Chris fell in love with a girl who screamed his name from a moving car window. They’d been in school together for almost twelve years, but when he heard her scream his name, he fell in love. Her name was Kaycie. Chris spent six months working up the courage to ask to take her out. She politely declined.

When senior year had come to a close, and summer had faded into fall, Kaycie moved to North Carolina and Chris stayed where he had always been.

We were sitting on the curb in the center, sometime in late October, watching a caravan of floats pass us by, when I said, I just can’t wait for summer when everything is alive again and I don’t have to wrap myself in a blanket to watch a parade.

And that’s when he said
I can’t wait until Kaycie comes home.

And it made me wish instead of, squeezing into clothes, balancing on heels, forgetting morals, withholding opinions… all the things I had been doing for so long…

I could just yell out a window
And get the same attention.