Note: This is a sequel to The Rebellions of Simone Russell. You'll need to read that one to make sense of this. Also, the title is taken from Dr. Seuss' Oh, The Places You'll Go.

Any Direction You Choose

Simone arrived at the Durkees' at half past six, balancing a plate of freshly baked cookies in one hand and tugging her skirt down with the other. In the rush to get ready, she'd forgotten Mr. and Mrs. Durkee were a modest couple, who replaced "fuck" with "fudge" and thought hot pants and mini-skirts were signs of social collapse.

Simone sucked in her stomach and pulled the skirt lower. The hem was now a little below mid-thigh, but still wasn't acceptable according to the Durkee standard. However, unlike some other parents, Mr. and Mrs. Durkee would only trade looks instead of politely suggesting she go home and change.

Philomena and Frank Durkee were a nice couple. Unassuming, quietly ambitious, always willing to participate in community activities, they would've been another one of Harmony's golden couples if they weren't atheists. Philomena and Frank preferred academic journals to any religious book, and because of this, Harmony's gatekeepers regarded them with suspicion. Whenever people commented on the Durkees there was always an edge of doubt in their voices. "They're good people, I suppose" they were fond of saying. It was as if they were waiting for someone to contradict them, to offer proof of what they'd always known to be true.

Simone liked the Durkees. They were charming in their own strange way. Philomena, with her white-blonde hair, pale skin and thin build, looked frail, and her nervous  movements reinforced that impression. However, Philomena was anything but. She ran every morning for an hour and a half and went to yoga three times a week at the community centre. She was a strict vegetarian, refusing to even touch meat. The Durkees had two fridges in their home. No meat or meat by-products were allowed in the one in the kitchen. The fridge in the basement housed the hamburgers and steaks Frank enjoyed.

Reese was more like Philomena than Frank. Most of the time he ate strange looking vegetable blends, tofu and fruit, but on holidays and at special events, he would partake of a hamburger or turkey. He preferred to run in the afternoons, but wouldn't be caught dead at a yoga class. Reese had inherited his social awkwardness from his mother. Philomena was the quiet sort, favouring one on one interaction rather than being in a crowd. She was well-read and articulate, but couldn't find her words when there were too many people around.

Frank, the dentist everyone in the better part of Harmony visited at least once a month, was in his early fifties and resembled Andy Griffith in his pre-Matlock, post Andy Griffith Show days. He always wore a placid expression. When he was angry only the lines in his face deepened. He still looked like plain old Mr. Durkee, who couldn't hurt a fly.

Last year Reese, Simone, and Kay lied to their parents and went to a dive bar in the shady part of town, to see a shock rock group. Kay, once again forgetting her limits, drank too much and had to be taken to the hospital. Eve was on duty that night. It wasn't long before their parents were crammed into the emergency waiting room, meting out punishments. As Mr. Durkee calmly told Reese how disappointed he was, Simone realized again how different her father was from other men.

Frank gave Simone a placid but welcoming smile when he opened the door. He glanced down at her bare legs, disapproval in the downturn of his mouth. He said nothing, though, and opened the door wider to let her in.

"We're having pasta tonight," Frank said, closing the door. "What I wouldn't give to add some meatballs. Never marry a vegetarian, Simone. For the rest of your married life you'll never feel quite full."

Simone smiled. "But you'll feel healthy."

Frank snorted. "I've got to stop leaving you alone with Phil. She's brainwashing you."

Simone followed Frank across the living room and through a heavy wooden door to the kitchen. Philomena was already seated at the table. Reese was by the stove, scooping out the stir fry into a glass bowl.

Frank took the cookies from Simone and put them on the counter, motioning for her to sit down.

"Oh, Simone, look what I've found, a recipe for mushroom pastries. It sounds disgusting, but I think it would be nice to try. A few adjustments and I think it could be wonderful." Philomena handed her an old cookbook with yellowing, dog-eared pages.

Every room in the Durkees' house had books. There were two large bookcases in the living room, another one in the kitchen beside the wooden door. There were books in the cupboards beside the coffee mugs and dinner plates. James Joyce's Ulysses and Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time were on the bathroom shelf. The books, mostly old editions with pages falling out, prevented the house from seeming like every other middle class home in Harmony. The Durkees' were trying to keep up with some other family, not the Jones'.

"It looks great," Simone said, handing the book back to Philomena.

"I'll give you the recipe tomorrow morning." Philomena's bright expression dimmed, and she touched Simone's arm. "You'll be here in the morning, won't you?"

Simone nodded. "Of course. I wouldn't be anywhere else."

