If You Knew Then What I Know Now by Ryan Van Meter

Author:Ryan Van Meter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sarabande Books
Published: 2011-10-05T04:00:00+00:00

“Cold cuts will take the paint off a car, if the sun is hot enough.” I’ve heard this somewhere, and just knowing it makes me sound as if I am capable of such a thing. The car windows are rolled down, Angie’s hair is flying all around her face like she’s underwater. Houses, cars, and lawns blur past us. We drive to Jon’s house where we hope Kevin will be, around a narrow curve, up a slow hill. We’re chanting “BE THERE! BE THERE!” with tight red faces. I’m bouncing the container of cherry bars on my lap, wet residue streaking the inside of the lid in sugary ridges. One more turn right, one left, and there’s the house, at the mouth of a dead-end court. Kevin’s car is there, as if we summoned it, as if we screamed, willed, and commanded it there. This is perfect. We can almost see his face when he trots out to his car after piling up the family’s mail in the kitchen and calling the dogs back inside, and there, across his windshield is the weirdest mess he’s ever seen. My grandma’s homemade cherry bars as vandalism. The stereo plays the fast chorus of The Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun,” because it’s true.

As we turn in the cul-de-sac, though, we see them. Kevin and Claire, both of them, walking out of the house, staring at Angie and me. We look at each other because we thought we were summoning his car, and accidentally we summoned him, and Claire too. On their faces are smiles until they stop smiling because we look so ridiculous, chanting and screaming out of the open windows. They don’t know what we’re up to, but it’s pretty obvious that whatever it is, they’re on the wrong side of it.

Seeing them side by side, I realize something I can’t ever tell Angie. I don’t want to rub these cherry bars on Kevin’s car as a message about him and Claire because it’s not him that I care about. My actual concern is that Claire cannot date anyone ever because I don’t want her next boyfriend—if it’s Kevin or anybody else—to start kissing her. That would be the explanation to everyone that what was wrong with Claire and me was me. That’s why Kevin and Claire can’t get together. That’s why it’s actually fine that Angie still likes Kevin, and for her, these cherry bars are some kind of bizarre flirtation. That’s why I must believe that Angie and I have only just begun to live because only I know my hidden difficult secrets. I’m already nostalgic for our present because the future is so impossible.

In front of Jon’s house, Angie pulls her car over, jams it into park and switches off the engine. “Get down,” she whispers. “Hide. Pretend you’re sleeping.” This sounds reasonable at this moment, even though Claire and Kevin have just seen us drive past them, just seen our dumb, surprised faces. We slump down into the foot wells and curl up.

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