“What happened? With the band?” Oli asks.

“Oh, well, we went to Portland to try and sign with a label. It wasn’t that well thought out. It was just like, me, Max and our friend Dana and whatever we could fit in a car.”

Oli thinks this sounds fine, like something people did when they were young, but Lark doesn’t smile. He’s not ready to laugh at whoever he was then, at whoever made those decisions.

Lark says, “We shouldn’t have gone. We shouldn’t have taken Dana. It was so dumb.”

The movie is still playing on the TV, and Lark turns to watch for a minute. The Fellowship is forming in Rivendell, making an oath to travel together, to protect the world that matters to them. It’s a promise made by virtual strangers. The goal should be simple enough, but success looks different to each of them.

It doesn’t end well. They don’t finish together.

When Oli was a teenager, he thinks, and even in his early twenties, he was a stranger to himself. There weren’t any promises he would have been able to make. The seeming inevitability of college at least deferred the feeling of serious decisions until he was older, more sure of himself, more firm in his friendships.

Lark just wishes he had the strength to so freely and thoroughly commit to something. Years ago, or in the present. He’d never said to Max what he thought of his ideas. Never told Dana to stay. But he didn’t quit the band, either. He didn’t choose anything.

Lark knows it’s pathetic, but he often thinks about the things he would change if he could repeat his life. The moments of potential he picks out are usually small. He would quit Squires of Gothos; he would not let Max hug him that day he’d gotten his last rejection; he would shout at Dana when he found out about her decision to leave with them. Somehow, the rest seems inevitable.

Maybe there’s a path where he has a real life. But that seems as impossible as time travel.

“You were at the right age to be, like, on an adventure, though. It must have been fun. To travel with friends. Be in a new city. At least for a while.” Oli takes the charitable view. “Mistakes are part of the fun.”

Lark shakes his head. “That’s what I thought. It’s what I hoped. But it was kind of a cursed journey. The timing, just everything.”

“How bad could it have been?”

“It was not what any of us needed. And it was obvious, even before we left.”

“You feel bad about it?”

“I really do.”

In high school, I had a good reputation with local parents. I taught beginner’s piano lessons on the weekends for some of the country-club families. The kids were young enough that it was mostly music-flavored babysitting, but it was good pocket money. Anyway, before I left town, I was just associated with Bach etudes. A shy teenager in oversized knitwear. Safe and sweet.

When Max and I started driving, Dana’s parents wouldn’t let her get in a car with Max alone. I wasn’t sure why—there was a story, something to do with GTA and maybe Max having too much coffee before he met them for the first time. I was considered the responsible one and ended up with designated driver status even after Dana got her own car. I’d go around to pick her up on Friday nights, eat the fresh fruit they offered me while she ran around the living room looking for her keys, her phone.

After Max convinced me to go to Portland, they weren’t so nice to me. They opened the door, then left me standing in the hallway. No fruit, which was a bigger disappointment than I would have admitted. Dana was quick to get me out of the house, carrying a duffel as well as her usual camera bag.

Is everything okay? I asked, turning the ignition, leaning into the key. Your parents seem—

When she realized I wouldn’t finish the sentence, she nodded, slid down in her seat, low enough the seatbelt pressed up under her chin. They’re mad about Portland.

About Max and I? I asked, confused about why they’d have any opinion about it. I would have thought they’d be relieved to have our little clique broken up, considering their worries about Max, and what I was sure was the increasingly obvious fact that I was going exactly nowhere.

About me going with you, she said. It was the first I’d heard about it.

I knew Dana and Max were close, an on-again, off-again, it’s-complicated-on-Facebook kind of situation that they were trying and failing to hide from me. But Max made everything complicated, and she had been talking about RISD’s photography program for 2 years.

I also knew how badly I wanted to get out, and hearing that she’d decided to join our pitiful expedition of hometown failure felt like having cold water poured over my head.

Oh, I said, picking around my feelings, excavating some words. I guess they would be upset.

What about RISD? I asked later. The giant printing labs and the, the everything.

Are you upset about me and Max? Dana asked in return.

I sat with my head against her leg. We were watching a movie at Max’s after practice. He had gone to make popcorn. I had known that she would stay over, that she had been staying over at Max’s most Saturday nights. It didn’t bother me, though I was starting to think about how easily we all touched each other, whether I was crossing some line. I sat up.

No, I told her. I’m just worried. What’s in Portland, anyway?

Why are you going then?

I didn’t say anything about that, but she apologized for asking.

Dana was reading ‘Regarding the Pain of Others,’ the slim paperback in her camera satchel. I wondered what she was learning. I wondered what she hoped to learn in Portland.