Things I Did to Be Close to You
By Lydia Mathis
I followed you and my brother around like a little duck when he first brought you to our house. You were new and exciting and a boy and I was seven and wanted anything my brother had. You cupped my cheek and called me cute.
***
I wrote about you fifty-seven times across three different diaries. It was March 24th and I knew I would be thinking about you in exactly one month on your birthday, so I dug through my closet to find my diaries and remember how I remembered you. There was the pink diary with cartoon girls with heads bigger than their bodies, there was the purple one with the cast from High School Musical on it, and there was the black leather one that I bought when I decided I’d be a writer and that writers wrote in black leather journals that had their initials engraved on the cover. I used my fingernail to dig D. T. into the surface. Of course, I wrote my name and yours together. I was twelve and you were fourteen. I was in middle school and you were in high school. What else could I do?
***
I forced my brother to help in my schemes. In the days before you came over to spend the weekend at our house, I’d convince my brother to bring up playing truth or dare. I told him to dare me to kiss you. I got to kiss you for the price of washing the dishes for a week and giving him the five dollars mom gave us every Friday to buy fries and chicken tenders at lunch. If I were to ask you about it now, you wouldn’t remember, or maybe you would, but I’d never know because I couldn’t ask you anyway; we lost touch years ago.
***
I stalked a girl named Tiana Mitchell on Facebook for a year when I saw your new status read in a relationship with Tiana. It had been three years since you moved away for your mom’s new job. It had been two years since you and my brother stopped texting. My brother said it was just like that sometimes. I didn’t know people could just fade out of a life, like a whiteboard sloppily wiped clean. You didn’t know what was there before, but the smudges proved that something was there. You didn’t update on social media often, but she did. There was a picture of you with a fresh haircut, smiling in a bright yellow shirt and jean shorts. I thought you hated shorts? There was one at the MOMA in New York. Did you guys go on a trip? Was it fun? I hated when you two broke up because I lost you again.
***
I see you in him. Your long fingers when he holds mine. Your brown eyes in his blue. Your wispy mustache in his clean shave. Sometimes when I look up at him, I look up a little higher, at the space over his head, because you’re 6’2 and he’s 5’10.
***
What I didn’t do was tell you how much I wanted to be close to you.
THE END
Author Bio: Lydia Mathis is completing her MFA in fiction at New York University. She has worked as a teacher for Teach for America in Memphis and as a teaching fellow at Coler-Goldwater Hospital in New York City. She is the recipient of A Public Space’s 2023 Editorial Fellowship. She earned her BA in English literature with a minor in classical civilizations from Agnes Scott College.