<\/p>\n
On Fridays after school, we rode our bikes to the liquor store to buy sour candy, the kind in large plastic bins with big metal scoops. Sour peaches, sour rings, sour bears and worms and sharks, sour lips and sour rainbows and sour kids. Emily never had money, so I paid, which was fine.<\/p>\n
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With the bag of candy tied around my handlebars, we pedaled to the high school where we sat in the bleachers, on the top row, and pressed our backs to the metal railing. The first sour bite was the best. The way my jaw clenched like a fist even before the sour hit my tongue.<\/p>\n
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Meanwhile, the field below was electric with teams practicing and students buzzing, and we played a game called That\u2019s Gonna Be You<\/em>. Emily and I were still a year away from high school and joked that watching from above was like watching ourselves in the future.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s gonna be you,\u201d she\u2019d say, laughing and pointing to the football player dragging his feet, half a lap behind the team.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s gonna be you,\u201d I\u2019d say and shoulder-bump her, pointing to the cross country runner leading the team in stretches. Blonde hair pulled tight in a ponytail, she barked orders and counted to ten.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Besides pointing out our future selves and sucking the sour off gummy soda bottles, we also complained about our parents. To make Emily feel better, I made stuff up about my dad yelling and being an asshole, but really he wasn\u2019t. He was the kind of dad who always listened, even if sometimes I wished he talked too.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But Emily\u2019s dad was another story. Three months ago she found out he had another family. Family #2, she called them. She found a birthday card in his office desk with a drawing of a dad, mom, older boy, and a little girl with red curls. Emily was blonde and an only child. She didn\u2019t tell her mom, but she told me as we pushed sour rings on the tips of our tongues. How many could we fit until one snapped? She didn\u2019t cry like I thought she might, but instead pointed at a group of boys huddled like vultures under the bleachers across from ours, secretly smoking and punching each other in the arms. \u201cThat\u2019s gonna be you.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Emily started questioning everything about her father. Whenever he wasn\u2019t home, which was a lot\u2014work trips, golf trips, who-knows trips\u2014she assumed he was playing catch with his son or teaching his redheaded daughter to ride a bike. When he was<\/em> home, she tried to sniff foreign odors on his shirt as he hugged her goodnight. And when the light hit his mouse-brown hair at just the right angle, she swore she saw hints of red.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The more she shared, the less I shared. Having to deal with Family #2 was so much worse than my mom drinking too much white wine after dinner. My mom didn\u2019t get silly-drunk like in the movies, but the next day she wouldn\u2019t remember what we\u2019d talked about. I had to get used to cloned conversations. Plus I was running out of bad things to make up about my dad, so mostly I just listened and searched the field for future-me.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Then Emily\u2019s Dad called her Dylan<\/em> accidentally. Twice.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cDylan<\/em> doesn\u2019t sound anything like Emily<\/em>,\u201d I said. \u201cHow can the dillweed make that mistake?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n With a mouth full of sour gummy bears she\u2019d scrunched together until four became one, Emily said, \u201cWhatever. That\u2019s gonna be you,\u201d and pointed to a funny-looking kid sitting against the goalpost doing homework alone.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYeah? Well, that\u2019s gonna be you,\u201d I said and pointed to a cheerleader practicing her leg kicks. She looked ridiculous, and I knew that would get Emily good because she swore she\u2019d never be a cheerleader. She said cheerleaders were just decorations for guys, and how stupid was that? I was waiting for her to point out the worst guy and say it was me, but she didn\u2019t. She just sat there working her tongue, unsticking bears from her back teeth. Finally, she said, \u201cShit, Dylan<\/em>\u2019s even a cooler name than Emily<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n #<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Today, as I\u2019m scooping the last of the sour fish into the bag, Emily says she has something big to tell me. But later, with our backs against the cool metal bars and one handful of sour keys already gone, she still hasn\u2019t said anything.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cSo, like, did something happen?\u201d I ask, as the marching band marches in a giant circle.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cNothing happened,\u201d she says, tears in her eyes for the first time. \u201cBut, like\u2026I realized something.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I want to give her a hug, but I\u2019m not sure if that\u2019s the kind of friends we are. So, like my dad, I sit quietly. Waiting to listen.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWhat if, like\u2026\u201d She stops to tie a sour rope in a knot, then bites off one end. \u201cWhat if I\u2019m<\/em> Family #2?\u201d She looks away. \u201cWhat if it\u2019s not them. What if it\u2019s me<\/em> that\u2019s Family #2?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The worst part is I don\u2019t know what to say because she could be right, because who gets to choose? I try to imagine what my parents might say, but I\u2019ve got nothing. So I reach into the bag and grab two sour cherries\u2014her favorite\u2014and give her one. Then she grabs two sour bombs\u2014the strongest of them all\u2014and hands one to me.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s gonna be you,\u201d I say and point to the girl walking like a horse with high knees, twirling a baton.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s gonna be you,\u201d she says and points to a big kid banging a drum hung around his neck.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And then we can\u2019t stop. We point out everyone on the field. The football player doing pushups, the sprinter collapsing on the grass, the kid in crutches asking girls to sign his cast, the couple holding hands, the boy getting yelled at by his coach, the girl with pink hair. That\u2019s gonna be you, I tell her. That\u2019s gonna be you, she tells me. And we eat. We eat until the sour scrapes our tongues and cuts our gums.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Eventually the sun drops behind the mountains, and the lights of the field click, then buzz, then shine. That\u2019s gonna be you, she says and points to a kid sitting alone, picking grass. And to the coach blowing his whistle. And to the boy trying to do a cartwheel. That\u2019s gonna be you, I say and point to a girl sprinting as if she\u2019s late, backpack bouncing side to side. And to the girl crying into her phone. And to the girl who was running laps when we first sat down and is still running laps, her face bright red, and she has not stopped, has not even slowed. That\u2019s gonna be you, that\u2019s gonna be you, we say until all the teams have packed up their equipment and left, until even the non-athletes, the randoms and slackers and stragglers have decided it\u2019s time to go home, and there is only a pile of sour sand at the bottom of the bag, and our mouths are swollen and raw, and we have pointed at everyone until there\u2019s no one left to point at, and still we have no idea what kind of people we are going to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eric Scot Tryon On Fridays after school, we rode our bikes to the liquor store to buy sour candy, the kind in large plastic bins with big metal scoops. Sour peaches, sour rings, sour bears and worms and sharks, sour lips and sour rainbows and sour kids. Emily never had money, so I paid, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":8096,"template":"","categories":[9,48,49],"tags":[889,6,136,143,1945,1946],"class_list":["post-8095","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-fiction","category-literary-features","tag-aquifer","tag-aquifer-the-florida-review-online","tag-eric-scot-tryon","tag-fiction","tag-literary-feature","tag-short-fiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n