"Let's go, then!" Shane grabs Zach by the hand and pulls him from the table. He races out of the kitchen and calls on his way out the door, "Bye, Granny! Be back for dinner!" He doesn't wait for a response and doesn't bother closing the door properly behind them. He just runs.
He only lets go of Zach and slows his pace to a walk once they reach the line of trees siding their small farm, and they begin on a footpath through the shrubs and tall grass.
During their hike, Shane asks Zach about his bus rides between cities, and Zach answers honestly about his family, his feelings, and his life in general. Zach has never had anyone to talk to about such things; he isn't sure at times how to answer without seeming too boorish or gloomy, even cynical. But his anxieties are quickly dispersed as Shane becomes engrossed in the details of his life with earnest curiosity.
After more than a mile of roaming trail, the boys reach a clearing, and finally the river. Up ahead a ways is the famous bridge. Zach will finally see it in person, walk across its stones, feel the ivy and wisteria growing all around it.
Zach sees the highway, empty now, not a car or bus in sight, and he recalls again the images that have been in his mind.
"I saw you once from this road, years ago. At least I really think it was you." He had been rolling the idea around in the back of his mind since meeting the boy, but today he feels sure after giving it real thought.
"Me? On the bridge?" He asks, excited.
"N-no." Ah, why did he bring it up? Now he doesn't want to admit to what he saw. "On a bike. It's been years now. I don't remember much about it. But you do look very much like the boy I remember seeing on that bike that day."
Shane thinks hard, twisting his mouth theatrically, trying to recall the event. "I never did own a bike except for this one summer when I made a bet with Greyson Stone that if I could beat him on his bike while he rode on his sister's, then I'd be able to use his all summer and he'd have to ride hers." He whacks Zach's arm as he laughs at the memory and follows up with, "That probably wasn't the most fair of bets. Oops. Poor guy."
Oh, is that all…
Zach feels foolish now for thinking anything else about the event. But it was so long ago. Of course he might have remembered wrong. After all this time, to find out that's all it was. He should feel relieved, but-
"Actually there was another part to that bet, now that I remember."
He beams at Zach with his finger on his lips, saying through it, "The loser had to give the winner a kiss on the lips."
Ah. So he was right!
Zach doesn't know what face to make, so he just laughs and says, "Oh, is that a fact?" And begins to walk quickly toward their destination. Shane does not match his speed but walks quietly behind him as they get nearer to the bridge.
The sound of water greets Zach's ears and he pauses for a moment to take it in. The flowers. The stones. The sun-bleached wood. It really is an antique, and even now Zach can't figure out what makes it so special to him. It doesn't matter. It's beautiful. But there's something out of place.
"What are those wooden boards underneath?" Across the length of the bridge near the water level are haphazardly placed wooden planks nailed crookedly into the stone.
"Oh that. We had a ton of flooding last summer. Caused a lot of damage. The stone was crumbling and folks were worried the whole thing would come down. Well.." he looks down "..I was worried. So the old man showed up one day and solved the problem like this. He did his best, anyway. He hammered stakes right into the rocks and filled it with cement."
The poor bridge. Crumbling apart at its base, but still standing so beautifully on the surface, pretending everything is perfect, that everything is fine. He can't help but compare himself to it. Or at least, how he used to be. If there is any hope for this bridge, then there must be hope for him, too. To start over, build himself up from a new foundation. Shanan. That could be his new foundation. His bedrock.
While Shane is still silent behind him, Zach approaches the stone steps and places his feet lightly on their firm surface. It's a lot bigger in person than it looks from the road. Twenty feet or so across. He wonders, too, how he could have missed the water flowing gently beneath its arches.
With his hands flat on the moss-covered top, he takes a deep breath and looks out into the water. His eyes follow the deep clear motions of the river which flow parallel to the road then veer off to the right until disappearing around the hill and into the trees. His heart is at peace. Almost as if he is drawing strength from the spot beneath his feet, from beneath his palms.
He closes his eyes now as every anxiety and fear he's had the past year seem to slip down off his shoulders, across his back, down his arms like silk, and finally out through his fingertips, completely disappearing into the river below.
Realizing he has forgotten about his companion, he opens his eyes with a start. Shane is standing next to him with his back toward the river, elbows hooked on the bridge's stones, looking up at Zach. A piece of stiff grass is sticking out of the boy's mouth, moving up and down as he chews aimlessly. Another is in the boy's hand. After seeing his eyes on him, Shane smiles and asks, "Wanna see something?"
Zach nods with an apology, "Sorry, this place seems to just put me in a trance. Like my head could float away somehow."
