West Ashley, in my mind, can be simplified down to three roads:
Ashley River Road was the kind of road that seems entirely aimless and unimportant. Two lanes of busy traffic traveling at 40 to 50 miles per hour. The kind of speed that feels like a broken neck in the city, but once you get out to the country suburbs, feels leisurely.
My neighborhood was situated on Ashley River Road. I could walk two miles East and find myself at the Bi-Lo Supermarket and the first major intersection in town, where Ashley River Road meets Bees Ferry. However, you could take Ashley River Road further East, and find where it splits off to Folly Road (which goes straight to the beach) or take it all the way to Calhoun Street in Downtown Charleston. If you took Ashley River Road West and followed it to its end, you would eventually find yourself on Beach Hill Road, and then in Summerville, where Annapolis lived with her mom and sister.
My neighborhood, Sage Hollow Township, was not a township at all, but a subdivision, the uniform model of a suburban housing development. There were less than ten models of buildings within its borders, so that if one walked around the whole neighborhood, they could see the same house produced in five different colors. Sage Hollow Township was a small neighborhood with only one entrance/exit to the main road. The road in, West Bridge Street, was like the stem of a four-leaf clover. It stretched up the center of the neighborhood, with no houses on either side. At the top of the neighborhood was the park and the pool, and then the Woods.
Four roads branched off from West Bridge Street at the base and top, and these roads twisted and turned in over-complicated circles, forming the lucky leaves. Once inside the Township, one had a sense of being cut off from the rest of the world. Isolated.
About a half a mile east of the entrance to the Township was the first entrance to our neighboring subdivision: Shady Gables. Shady Gables was much larger than the Township; I didn’t even have to enter to know that much. The Gables had three entrances on Ashley River Road in the mile and a half between its start and Bees Ferry Road. Bees Ferry Road traveled South West before intersecting with Glenn McConnell Parkway (the road that lead up to the school), an intersection that also functioned as the Gables’ other end. Within the roughly three miles before that intersection, the Gables had three more entry points.
Unlike the Township, the Gables were not cut off from the rest of the neighborhoods in West Ashley. It was so vast that it expanded deep into the swampy west, and merged-melted together with other subdivisions like Big Willow Lane and Magnolia Garden Parks.
All these neighborhoods combined must have housed more than half of my classmates, though I didn’t know that until Jannette made me privy to that information. Early in the school year, as our friendship was first starting to take form, Jannette started asking me to hang out after school.
For me, seeing people outside of school was still a deeply intimate act. In middle school, it had taken me the better part of a year to find more than two people I felt comfortable with seeing in a social scenario. In turn, I felt honored, but also startled, by the hastiness and nonchalance of Jannette’s invite. But that was Jannette’s way, and I knew even then that making friends meant escaping the comfort zone.
Jannette would usually invite me out of my house to “take pictures”. To my understanding, this has been a go-to pastime for teenage girls since cameras became accessible to the masses. For Jannette and I, in 2014, “taking pictures” meant putting on the clothes we couldn’t wear at school (Abercrombie crop tops, bando-bralettes, acid washed ripped jeans), and then we would ride our bikes to whatever location had the best potential to be aesthetic. Lucky for us, we were existing in the peak of the tumblr-grunge era, so playgrounds and forest floors made excellent backdrops.
When we were tired of taking pictures, we would ride around searching for thrills. Sometimes this meant riding over the steep and grassy hills of the parks and golf courses, but often it meant riding around to different peoples’ houses and bugging them. If Sara or Michelle weren’t already with us, their houses were usually safe bets, but if they were with us or if they were busy, then no one was safe from our pestering.
After Halloween, a new group dynamic was established. Caylen and I had consummated our new relationship with a kiss: we were officially boyfriend and girlfriend. I felt good about it. I hadn’t had a boyfriend since Blaize Huckabee in 7th grade (and because the two of us had never even held hands, let alone kissed, I was starting to feel like he didn’t fully count) and I was hoping that my new 9th-grade relationship would carry the air of maturity I so desired.
