Julianne told me, "I want to start a club." at the end of September. Considering where we were -the empty field next to our high school- it was as if she'd just asked me to have a baby with her.

 

"What's it gonna be about?" I asked.

 

"I don't know yet," she said.

 

"Then why do you want to start it?" I asked, "Usually you have to have a topic to start one."

 

"It'll look good on college applications," she said.

 

"Jesus Christ," I said.

 

The school bell rang, meaning we only had five minutes left before we would be marked as late. From our spot on the field, the bell was distant.

 

"Why don't you join me at two year community college? We'll be done quicker, pay less, and still get jobs we hate." I took her hand. "We can have our mid-life crisises together. It'll be a cute couple's activity."

 

"It's crises," she said, "and there's nothing cute about them, Marjory."

 

Marjory and Julianne. We'd become friends because we were the only teenagers we knew with such old lady names. Then we'd started dating because we were both cute even if crises weren't.

 

"Maybe we should think about going to class," I said. I stood up, she did not.

 

"Marjory," she said, "I think we should break up after graduation."

 

"...What?"

 

Our first date had been almost exactly a year ago. It was her brother's baseball game. Little League didn't end until late in September. It was surprisingly warm for the only Little League nighttime game. We sat in the back, left-hand corner of the bleachers. Our elbows were touching. It was our first date, but there wasn't much to do. We already knew each other. I knew Julianne didn't like fresh coffee because it burned her tongue. Julianne always started walking up steps with her left foot, and down steps with her right foot. Julianne wanted a house with a white picket fence by the time she was forty. Julianne preferred chalk boards to white boards.

 

We were the only ones there after the game. Julianne had to wait for her mom and brother to come back from celebratory ice cream down the street. We stood on the outside of the chain-link baseball fence, we couldn't bring ourselves to step onto the foreign world of the baseball diamond.

 

"I can't imagine where we'll be in a year," Julianne said.

 

"I can imagine where we'll be in ten years," I said.

 

And I pulled myself up so my feet weren't touching the ground, and rocked back and forth on the chain-link fence until it felt like the whole world was shaking.

 

I wanted to shake her like that now.

 

"This won't work long-distance," she said.

 

I said, "Oh. That makes sense."