Tomorrow, Simone thought, was the beginning. Sort of. Tomorrow Reese would get into the shiny new car his parents had bought him a week ago and start the long journey to Cambridge. MIT's Building 7, the entrance to the campus, would be at the end of it; another beginning. Two days later Simone would be on a plane to Atlanta. They'd be separated by miles, states, majors and new experiences. There would be a possibility they wouldn't know each other when Thanksgiving came and there'd only be three blocks between them.

Carrying the bowl of food to the table, Reese gave Simone a small smile. Simone interpreted it as reassurance. When he came back, he'd still like spending summer afternoons reading in the park and going back at midnight to play on the jungle gym. Reese would still love apple pie, Led Zeppelin and brightly coloured liquor he made from vodka and candy. He'd still be her constant.

Dinner was nice. Philomena and Frank ate quickly, not wanting to miss too much of a documentary on the Big Bang Machine scientists were building in Europe. Reese and Simone offered to the do the dishes so they wouldn't miss the beginning.

They stood side by side at the sink, speaking in low voices, discussing everything but the next day. Tonight was a border. After finishing the dishes, they'd find something to occupy their time before they left for the Harmony Dells.

Every year at the end of the summer, high school students and grads gathered to welcome the new school year. They showed up in the new costumes and identities they would wear until June, sure the upcoming year would be nothing like the last. For the graduates, caught in purgatory, only now coming to terms with who'd they'd been for four years and unsure of who they'd be in another four, the night was full of small revelations.

When they finished with the dishes, Simone and Reese went up to his room, making sure to use the living room stairs instead of the ones in the kitchen. They passed Philomena and Frank, who glanced at them briefly before turning back to the television.

Reese's room was as neat as ever. The bed was made and the desk was free of clutter, but there was hardly any room to move. There were boxes and bags on the floor, full of things a new college student would need. Sheets and duvets from Wal-Mart, a new laptop, and computer accessories, new shoes to match the new suit in the closet.

Simone avoided looking at these things, focusing on the posters on the wall. The one of Einstein sticking out his tongue was her favourite, followed by the one of Alex De Large and his droogs standing in shadow under a bridge.

"How do you feel?" Simone asked, the loudness of her voice surprising her. "How do you feel about tomorrow?"

Reese shrugged, sitting down at his desk. "I'm scared, of course. It's MIT. If I mess up, then I really mess up." He looked at his hands. "You want to know what I think about the most? That I won't be the smartest guy in the room anymore. No matter what any stupid jock said I could always feel good knowing I had more brains. At MIT, the guy on the football team just might be a MENSA member."

Simone went over to him and sat on his lap. "Maybe you'll like not being the smartest guy in the room. You won't be picked on anymore and no one ask you to do their homework."

"I suppose." Reese put his arms around her. "How do you feel?"

Simone didn't know how to answer. She'd woken up last night gasping and sweating, feeling as if there were weights stacked on her chest. Maybe her father was right. Maybe she wasn't ready to move so far away, and live in a city so unlike Harmony. Maybe she'd come home after a month or two, contrite and ready to be shaped and moulded.

"Sometimes I feel like I don't want to leave and other times I feel like it would be the worst thing if I came back. You don't know how lucky you are. Your parents are driving all the way there with you. They're going to make sure you get settled in. They're going to get one of those proud parents of an mit student bumper stickers and buy sweatshirts from the school store."

By now bitterness and anger were familiar friends of Simone's. They comforted her, pushed her forward even as they held her back. They kept her myopic, unable to see anything other than what they wanted her to.

"We are going to do all that," Reese said. "And I am lucky, but it's not like your parents don't love you. I think it's possible your mom and dad aren't going with you because it would be too hard for them to let you go. They love you, Simone, just not the way you need them to."

Reese had done it again, said something so profound in such banal tone that the tension immediately left Simone's body, buckling under the weight of truth.

Simone leaned back, pressing herself against Reese. "I don't think you don't have to worry about not being the smartest person in the room at MIT," she said softly.

A few minutes after the documentary ended Frank started up the stairs, his joints creaking in unison with the wood underneath him.

Frank had had his dental practice for eight years before he got married. He'd been thirty-four and Philomena thirty-two when Reese was born. Out of their twenties and secure in their identities, Frank and Philomena were languid in their parenting. They knew that a full schedule of activities would only exhaust Reese and make him anxious. Unlike other parents, they let him loose in the afternoons with instructions to be back before nightfall. When he returned with skinned knees and jars full of insects they shook their heads and sent him to shower. They never hesitated before pushing him out of the house the next day. When Reese complained about not being allowed to spend hours in the living room playing video games, his parents said, "Children shouldn't stay inside. You've got to see what's out there."

Frank cautiously poked his head into Reese's room. Something like a sigh of relief passed through his lips when he saw Simone and Reese sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the screen of Reese's new laptop.