After our kiss, the rest of the night was spent in a desultory march about the Township. I noticed that Solaria and Freddie walked close— the way two people with butterflies walk together. Freddie was pointing at random houses and dropping the names of our classmates who lived inside— some names I knew, most names I didn’t. I walked with Caylen, his hand in mine, but I kept facing Annapolis as the two of us chittered away.
She and I were in one world, in reality: The reality where the actual boyfriend in question didn’t matter so much as the fact that I’d successfully acquired the boyfriend and kissed him in the first place. She and I were living like role-players, and we needed time to level up our characters after this achievement.
We all eventually ended up back at the playground, where I always seemed to end up in those days. We piled into the cramped, shadowy jungle gym. I took off my blonde wig and I let my head rest on Caylen’s shoulder.
The kiss was exciting because it was new and long-awaited— though I regret to say that it did not fully meet my expectations. In my mind, kisses were always electric! A kiss was (or should have been) a cosmic embrace, two people breathing each other in like the very air they need to live. I believed that a kiss, every kiss, was meant to be a revelation. A vacation from reality, a pause in time and space. Those were the kind of expectations I was working with.
You can imagine my disappointment when I didn’t have a revelation. When my mind didn’t fill with supernovas and flowers blooming. When my first kiss was just two mouths…touching.
Now that I’d experienced two mouths touching, the act of putting my head on his shoulder and letting him put his arm around me— still novel, but not entirely new… still almost forbidden behavior— seemed much more affectionate. That was the sensation I really couldn’t get enough of; the warmth of another completely surrounding me, holding me, and protecting me from whatever terrors the world held.
At ten, we all sprinted back to my house to make curfew in time. As I ran, I thought I could see myself moving in slow motion toward a new era of my life.
Caylen’s dad picked him up less than fifteen minutes after we got back to my house, and Freddie left shortly after.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” I remember hearing him say to my father before he left, “you have a lovely home.” Demonstrating how no edge-lord is immune to the lifelong influence of Southern Manners.
Solaria, Annapolis, and I all piled into my twin bed, like mice in a den, we let sleep wash over us.
Everything was different in November. Freddie and Emma were on the rocks, and he was making it everyone’s problem. I started wearing black jeans and turtle-neck sweaters every day, like a miniature beat poet. Solaria’s wardrobe darkened to match her new hairstyle, so together, the two of us looked like a contemporary theater troop.
Caylen started wearing his pea coat to school every day, which gave him the appearance of a British Detective. Every morning, we kissed when he sat down on the bus, and every morning, he would listen to Wesley and I arguing over nothing. When we unloaded from the bus and met the rest of our party in the Cafeteria, I would let myself disappear into his arms as we waited for the bell to ring.
I was hiding from the world, and I didn’t care if it made me seem pathetic. I loved being able to exist inside a constant hug, and I loved that having a boyfriend gave me the power to do that.
In the afternoon, we would sit together again and kiss again, before parting ways.
Jannette was the one who brought up going to Caylen’s house in the first place.
Before she mentioned it, I hadn’t considered that Caylen’s house was a place I should have wanted to see.
“He lives in Shady Gables, right?” Jannette asked once as we were peddling down a leafy-orange road.
We were cruising, with no specific destination ahead of us.
“Yeah, but I don’t know which house is hers,” I answered, anticipating her follow-up. “I only know where he gets picked up in the morning.”
She didn’t miss a beat. She was incapable. “You should ask him where he lives.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to see where he lives!” she said it like it was obvious, and I suppose it was.
Jannette liked knowing these kinds of details about people: where they lived, who they lived with, what they spent their free time doing. It’s how she understood everyone. She didn’t really care if she came off as intrusive; it was inconsequential when it came to her forming her understanding of the world as a whole.
I wished I were as careless as she was about things like that. “What if he thinks it’s weird for me to ask?”
