Part Four: If I Die Within Your Reach

Why are teenagers so rotten to each other? Do they become reactive and defensive in the face of things they don’t understand, or things that scare them? Is it simply hormones? The constant work of keeping up appearances? Fear of our parents? Whatever it was, the combination of all of these, perhaps, but we fell apart. More specifically, I fell apart. Between my mother’s almost constant complaining about how much time we spent together and hints that we should “take it easy” for a bit, and my friends openly and rudely pulling away the longer we stayed together, it became too much for me to carry. I broke up with him, suddenly, in May. He was furious. We fought and fought about it; he rightfully called me on caving into pressure from my mother. There was one particularly nasty exchange about refusing to come to my dance recital, done entirely through notes in geometry class. Rose didn’t speak to me for a year after that day. He started dating another girl, almost immediately, a senior we were both friends with, and I set about trying to find a new friend group. Amy was as good as her word; when she said us or him, she meant it. Eventually, we called a chilly truce, sometime in the middle of the summer. We’d see each other around, and occasionally, he’d come in to the ice cream shop I worked at.

One evening, just before I was leaving on vacation, he came into the shop with a manila envelope. “I wanted to give you this before you went on vacation,” he said, rather sheepishly. “Don’t open it until you’re gone though, ok?” “Ok, Matt. Thanks, I guess.” I could feel that there was a tape in the envelope, and figured he made me a mix to listen to at the beach.

I still have that tape, and the letters that went with it. You don’t throw something like that away, ever. In fact, that kind of tape gets burned into your soul permanently, and never ever leaves you. Even if I had thrown it out, I’d still hear it in my head. He wanted me back. “This tape may change everything, it may change nothing, but at least now you’ll have something to do at the Cape”. He didn’t sign it, just attached liner notes about every song on there. “Starpower” Sonic Youth, “Within Your Reach” the Replacements, “I Apologize” Husker Du, and so many more. I sat on a rock by a little footbridge by the tidal pond, headphones on, and cried and cried. I listened to it two more times, and went to the pay phone in the marketplace. “Call me when you get home, and we’ll talk, ok?” was all he would say that night. I went home a week early, with my father, and the minute I was in the door, I called him. “Come over, tonight.”

When I got to his house, the door was slightly open. I pushed it aside, and tentatively walked in. “Matt”, I called, “are you here?” I stepped in, and stopped to avoid something on the floor. A rose, with a note underneath, that simply read, “please come back”. He came down the stairs, and stood in front of me, and just looked at me, waiting for me to respond. And oh, god, I loved him. I still wanted him, I still thought about him every minute of every day. And it scared the shit out of me. I wasn’t ready for something as big as he was; I forgot who I was when I was with him. There was only him, and I was afraid. And I said no. I recognized the look that told me his heart was breaking, because honestly, it was like looking in a mirror, but it was too scary for me to deal with. I walked home in the dark. In my kitchen, I put my bag down, and pulled the rose he had left for me out of it, and every petal fell off of it, all at once. Only then, did I cry.