Jamie Ford

C H A P T E R 2 Jamie Ford

Pulled out the thick sheet of paper and saw a wedding invitation for Caitlyn Calderwood, my high school sweetheart, the person whom I once was madly, recklessly in love with. Like many hormonal sixteen-year-olds, we thought we’d be together forever. Instead her parents came home early from church on Super Bowl Sunday and caught us in bed. I’ll never forget that day, walking to my car in my underwear after Caitlyn’s mother grabbed my clothes off the l oor and ran down the hall, screaming for her husband.

I went home to the rent-controlled apartment that I shared with my alcoholic mother—who, for once, I was grateful that she’d disappeared for a few days––and sat with my worry as I watched Tennessee lose to St. Louis 23-16. The wide receiver had been tackled inches from the goal line as time ran out. That’s how I felt about Caitlyn. Close, yet such a crushing loss. When I went to school on Monday, Caitlyn was gone. “Her parents just said that she’s been sent away,” Caitlyn’s best friend, Sophie, shared the news. “Sorry. That’s all they would tell me. What exactly happened?” “You don’t want to know,” I said as I left for Trigonometry where I sat for 45 minutes staring at the empty desk in front of me where Caitlyn used to be. What have they done to you? What have we done? This is all my fault. I imagined her being sent to her grandmother’s house in Georgia, to an all-girls private school in upstate New York, or to some reform school where kids work out their anger, anxiety, and sexual frustration by rock climbing and white-water rafting, but the counselors still take your shoes at night so you don’t run away. As our math teacher droned on, I began to see my future with Caitlyn as Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, not just unsolvable, but completely unknowable. Or maybe it was like long division and I was just the lonely remainder. Now as I stood next to my mailbox, listening to the chirping of mountain bluebirds and lawn sprinklers, I realized that I hadn’t seen her, hadn’t heard from her in twenty years. Though I’d thought about her, without fail, ever damn Super Bowl Sunday. While everyone else ate chicken wings and commented on the halftime show, I’d ride a tidal wave of nostalgia and anxiety, feeling a part of me pulled under by rip-currents of regret and there was no lifeguard on duty.

I sighed as I read the invitation. I was happy for her, honestly. Until I saw she was marrying someone named Rayne. That was it. No last name, like a K-POP star or a professional wrestler. I also couldn’t tell if Rayne was a man or a woman. That’s when I remembered how her parents had sent her to Bible camp after her freshman year and how she told me half the kids there were queer and there was a lot of fooling around after dark, despite the puritanical intentions of their parents. I hadn’t been surprised. My mom sent me to a similar place, though I think she sent me to the camp run by a local Baptist church because it was the only one we could afford. Graceway Bible Camp was where I did mushrooms for the irst time. They grew were everywhere. Easy picking for those of us whose desired to be elsewhere, if only for a few hours. It was greater than our fear of accidentally ingesting the wrong kind of cap and stem and being rushed to the ER. One of the happiest moments of my childhood was spent at Graceway, loating on a raft with two other kids, staring up at the night sky and seeing geometric patterns, connectivity in the stars that I had never noticed before. Then a shooting star lashed across the sky. That was Caitlyn to me. “Hey, did we win the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes?” My wife, Olivia shouted through the kitchen window. “What are you doing out there?” “Just reading some fan-mail.” Olivia understood that meant just the opposite. As a journalist, I was used to people occasionally—okay, frequently—being unhappy with my work. That’s why I never engaged with anyone on Twitter, even though I had a blue check mark. I didn’t have a Facebook account. More importantly, I never read the comments section beneath any of my online articles, but

that didn’t stop nice people from doxing me and mailing little love letters imploring me to perform hideous obscenities on myself. Take that Pulitzer and shove it sideways up your… “I’ll be inside in a minute,” I yelled back as I looked at the date. Caitlyn was getting married a week from now, June 5th, in Santa Fe. I smiled and shook my head in equal measures of disbelief and appreciation. Caitlyn had been a theater kid in high school. A drama queen in the literal since. Plus, she wore black all the time, even before Hot Topic made it possible to buy goth off-the-rack. She was old-school emo, like Holden Caulield and always joked about getting married on Friday the 13th or on a full moon. She’d done better. She was getting married during next week’s total solar eclipse.