“Are you not his girlfriend? He shouldn’t think that sort of thing is weird. It is both normal and expected, in fact.” She rode ahead of me then turned back, she circled me like a shark, leering with her hand extended, “text him or I will.”
The boredom, I see, was becoming more pressing for Jannette, and it would become unbearable if I didn’t do something about it quickly.
“I got it, I got it,” I said.
Asking for a head injury, I took my phone out and drafted the message
hey i know this might be TOTALLY weird, but my friend and i are in your neighborhood and we were wondering if you were busy? Maybe we could stop by and see your house?
I know I was partially hoping he wouldn’t respond at all. We went in circles waiting for the phone to buzz….
When it did, the message read:
hahaha not weird. just go down the road my stop is on, i’ll meet you guys outside.
This was the MO of our relationship. Whether it was my own idea or if it came from my friends, it worked out that every time I saw Caylen, I was chaperoned.
Jannette was with me the first time I went to his house, the first time I met his father.
The second time I went to his house, I brought the whole caravan with me: Solaria and Freddie, Jannette and Annapolis. We all watched The Lego Movie and then The Host Club in his movie room. I, again, seized the opportunity to burrow into him and steal his warmth. I was like a little cuddle vampire. Between the hand holding and the kisses, it was the physical intimacy I liked the most, but felt the weirdest about getting.
I liked that due to its unserious nature, my relationship with Caylen lacked any sort of pressure. I didn’t ever feel like my heart was on the line, and so I never worried about him breaking up with me, and so I felt very in control of the whole thing. However, the relationship lacked a certain passion, which was something I craved.
For weeks, I had been waiting for the whole thing to become a little more magical. With every kiss, I waited for a spark to ignite, but it just refused to happen for me.
I brought these feelings up to Solaria, who, since Halloween, had been dealing with passions slightly beyond my comprehension. As Freddie’s relationship with Emma deteriorated, Solaria bore the emotional weight of the situation for weeks. Emma and Freddie eventually broke up on Thanksgiving, and from there, things between Solaria and Freddie seemed to get cozy really quickly.
Our Friday hang-outs soon became Friday hang-outs with Freddie. I liked Freddie fine when it was just the two of us together— we had plenty to talk about because we liked the same movies and the same kind of music— but when Solaria was around, he was my adversary and his presence was intrusive. When we would all go to the park, they would lie around touching and holding onto each other, and I would sit on the swings a few feet away, attempting to launch myself into space over and over again.
Freddie treated me like a jester. He would demand that I tell them stories so that they could listen dreamily as they brushed each other’s hair. The characters from these stories were all complex and troubled and unique and talented and perfect and deeply flawed, and they were all incorporated into the OC-universe that Solaria and I were building together— the Drift-verse. We would recall the stories back at my house, once Freddie was gone, and we would draw our art and continue to expand our canon. For Freddie, I’m sure the stories were all in one ear and out the other.
When people asked them if they were dating in those weeks following the break-up from Emma, they would just laugh. This drove me all the more crazy.
I wanted to know about making out.
I thought that making-out was likely the answer to my kissing problems. The root of the issue was that I was unsatisfied. What I was getting from Caylen were little pecks. They held no warmth, hardly a moment to cherish at all. What I wanted was something more lasting.
Alas, I’d never made out with anyone, and thus, I was faced with an entirely new set of problems I hadn’t even considered pre-kiss. First, I didn’t know how I was supposed to initiate a make-out to start with, especially not in the small amount of time I was being allowed. Second, I wasn’t clear on what I was supposed to do once I got there. I knew that something was supposed to be done with my tongue….a concept that freaked me out, but that I was open to.
After I told Solaria that I felt my relationship lacked passion, I asked her about making-out. I asked her because I knew she had experience.
“Yeah, making out is great,” she said when I asked what it was like.
But I wanted more, so I asked her how it worked.
I listened to her as she described what she did, specifically, with her tongue, her lips, her hands.
I couldn’t deny what I felt when I listened to her, and it scared me. I wanted more. I wanted her to show me. I wanted her to…
“Is there a way I could practice?” I asked.
