"Don't you think I hate it, too?" Gudmund whispered fiercely. "Don't you think it's the last thing
I want?"
"But you can't," Seth said. "You can't just . . ."
He couldn't say it. Couldn't even say the word.
Leave.
Gudmund looked back nervously at his house from the driver's seat of his car. Lights were on
downstairs, and Seth knew Gudmund's parents were up. They could discover he was gone at any
moment.
Seth crossed his arms tightly against the cold. "Gudmund –"
"I finish out the year at Bethel Academy or they don't pay for college, Sethy," Gudmund
practically pleaded. "They're that freaked out about it." He frowned, angry. "We can't all have
crazy liberal European parents –"
"They're not that crazy liberal. They'll barely even look at me now."
"They barely looked at you before," Gudmund said. Then he turned to Seth. "Sorry, you know
what I mean."
Seth said nothing.
"It doesn't have to be forever," Gudmund said. "We'll meet up in college. We'll find a way so
that no one –"
But Seth was shaking his head.
"What?" Gudmund asked.
"I'm going to have to go to my dad's college," Seth said, still not looking up.
Gudmund made a surprised move in the driver's seat. "What? But you said –"
"Owen's therapy is costing them a fortune. If I want college at all, it has to be on the faculty
family rate where my dad teaches."
Gudmund's mouth opened in shock. This hadn't been their plan. Not at all. They were both
going to go to the same college, both going to share a dorm room.
Both going to be hundreds of miles away from home.
"Oh, Seth –"
"You can't go," Seth said, shaking his head. "You can't go now."
"Seth, I have to –"
"You can't." Seth's voice was breaking now, and he fought to control it. "Please."
Gudmund put a hand on his shoulder. Seth jerked away from it, even though the feel of it was
what he wanted more than the world.
"Seth," Gudmund said. "It'll be okay."
"How?"
"This isn't our whole lives. It isn't even close. It's high school, Sethy. It's not meant to last
forever. For a goddamn good reason."
"It's been –" Seth said to the windshield. "Since New Year, since you weren't there, it's been –"
He stopped. He couldn't tell Gudmund how bad it had been. The worst time of his life. School
had been nearly unbearable, and sometimes he'd gone whole days without actually speaking to
anyone. There were a few people, girls mostly, who tried to tell him they thought what was
happening to him was unfair, but all that did was serve to remind him that he'd gone from having
three good friends to having none. Gudmund had been pulled out of school by his parents. H was
hanging out with a different crowd and not speaking to him.
And Monica.
He couldn't even think about Monica.
"It's a few more months," Gudmund said. "Hang in there. You'll make it through."
"Not without you."
"Seth, please don't say stuff like that. I can't take it when you say stuff like that."
"You're everything I've got, Gudmund," Seth said quietly. "You're it. I don't have anything
else."
"Don't say that!" Gudmund said. "I can't be anyone's everything. Not even yours. I'm going
out of my mind with all this. I can't stand the fact that I have to go away. I want to kill someone!
But I can take it if I know you're out there, surviving, getting through it. This won't be forever.
There's a future. There really is. We'll find a way, Seth. Seth?"
Seth looked at him, and he could now see what he hadn't seen before. Gudmund was already
gone, had already put his mind into Bethel Academy, sixty-five miles away, that he was already
living in a future at UW or WSU, which were even farther, and maybe that future included Seth
somehow, maybe that future really did have a place for the two of them –
But Seth was only here. He wasn't in that future. He was only in this unimaginable present.
And he didn't see how he'd ever get from here to there.
"There's more than this, Sethy," Gudmund said. "This sucks beyond belief, but there's more.
We just have to get there."
"We just have to get there," Seth said, his voice barely above a whisper.
"That's right." Gudmund touched Seth's shoulder again. "Hang in there, please. We'll make it.
I promise you."
They both jumped at the sound of a door slamming. "Gudmund!" Gudmund's father shouted
from the porch, loud enough to wake the neighbors. "You'd better answer me, boy!"
Gudmund rolled down his window. "I'm here!" he shouted back. "I needed some fresh air."
"Do you think I'm an idiot?" His father squinted into the darkness where Seth and Gudmund
were parked. "You get back in here. Now!"
Gudmund turned back to Seth. "We'll e-mail. We'll talk on the phone. We won't lose contact, I
promise."
He lunged forward and kissed Seth hard, one last time, the smell of him filling Seth's nose, the
bulk of his body rocking Seth back in the seat, the squeeze of his hands around Seth's torso –
And then he was gone, sliding out the door, hurrying back into the glow of the porchlight,
arguing with his father on the way.
Seth watched him go.
And as Gudmund disappeared behind another slamming door, Seth felt his own doors closing.
The doors of the present, shutting all around him, locking him inside.
Forever.