Farewell to Eden

The sign that hangs above the welcome desk is huge and shiny. “Welcome, Eastridge High Alum! Congrats on 20 Years!” 20 years, I muse; 20 fucking years. I receive my name-tag and pin it to my left lapel, then head down the tiled hallway towards the gymnasium. Christ, I think in amazement; it even smells the same.

I pause at the open doors. What the fuck am I doing here though, really, I think. But my heart picks up pace as I stand there, wondering the same thing I’ve wondered the whole journey here: if I’ll see her. If she remembers that secret pact that we made, all those years ago, as vividly as I do.

“You know I’ve always been in love with you, right,” I can hear the echo of her voice. We’re at the Lookout, passing the joint I’d nabbed from my older brother’s stash, staring up at the star-filled sky. I nod, “I know.” “But you’re leaving, and I’m leaving,” she continues. I nod, “This is true.” She sits up, her hair long and tumbling down her back. She looks at me, “I’ll probably never see you again.” I shrug, “Probably.” "Hey!" she grins, hitting me lightly. Then her face grows thoughtful. “Wait. Wait, okay. 20 years,” she says, “20 years. We’ll both go to the reunion-“

“Reunion?” I laugh, “I barely make it to school events as is-“

“Yes. Reunion,” she repeats loudly over me, poking me and laughing, “You’ll have pulled your shit together by then. Anyway, we'll both be there. You’ll look at me from across the floor, and I’ll look at you. And here's the deal: if we walk towards each other, we’ll take each other’s hands, drop everything in our lives, and run away together. Forever.”

I take a puff, exhale. “Why not just do that now?” Sarah frowns, “Because that’s not realistic.” I grin and look over at her, “And this 20-year-long game plan of yours, is?” She nods sagely, “Look, you’re with Dana. I’m with Brian. In two weeks, we all graduate. In college you’ll have more Dana’s, I’ll have more Brians. And then, you know. Life. Besides,” she says, curling her hair behind her ear, taking the spliff from my outreached hand, inhaling, “I like pacts. I like having a secret. I’ll even make it official, here-” She takes off her favorite ring and tucks it into my jean jacket pocket. “See?” she said, “How amazing do you feel now, having a pact with someone that no one else knows about?”

I can’t help but smile at her enthusiasm. I pause, then slip off my silver chain bracelet. “Here,” I say, and she looks at it in surprise. “Come on. Wouldn’t be a pact if I didn’t give you something,” I say. Her smile spreads slowly, lighting up her whole face, “Yeah.” She holds it in her palm, then wraps her fingers around it, closing it from sight.

I hop to my feet, stretching my arms in feigned tiredness, and say, “So, I guess that's it then? See you in, what, 20 years, right?” “What! Dumbass!” she exclaims, laughing. She’s pulling me back down- her hair smelled of flowers-

I smile, feeling her ring near my heart, where it’s hung on a chain, tucked away, since that night. And I wonder the same thing I always do every time I feel it, look at it: if she’s worn my bracelet since then, too. If it’ll be around her wrist, when I see her.

I take a deep breath, and walk into the gym.

The dimness of the lights is pleasantly hazy above the packed floor. A DJ plays in the corner. Sounds of chatter and the perfume of booze gently swirl in the air. I stroll around the outskirts, sipping my drink, when someone taps my shoulder.

“Holy shit - Josh?”

I turn. I’m met with a beaming, dimpled smile and shock of curls. Before I know it, she’s pulling me in, hugging me so tight I can barely breathe. “I knew it was you, I fucking knew it,” her muffled voice says into my chest. “Hi, Marisa,” I say, chuckling. She breaks away, playfully hits me, “What the fuck! I can’t believe you actually came! Eileen, Mark, get over here!”

Before I know it, I’m being hugged, flanked, tousled - “Only took 20 years to get you to come to one of these things, huh Joshie?” - given a shot, then another. My ears fill with stories of marriage and families, careers and retirement dreams. But most of all, memories. Those four years of high school, where the only thing that seemed to matter was our crew’s friendship: me, Marisa, Mark, Eileen, and...Sarah.