A part of me, not-so-small, desperately needed her to just say “Here, let me just show you. It will be no big deal, because we are friends.”
But she didn’t say that— she said “You could probably use your hand!” and then she laughed.
She relayed to Caylen my feelings about our relationship and how it lacked passion. This did incite change in a couple ways, though maybe not in the ways I was looking for.
First: Around the end of November, Caylen got into the habit of referring to me as radiant. I thought this was very romantic, at first, but later on, Jamie McMean said that whenever he heard Caylen call me that, it made me seem like a home appliance or an alien ray-gun. Although I knew that the word radiant rarely referred to either of these objects, and was more commonly used in reference to beautiful women, the description still nestled into my mind and started to grow into an ick.
Second: When radiant was not enough to make me feel desired, in an act of desperation, Caylen and I exchanged our first “I love you”s….over text. Making him the first romantic partner I ever said “I love you” to…over text.
Later on, it came back to me by way of Solaria that Caylen did not want to make out with me, but he did want to touch my butt.
I didn’t really understand the rationale. To me, butt-touching seemed about as serious as boob-touching; therefore, making out seemed like the logical precursor. I just wasn’t as emotionally prepared to have someone’s hands in my back pockets as I was to exchange saliva. We were at a crossroads, and the relationship was starting to seem like more trouble than it was worth.
But as we entered the last month of 2014, my desire to be in a successful relationship still outweighed my desire to be free. We stumbled through December the same way we always had. With barely audible conversations squeezed into non-existent moments of alone time. With microscopic kisses that punctuated the days.
Wesley started ~talking to~ a guy named Blaine in the week leading up to winter break. Blaine was in my lunch period and usually ate lunch with Jannette and I. Blaine was a connoisseur of romantic drama— when the situation between Delilah and Julien took place just a couple months earlier, Blaine was there with Julien, his tongue down the throat of another 10th-grade girl, whom he dated for a few short weeks after that. In December, Blaine was experimenting with the label “gay,” and seeing as how Wesley was the only out gay guy in our grade, it was only natural that he was Blaine’s first option.
In no time at all, Wesley and I were planning out a double date.
The Friday before winter break, Caylen, Blaine, and I all got off the bus with Wesley at his stop. In Wesley’s living room, Caylen and I exchanged gifts with each other. My gift to him was a squishy brown teddy bear holding a plush heart; his gift to me was a foam facsimile of Link from the Legend of Zelda (just vague enough not to require literal branding)— I don’t know what its purpose was, but I used it as a wall decoration.
When we were done exchanging gifts, Caylen and I joined Wesley and Blaine in the kitchen for after-school snack time. Wesley had the best snacks, despite having two siblings and a single mom, his house was always stocked with bags of chips, fruit snacks, and the like. We gorged ourselves and while we ate, Wesley and Blaine discussed BBC’s Sherlock. Caylen was talking about Benedict Cumberbatch but kept pronouncing his name with the same long U a person would use for vacuum or cucumber. Wesley kept insisting that the pronunciation of the name could not possibly be correct (and I was in agreement with him, but I did not really want to get into it— because I thought Sherlock was for dorks). Caylen insisted he was right. Whether it was true or not, I felt like he was being kind of obnoxious about it anyway. Sadly for him, there was not much else he could do besides change his personality entirely that could keep the Ick I felt from growing.
When the snacks were gone, we left Wesley’s house and made for the woods. We walked to the back of the neighborhood, past the playground and the pool, to the spot where the Woods began. I’d been inside this part before with Janette and Sara; we’d found oddities we couldn’t explain— a bag of white powder (too big to possibly be anything actually illicit, but still scary), beer cans, ropes. And then plenty of orb weever spiders.
I’d never gone as far as Wesley was taking us. I followed directly in his footsteps, watching for spiders and snakes all around me. Blaine followed behind me, and Caylen behind Blaine. Wesley took us to the place where he burned all his school materials from the 8th grade.
