He Waited Ten Minutes. She Came Back.

Five traffic lights east of Westbrook High, there’s an abandoned quarry. The gravel road is so narrow that a pickup truck can barely squeeze through. Wild blackberries and scrub pines crowd both sides. A desolate place like this, somehow, is where high school kids go to sneak a moment alone.

Ethan Miller and Lily Adams were both seniors. They’d been inseparable since freshman year. Ethan consistently ranked in the top three of their grade, and with his help, Lily, once a middling student, had slowly climbed into the top twenty. Their guidance counselor turned a blind eye.

The day midterm math scores came out, Lily stared at the "62" on her paper for a long time.

"What do I do? SATs are six months away, and look at this score." She folded the test in half and shoved it to the bottom of her binder.

"I've got you. We'll keep at it." Ethan bumped her shoulder lightly.

"Been at it over a year, and I'm still stuck. I'm just dumb."

"You're too stressed. You can't even hear the lessons right." Ethan steered her toward the lockers, lowering his voice. "After school, I'm taking you somewhere. Guarantee it'll clear your head."

That day, the school had canceled that evening study hall. At 3:30 p.m., Ethan pedaled his bike with Lily on the back seat, her backpack in the front basket. They rode down the county road, all the way to the quarry.

In the middle of the quarry lay a deep, dark blue pool, filled by rainwater. Ethan leaned his bike against a pine and pulled two cans of Coke from his bag. Lily sat on a flat rock, staring blankly at the water.

"You know why I brought you here?" Ethan sat beside her, a fist's width apart.

"Because no one's around," Lily said, her voice still muffled.

"Because it's quiet enough to hear what the voice in your head is actually yelling about." Ethan turned sideways to look at her. "It's not that you can't do math. You scare yourself every time before you even start a problem."

Lily said nothing. She lowered her head and scraped her fingernail back and forth along the edge of the can. Ethan reached over, took the can, popped the tab for her, and handed it back. He'd done this a hundred times before, but this time, his fingers paused on the rim for a beat, then brushed the back of her hand.

Lily looked up at him. The reflection off the water fell on her cheekbones, like a thin sheet of tin foil.

Ethan leaned in. Lily didn't pull away. His lips were a breath from her forehead.

The roar of motorcycle engines tore through the pines.

Three modified dirt bikes shot down the gravel path and circled the pool. The riders were three men in their early twenties, wearing greasy overalls. One had half a case of beer strapped to the back seat.

"Well, well. High school sweethearts." The bald one leading them killed his engine and hauled the beer down.

Ethan stood, putting Lily behind him. "We were just leaving."

"What's the rush?" The bald man tossed a beer to his buddy. "Your girlfriend's pretty cute."

Lily's hand gripped the hem of Ethan's school shirt. Ethan could feel her trembling, but he didn't look back. He stared the bald man down, counted to three, grabbed Lily's hand, and started toward the bike.

Something hit the back of his head. The beer can connected with a dull thud. No blood, but his ear rang. Ethan stumbled two steps. Lily screamed.

The bald man wrenched Ethan's arm behind his back and forced him to the ground. Gravel bit into his palms. He heard Lily calling his name, then another man's laugh, then the sound of a zipper.

Ethan struggled wildly, a knee pressing into the back of his neck. He couldn't see anything. He could only hear Lily's crying shift from screams to muffled sobs, and finally into a sound he didn't recognize. He bit through his lower lip. Blood mixed with gravel dust, salty.

After what felt like forever, the pressure lifted. Motorcycles roared back to life, gravel spraying. When Ethan got up, Lily was already sitting upright. She hugged her knees. Two buttons were missing from her school shirt, and her skirt was covered in dust.

Ethan walked over and crouched down, reaching for her shoulder. Lily jerked back so hard her spine hit the tree trunk. A single word scraped out of her throat: "Don't."

Ethan's hand hung in the air, then slowly withdrew. He took off his own jacket, folded it, and placed it on the rock twenty centimeters away from her. Then he turned his back and dialed 911.

At the hospital, after the exam, Lily's mother came to pick her up. At the end of the hallway, she glanced back at Ethan, her lips moving slightly, but she said nothing.

For two weeks after, Lily didn't come to school.

Ethan went to class, did his problem sets, and followed his routine. He photocopied Lily's class notes, highlighted key points in different-colored markers, and placed them into brown paper bags. When the sixth bag was full, he rode his bike to Lily's house.

Lily's mother answered the door. "Ethan, she doesn't want to see anyone right now."

He handed her the bags. "These are the notes from the last two weeks."

