The Fleeting Happy

Sixteen

The new year dragged on quite slowly, with January turning to February and February turning to March and March turning to May. Still, my father was not home, but I found myself almost forgetting about his delayed impending return, because of how much I loved our phone conversations every night and how much nicer it was that my mom was in a better mood nowadays.

She and I would visit the mall together during her days off and we'd go shopping, like a non-dysfunctional mother-daughter duo. She'd even let me pick the new cups and drapes for her restaurant and hadn't criticized my choices in any way. We would eat post-lunch lunch in the food court and talk about how our day went and it would be so wonderful that I would forget my dad's missing presence. I would forget to feel guilty.

At school, Montana and I started talking less and less, which was what might've been bothering me the most. I noticed her starting to pull away during lunch and P.E. but when we were in English class, it was almost as if the rest of the world didn't exist, because we'd both forget who we were and simply read. Or write.

Montana was trying to write the Poem to End All Poems, in order to woo Radley and convince him to meet with us sooner. The way she figured it, if she could make Radley fall in love with her through her writing the way he did with his, he'd jump at the chance to meet them.

Mr. Forman thought that this was a good idea. "That's incredible, Montana. See, this is how you reach out to people best. Through literature. I couldn't be prouder. Have you started the poem yet?"

"I've just been brainstorming," Montana admitted. "I'm trying to figure out what I should write it about. It needs to be honest. True. Passionate. It needs to be my best poem yet, and I've been... suffering some setbacks..." She glanced at me, and the look in her eyes went off like a grenade in my gut.

"Writer's block," she said coolly. "But I'll figure it out. Thanks, Mr. Forman."

"Anytime, Montana."

I wanted to tell her I was sorry, but I didn't know how.

I just froze up, like I always do.

The Poetic Songs to Make Montana Smile CD was still in my bag, untouched and unseen and unheard.

Despite my growing troubles and complications with Montana, there was one thing that remained somewhat simple: my friendship with Greene. After our day of watching Shrek naked together, we'd just reached a sort of place in our relationship where we were undeniably close, but still unsure of where we stood.

Neither of us seemed to want to talk about anything, but that was perfectly fine with me. I'd come to realize that there are some things you don't really have to put a label on. And the less I worried about what Greene and I were, the more relaxed I became.

It was simple with Greene. After all, we had pretty much everything in common. We'd both obsess over bands. We'd talk about guitars and skateboards and junk food. This may sound weird, but it felt more like Greene was my brother. We hadn't kissed at all since the Naked Shrek Day, so I assume he understood that feeling as well.

At the same time, Greene and I both seemed to be trying to push that feeling away in order to make our relationship work. Maybe we were both just lonely. Maybe we yearned to be in love. Whatever the reason, we kept going with our insanely complicated yet simple relationship. It was strange.

But things were okay. I was okay.

One day on a Friday afternoon, Greene had taken me to the Severn Valley skate park in his truck. I was the one who mostly did the skating on a borrowed skateboard, avoiding the bowls and half-pipes because I wasn't very good yet. At first, Greene went nuts in the snake run (unlike me, he was a pro). Eventually, he went off with a couple of his friends— who all had questionable names like Spider and Thrasher— to the underground section of the park in order to smoke a lot of weed.