Only You

breakdown

I don't go to school, not because I want to avoid her now, but because I don't know what I'd do if I were to see her again in the waking world. I couldn't bear the thought of looking into her eyes in the classroom and seeing a professional gaze back, confirming my fears that what had happened in the forest had all been nothing but a dream. I know I'm cowardly for doing it. I know we're doing something risky, even though I am not a minor. I know she could lose her job. Everything comes into sharp, logical focus in the stark light of the morning. 

I don't know how long it's been since that night, since that snowy kiss, but my parents are back home and I am suffocating. I don't stay home most of the time when my parents are there. And now that I can't go to school, I wander the town like a homeless soul. There you see me, swinging idly on the old wooden gate at the edge of the field. There you see me walking through the alleyways of the stores in town. There you see me, sitting in the cinema long after the movie has ended and the janitor comes in sweeping up the fallen popcorn crumbs. 

It's the beginning of winter break, I think. Or close to it. I see excited kids running around the mall sometimes, talking about the outfits they'll be wearing to this party and that, talking about the things they'll do the second school lets out. So I leave the town again. I haven't done this since meeting Cate, never felt the need to escape when she was my escape. But love has an odd way of making one terrified of feeling it, because after the initial shock of the first kiss, one becomes scared that anything else will be only a shadow, or nothing at all.

It was wrong of me to think that about Cate. Cate is extraordinary. Cate is a force of nature. 

Yet here I am, slumped against the window again, watching the night highway bend and twist before my red eyes, half-hoping the bus would stop at a forgotten station again, half-hoping I could go back to the night Cate and I first met, so I could somehow make things better. Maybe I'd not be a student. Maybe I'd be older, more put together. Maybe I'd finally be good enough for her, in another life. 

It's raining; I watch the drops slip down my window, welling up like tears, dark drops of onyx on the laminated glass. And then all of a sudden I need to get out. I need to call her. I need her. 

I need her.

I get off the bus at a random stop and run towards the mall on the interstate. I get drenched by the rain and by the time I get to the phone booth by the Dunkin' Donuts, my hair clings to my face, dripping wet.

The phone rings a long time before she picks up. 

"Hello?"

God, her voice. It sounds more beautiful over the telephone. I close my eyes, sink down to the floor. I could listen to a tape of her just saying "hello", over and over again, a soft, pretty sound calling from far away. 

"Hi," I say. "Hello."

"Jude?"

I feel my throat close up. 

"Jude..."

A myriad of things I've wanted to say to her spills into my tongue, but I keep my lips sealed, afraid.

"Where are you? Are you outside? It's so late..."

She sounds different. Tired. I realize now I must have woken her up. It's easy to forget that not everyone stays up till the crack of dawn wandering the world and looking for a lost version of yourself. 

"I'm sorry," I say, and wince as my voice comes out rough. "Sorry. I must've had the wrong number."

"Oh," she says uncertainly. "You're not Jude? I must have been mistaken."

"I'm not Jude tonight," I whisper.

"What did you say? I can't hear you very well."

"Nothing. I'm sorry, ma'am. Good night."

I hang up. I put my head in my hands. What the fuck is wrong with me? Cate, Cate, Cate. What was I thinking, that she would drop everything in the dead of night and come running to find me in this phone booth in the middle of nowhere? Did I think she could be my hero? I stare up at the numbers on the keypad. I mouth Cate's number, memorized by heart. Does she think I'm strange?

Yet there was an eagerness in her weary voice when she said my name. Did she miss me as much as I missed her?

The night seems to grow darker; a light above me buzzes and flickers. I sit crumpled up in the phone booth, listening to the roar of the rain on the roof and letting my mind spiral into a void, clawing at slippery banks to no avail.