by JB Dutton
* * * * *
Mom headed back on the 26th to meet up with Bob. I was looking forward to another week of Snapchat, beach, IG, TV, and being woken up by Gran before several species of bird were even poking their beaks out of their nests.
I’d had zero contact with Cruz even though I’d sent him a Merry Christmas text, and it was beginning to really upset me. Then, on the morning of the 26th, all that changed. I was sitting on the grass outside my grandparents’ condo when Cruz texted me back saying he’d seen Aranara. Just reading her name on the screen made my temperature rise. I had to call him.
He answered after one ring: “Hey. Guess you got my text.”
My mouth went dry and it took me a few moments to get my shit together and be able to speak.
“Yeah. Um, so, you’re, like, seeing Aranara?”
“Jeez, Kari! I said I’d seen her.”
“Okay.”
“In Chelsea Market.”
I burst out laughing. Some of the tension between us dissipated.
“What the eff were you doing in Chelsea Market?”
I couldn’t imagine Cruz hanging out among the gourmet bakeries and chic urban boutiques.
“The restaurant sent me to buy some shit at the kitchen supply place. She was in this weird gym with people balancing on surf boards.”
“Okay.”
Great, she was wearing workout clothes. Man, I hated this jealous feeling.
“Yeah, so she saw me and came out. She said she’d been trying to find me.”
“Okay.” Crap. It got worse.
“She said she knew where Noon was and that he was in trouble.”
I stopped breathing. I moved the phone away from my ear. Cruz’s distant, tinny voice drifted into my consciousness.
“Kari?”
I snapped out of it and answered, “Yeah, okay, so now she’s worried about Noon? Last time I saw her she wouldn’t even look at him.”
“Kari – ”
I was starting to lose it.
“I mean, she was, like, all over you.”
“Kari, listen.”
“And now she’s pretending to care about Noon to get on my good side and make me stop wondering, and then she’ll make a move on – ”
“KARI!”
I almost jumped out of my seat.
“What?” I asked faintly.
“She’s Noon’s sister.”
Bombshell.
Cruz gave me a few seconds to let it sink in, then repeated, “She’s his sister.”
“I... I...” was all that came out of my mouth. Too stunned to speak.
“Crazy, right?” said Cruz.
“Uh-huh. Noon is her brother?”
Sometimes my IQ just shoots right off the scale.
“Yeah,” chuckled Cruz.
“So what else? What did she say about him?”
“She said he needs you.”
My stomach was doing cartwheels. It was bad enough that things had turned awkward with Cruz, now all those feelings I had around Noon were flooding back. But this time something was different. Now he needed me.
My voice was quavering. “So... what does that mean?”
“Aranara said you should come back to New York right away. Before it’s too late.”
“Too late!” I yelled, attracting disapproving looks from a sun-visored, white-haired woman walking nearby.
“She wouldn’t tell me anything else and I had to get back to work.”
“Did you get her number?” I asked frantically.
“Yeah, yeah,” answered Cruz. “Chill, Kari.”
My heart was in my mouth. Definitely not chill.
“Can you text it to me?”
“Sure. Are you okay?”
“Oh yeah. Apart from feeling like my brain is gonna implode I’m fine.”
Cruz laughed. “Well, at least you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”
“But what am I gonna do? Mom flew off to Europe last night and I’m in, like, Snoozeville, Florida.”
“I don’t know. Talk to Aranara?”
He was right. That was step one.
“Okay, I’ll call her right now.”
“Yeah, do that. I gotta bounce,” he said.
There was a pause. Crap. What was he thinking? He’d have to be stupid not to know that I had feelings for Noon. God only knows what those feelings were, but neither of us could deny that they existed.
“You too, Cruz.”
I hung up. A few seconds later my phone buzzed. I stared at Aranara’s number in the text message. A seagull screeched loudly, right overhead, making me jump. An older man was practicing his golf swing across the way, the swoosh of the club making a random beat among the swish of the lawn sprinklers. He looked familiar. Must be one of Pop’s friends.
As I hit the text message link, I couldn’t help but think that my life was about to take another turn toward the unpredictable.
She answered immediately. “Aranara speaking.”
I took a big gulp. “Hey, Aranara. It’s Kari.”
“Oh, I’m so happy you called,” she said, but her voice was missing its usual sparkle.
“Cruz gave me your number.”
“I know.” she said, as though she’d been standing over my shoulder for the last five minutes.
“Right, so – ”
“You’ve got to come back,” she interrupted. “Noon is in trouble and I can’t explain over the phone, but you can help.”
“What kind of trouble?” I asked.
“Come back and I’ll tell you while we’re on the way to meet up with him.”
“How? Steal a golf cart and drive it up the I-95?”
“It’s great you can laugh about this,” she said, “but it’s serious. I’m really worried about him and I can’t talk to our parents about it.”
“I don’t understand,” I admitted.
“I know, but you will. Cilic will come pick you up in the limo tonight.”
That wasn’t as simple as she was making it sound.
“Pick me up where? Gran and Pops will freak. They might even have a stroke. One big, communal stroke.”
“Calm down, Kari. Just leave them a note telling them that you’re taking the Greyhound to meet your boyfriend in New York and that they can call you on your cell. Draw them a smiley face, some flowers and kisses. Be cute. But make sure they’ll see the note. Tape it to the medicine cabinet. When they call, tell them that you sent your mom an email and that she thinks Cruz is a hottie and finds the whole thing very romantic.”
“I don’t know...”
“There are plenty of other sixteen-year-olds who do worse than this, and you should tell your mom that in the email. Pre-apologize.”
“Wow, Aranara, that’s easy for you to say.”
“Don’t you care about Noon?”
I sighed and lay back in the grass.
“Of course I do!”
“Don’t you want to know about the Temple of Truth?”
And this was where she got me. The mystery. Not just my feelings for Noon, but my questions. What was he all about? How could I get through to him?
“Fine.”
I could almost feel her smiling on the other end.
“Perfect. Cilic will be at the gate from 1 p.m. Sneak out when your grandparents have their afternoon nap and I’ll be waiting when you get here.”
She hung up. I stared at the seagull hovering and swooping above me, and felt myself floating away from my increasingly bizarre reality. I guess I needed to escape it, if only for a minute, because a bunch of crazy questions came to me. Why do seagulls fly over land, I wondered? Don’t they eat fish? Do you ever see a seagull eating anything other than fish? Maybe they just like flying out of their comfort zone. Heading off to adventure...
What I should have been wondering was how Aranara knew where my grandparents lived.
I closed my eyes. I was only certain of one thing: I had to take the leap.