Frank cleared his throat and leaned against the door frame, using it to support his weight. "How long until you two are off to the Dells?"

Reese glanced at the clock on his bedside table. "Two hours, I guess. They're probably just starting the fire now."

Frank nodded. "Your mother and I are going to Dr. March's. Book club night," he explained.

Reese furrowed his brows. Dr. March was an old friend of the family and was also Reese's godfather. He'd been a tenured professor at Boston University before he'd retired to Harmony and became head of the library's board of directors. In his spare time he wrote papers and hosted book clubs at his home. Every Friday Frank and Philomena would head over to Dr. March's for their seven o'clock meeting, books they'd finished before the middle of the week in hand. It was Saturday.

"Have a good time," Reese said, cheeks flushing.

"I'll see you bright and early tomorrow, Simone" Frank waved at her before leaving.

"Let me guess, book clubs aren't usually on Saturday nights," Simone said.

Reese nodded, refusing to look at her.

He'd grown up watching National Geographic and TLC and for a long time sex had been a necessary but awkward series of jerky movements animals engaged in. When puberty began, sex and girls became a mystery Reese couldn't unravel even when teachers and other adults supplied him so-called answers. After the birds and the bees talk at twelve, there were no more personal discussions of sex. It was something that happened on television, something other people did. Reese preferred it that way. Not talking about sex meant his embarrassment and guilt were remote and easily shrugged off. It would be a while before he would be able to look his parents in the eye without feeling exposed.

The feeling as if he'd lost a layer of skin heightened when Reese heard his parents' car pull out of the driveway. However, that didn't stop him from reaching for Simone.

)(

Like moths they emerged from the darkness of the trees to surround the bonfire. In the half light they were barely recognizable to each other, guessing at each other's identities. Without the familiar halls of Harmony High School, the comfortable tell-tale signs of status, lettermen jackets, cheerleading outfits, and the lack of them, it was difficult to tell who you were talking to. As faces became clearer and memories returned, their voices became louder and started to overpower the music coming from the speakers a few feet away.

Her friends, Simone thought, were like ghosts. They were echoes of the past stuck in the limbo of the present. Jock, cheerleader, nerd, weed-head. Their high school identities were now like clothes that no longer fit. They squeezed themselves into them anyway because there was nothing else to wear.

With no destination in mind, Simone wandered around the bonfire, stopping to talk to whoever she recognized. Sometimes she was pulled into conversations by people she barely knew, people who'd laughed at her when they weren't ignoring her. Simone smiled tightly, nodded and threw in a few words before moving on.

It wasn't long before she came full circle, back to the place she and Reese and emerged from into the clearing. They'd spread a blanket next to a large oak tree and put a picnic basket filled with chips, soda, and vodka on top of it. Neither of them planned on drinking much. Appearing as if you planned on passing out and waking up in the dells was part of the night's ritual.

Simone sat beside Reese, her knee bumping his. Instinctively, Reese put his arm around her and drew her closer. Simone rested her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes.

Months ago she would've been afraid to do this, to be seen with Reese and to physically acknowledge that she saw past the label put on him. Reese could be socially awkward and he was smarter than a lot of the teachers at school, but "nerd" was and would never be an adequate description of him. To know that was one thing but to make other people aware of it was a sin.

Hormones, expectations, the fear of inevitable responsibilities. Life was complicated enough for a teenager. It was necessary to reduce each other to what could be easily understood. To accept the nuances and shadows of others meant ignorance would no longer be a sufficient excuse or reason. Ignorance was bliss and knowledge was responsibility.

During prom Kay had boldly asked Simone what everyone had wanted to know for a while. Simone and Reese never held hands in the halls or sent each other those little pouches of cinnamon hearts the student council sold  on Valentine's Day. However, there was hardly any space between them when they sat together at lunch. They way they touched each other spoke of a familiarity and intimacy no one could quite explain.

"Are you guys having sex?" Kay asked, staring at Simone's reflection in the bathroom mirror.

Simone stared back at her, noting Kay's pale skin and smudged lipstick. They'd been dancing together when Kay had gone still and wide-eyed before rushing away, her hand covering her mouth. Simone followed her to the bathroom and waited until she finished retching.

"You guys are secretly dating, aren't you?" Kay continued. Her need to quantify, categorize and fit the relationship into a neat box bordered on desperation.

"No," Simone replied blandly.

"Then, what? Don't tell me you guys are just friends because, come on. You guys are here at prom together. That's huge."

"Not really," Simone replied. "Neither of us had dates."

Annoyed, Kay narrowed her eyes. "You guys are hooking up, aren't you?" she accused. "You're totally doing the fuckbuddy thing."

"We're not," Simone cried. She hated that word. There was no equality in it. Like most things having to do with sex, it also carried the stigma of female shame. "It's not like that at all," she whispered.

