The Geography of You and Me

“How old is that thing?” Owen asked, stifling a yawn.

“Older than you,” Dad said without looking up. He was tracing a finger along a thread of highway, and when Owen leaned in, he could see the direction it was moving: west.

“Was California even a state then?” he joked, and Dad shot him a look, but there was something good-natured about it, something almost joyful, and Owen sensed that some curtain had been lifted since last night, some weight they’d both been carrying.

“I was thinking we might take a little drive.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said with a grin. “I was thinking we’d head out on the road, see how far we get.”

Owen tried to hide his smile but failed completely. “That sounds like a pretty good plan.”

“You’d be fine with it then?” Dad asked. “Not staying here, not going back?”

“Yes,” he said with a decisive nod, and the word echoed through his head: Yes, yes, yes. His chest felt light and expansive, his heart lifting at the thought, and it seemed so sensible, so obvious—that they would go west, that they would move forward, because where else was there to go?—that it almost felt like a trick, like at any moment, Dad might tell him it was all some terrible joke.

But he didn’t. Instead, he folded up the map, giving Owen a searching look. “You’d be missing some school.…”

“I’ll survive,” Owen said, nodding at the map. “You can use that thing to teach me geography.”

“Seriously,” he said. “I don’t want you falling behind because of this.”

“I have enough credits to graduate now, if I wanted to,” Owen said. “And I can do my applications on the road. It won’t be a problem. Really.”

Dad smiled, but it didn’t make it all the way up to his eyes, which remained solemn. “So we’re doing this.”

Owen nodded. “We’re doing this.”

“Okay,” Dad said, and he lifted his coffee mug, nudging another toward Owen. They raised them at the same time, the clink of the ceramic ringing out through the drab kitchen and along the halls of the little apartment.

Owen floated through the school day in a haze, daydreaming about the road ahead of them. They could end up in Chicago or Colorado or California. It didn’t matter. It would be a new start. Not in the dungeon of some great city castle but out west, where there were more mountains than people and where the skies were lousy with stars.

After school, he walked home with his head still buzzing, his thoughts several time zones away. He crossed the lobby and hurried through the mailroom, eager to get downstairs and see what other plans his dad might have come up with while he was at school, pausing only to unlock the little cubby that belonged to the basement apartment. He threw the two catalogs and the envelope full of coupons directly into the bin, and was just about to slam the door when he noticed something in the back.

Even before he reached for it, he knew what it was. He had no idea where it was from, or what it would say, but he knew it was from her. He just knew.

The scene on the front was an overhead view of the city of London, and he stared at it, stu

There, on the back of the postcard, were the exact same words he’d written just yesterday.

I actually do.

He blinked at it, stu

She’d sent him a postcard, too, and with the very same message he’d sent her. It seemed impossible, yet here it was, and as he stood there gaping at it, his mouth hanging open, he sensed someone in the doorway.

“It’s because of what it says on the front,” she said, and it took Owen a moment to wrench his eyes from the message in his hand. When he finally looked up, there she was, leaning on the handle of her suitcase, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright. “The whole ‘wish you were here’ thing.” She shook her head, and a few strands came loose from her ponytail. “It’s stupid. I didn’t expect—I didn’t think I’d be here when you got it.…”

“No,” he said, holding it up like an idiot. “It’s great. Really. Thank you.”

“I’m just getting back, actually,” she said, pointing at the bag. “My parents flew me over there a few days after the blackout.”

“I looked for you,” he said, then shook his head, wishing he could think of something better to say, wishing his mind would keep up with his heart, which was thundering in his chest. “I guess that’s why.”

She nodded. “Guess so.”

“Listen, I’m sorry about—about the roof that day,” he said in a rush. “I was coming back, but then—”

“No, it’s fine,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting—”

“It was just that my dad—”

“It’s okay,” she said as their words crossed like swords in the air between them.

Owen glanced down at the postcard, the small blocky letters on the back. Then he flipped it over again, and the words went tumbling around in his head: wish you were here.

He had. And he did. And now he was leaving.

He raised his eyes to meet hers, pulling in a breath. “There’s actually something—” he began, but once again, she had started to speak as well.

“I need to tell you something,” she was saying, and he nodded. Her mouth twisted to one side. “I think,” she said, then paused and began again. “I think we’re probably moving.”

Owen stared at her. “You are?”

“It’s still not completely for sure, but it looks that way, yeah.”

“Where?”

“To London, actually. My parents are still over there, working out the details.”

“Wow,” he said, shaking his head back and forth. “That’s… wow.”

“I know,” she said. “It’s crazy. And really fast.”

“How fast?”

“Next month, probably,” she said, and he must have looked surprised, because she hurried on. “But we’d be keeping the apartment here, and my dad promised we could still come back for the summer, or at least some of it. So maybe…”

Owen forced a smile. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.”

Lucy sighed. “I’m still not sure how I feel about all this.”

He nodded numbly; he wasn’t sure why this news should be hitting him so hard—why he should be feeling left behind—when he was leaving, too. “Well,” he said, “it’s a lot closer to Paris.”

“And Rome.”

“And Prague.”

She gri

“Not at all,” he said, twisting the postcard around in his hands like a pinwheel. “You can complain to me anytime you want.”

“I might just take you up on that,” she said, and he took a deep breath, trying to work up to his own news, to explain that he would be leaving, too, that they’d been brought together again only to go pinballing off in opposite directions.

But he couldn’t find the words. And so instead, they just stood there, regarding each other silently, the room suddenly as quiet as the elevator had been, as comfortable as the kitchen floor, as remote as the roof. Because that’s what happened when you were with someone like that: the world shrank to just the right size. It molded itself to fit only the two of you, and nothing more.

Eventually, a woman with a baby on her hip inched her way around Lucy’s suitcase, scraping her key against the lock of her mailbox, and they stepped aside to give her room. When she left, the spell had been broken.

“So,” Lucy said, turning her suitcase around so that it was facing the other direction. “I should probably go unpack.” She nodded at the postcard he was still clutching. “I know it’s kind of cheesy.…”

“No, it’s great,” Owen said, and a laugh escaped him. “Actually, you should keep an eye on your mailbox, too.”

She tilted her head, eyeing him like she didn’t quite believe it. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Okay, then,” she said with a smile.

He nodded. “Okay, then.”