Sometimes, all I think about is you
Late nights in the middle of June
Heat waves been faking me out
Can’t make you happier now
—Glass Animals, Heat Waves
Do cicadas just buzz until they die? I wondered as the garage door rolled open, letting the heat and humidity of the last days of summer wash over me. As I walked towards my car, I glanced at the grass that my dad had forgotten to water all summer, dried and patchy up to where it met the lush emerald of our neighbor’s yard. The spray from their automatic sprinklers created rainbows as the blazing sunlight passed through the mist and tempted me to run through it like I did as a kid, but maybe it was more trouble than it was worth. Especially since I had work to do.
I wasn’t cleaning out my car because I wanted to or because my parents had gotten fed up with how cluttered it had become. I had received a text from a friend asking for her winter coat, which she believed she had left in my car, buried under a pile of other memories. But I knew the coat wasn’t there. I had just dug through my car last week when searching for a tube of vanilla chapstick, which used to be her favorite smell, and I hadn’t seen the coat.
I’m not sure why it’s easier to think about, to long for, someone when you’re not supposed to think about them. You start seeing them in everything that has even the vaguest connection. We had both driven nearly identical cars, 2004 Toyota Camrys in silver, before my dad had gotten me a newer black Honda Civic after the Camry broke down. Up until then, I would occasionally see my old car waiting for me in the driveway and I’d run towards it, thinking it was hers, before realizing the driver’s seat was empty.
She’d often come to pick me up when we hung out because she was the better driver. We realized this the first time I had to drive both of us home. It was pitch black outside after a party at her cousin’s house in the countryside. I could barely see, even with my high beams on, and nearly ran my car off the gravel road and into a ditch. I was stone-cold sober, too. After that, she would always volunteer to drive.
We went almost everywhere there was to go in our small Midwestern town, but our favorite thing to do was go grocery shopping. We both preferred shopping at Target over Walmart since we had agreed the gleaming white insides looked less trashy compared to Walmart’s tans and greys. We liked to go together because it was a twenty-minute drive with nothing to do except for talking and singing along to Taylor Swift songs. Neither of us had ever been in a romantic relationship before, but that didn’t make screaming along to breakup songs any less fun.
At Target, we’d wander through the aisles and never forget to browse the brightly packaged snacks, and then we’d talk about movies we wanted to see as we ate Kit-Kats and chips while sitting on the bench outside. One time, while I was examining the astonishingly long list of ingredients on a tube of Pringles, she asked me whether I thought Captain America or Thor was hotter. I had never watched a Marvel movie before since my parents didn’t speak English at home, so I said I didn’t know. That was a bit of a mistake: she proceeded to lure me over to her basement with the promise of popcorn and attempted to march me through a marathon of every Marvel movie in chronological order. She got a little too excited when showing me her fancy popcorn maker — a bulky metal pot whose lid had a handle sticking out of it to stir the popcorn. She turned the fire up so high that smoke poured out instead of popcorn. Her parents rushed downstairs to the fire alarm wailing and us rushing through the house, trying to open every window and door so we could fan the smoke out with table mats. Eventually, we did manage to make popcorn that wasn’t scorched. The warm red bowl we dumped it into protected my hands against the chill of the basement air as we descended.
The warm red bowl we dumped it into protected my hands against the chill of the basement air as we descended.
We settled down on the middle cushion of the couch with a blanket, the bowl balanced half on my lap and half on hers to keep us warm. It didn’t take long for me to determine that I didn’t find Captain America or Thor “hot.” I remember rubbing my eyes, still burning from the smoke, halfway through Avengers: Age of Ultron when I came to this conclusion and wanted to go to bed. But when I turned to ask her if we could stop for the night, I found her asleep. I must have fallen asleep soon after because the next time I opened my eyes, I found that her face was close enough that I could feel her lashes brush my cheek whenever she took a breath. I had never noticed quite how many freckles she had, like some god had garnished the curve of her nose with cinnamon. While Spiderman zipped across the flatscreen on the wall, all I could think about was how her breaths felt, a warm summer breeze across my neck.
As I cleared out my front cup holders, the sun continued to beat down on the car, heating it like an oven. I winced as I grabbed a shiny crinkled foil package, the heat searing my skin before I could toss it out onto the shimmering asphalt. When I leaned over to inspect it more closely, I saw it was a packet of Kellogg’s Pastry Crisps, no doubt from when I’d use to keep them in my car to ensure she would actually eat breakfast. We would sit in our cars and hang out together every morning in our high school’s parking lot before class. I could always tell when she had snoozed her alarm because I could hear her stomach growling as she crawled into the passenger seat. I found it amusing that she’d always claim she wasn’t hungry when I’d offer her food, but snatched it from my hand anyway. I usually didn’t let anyone else eat in my car because of the crumbs, and neither did she. But we had let each other do it. The sun-faded foil was now just a reminder of how long it had been since the last time we had spent our mornings drawing silly shapes on fogged up windows. I crouched down to read the almost invisible print on the back: “EXP 01/05/2019.” Yeah, probably not good anymore. I left the packet on the cracked driveway to deal with later.
