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If you’re riding up from Columbia on I-20, get off at Exit 98 and drive northeast for about forty-five minutes, past a bunch of cows and historic battlefields and bullshit, and you’ll hit Buckley, South Carolina. It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it town, minus there being anything to miss. When you see a sign declaring the BUCKLEY HIGH GOLF TEAM STATE CHAMPS and a water tower with some faded spray paint, you’re there. If you hit the Gas-n-Go, you’ve gone too far.
We moved to Buckley after I finished sixth grade. Mom bought a tiny house on Main Street, with no explanation as to why we were moving from the middle-class suburbs of Charlotte to a shithole town whose residents live for beauty-salon gossip and the repeal of separation of church and state. Her mouth would flatten into a line of distaste when her eyes hit the ridiculous headlines of the one-man biweekly newspaper, and even though she never said it, she expected better of us than to act like everyone else in Buckley.
Just because you’re in the zoo doesn’t mean you’re an animal.
Buckley liked to maintain an aura of historical importance. Here, a plantation where Jefferson Davis once spent the night. There, a monument for a fallen Revolutionary War soldier, right on the spot he died. They’d have you believe that Buckley was a perfect—if smaller—representation of southern gentility; another Charleston or Savannah, nestled in the flatlands of eastern South Carolina.
But underneath it all lurked the same nasty streak that marked so many small southern towns. The windows filled with defiant Confederate flags, the sexual rumors whispered behind closed doors, and the firm belief that Buckley was the finest place on God’s green earth anyway, thank you very much. Buckley’s famed town square was known across the state for its cobblestoned road and historical landmarks. Even still, seedy bars and failed business ventures filled the edges of the square, the same people roaming them for years. Then, later, their children and their children’s children after that.
If you headed out of town south toward Myrtle Beach, you’d ride past Buckley High School, then over some railroad tracks and into the old mill village, a part of Buckley no God-fearing townsperson would talk about and many claimed should’ve never been drawn into the Buckley city limits at all.
That was Buckley—historical tours and meth labs, Confederate legacy and Friday night lights.
From the time we arrived, my older brother, Ryan, and I kept a map on his bedroom wall charting all the places we wanted to go—places so far away, so different from Buckley. I was always picking stupid ones like Albuquerque and Ann Arbor and Austin. They sounded unique to me. Interesting.
His dreams ran bigger. Florence. Berlin. Cairo. I’d listen as he talked, painting enchanted pictures in my head of places as distant as the imaginary worlds in his books. I hung on to Ryan’s words when there was nothing else worth hanging on to. Buckley was a fence holding us in, a cage clipping our wings. Everything that mattered was outside, waiting on us.
Until I met Adrienne.
At Buckley Middle School, Adrienne had everything and she was everything. She’d hold court with her best friend, Claire, on the swings during lunch and tell Claire all the secrets everyone had fed her that day. Who was making out with whom. What party everyone was and wasn’t invited to. Who had on a heinous skirt.
I was fascinated with the pair of them. Adrienne looked so different from everyone else in Buckley. I later found out her father had been a purebred southern bachelor and betrayed his heritage by going to law school at Northwestern and marrying the future Mrs. Maynard, a beautiful dark-haired advertising exec of some kind. That explained Adrienne’s perfect tan skin, her shiny black hair. But the one thing that made her uniquely Adrienne was her hypnotizing dark brown eyes, the way they flashed when you had pleased her, offering the most specific kind of acceptance and love. Claire was the perfect unassuming best friend for Adrienne—small for her age, white-bread innocence, and all-American cute.
One day in class, Adrienne was talking about Elona Mabry, a slightly overweight classmate of ours who tended to overpraise Adrienne whenever she was within fifteen feet of her. I had no trouble identifying Elona’s type—a specifically sad kind of wannabe in the middle school world. “It’s that thing she does with her eyeliner,” Adrienne was saying during fifth period. “It totally looks like she puts it on in a dark room while being groped. And that huge, clearly fake Coach purse she carries around, and she can never find anything in it. Like, what do you even think she’s looking for in there? It’s like—it’s like—”
“Like a raccoon robbing a trash can,” I said from my assigned desk catty-corner to her. I didn’t stop to think about what I was saying. The words ripping Elona to shreds automatically strung themselves together.
Adrienne snapped her fingers, pointing at me. “Yes.” Then she laughed, tilting her pretty head back until everyone was looking. Claire sat behind her, covering her mouth with a hand, giggling as if in spite of herself. Adrienne went on, “That’s exactly what it is. You’re Olivia, right? I’ve been meaning to tell you how much I love your hair. What do you do to it?” I twisted a strand of hair around my finger. I could practically feel others tuning in to what was happening, looking at me like they looked at her. Adrienne liked me; Adrienne thought I was funny. My smile was radiant. Later, I’d tell her about where I was going. The places on the map. She told me she’d seen some of them, from her parents’ pictures or in person.
Adrienne was in Buckley, but she was so above it.
There’s something about certain people that always draws me in. They make me feel more daring, more alive, more vibrant. They light a match and spark a fire, and the blaze is too enticing to be scary.
Adrienne was a fireworks show to my total eclipse.
Before I met Adrienne, Buckley was a colorless day, a roadblock on the map, a punishment to be endured. Everything about it was so boring, so lifeless and ordinary.
With her, everything developed an edge. And I loved it.
We sat on the swings day in and day out and observed our peers. Mocked them. Grew sharper than them, smarter. In my report cards, the teachers never used the words, but I could read between the lines and Mom could, too. Bully. Mean girl.
“Jealous.” Adrienne would laugh.
I laughed, too. Life was easy when you were looking down on everyone else.
Three years later, Ryan packed up our map and put it in his trunk. He took it with him where he was going: Ann Arbor. Turns out, wings grow back. He flew out of Buckley.
He left me behind. I’d forgotten I was supposed to care.
And then he was gone for good.
Copyright © 2017 by Laurie Devore