I curl the blanket over my body and breathe in Matty. I start to feel like I could stay in this bed. I could wait here for him and get married and learn how to make venison burgers and kiss his mom’s ass until she likes me. I roll up the other side of the blanket into a cocoon. I could go to church and make potluck or bring potluck or whatever the hell you do with potluck. I could return the car. I could finish high school. I could be that person, the one who stays. The one who makes good on things. But then I think about inertia. That whole body at rest thing. I think about how wives don’t play guitar in bars and double dating with Mark Conrad for all eternity. Matty coming home with a six-pack every night, covered in factory grease. I think about Molly Walker and all those holiday sweatshirts. If I stay, I will always be a body at rest. And I can’t even make regular hamburgers.

I get up and root around, pull Matty’s favorite sweater from the pile of clothes on the closet floor. His navy blue cotton roll neck. Thick and warm, and it smells like he does when he’s just gotten out of the shower. I pull it on and lean over the bed to kiss his pillow. Like the kiss will be there waiting for him when he gets home, and he’ll know it’s there. I leave the note I wrote him on top of the kiss, the pearl promise ring he gave me tucked in the folded paper. My eyes sting. I pinch myself hard on the fleshy part under my thumb, like my mom used to do when she was crying and wanted to hide it.

Matty’s house looks smaller when I back down the driveway. Smaller and sad. All lit up; warm and inviting and no one home to enjoy it.

By the time I get to the highway, I’m flat out sobbing. I get myself together and wipe my face on my sleeve, but then I realize it’s really Matty’s sleeve and start all over. I wish I’d left him more, but I just couldn’t write it. All the note says is: Matty, I have to go. I’m sorry. Love Always, April. I wrote it on the last page of Where the Wild Things Are. That’s the part where Max finally comes back home and the food his mom made is waiting for him, because even though he was acting like a horrible kid she still loves him enough to make him dinner.