Title

Wayward

Document Type

Creative Writing

Publication Date

Winter 2011

Department 1

English

Abstract

It’s hard to imagine, now, how it was that I took up with that boy in South Carolina, but facts are facts. William Buchanan Redmond was lawless and drawling, full of sideways glances and outrageous proposals. He went by Cannon.

One night on Hilton Head Island, where I was staying with a friend’s family (thanks to private school I had friends with houses on Nantucket, etcetera, though I lived in a modest house with my mother and sister that we were renovating to resell), he approached me at an outdoor concert. A guitarist was playing a sing-along rendition of “Take Me Home, Country Road” in the piazza down by the harbor, hired by the resort to entertain visitors while they strolled and ate ice cream. Cannon sat down next to me on a brick wall. I thought he was cute. I’d say something more intelligent, except my teenage diaries reveal a definite simplicity of thought: he was cute. He was cool. He was dealing drugs out of a purple van in the parking lot. [excerpt]

Required Publisher's Statement

Original version available from the publisher at: http://harvardreview.fas.harvard.edu/?q=print-issues/harvard-review-41

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