin and I got iced coffees and wandered the aisles. We smelled the fall candles and laughed at the Halloween costumes. We talked about how in less than a year we'd be excited about buying laundry hampers and microwaves for our dorm rooms. I felt lighter and more hopeful than I had in awhile. Kaitlin made me feel semi-confident that I could figure out how to fix things with Sophie, and things could go back to normal.

The signs were everywhere that summer was fading into fall, and I hoped that my memories of that summer would fade away, too. During the cold, dead winters, summer and everything that came with it always seemed like fantastical impossibilities. Exposed skin and fireflies and diving into a lake and breaking a sweat without even moving were things from another world. By the time winter came that year, I hoped that time traveling and summer days with Pete would also seem like unrealistic remnants of another life. And in a year I'd be in college, away from Palmer and all the places in it that reminded me of him.

Changes lay ahead and life would go on. At least that's what I told myself.

When Kaitlin dropped me off back at my car in town, she said, "That was fun, but it would be nice if we could all hang out together again. You should talk to Sophie tonight."

"I wish you didn't have to work tonight. I'm afraid I'll chicken out and go back into eccentric recluse mode and stay home instead."

"You got this. Work up some birthday and new haircut confidence and go be social."

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Notes: Meijer is a chain of supercenter stores in the Midwest, like Walmart, but better.