6 Ethan

Sometimes, fond memories are felt alone.

When I was halfway through the fourth grade my father, mother, and younger sister picked up out of the Maryland snow to take residence on a military base in Southern California, a foreign land with one season: summer.

The empty stucco one-story that we moved into had served as a play lot for the time it lacked residence and there were a few kids still in the sunny driveway when we pulled up. Everyone scattered, except for one.

"Hi, my name's Charlie. I live right across the street, there." A girl about my age stood like the welcoming committee in grass-stained shorts and a blond ponytail.

Mom was unbuckling Drew, from her booster seat and Dad had fixed to unloading boxes, leaving me with the stranger.

"I'm Elizabeth."

"Elizabeth. Can I call you Lizzy? Lizzy, I can tell, we're going to be best friends!"

I had never had a best friend before and I sincerely doubted that the blond girl would remember me once I was no longer a novelty but, instead, she took to being my personal guide of everything.

When the winter break ended I learned that Charlie and I were not going to be in the same class, but the two of us would take the short walk home together.

"Do you know what I think would be cool?" she asked me one day.

"What?"

"You should get together with my brother because then you guys could get married and we'd be sisters!" Charlie grinned at me with her master plan. I was reluctant to argue.

"You have a brother?"

"Yeah, of course; He's my twin: Ethan."

"Huh. I've never seen him."

"Really? He's in band." She gestured to my hand, in which was my instrument case. At the time, I played trombone.

"What does he play?"

"I don't know, some sort of horn thing with a fancy name."

"Well… I'll keep my eye out for him, but I'm not making any promises."

I wondered why it wouldn't just be easier for Charlie to introduce me to her brother, but I couldn't see explaining the logic there, either. She never brought it up again and neither did I, for want of not seeming desperate that I should still pursue the issue. I had very little intention of actually having a romantic encounter with Ethan- I had never had a crush on anyone before… but now I was curious, and curiosity can do strange things to a person.

Sometimes I'd get home from school and set up looking out of my window, trying to decide if any passing boy looked like an Ethan, watching their house rather than being not creepy and just asking.

Looking for Ethan in band was worse since, from the back left corner where I was stuffed, I could see hardly anything. As the only trombone with virtually no part in the song, I usually sat idle for the hour and couldn't help thinking of the only thing relevant.

It was on one such afternoon when the teacher was threatening to walk out on us, something she had done before, because some boys to the right of me were being rowdy. I half listened as she chewed them out and I thought of how I couldn't read a book even though I wasn't doing anything constructive.

"Ethan!" she snapped.

My head followed the path of the vocal trajectory.

I remember everything from that moment.

I remember how as I laid eyes on him, he was turning just so that he met my eyes for a second. I don't think he even saw me, just in passing, background.

But me…

Something ripped, a molten ice weighing, sinking through my veins as I drowned. At the same time, it was weightless, like the breath above a hazy gas. My wrists, my soul, my throat were choking on my pulse and my heart was still as stone.

Time stopped, quite, very literally.

At that moment, I was drawn to him with such intensity; I was wondering how he couldn't feel the pull from the magnetism.

I sat back in my chair, trying to catch my breath silently and elude the ripe blood pooling in my cheeks, holding myself down, to that chair, only sure of my whitening knuckles and not where the rest of me was.

It wasn't as if I started to see him after that, but I was always acutely aware if he was around, chance encounters where I was Charlie's friend, but even if that was all he ever knew me as, he never referred to me that way, never as her friend and never by my name. I was just a 'her'.

I thought, before, that maybe he would look like Charlie, but a boy. He didn't look anything like her, though. He had copper hair and her features were more delicate while he had a strong brow… but their noses were the same.

I never looked at Ethan very much. I couldn't make eye contact with him and I never wanted him to catch me looking so I never looked. I knew nothing about him but the feeling never left and the closer he was, the stronger it was.

When we were little, my mom and Mrs. Brown would go up to the school's track, sometimes, on the weekends. Normally I didn't tag along, but somehow on a day that I did, Ethan did, too.

While our moms walked, I unintentionally got him alone. He walked the path on the hill with me, like it was normal. I got brave.

"So, there's a rumor that you kissed a girl behind the bleachers." My words tumbled out clumsily.

Kissing seemed like a big deal to me, as much as anyone would import losing their virginity. It seemed sacred and powerful.

The atmosphere felt like I had the upper hand, but I didn't want it. It was something in his face and the small pause before…

"Yeah… but, but it didn't mean anything!"

I couldn't tell what he was trying to say to me.

He turned toward me in what was that brief moment of really looking at me, like that first day, but I knew he was seeing me. Something made me hope, for a flicker of an idea, that maybe he had seen me before.

Even then, how could I imagine, for even a second, that our conversation about another girl could have any implications that he could ever feel something for me? It disgusted me that I could even think it was possible. At that moment, though, with his hand swinging just inches from mine…

Small moments would let me feel less guilty for dragging my crush around for ages. Even so, I did feel guilty and, after years and years of stuffing and trying to forget I had managed to go months without thinking of him, without uttering his name, without wondering why…

All of that undone by one kiss.