Meet Me Here by Bryan Bliss Read Free Book Online Page A

looks visibly relieved. She pulls the sign out, wincing once, and then holds it for both of us to see.
    “No wonder there’s so much crime here. How did he not see this?”
    She riffs on the state of law enforcement in our town, but I’m barely there. Barely listening.
    “I’m surprised he didn’t ask for your autograph,” she says. “He was all ‘Oh, you’re a Bennett? I’m about to die from excitement.’”
    “Yeah,” I say.
    I’m trying to smile, but I can’t stop thinking about the way that police officer looked at me, like I’m doing him a personal favor by joining the army. It’s ridiculous because what he thinks shouldn’t matter. But the sense of disappointing him, this entire town, is something I can’t shake.Because who will I be if I don’t follow in the Bennett footsteps?
    “Let’s go do something else,” I say.
    Mallory does a double take and knocks on my head. “Is that you in there, Thomas? I thought you were going to turn into a pumpkin if I didn’t get you home soon.”
    “It’s graduation,” I say weakly.
    She studies me for a moment, trying to guess my angle. Here’s another chance to be straight with someone. And with such little risk. I could tell her, and poof, it’s over. But sometimes it feels like I’ve forgotten how to be real with anyone. So I force a senior picture–worthy smile and say, “Give me the notebook.”
    She pulls it out of her back pocket and hands it to me, still watching my every move. I flip through the pages, one after the other, trying to make my face upbeat and normal. But everything on the page is ambiguous now. Ten-year-olds projecting their idea of cool into the future.
    The frustration cakes my voice. “Maybe we could just drive around. I don’t know.”
    She takes the notebook when I hand it back to her, still watching me. “Yeah, Thomas. We can do that.”
    Mallory holds the notebook on her lap with one hand; the other she hangs out the window, letting the wind lift and drop it. The only sound is the rustling of the notebook’s pages, our childhood blowing in the wind.
    I’d drive until the sun came up and went down again if I thought I could get away with it, letting the radio mute whatever I was feeling. The wind would blow away all my problems. Jake, my dad, all of it would disappear if only I drove long enough. But when I hit Plateau Road, when I can see Ford High School looming in the distance, reality hits me in the gut.
    The teachers, my friends, people I’ll never meet. Everyone expects something I can’t give them, expects me to be this person that I’ve fraudulently created. The weight of all of them pushes on my chest, and I begin to panic.
    I need to get out of this town.
    But that means going home and taking the yelling, the shocked disbelief. It’s swallowing everything for a few more hours, once again turning the disappointment into a tank of fuel, a reason to get me on the road.
    And I don’t know if I can do that either.
    Then there’s Mallory. No matter the nostalgia, the weightlessness of being out with her, it has to end. If thepast few months with Jake have taught me anything, it’s that ignoring facts does not transform them. Fact: I cannot go to the army tomorrow. Fact: I cannot tell anyone. And that leaves me with the last and final fact: The longer I’m out here with Mallory, the harder it becomes to get away.
    I can barely breathe when I make a hard right into Ford’s parking lot. Mallory curses as she grabs for the door. I stop the truck just around the corner from the football field and put it in park.
    “What the hell, Thomas!” Mallory reaches down and picks up the notebook. When she actually sees my face, she says, “Are you okay?”
    “I need to explain something to you,” I say.
    I search for the words, something that will honor what we’ve done tonight but will also make it clear that what’s happening right now has to end. If I don’t leave—and soon—I’m not sure what will happen.