We were standing along a ditch over a shallow canal. I recognized it as the end of the neighborhood. As we stood, we were still in the Woods of Sage Hollow Township, but when we crossed, we would just be in just the Woods.
There was a fallen tree connecting the two sides of the ditch. Wesley crossed without worry and extended his arms out to me. I followed across, and Wesley helped Blaine and Caylen.
A new sense of freedom overcame us on the other side. We ran free through the trees as far as the Woods could take us. Screaming and laughing and singing as if we were speeding down a highway. We ran and ran and ran until the Woods petered out. It was almost like we’d run in a circle. For a second, I thought I was still in the Township—
Until Wesley said, “It’s Shady Gables!”
Of course, it was Shady Gables. The connection was obvious, but still I was in awe. It was a shortcut. A secret path. I was in awe.
We turned to head back. Blaine and I, tuckered out, opted to walk. Wesley and Caylen still had some zoomies to run out, so they bolted ahead. Blaine joked that they were running away together and that they were going to leave us for each other. I laughed at his joke, but thought to myself that I wouldn’t mind much if they did.
When we made it back to the Township side of the canal and back out the mouth from whence we entered, we went over to the park and laid in a circle in the grass. We took in the cloudless Carolina sky and drank in the orange last rays of sunshine.
Caylen told me that my hair was beautiful in the light, like the fur of a golden retriever..
I knew, like I always seemed to know, that he was trying to be sweet.
But I couldn’t stop myself from laughing at how ridiculous it was. It seemed completely absurd. Like the fur of a golden retriever? My hair had grown out and faded from being almost the same shade of red that Solaria had just dyed her hair to. It had been over a year since I’d dyed it, so my roots were almost eight inches long, and the color in the rest had turned a rusty-blonde. It was not the most intentional look, but I still thought there were more flattering comparisons to be made…
I felt bad for laughing, though, because I could tell he was embarrassed.
The three of them all walked me home from the park. Caylen and I kissed goodbye outside the view of any windows.
The two of us were texting for all of the break. It was decided that he would be allowed to touch my butt when we got back, then we would work our way up to making out. It was a fine plan.
I spent the first half of break back in Colorado with my mom, but I was back in South Carolina just after Christmas. I spent New Year’s Eve at Solaria’s house in Hollywood (South Carolina). It was my first time going to her house and meeting her family. She lived with her grandmother. Solaria warned me that she could be a little intense, but she seemed pleased whenever I used my best polite voice.
We watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower and ate veggie pizza. She was texting Freddie the whole night, which I tried not to mind. At midnight, her dad shot off fireworks in their backyard. We watched them, hugged, and said we loved each other. Then Freddie asked her to be his girlfriend.
I wanted more than anything for her to say no, but obviously, she said yes.
With just a couple of days left in the break, the two of us went over to Freddie’s house to watch my favorite movie of the time, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Solaria had never seen it before, so I was excited to show her. She didn’t see much of the movie, though.
I sat and watched the little TV in Freddie’s room from a papasan. Just a few feet away from me on the bed, Freddie and Solaria were doing things I deemed unspeakable and unknowable under his covers. I tried to tell myself they were just kissing, but my eyes and ears betrayed me, so I just honed in on the screen.
Something about what they were doing, and Scott and Ramona, and the no passion, and the ick. It all just came together at once. It hit me that I couldn’t go on living the way I was, and I needed a change. The only thing I could think of at the moment was to break up with Caylen. I didn’t like him that much to begin with, and at least with him gone, I could have some more emotional room to deal with whatever unnamed thing I was dealing with.
I didn’t think breaking up over text was right, even then, but I was suffocating. It was my only option, and seeing as to how the majority of our relationship took place over text, I didn’t think it was the most awful thing.
Still…kind of shitty….
As Scott sat in the bar drinking away his sorrows and Solaria and Freddie explored each other’s bodies. I cut things off with Caylen in a paragraph.
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