When I was a little girl, I used to run to the meadow. In spring, the wildflowers were just beginning to bud, green sprouts braving the risk of frost. As the school bells rang for the last time, signifying the end of each school year, the blossoms would be in full bloom for the summertime, explosions of purple and orange and yellow and pink and white. By the time autumn came around, most of those flowers were long gone, but a few hardy survivors still shuddered in the chilly breeze. And then came winter, when ice would cover the barren fields and snowflakes would cascade from the bleak canopy of clouds above to pepper me in frozen kisses.
Now, it is October, and the gray sky is threatening to dampen my spirits further. I shudder in my Nittany Lions sweatshirt and pull my hands into the sleeves. It’s not nearly warm enough to brave a Pennsylvania October, but I knew that before I pushed open the back door of my parents’ house. I never made rational decisions about the meadow. It is a place of magic, for me, and logic does not have a place in wonder. When I was 12 my mother stopped following after me with an extra coat and earmuffs as I slipped out the back door.
Standing here at twenty years old, I feel slightly like the child I once was, and I hold onto that comforting thought as best as I can with my shaking hands. A weak laugh falls from my lips, though no one is beside me to hear it. The wind swallows up my mirth and sweeps it north. A pair of gloves wouldn’t have hurt, after all. But I’ll never tell my mother.
My gaze falls on a wimpy little cornflower a few inches from my boot, the exact shade of my eyes. I pluck it from the ground and twirl the stem between my fingers. For some reason, I have to fight the urge to drop it back to the frozen ground, like I’m unworthy to hold such fragile beauty. Instead, I tuck it behind my ear and continue on. Life is simpler in the meadow. The cold air stings my face, but it’s a welcome pain, better than the dull ache haunting my every step.
“Your folks are looking for you, you know.”
That voice stirs a million moments in my heart, many of them involving sunlit days playing games of tag and moonlit nights lying among the tall grasses. I don’t turn around, but I do smile a bit as I cross my arms and shiver. “How’d they know I was here?”
“They didn’t. I did.” Archie appears at my side, and he’s so familiar I want to cry. Because if I am tied to the meadow by years of interwoven memories with an unyielding string, I am just as tied to Archie. “I thought you weren’t supposed to be back until December.”
“I wasn’t,” I admit, shoving my hands into the pockets of my hoodie, the one he bought me as a graduation gift. “It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I just had to get home.”
“Is everything okay?” he asks, his question more of a formality than anything. Currently, I’m radiating not fine like a buzzing neon sign. “What’s wrong?”
Can he see my shame? I feel like I’ve been written all over in scorning red ink, doused in rejection, ripped to shreds, plunged into failure. Part of me doesn’t want him to know at all. In my memories, Archie exists in rose-colored flashes, nostalgia bathing our friendship in gold. We ran through this crummy town together for eighteen years, hand-in-hand, until an acceptance letter whisked me away, and he was left working alone in his father’s garage. The thought of appearing as less than I am is terrifying. Or maybe, this is exactly who I am. A girl of almosts.
I clear my throat. “I’m dropping out.”
His eyebrows draw together, his face drawn into an expression I recognize all too well. He’s calculating, sorting, desperately attempting to come to the answer so he doesn’t have to ask the question. It doesn’t work. I stay silent until he finally stares ahead and whispers, “why?”
“I don’t know… it’s just getting too hard.” There’s a lump in my throat and a tear slips down my cheek, cold in the winter air. “All my life, I’ve dreamed of being a writer, but my professor hates everything I turn in. By the time she’s done with it, I can barely read my own work, there’s so much ink. She’s so scathing and critical. Every time I go to class, my stomach is in knots. It’s just not worth it anymore.”
I practically force the words out. I expect him to fight me, or maybe to wrap an arm around my shoulder. What he does is much, much worse.
He laughs.
He just stands there and laughs at me, clutching his stomach, leaning over, practically wheezing.
Anger roars inside of me like some vengeful beast of ancient lore. “Why do I even bother?” I mutter, scowling as I walk away from him, my boots hard against the frozen ground. He catches my wrist and I spin back around, refusing to meet his eyes. My gaze falls to the grass instead. It’s so brown and brittle that I doubt my death glare can kill it more.
“What? Oh come on, Olive.” He’s grinning—how can he grin like that when I’ve just decided to give up my lifelong dream? “You’re going to let one person scare you out of everything you’ve ever wanted?”
“She has it out for me. I have a big project due at the end of the semester, and she’s hated everything I’ve been working on for it, and if I fail, they’ll kick me out of the writing program. And then I’ll have nothing, and I’ll have wasted three years of my life on a dead-end dream.”
“But if you quit, you don’t stand a chance.”
“It’s not quitting. It’s…” I blow a stray curl out of my eyes. “It’s being realistic. No one makes it as a poet. My parents were right. I’ve been kidding myself all these years. I never should have left.”
Archie doesn’t say anything for a moment. His gaze falls from my face to our hands, loosely entwined. Car grease still coats his fingers. I wonder if he left work to come find me.
“No, you were right to leave. You don’t belong here.”
I scoff. “Right, because someone who grew up dodging potholes and dead deer on Route 61 belongs anywhere but here.”
“No, really,” he says, and there’s a fire in his voice I rarely hear. Despite my desire to remain cold and angry, I meet his eyes. They’re a rich brown, the color of soil after rain. “I’m going to live and die here. That’s what my dad did, and his dad, and so on. My kids are gonna bleed Skook, and they’re gonna be proud of it.” He chuckles a little, a warm sound as the wind whips around us. “But you, you’re different. You’re smart, Olive. You’re ambitious and creative and driven. And you want to give up? If you waste all that and move back here because one professor was giving you a hard time, I’m gonna lose it.”
My shallow breath materializes in little clouds.
“I needed to come home,” I whisper hollowly. My hand begins to shake, and he grips it tighter yet, grounding me as he always has. “I don’t feel like me anymore.”
Slowly, Archie wraps his arms around me and I lean into his embrace. I can still smell the garage clinging to his clothes. He rests his chin on my head and I listen to the steady beating of his heart, recalling how many times he has saved me like this.
“I wanted to drop out,” I breathe, my voice muffled by his sweatshirt, “because it would be on my terms. If I get kicked from the program, it’ll look like I’m not good enough. Quitting is easier.”
“If it was supposed to be easy, there wouldn’t be anything special about it.” He strokes my curls and speaks close to my ear, his voice soft.
“There’s nothing special about me.”
“You paint worlds with words, Olive. You’re incredible.”
I look up and give him a watery smile. “You know, you’re pretty incredible, too.”
He winks. “I know I am.”
Archie pulls me close again. As I inhale the familiar scent of a frozen meadow and a boy from the garage down the street, my heart turns life to a fresh page and begins a new poem.
Katherine Joyce is a first-year English major at Penn State Schuylkill from a middle-of-nowhere town in Schuylkill County. She has spent the last year and a half ignoring the world to write a YA fantasy adventure novel that she plans to self-publish in the future. On the off-chance that she’s not writing, she’s probably rereading Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and Bardugo’s “Six of Crows” duology, or participating in Lion Ambassadors and Schuylkill Benefitting THON.