"Hey," says Mark to me, "Remember that first day we all got together? Freshman year. Marisa and me are under that tree in the quad, waiting for this one to finally arrive," he claps me on the back for emphasis. I nod; the others smirk. "Then before you know it, this girl walks by. This beautiful girl. She must be new, we think; we don't recognize her. Marisa here, not one to ever hold back, calls out to her. We start talking. 'Sarah', she says her name is. Then Josh shows up, and that's when we knew: she was in. Anyone who can hold Josh's focus for more than 30 seconds, is in." Everyone is laughing in agreement. The reminiscing continues, an endless brook of happy babbling.

Sarah. I haven’t seen her yet. I’m assuming she’s off talking to people, like always. I keep looking around, my heart doing little leaps each time. Waiting for that moment when our eyes meet and we walk towards each other. How she’d grin wickedly at me in that moment, and we’d run out of here, away from the past 20 years of a foggy fever dream and into to a woken Eden.

“Course right after graduation, Josh here disappears,” Mark’s regaling. He shakes his head at me, “It was like you got on the plane straight from the ceremony. Where’d you even run off to, man? I heard so many rumors. South America, Asia, fucking Russia. Seducing socialites in between hedge funding and espionage.” He’s laughing, Marisa is protesting. Eileen pipes up, “Well, let’s be real. Of our whole graduating class, ‘Most Likely to Become an International Man of Mystery’ could only belong to Josh Evans.” I chuckle, but say only, “I traveled a bit, yeah.” Everyone grins. I clear my throat, saying, “Speaking of mystery, where’s uh, where’s Sarah at?”

The smiles fade. An odd hush falls over them. I search their faces, but eyes are averted, heads bowed. “What?” I say, my heart sinking a bit, “She couldn’t make it?” There’s a long pause. The music in the background seems to fill the void. Eileen answers, and her voice is low, gravelly. “She - she’s gone, Josh.” I take a step back, shake my head, “What?” “Yeah, man,” says Mark, nodding somberly, “Three years ago.” I stare at them all, hoping this is some stupid prank like we all used to play, that Marisa will break like she always did, and Sarah will pop up behind me and shout “BOO!”

But there’s nothing. Only that music, that goddamn music. The room is suddenly spinning. My legs are shaking. My throat feels swollen, maybe from the shards of my shattering heart. “You were off on your...travels, you know,” Marisa’s saying weakly, “No one knew how to reach you. No one’s known, really, not since we graduated. I guess we just assumed you...knew. And grieved in your own way. You were always like that, Josh.” “Right,” I say, “I, uh, I’m gonna go outside for a minu-“ My voice breaks, and in a daze, I stagger to the back exit.

It’s cold outside, or at least I guess it is; there’s snow and bare branches and dark sky, anyway, and my breath comes out in white wisps like winter has consumed my insides, too. But I can’t…feel anything. Not the chill of the air, not the tears on my cheeks. I can barely taste whatever this drink in my hand is. But I tilt it back and chug til it’s gone, then toss it aside into one of the piles of snow.

I angrily yank out the chain from under my clothes and take it off. Like a curled snake, it huddles in my palm, with Sarah’s ring at the center. As I stare at it, I can see Sarah from across the swell of parents and graduation gowns. Brian was at her side, they were taking pictures with their families. As she turned to fix her cap, our eyes met. With a grin, she waved to me, then pointed to her wrist, my bracelet twinkling in the sun. Then, she was gone, slipped away in the crowd. That was the last time I ever saw her. And it was all seeming so much like a dream, more than it ever had.

I hop over the side of the steps and tramp through the snow of the quad, coming to a stop at the first tree, the tree where I first ever set eyes on her. She stopped my heart in that moment, with that smile, that halo of hers. “Hi,” she’d said, “I’m Sarah.”

The tree has grown taller since that day, but there’s still some branches that hang low. I look down and let my palm turn over. The chain falls loose, hanging but from a single finger, Sarah’s ring at the end of it making it swing like a pendulum. I toss it up, and it hooks around one of the branches. I look up at it for a long moment, then with a nod of silent good-bye, I turn away and head back towards the steps, where I can see Marisa, Mark, and Eileen waiting for me.