In the end, I didn’t find her coat, but I did discover more relics that brought back memories.
In the end, I didn’t find her coat, but I did discover more relics that brought back memories. When I found crinkled pre-calc worksheets half shoved under my floor mats, I remembered when we used to sit at the same two-person table in class and how she’d turn and whisper comments to me when she thought the teacher couldn’t hear. She used to scribble questions to me in the margin of her notes, and I’d scribble back. She always wrote in pencil, so it was easy for her to erase. I wrote in pen, thinking it would be a good idea to learn from our mistakes. I think I spent more time that semester memorizing how her pencil tip moved across the pages, creating letters that were always slightly slanted upward and loopy like cursive, than I did paying attention to the teacher. Those notes disappeared partway through the year, though. Soon after, our seats got reassigned and I got moved halfway across the room. I don’t think the teacher ever noticed anything had broken between us since the seats were randomly assigned, but maybe the universe had.
Under the driver’s seat, I found a silver walkie talkie with black trim, the toy kind that you give to kids who want to play at being secret agents. Or in this case, what our mutual friend got everybody for Christmas because he thought it would be cool. There were originally four in the pack, but only she and I lived close enough to actually use them. I also didn’t remember how long its range was, but it must have been at least half a mile because that’s how far apart our houses were. Even though we had phones, there was still something novel about the static buzz of the walkie talkies late at night. As I stood in the heat staring down at it, my thumb mindlessly slid the switch from “OFF” to “ON.” And then my fingers adjusted the knob on top until a static-y robot voice announced that I was now on channel 6. As I held down the “TALK” button, I wasn’t sure if it was the humidity, but I struggled to take a breath before asking, “Hello? Are you there?” I think that was the first time I had ever been met with silence, but honestly I don’t know what I had expected to hear.
There were also loose UNO cards scattered across the back seats. I knew they were hers; I was there when she bought them at Target. She had wanted to play during the fourteen-hour bus ride to a robotics competition in Louisiana. Most of the team got bored after playing a few rounds and went back to their phones or staring through the window at the fields speeding past, but we kept playing, just the two of us, on the armrest between our seats until we arrived at the hotel. We made up silly rules about what the other person had to do when certain colored numbers were played. I remember that playing a blue three meant that the other player had to text their crush, and how I held my breath when I placed that card between us. When she said she didn’t have one, I nearly sighed out loud. Hours later, when she played a blue three, I lied and said the same. That night, laying side by side in the dark on scratchy sheets that seem all too commonplace at three-star hotels, I felt her hand on mine, and pretended to be asleep.
However, over the course of the next semester of senior year, our calls and texts slowed to a trickle, then mere drops every few weeks, then radio silence. The last text between us before she asked me about her coat was months ago, a late “Happy birthday!” with no response. Even though we still had multiple classes together senior year and were on the same robotics team, there seemed to be an unspoken rule that we existed on different frequencies. It was confusing how she’d still sit next to me in physics and claim me for group projects, but still somehow avoid having any contact with me beyond what was necessary. I guess I could argue that I was being used to carry the projects, but she never asked me to do more than my fair share of work and it wasn’t like she was too stupid to understand things on her own. Even now, I honestly can’t explain why everything dragged out as it did. I don’t even know if we ever stopped being “friends.” I suppose it is because we never exploded in some grand burst of flames that cleared the air and destroyed everything as we should have. Instead, everything just tapered off, like a broken-down car rolling to a stop.
Instead, everything just tapered off, like a broken-down car rolling to a stop.
It amazes me still now that no one else noticed how we had fallen away from each other. Our mutual friends still saved us seats next to each other, and invited us out as if we were one person. Last week when I ran into her parents while buying snacks at Target, I had no idea how to answer when they asked when I’d be coming over to hang out again. I hope I was polite when I talked with them, friendly even, but then I spotted the brightly colored box of pastry bars in their cart and felt a pang in my gut that reminded me that she had the same flaxen hair as her mom, the same crooked grin as her dad, and suddenly it was too suffocating to be standing by the freezer aisle. I think I told them we were both busy, and that I would only be in town for a week or so before I returned to Boston for college. Now, I am still busy, overloading my brain with code and diagrams so it won’t have space for her. But even my work offers no escape. She’s the same major as me, and I still wonder every now and then whom she does her homework with now.
The sun had slowly sunk in the sky as I searched, and stopped, and began again, casting a fiery glow over everything. Meanwhile, the buzz of the cicadas had grown in volume, more and more of them joining in calling for attention. Maybe I should have joined them and called out as well. I wonder what would happen if we had an honest conversation now…
…HOOOOOONK! I turned my head towards the end of my driveway and saw my dad inching up the driveway towards my open car door. HONK! HONK! HONK! He continued, glancing meaningfully at the spot next to my car. I pulled my legs into my car, only remembering the pastry bar I had tossed out earlier once I had slammed the door shut. By the time I looked out the car window, my dad had already run it over, the bright strawberry filling and crushed golden pastry now smeared across the driveway. It was reminiscent of roadkill.
