Note: This is a WIP. I haven’t shared WIPs in years, but I am hoping that doing so inspires me to keep going and see the thing through to the end. The best comp I can give for this piece (and hope to achieve at the conclusion) is Perks of Being a Wallflower set in a small Iowa town. Please let me know if you have any parts you like, or things you want to see in future sections!

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I hand Nick the nearly-spent joint, watching his thin lips puff at the damp butt; I imagine the molecules of our saliva mixing in the paper fibers, against my better judgment.

“Careful, Trent! Squirrel!” shouts Veronica from the back seat.

I swerve just in time to dodge the skittering creature, the neon contents of our Big Gulps – blue raspberry, lime, tropical punch – sloshing from side to side in the cupholders of my ancient Mercury.

“Jesus,” Nick coughs, hacking out a cloud of smoke that quickly vanishes out the window, into the golden-hour light. “I swear they’ve got a death wish. Remember how Mr. Larrabee would say the wildlife around here have scrambled brains because of the chemical runoff from the factories out east? God, I miss that guy.”

“Dude, didn’t he get, like, sent upriver for sexting Jenifer O’Hair? He’s a fucking creep,” says Veronica.

“There’s beauty in the breakdown,” I reply, pointing to the cassette-to-aux converter plugged into the dashboard tinnily playing “Let Go” through the car speakers.

“Sure, if you want to put it that way,” scoffs Veronica, sucking down a wet gulp of her tropical punch through the straw, her tongue dyed a ferocious shade of red. “But to me that’s just skeezy. The dude, not the song, obvs. Frou Frou is amazing.”

“Hey, Nick’s not saying Larrabee was a good guy. He just made for an interesting specimen to observe. Right, Nicky?”

But Nick’s not listening to us anymore. He’s thrown the spent joint out the window and is pulling another from the glovebox, which he rolled thirty minutes ago in the deserted parking lot of True Value while we waited for Veronica to finish her shift. His brow’s furrowed, like he’s deep in thought, a look I’ve grown accustomed to – we’ve spent the last five evenings soaking up the last, golden rays of Iowa summer before heading back to our separate corners of the country for college.

“Nick? Earth to Nick?”

“Ah, shit. Sorry,” he says, throwing back his head to laugh – a brilliant smile, his perfect, orthodontist-inspected teeth glistening in the golden sunset. “I guess I’m just in my cups,” he says as he lights up the fresh joint.

“You sure that’s all?” I ask.

“Well, not really. Trent, how do you know me so well? You’d think we’ve been friends for years, not just the past two months.”

I die a little inside at that.

“You’re just easy to read is all, Caraballo,” I say, rubbing his shoulder with one hand as I steer us toward the town square with the other. I catch Veronica eyeballing me in the reflection of the rearview mirror and casually put my hand back on the wheel.

The three of us are newish friends, a summer trauma bond formed over being back from college with nothing to do but kill time, work a few shifts for scraps (Veronica and I anyway), and count down the days until we could be back in our adopted cities with reliable cell service, more than one Chinese restaurant (that’s not a buffet), and a liberal agenda (borrowed words from my Iowa brethren, obvs).

It’s not that we didn’t know each other before this summer; growing up in a town of 3,000 does not afford a person one iota of anonymity. During high school we each fell lock step into the cliques that defined our experiences then. Nick the perfect, prodigal son of the town doctors, found himself on the basketball court, the football field, and the baseball diamond. It’s not that he was made for the sports or anything, lean and standing 5’9 on a good day, but his natural athleticism was undeniable, raised from a young age on a home gym and concrete pool, Tae Bo DVDs, Flintstone vitamins, a helicopter mother with a penchant for disordered eating. Veronica hung around with the emo crowd in those days, PETA stickers on her locker, piercings in her ears, a quick rejoinder ready for you if you felt like commenting on her chunky red highlights.

And then there was me, closet-case, band kid, hiding comfortably in the margins of everyone else’s stories, happily filler but never letting anyone in for my own storyline. That’s really all you need to know.

Veronica takes my spot at Nick’s shoulders, and she reaffirms my sentiment.

“Trent’s right, Nick. Something’s off about you tonight. What gives?”

He sighs, scratching at a cigarette burn on the glove box (not his doing). “Just thinking that I’ll be a little bit fucking depressed when you guys aren’t around anymore. My Providence friends are cool, don’t get me wrong. But, you know how many of them are from a small town in the middle of nowhere?” He holds up a goose egg.

“I still can’t believe you go to Brown,” grumbles Veronica like it’s a personal insult, removing her hands from Nick’s shoulders, settling back into her seat. “How you’re able to stand any one of those east coast snobs is beyond me.”

