Simmons Hall, it was called. A dorm at MIT.
I’d always hoped I’d leave Buford, but I’d never allowed myself to dream that big. MIT. Would I really wind up there someday? I’d taken the SATs and sent in my applications, but not there. Still, I’d seen it.
And so, it seemed, had Sarah.
What did it mean?
I didn’t want to believe her story. It seemed impossible that the binoculars did what she’d said, or that her mom made them or left them with Sarah or asked her to give them to me. But I only had to look at Trip and Tannis and Nat’s dad to believe the first, and Nat, and even myself were proof of the impossible situations parents give their kids sometimes.
So, was that my future—me and Sarah at MIT? Or had I misinterpreted or misremembered something, the way we can with memories? Was it a future I’d create, now that the idea had been planted, the way the binoculars had pushed me toward the SATs and Sarah and all the things that had come after? If they had. The chicken or the egg, decision or destiny?
I keep going round and round, trying to put the pieces together. About Sarah. About the binoculars. It took me a while to even realize how she knew where to leave them—the only way she could have guessed that I’d find them in the back of a cave. She must have seen that moment in them before.
How many other times had she looked, and what did she know?
And what had her mother known that made her think the binoculars belonged with me?
I’ve read and reread Sarah’s letter, poring over the words for meaning. Especially the end. Love, Sarah, she’d written. Had she meant that? Or was that just how she signed her letters?
Would we really be together someday? And did I still want that?
That was the one question I could answer: Yes. I did. I knew how I’d sign a letter, if I knew where to send her one.
I saw an old movie once about this guy who thought he was living a regular boring life—family, job, house, all that—but it turned out he was the star of a reality TV show. He was the only one who didn’t know. Everyone else was in on the joke.
That was kind of how I felt. Like none of the things or people in my life—Natalie, my mom, Trip’s dad, Sarah, the cops—were quite who I thought they were.
I don’t remember how that movie ended, whether it was happy or sad or what happened to that guy. So it’s kind of like my life that way too.
Except now I have a way to see how it ends.
I feel the temptation sometimes. It burns. Wanting to know if I’ll see her, what we’ll say. I have the binoculars. I could look.
But I won’t.
And neither will anyone else.
I’m the only one who knows where they are. I’m not telling, and regardless of what Sarah or her crazy mom thought my future was, I’m not using them again.
At least, I think I’m not.