As the door closed, he caught a glimpse through the gap: a pair of feet in Lily's rabbit slippers at the foot of the stairs, standing there for less than a second before retreating.

He rode back to the quarry, sat on that rock, and drank the last unopened can of Coke. It had gone flat. Sweet and bitter.

A month later, Lily returned to school. She'd been transferred to a different building, and her lunch period was changed so they wouldn't overlap. Ethan saw her once from a distance in the hallway. She'd cut her hair short and started wearing glasses. She walked right past him, eyes on the floor.

That afternoon, Ethan waited for her at the school gate. He had calculated exactly when her makeup class ended.

Lily came out carrying her textbooks. When she saw him, her steps faltered for half a beat.

"Why are you avoiding me?" Ethan said.

"I'm not."

"You go from the second floor to the west wing and out the back gate, just so you don't have to walk this way." Ethan's voice was flat, but his knuckles, wrapped around his backpack strap, had gone white.

Lily stared at the toes of her shoes. "Ethan, just let me be alone, okay."

"I've left you alone for a month." He took a step forward.

Lily took a step back. That single step nailed Ethan to the spot.

"Are you blaming me?" Ethan asked her.

Lily finally lifted her head. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but her voice was hard. "I blame myself. Okay? I blame myself for going to that place with you, for wearing that skirt, for not running. Are You satisfied?"

"You know it wasn't your fault—"

"Then why do you keep coming to find me?" Lily cut him off. "Every time you show up in front of me, you make me live through that afternoon all over again. Do you understand that?"

Ethan opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

Lily walked around him and left. The sound of her canvas sneakers scraping against the concrete was faint and granular, like fingernails dragging across a soda can.

For the next two months, Ethan didn't look for her again.

He divided his days into three blocks: classes, SAT practice tests, and staring at the ceiling at two in the morning. His bedroom wall was plastered with sticky notes—pink for math formulas, blue for physics theorems. None of them had anything to do with Lily. But on his nightstand lay a dried-up highlighter, one she'd lent him sophomore year. He'd never returned it.

He lost ten pounds. His cheekbones jutted out. The guidance counselor called him in, told him his grades were already guaranteed for a scholarship, not to snap the string. He said "Mm," and did another practice test the next day.

In early March, acceptance letters began to arrive. One Saturday morning, Ethan opened the email from MIT. He stared at the screen for fifteen seconds, then put on his jacket and rode his bike out.

The morning paper sat on Lily's front steps. He pulled out his phone, opened Lily's contact, typed three words, and deleted them. Typed a full line, deleted that too. Finally, he put his phone back in his pocket, picked up the newspaper, folded it together with the printed acceptance letter, and slipped it into the mailbox.

He didn't ring the doorbell.

On the back of the printout, he'd written a single pencil line: "Tuesday, 3 p.m., the quarry. I'll wait ten minutes. It's okay if you don't come."

Tuesday came. He sat on that old rock, two cans of Coke in front of him. At 3:05, footsteps sounded on the gravel path. Not a motorcycle engine—the sound of canvas sneakers on crushed stone.

Lily stood five steps away, wearing that washed-out school jacket. She still had those glasses on. Her hair had grown a little longer, pulled back in a low ponytail.

She didn't speak. She walked over, sat down, picked up one of the Cokes, and popped the tab herself.

"What you wrote—'It's okay if you don't come,'" Lily took a sip. "Did you mean it?"

Ethan watched her hand holding the can. It wasn't shaking anymore. He said, "If I hadn't written that, I was afraid you wouldn't even dare leave the house."

Lily rested the can on her knee and pulled something from her pocket. She placed it on the rock between them. Half a highlighter, pink, with bite marks on the cap.

"The one from sophomore year ran out a long time ago," she said. "I bought this myself. I've got a makeup exam tomorrow."

Ethan stared at the highlighter. His Adam's apple moved. He raised his Coke and gently clinked it against her can.

"Tomorrow, I'll save a seat in the library."

Lily didn't answer, but as she put the highlighter back into her pocket, the corner of her mouth moved. Not a smile. A loosening. Like the first crack spreading beneath the surface of ice.

They didn't talk about what had happened at the quarry that day, nor did they say what the future might hold. After one can's worth of time, Lily stood up first and started walking back. At the bend in the path, she turned and said, "See you tomorrow."

Ethan crushed both empty cans and put them in his backpack. As he rode away from the quarry, his back tire kicked up small stones that pinged against the pine trunks, like someone, somewhere in the distance, knocking softly twice on a door.