“Come on, Hannah Banana,” they say, sounding more like a cheer.
“This conversation isn’t over, okay?”
“I’ll text you,” I reply, looking down at my shoes to avoid her insistent eyes.
“Aah, so I won’t be blocked anymore?” She arches her brow.
Before I can respond, her teammates start howling like wolves, so loud that it echoes down the now near-empty hallway. She turns and jogs away. Once they disappear, I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. My wrist buzzes.
HAPPY FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL! It’s Mrs. Patricia from church! Just wanted to reach out so that you’d have my number. So excited to have you on board for Sunshine Saints.
I take a deep breath. I still have time before I have to facethatmusic. I head toward the field house, stepping outside at the first exit I find and cutting through the back parking lot on the path that leads to the sports fields. I walk along the edge of the football stadium, seeing the Ridgeway Ravens warming up with sprints through the bleachers.
When I come around the ticket stand, I stop. The sight of Kristen leaning back against the field house, staring up into Vincent’s eyes, hits me like I just walked into a glass door. I watch him tip his forehead against hers before stealing a kiss. It’s like watching open-heart surgery—disgusting, nauseating, and potentially deadly.
Kristen’s voice echoes in my mind, telling me Vincent isn’t going anywhere. Maybe I was wrong to assume Kristen and I would be hanging out alone.
“Hey guys,” I call out. I remind myself to smile. I want to get back to Kristen’s and my version of normal, and I guess, somehow, Vincent has to fit into that.
“Hey, you ready to go?” Kristen asks, smiling and stumbling a little as she tries to catch her breath and balance against the wall of the field house.
“Yep,” I say, trying not to be awkward.
We start walking past the rest of the fields behind the school. Like field hockey, the girls’ soccer team has their first scrimmage today. We pass boys’ soccer and the cross-country team doing warm-ups. The football team starts stretching, calling out each move before proceeding in one synchronized line.
“Never realized how big Ridgeway is on sports,” Vincent admits, looking out over the fields. He has a green-and-blue flannel tied around his waist. His black jean shorts are an old washed-out pair that he cut at the knee. I like his checkered Vans, though I’d never tell him.
A waist-high fence marks the perimeter of the field hockey turf. Our team isn’t out yet, but Cuyahoga Falls High School is already doing their warm-ups. I try to imagine Hannah out there, running sprints and stretching in the fresh-cut grass. I feel a pinch in my chest.
Kristen picks up the pace now that the woods are in view. The shade from the trees offers some relief from the sun. Vincent takes the lead, and we shift toward the fence that separates the Haverford Tree Farm from the school property.
Once we’re on the other side, Kristen and Vincent interlace their fingers. Kristen’s parents have ano boys when home alonerule, a rule that she struggled with a lot when she started dating Tyler Scheen in eighth grade. Nevertheless, she listened. When we come out of the trees and walk up the empty driveway, I realize that old obedient Kristen drifted away over the summer as well.
I look at their hands, seeing Kristen’s yin-yang ring. Hers is silver and mine is gold. I glance at the black-and-white circle on my finger and wonder if this is what we are becoming. Two separate entities, opposites that somehow fit together. What happened to all the things that used to make us the same?
I could’ve reached out more over the summer. Ishould’ve. At first, I thought something was up because Kristen hardly seemed to notice. I mean, she wasn’t reaching out either. But now I know she had her own distraction.
A sense of pride washes over me when Kristen’s chocolate lab, Skittles, runs past them to greet me. At least she knows where her loyalty should lie. We follow Kristen and Vincent into the kitchen. Vincent gets a glass from the cabinet and grabs a Crystal Light packet from the pantry, already familiar with the layout.
“You gonna take a load off or nah?” he asks, his attention zeroed in on the bottom of his glass.
He stirs his lemonade with a spoon, the metal tapping the wall of the glass rhythmically, almost hypnotically. He glances in my direction, brows raised slightly as if to reiterate his question. I look at Kristen, noticing they both left their bags in the entryway.
He’s talking to me.
“Yeah,” I say, draping my bag over the back of a chair.
“Let’s go on a walk. It’s so beautiful outside,” Kristen says, breaking the growing silence and probably beginning to sense how awkward this is going to be.
She opens the sliding screen door to step out onto her deck, and I stop short of unzipping my backpack. We always do ourhomework right after school.Always.Both of us used to be anal about it, but I don’t say anything. Kristen leads us over to the golf cart her dad uses to travel throughout the farm. Vincent sits up front with her, and Skittles and I take the back.
“We survived the first day of senior year,” Kristen says as we cut through the section of young Fraser firs, the farm’s prized Christmas crop.
“There’s still so much to come,” I say, thinking about the festival. Even though I’m not going to tell Kristen the truth about Hannah, Hannah and I being copresidents isn’t a secret. But without the backstory of Hannah’s gesture, Kristen will just get defensive about how I shouldn’t have to share the title I worked so hard to get. She wouldn’t be able to offer any support for the real issue.
“I’m not worried about it,” Vincent says, reaching his hand out when the path narrows enough that he can brush the fir needles.
The smell intensifies as we move deeper into the farm. I know that whatever school I end up at next year, I’ll have pine-scented candles to remind me of home.