Josephine Potter
English Paper
Professor Wilder

When he closed the door, she got the feeling that they'd thrown themselves into a time warp. It was late. They were exhausted and wired at the same time, the anxiety of the future coursing through them. She felt like they were in the tail end of "Peter Pan," weighing the pros and cons of Never Never Land. As he dropped an empty suitcase on his bed and started to slowly gather his possessions, she thought that eating imaginary food and flying actually sounded pretty damn good. She wanted to grab his arm and tell him so, urge him to push off weighty adult decisions for just a little while longer. But he wasn't looking at her. In fact, he seemed to be avoiding her eyes, as if meeting them would open the floodgates.
Standing in the bedroom of the boy she had known for what felt like her entire life had never felt so strange. The room was the same. Sure, the movie posters had changed over time. The walls were now filled with pictures he had taken of their friends, their faces captured in honest expressions of happiness. There were relics everywhere of the childhood they had shared. The closet where they'd recited Spielberg's lines, the bed where they'd spent many a night watching movies but, more frequently, bickering with each other in a manner that would evolve over the years from nagging and challenging to tender. And back again.

The tender part had been brief. Well, to be honest, the tender part had been constant, but how often they chose to explore that tenderness was sporadic. They were the heroes of bad timing.

Now, his belongings were scattered all over the room and she attempted to help him place them in bags. Bags he would put on a plane to fly three thousand miles away from her the next morning. They had lived down the creek from each other their entire lives. Crawling into his window if she felt like talking to him had become a given. Now, suddenly, nothing was a given. Who knew how often they would come home? Who knew what choices they would make in college, and where that would lead them after that. But the bigger question she suddenly couldn't stop asking herself was when would they be together again? Not just in terms of distance, not just in terms of a shared meal, but in terms of something bigger. Something she didn't feel like she could say out loud. Not yet, when the remnants of the past year still hung between them, whether she liked it or not. They had grown up already against their wills. She had allowed herself to fall in love with someone else, and she had watched him do the same. What could they possibly say to each other now? What was left for them to be to each other?

She folded a t-shirt, then refolded it again, strangely nervous. He turned a book over and over again in his hand, as if the decision of whether or not to carry this book with him across the country were suddenly the toughest decision he'd ever made in his life. She'd looked at his face a thousand times in this room. But there was something different about how his eyes kept scanning her face. Something different about how nervous he seemed to be whenever their arms brushed as they placed things in his luggage. It was as if they were standing on a precipice, uncertain what taking the leap would mean.

Something started to happen. Something that was long in progress started to kick in. She knew that they were talking; the words were hanging over them like cartoon bubbles. But it was as if she was underwater and couldn't hear them. All she could feel, suddenly, was the heat rising off of her own skin and something echoing in her mind now.

And then, just like that, they were kissing. She didn't know how they got there. She had no idea. The thought of kissing this boy hadn't crossed her mind in years. Which was weird. Because once upon a time that was all she ever thought about.

And then, just like that, it was over. He coughed, she shuffled her feet. And she laughed to herself. It had been one of those moments. One of those moments where you shuck your status as mere mortal and achieve - however briefly - true greatness. She had shared many such moments with this boy. But now he was leaving, and nothing would ever be the same again.