Shane chuckles. "It's the flowers," he says, pulling the grass from his lips and folding it into a shape in his hands. "They're fragrant but strong. Sometimes it gets to ya." He smiles. "That's all it is." He quickly finishes what he is doing and holds up his creation to Zach.
Impressed, Zach says, "It's a star." Shane comes closer, faces the river, and after trapping the star between the darkness of his palms for a moment, releases it into the water below.
"As kids, my friends and I would make wishes all day long this way. Called em falling stars." He laughs at the memory. "Then, one day, Tommy-Ray learned how to make his grass look like a mouse, and the game turned into 'race the sewer rats'." He looks down then at his second piece of grass and admits in a sad tone, "I liked it better with the wishes."
Perking up quickly, he asks, "Want me to show you how to make one?" Zach nods. Settling beside him and taking hold of Zach's left hand, "Hold here," he says and pinches Zach's thumb and first finger on the end of the blade. Shane begins looping and folding the strand of grass between the boy's thumb and first finger, his fingers rubbing against Zach's, creating a soothing noise of skin brushing against skin.
Zach admires Shane's skillful hands and the warmth he feels from them, his own hands enveloped by them. Shane then loops the last of the grass over top of the first loops and pulls down to where Zach is pinching the other end. "Now slip your fingers out slowly." Zach does, and Shane makes one more knot before holding it up triumphantly for Zach to see.
"It's a heart," he says, surprised.
Shane nods. "Now hold up your hands and put them together like this." He makes a cupping motion with his own. After placing the grass heart in Zach's palms, he places his own palms over the back of Zach's hands, closing both sets of hands together.
Zach feels his cheeks go red at the sight of his hands inside those of the boy beside him. He feels their shoulders and hips touching, feels the gentle yet calloused skin he had never noticed on Shane until now.
"Make a wish."
Zach smiles, thinks for a moment, then nods.
Shane opens his own hands, allowing Zach's palms to come apart, and the shaped heart to drop silently into the river below and be carried away.
Staring after it for a moment, enjoying the sound of the river, Zach decides to tease the boy.
"So does this mean I threw my heart away?" He asks jokingly.
"No," Shane looks at him. He turns, stepping in closer, and adds, "You made a wish on your heart. The difference between that and making a wish on a star," he places his palm on Zach's heart, "is you're the one who decides if the wish comes true." His tone is so seriously that both boys can only look at each other for a moment more, then break into laughter at the thought.
"I guess when you put it that way, who wouldn't grant their own wish?"
"And no wonder a wish on a star never seems to come true," Shane mocks. "All those expectations and dreams, placed on a poor, dying rock. Tsk tsk." They laugh again and Zach notices Shane taking yet another step closer to him, putting their feet just inches from each other, and their arms, chests, and faces even closer. He should feel boxed in by the boy, pressured or claustrophobic, but he doesn't. In fact, what he feels is a longing to be even closer than they are in this moment.
And looking at Shane is like looking at the bridge beneath him. He is beautiful, a work of art. His dark hair, the light ring around his otherwise dark and endless eyes, his perfectly shaded skin. Even his neck, where his rich color disappears beneath the lining of his shirt and where it reappears at the ripped sleeve of his arm.
Zach wants to take in more of him, to see not just the boy's neck but his chest and shoulders too. The breeze sends the smell of soil and flowers up his nose, and Zach wonders with quickened breaths if Shane's own scent would compliment the ones around him, or be even more overwhelming to his senses.
Would his lips taste as wild and exotic as they look? He feels a light sensation of Shane's fingertips touching his own. Zach's arms are hanging limp at his sides, forgetting how to move. And just that one touch, feather-like, sends impulse after impulse up his arm, into his brain, and back down to his fingertips to flinch, no stay still, no move closer! And gravity seems to be pulling his whole hand closer to the touch, wanting more. He wants to touch his fingers, rub his hand against Shane's palm, to interlace his fingers in his.
VrrroOOM!!
A car suddenly speeds past on the highway behind him and Zach jumps backward with the shock, the moment broken like a window opened widely on a darkened room, revealing its secrets. Could anyone see us here if they looked? He can't help but wonder. He knows very well how visible the bridge is from the road, though surely not many pause to look as he once did...
In quiet defeat and with a small, hopeless smile, Shane turns away toward the water once more.
"We can stay as long as you want," he says into the air.
Zach is delighted to be here, in this spot with his new friend. But although he once thought nothing could make him happier than experiencing his bridge up close, now that the moment has come, he can't help but feel...disappointed.