The Year We Fell Apart by Emily Martin Page B

the way through.
    He’s standing alone when I reach him. “Hey.”
    “Hi.”
    “That was a fun class this morning, huh?”
    He nods and looks over my head. Looks everywhere but at me.
    “You okay tonight, Dec?”
    Finally, he meets my gaze. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
    When Declan first went away last August, we spoke every night after dinner. Even on the nights we had nothing to say, the nights when all we could do was lie in bed with our phones pressed against our ears and listen to each other breathe. We were in love; we were finally together. And we were determined not to let the distance undermine our relationship. But after a few weeks, he started to slip. The calls became every other night. And before long, our conversations were even more painful than the silence.
    I tried not to let it show how lonely I was without him. I didn’t tell him about crying myself to sleep or about how I couldn’t bear to go to the tree house anymore. Never told him how much it hurt when he’d forget to call me back. Because I wasn’t going to be that kind of girlfriend, the kind so dependent on her boyfriend that she can’t manage to be happy without him. Or the kind who would turn his time of need into something all about myself. I just tried to cope with it as best I could. Which, as it turns out, was not very well at all.
    I dig my toe into pine needles and sand. “I don’t know,” I say in a small voice.
    Gwen is over by the keg now, with Mackenzie and Cory. Everyone except Mackenzie is filling a red plastic cup. My own drink weighs down my hand. I lower it to hip level.
    All of us drinking . . . that would explain why Declan is so out of sorts. Not that he hasn’t tried it himself, but that was before a drunk driver killed his mother. As far as I know, Declan hasn’t touched alcohol since.
    Still, I don’t know what else he expected from a kegger in the woods.
    Someone throws a bunch of pine needles onto the bonfire, sending sparks up toward the sky. The needles smoke out and the party suddenly smells like Christmas. Like a thousand afternoons spent playing hide-and-seek in the forest with Declan.
    “So.” I tuck my hair behind my ear. Then I can’t keep my hand still, so I do it again. “Your dad must be happy to have you home.”
    “Don’t know about that. You remember what he’s like.”
    I remember hearing him yell at Declan for leaving dirty dishes in the sink, or for forgetting his basketball in the driveway. He’d holler over the smallest of infractions, with little regard for how much it upset his family.
    And then I remember the way he hugged Declan the day he left for boarding school. Holding on so hard I thought he’d never let go.
    “I know he’s tough . . . but you haven’t seen him since Christmas, right?”
    “Yeah, well. I think he’s gotten used to being on his own. But he’s out of town on business half the time and I’ll be caddying most weekends, so I doubt we’ll cross paths much these next couple months. Then I’ll go back to school. Problem solved.”
    “Oh . . . school is still good, then?”
    “Yeah, great. Really great. Thanks for asking.”
    The wind picks up, funneling smoke straight at us. We both shuffle to the side and Declan leans against the trunk of a pine tree, looking away again.
    This attitude is what I’ve expected ever since seeing him in Cory’s driveway. I just don’t know why he waited until now to show it. And I don’t understand what’s changed since the Fourth.
    Unless I imagined everything about that night. Confused sympathy for affection. And I must have, because if his stiff posture and closed-off demeanor are any indication, I’ll be lucky to get another hour out of this trial friendship of ours.
    It was unfair to break down in front of him that night. I can’t blame him for wanting to set boundaries. He probably wishes he never started speaking to me again in the first place.
    Mackenzie comes over with Cory. “You came! Wow, you look