“Well, it’s not like you and Trent are hometown heroes,” Nick retorts, spinning around to stick his tongue out at Veronica. “You’re down in Texas at that awful state school and Trent’s out in the middle of nowhere Washington doing god knows what. ‘Who cares where we are as long as it’s not here,’ right?” he says, parroting the catchphrase Veronica said the first few nights of our hangouts, which started after I sent Nick a DM on a whim after reading his Facebook status about being back in Centerville for the summer, and Nick doing the same with Veronica, who he had seen working at True Value while he was there with his dad picking up varnish for a summer project of refinishing their deck. From that day it had been the three of us against the town.

“Trent and I went to those schools because our families are too poor to go wherever we wanted, Nick.” Ouch. But not untrue.

“And I’m not doing ‘god knows what’ in Washington. I’m being a poor, first-generation college student. Get that shit sorted,” I chime in.

“Sure, but you know in-state tuition is a hell of a lot cheaper than leaving. And getting a degree from Idiot Skills costs almost nothing.” Also not untrue.

“Whatever. You’re just sad because you’re going to miss my face once I’m back at that awful state school.”

“Maybe. And your tits too, if I can be honest. Don’t forget about those tits of yours.”

Veronica laughs, reaching her hands forward once again and pretending to throttle Nick’s neck as I lean over to break up the fight. Too much touchy, I decided. “Hey, Nick, will you miss me too? I know I haven’t got Veronica’s assets, but you sure do know how to make a guy feel left out.”

“No, no, no. I’m sorry, babe. Come here and let me make it up to you,” Nick said, reaching to tousle my hair before yanked back into the argument with Veronica.

Though annoyed, I had gotten used to and would likely miss these fights between them, which seemed simultaneously scathing and sexually charged. I secretly agreed with Nick that it would have been more economical for both Veronica and I to stick around Centerville, to pick up an associate degree from the community college that practically handed out free tuition to anyone with a pulse (Indian Hills, which everyone called Idiot Skills).

But there was no denying that the stronger urge for both Veronica and me was to escape, no matter the cost, and that was something Nick could not understand. Veronica and I had spoken in private that we could imagine a future where Nick returns to Centerville, picks up the mantle and becomes the town doctor (he was studying pre-med at Brown). She and I, we both agreed, were never meant for small town life. We also vowed never to share our thoughts about Nick’s future with him, because we were sure he would disagree. Even though we both seemed to have a better path on his trajectory than he did.

Since moving to Austin, she settled into a significant amount of fame on LiveJournal, where she would write human interest pieces on Austin and living in America at large. She would often reference Centerville by character but not by name. She appeared regularly in the student paper, even as a freshman, making it clear that her internet blogging fame could easily translate to other mediums as well.

And for me, well, it’s true that I only chose Seattle Pacific because they accepted me on a full scholarship, and, embarrassingly, I felt a pull toward a city like Seattle, a place famed for its music, its diversity, its altogether unlikeness to Centerville. A place to find freedom of expression, a place to admit to people I am gay at parties, to go on dates with guys. To hook up with people I met at bars in Capitol Hill, to careen stupidly into the beds of these men, to experience anything I wanted to, a place to be myself, or to at least find out what that means.

Nick and Veronica are still play fighting as I drive toward the square, and I want to shout “JUST FUCK ALREADY” but I hold it in. Five days in a row of this might be starting to get to me, finally.

“I also feel a sadness in the air, blanketing everything,” I say instead, which causes a momentary stop to the fighting. They both look over and laugh, the weed making everything funnier than it actually is. But I am glad for the attention, the mirth pointed in my direction.

Once the laughter dies down, Nick responds to my outburst, suddenly serious. “I feel it too. It’s like, none of us are sad about seeing Centerville in the rearview again. Hell, at least for me I thought when I left for college that was it. I guess part of me thought I’d stay in Providence for the summer. Pick up some random job or internship and that would be that. I forgot my parents liked me I guess, would just assume that I’d come back and so when they called and said they had arranged a ticket back, I just sort of went with it.”

Having doctor parents in a small town like Centerville immediately skyrockets you to the upper crust of society; something like a plane ticket would be nothing for them, unlike my mom and dad, both construction workers. They were glad to see me, but my mom had pulled me aside after dinner my first night back and said that she wouldn’t allow me to just sit around all summer and do nothing. I would be put to work around the house or out on the job site unless I picked up a job. Luckily for me, and unluckily for her, I had called my old boss at the movie theater even before I had left Seattle to ask about a summer gig. My parents paid for the ticket on my assumed loan, with my paychecks at the theater going straight to my mom until I paid her back. Veronica had driven back from Texas in her dilapidated Crown Victoria, back to work at the hardware store, as if we had never left, the only change a few more lines on our managers’ faces.

She responds, “Well, part of me is glad we came back. If we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have gotten close. I think I’m falling in love with you, Trent…and Nick, I guess.” She bats her eyelashes coquettishly. I smile at her through the rearview mirror and notice a red tinge blossoming on Nick’s cheeks, the color matching Veronica’s slushie-stained tongue.

“Let’s make sure this is a night to remember,” is all he offers as a response, no hint of embarrassment apparent in his voice. I love that about him.