When We Were Infinite

Chapter 1


AROUND DUSK in Congress Springs, when it's been a clear day, the fog comes creeping over the Santa Cruz Mountains from the coast, shrouding the oaks and the redwoods in a layer of mist. The freeways there tip you north to San Francisco or south to San Jose, hugging those mountains and the foothills going up the coast on one side and the shoreline of the Bay on the other.

It was still late afternoon the day we were heading up through the Peninsula to SF for our annual Fall Showcase, and sharply clear-skied, which made it feel like the blazing gold of the oak trees and the straw-colored grass of the hills had burned away all the fog. It was October, and we were seven weeks into our school year and ten weeks into our final year in BAYS. Sometimes I wondered about early humans who watched the grasses die and the trees turn fiery and then expire, if they thought it meant their world was ending. That year, because it was our last together, it felt a little like that to me.

So far just Sunny and Jason were eighteen and could legally drive the rest of us around, so Sunny was driving; I was sitting squeezed in between Jason and Brandon in the back seat, Grace in the front, my whole world contained in that small space. Jason, Grace, and I all had our violins on our laps so Brandon's bass would fit in the trunk with Sunny's oboe and her stash of Costco almonds, and I was holding my phone in my hands because I was hoping to hear back from my father.

"Is that a new dress, Grace?" Sunny said as we passed the Stanford Dish. Sunny wasn't sentimental, but when she cared about you, she followed the things in your life closely, almost osmotically. "It's cute."

"Thanks!" Grace said. "I thought it might work for Homecoming, too."

"Except that Homecoming will never happen," Brandon said, waggling his eyebrows at Sunny in the rearview mirror. "We're all waiting for Jay's big moment, but the end of the world will come, and there we'll all be staring

Kelly Loy Gilbert believes deeply in the power of stories to illuminate a shared humanity and give voice to complex, broken people. She is the author of Conviction, a William C. Morris Award finalist, Picture Us in the Light, When We Were Infinite, and Everyone Wants to Know, and lives in the Bay Area. She would be thrilled to hear from you on X (previously known as Twitter) @KellyLoyGilbert or at KellyLoyGilbert.com.

* "Beautifully, achingly cathartic." Kirkus Reviews, starred review