"Then what is it like?"

Simone shrugged. "He's a good friend and we sleep together."

It wasn't a satisfactory answer. Simone knew that before she'd finished the sentence, but there was nothing else she could say. She couldn't tell Kay that Reese knew her better than her best friend. She couldn't tell her that she loved Reese in a way that didn't require the boundaries of a romantic relationship. Kay wouldn't understand and neither would she want to.

Kay grimaced as she leaned forward and began to wipe away the stains of lipstick around her mouth. "I can't believe you're sleeping with Reese. He's Reese. I was so creeped out when he was crushing on me."

"Your loss," Simone said, putting on a salacious smirk.

Kay's eyes bulged and she stopped moving, once again staring at Simone's reflection. "No." She shook her head. "He's not good, or anything. He can't be."

Simone scoffed. She gave Kay a look an older, more experienced woman would've given the young tart who believed her short skirt and plunging neckline would be enough to get her what she truly wanted.

"That is not right," Kay muttered, frowning.

Simone didn't have to guess at her thoughts. Kay was going over everything she thought she knew about Reese. The new information resulted in a new Reese taking shape in her mind, one more real than the previous.

A series of emotions played across Kay's face: regret, confusion, a bit of anger. Reese, the boy she'd scrawled nasty things about on the bathroom walls and used in an effort to win Miguel was now a person.

Simone could've felt bad about pulling Kay out of the neat little world of high school classification. Yet, when she looked at Kay's flat stomach she couldn't. After graduation and the summer holiday, there would be nothing to keep them from seeing the world as it was: messy and complicated. It would be especially so for Kay. Simone was preparing her.

)(

It was a real possibility that this was the beginning of the illusion of escape. Everyone over the age of fourteen complained about Harmony. It was too small, too quaint, too quiet, too much like what people from the city thought a small town was like. There was a teeming darkness underneath Harmony's pleasant facade, but it would always be suppressed, for the most part. The drug dealers, the prostitutes, the neurotics existed, but they were confined to the outskirts and belonged more to the long stretch of highway and forest rather than the town.

Almost every teenager dreamed of escape. When sneaking out to the Lucky Penny, a highway bar known for serving the underage, became boring, when house parties lost their thrill, and what was once beautiful no longer was, they started to dream of leaving. They sat enraptured in movie theatres, devouring the New York skyline, the bayous of Louisiana, the palm trees of California and Florida. They wanted to be anywhere but Harmony.

When senior year came, only the few whose family didn't have the money to send them out of state or overseas applied to the state university,. The two or three students who had to attend the local community college were sullen, unaware their classmates would return soon enough.

The novelty of the world wore off quickly. By the last year of college, the crowds of New York, the emptiness of Los Angeles, the gaudiness of Miami, and the humidity of the bayou became unbearable. One by one everyone returned, glad that you could go home again, that Harmony was just as it had always been: quiet, predictable, stable.

Melanie Woods, the valedictorian, had read from Dr. Seuss' Oh, The Places You'll Go at the end of her speech. The excitement in her voice was contagious and the graduating class had grinned, thinking of Paris, Las Vegas, Boston and Chicago.

Oh, The Place You'll Come Back To would've been more appropriate, Simone thought. As she sat in the stuffy auditorium, slight tremors began to wrack her body. Maybe in a few years, after she'd completed her internship, after she could add MD to end of her name, she would come back to Harmony. She would be Dr. Russell, indistinguishable from her mother.

)(

Reese and Simone didn't stay at the party long. An hour later they were heading down Valley Road, towards the cemetery.

The sky was no longer an inky black, but midnight blue. The stars had begun to dim, seeming to be snuffed out one by one as they raced between the headstones. Tag, hide and go seek, they played children's games, believing that after this night they could never play again with the same glee. When their chests began to burn and their muscles began to cramp, they ambled towards the woods.

They stopped under the tree they'd sat under a year ago, sharing a bottle of Stoli. Simone ran her fingers along the bark. Reese's matched her pace as his hand trailed up her thigh, disappearing under her skirt. She wanted to tease him, to move away and give him a devilish smile, but morning was fast approaching.

Dawn was breaking when they arrived at Reese's house. Simone had started to get out of the car when Reese stopped her.

"Stay with me for a while," he said, taking her hand.

They didn't speak. The silence that enveloped the car reminded Simone of churches and graveyards. She wouldn't forget this.

There were so many questions, so much uncertainties that made it difficult for Simone to act with confidence. She wanted answers, she wanted to be sure. Watching the darkness of the night fade into the brightness of the day, Simone realized there would be no answers or certainty. Endings and beginnings were indistinguishable. She wouldn't know a thing until she found herself here again.

End