If You're Out There

by Katy Loutzenhiser

  She pokes her head inside, quizzical. “Did I hear Bette Midler?”

  I close the laptop and cover it with a pillow. “Nope.”

  Mom blows a wavy strand of hair from her face, taking in the chaos of my room. “You okay?”

  I shrug.

  “You know,” she says, weaving through piles of clothes on the floor to reach my window. She pulls the curtains apart and zips up the blind. “It’s a really nice day out there. If you get out now, you could still catch a couple hours of sunlight.”

  “True,” I say, unmoving.

  Mom purses her lips. “Well, if you change your mind I’m here.” Her eyes zero in on the bucket of cookies. “I think I’ll confiscate these now.”

  “Fair,” I say.

  “Hey.” Mom stands above me and takes hold of my chin.

  “I’m fine, Mom.”

  “I’m sorry, but in my experience, fine is never fine. Trust me, I’m an expert.”

  “That’ll be a hundred and fifty dollars,” I say, but she doesn’t laugh.

  And then she gets that look of hers—that overwhelming optimism pouring out like a light so bright it makes you want to squint. “Let’s go do something. Anything, you name it. Spa treatment? Fancy desserts?” She grabs my laundry basket and starts filling it with clothes from the floor. “Or maybe I’m not what you need right now. Want me to leave for a few hours so you can throw a kegger? I’m not even completely kidding.” She hoists the basket on her hip. “I really think I’d prefer a healthy dose of rebellion to the look on your face right now.”

  I crawl out of bed and take the laundry from her. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mom, but I don’t think I could draw much of a crowd.” I set the basket on my dresser, my back to her.

  After a moment, I feel Mom’s chin on my shoulder. I glance down at the floor. She’s popped up on her tiptoes to reach. Sometime during my colossal ninth-grade growth spurt, my mother became my mini-me. I’m over three inches taller than her, and her skin is not as fair or freckly, but we have the same blue-gray eyes and brownish-reddish hair. Nothing on us is a clear-cut color. People tell us we could be twins, but I think Mom’s face is rounder, sweeter. She’s got this glow that makes people fall in love.

  I soften, giving her my weight.

  “I miss her too,” she says into my hair. It’s easy to forget I’m not the only one who’s lost her. “I think . . . How do I say this? Maybe it all got to be . . . too much. It’s a tough time of life to go through without a mom. Add the stress of college applications, moving to a new place, not to mention all those psycho teenager hormones.”

  I turn around. “Is that a clinical term?”

  “I’m just saying, I hope you don’t assume this is about you.”

  “I don’t know, Mom. You really think that’s all it is? She’s . . . sad?”

  “Well . . .” Mom doesn’t quite meet my eyes. “She used to talk to me. Sometimes.”

  I frown. “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing bad. But . . . Once in a while she would sort of . . . open up. Ask me questions. About the parts of life she wasn’t there for, or couldn’t remember anymore.”

  I climb back into bed. I guess that makes sense.

  It’s the one thing Mom and Priya have always shared without me—memories of this person I wish I knew but didn’t really.

  It makes me sort of sick to think that Sita was here the weekend before she died. I saw her for a bit that Friday, then spent the rest of the weekend at a sleepover at Lacey’s.

  I hate picturing Priya at that time. Or Mom, for that matter. She was pregnant with Harr then, and weirdly emotional. Sita came to hang and cheer her up. It’s not like Mom made the car hit ice on the way back from Newark, but I sometimes get the sense she feels vaguely responsible.

  “Look,” says Mom. “I don’t know what’s going through Priya’s head, but I have an idea. I think . . . I think she’s figuring out who she is. And sometimes, when a person is struggling with something like that, they kind of go inward. They feel like they need to get some distance from the ones they love. To work it all out. And sometimes they come back, when they’re ready. I see it in my work all the time.”

  “If something was bothering her I would have—”

  “I know,” says Mom, taking the spot beside me on the bed.

  “I would have tried to help. Anything would have been better than this.”

  “I know,” she says. “I hate that you have to feel this. People never tell you.”

  “What?”

  Her eyes grow glossy, but she smiles. “How much it hurts to lose a friend.”

  I nod through the quiet. “I wish I could remember her.”

  Mom sighs with that nostalgic, happy look she always gets when she talks about Sita. “They were a lot alike. Only she was more . . . unpredictable.”

  “Like how?”

  “Like . . .” Mom bites her lip, her face lighting up. “I remember once, back when we were roommates at Barnard—we’d been strolling around for hours doing nothing when we passed a free concert in the park. It was early and no one was watching these poor guys play. Next thing I knew Sita was pulling me toward the base of the stage, front and center, the whole area to ourselves. We danced like complete fools, until a crowd finally formed.”

  I laugh under my breath. “I can see how she and Ben got together, then. Both spontaneous like that.”

  “Yes and no,” says Mom. She settles back against the bed, quiet a minute. “Sita could be impulsive, sure, but she always . . . She had a vision for her life, and she was methodical about it. Same as Priya in that way. Ben . . .” She frowns. “Ben was always the first one to jump when it came to the big stuff. Did you know he proposed only four months after they met?”

  “Huh,” I say. I didn’t. “Yeah, I think I’d need to know someone for like, a decade, minimum, before committing to that. And maybe run a few background checks.” Mom’s eyes get that knowing glimmer for a second, as if to say, You’ll see, young one.

  “She was so . . . happy,” says Mom. “On the phone when she told me, I swear she sounded twenty years old again. They’d been on their way to pick up Priya from a friend’s house when Ben passed the perfect ring in the window of Tiffany’s. He brought Sita inside, got down on his knees, and begged until she said yes.” Mom shrugs and smiles, as if this fact still baffles her a little.

  It sounds right to me—the Ben part, anyway. He once brought Priya and me on a cruise to Mexico with only three days’ notice. We had fun, though I’m not sure Priya ever recovered from watching him drink from a pineapple while dancing poolside to “Gangnam Style.” (I can still see her face. “Dude,” she muttered, with a slow shake of the head.) As for the whole “seeing Mexico” thing, I don’t think petting a dolphin in a port for a couple of hours really counts, but it’s one of the few stamps in my passport (I had to ask—they don’t normally do it). Off the ship, other tourists kept coming up to Priya to practice their Spanish, assuming she was Mexican. Priya would sigh in my direction but respond, humoring them, in an accent so good they walked off none the wiser. Priya and I had our own room on that trip, our balcony jutting out over water, next to Ben’s. Actually, there was a weird moment one night. I started to go outside when I thought I heard him crying. I never told Priya that. I figured it would just make her sad.

  “Well,” says Mom, as if coming up from a faraway thought. “Somehow Priya came out sensible.”

  I sink back against the headboard. “Maybe she got it from her dad’s side.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You think it bothered Priya more than she let on?”

  She pauses a moment. “What do you mean?”

  “Her dad,” I say. “Not knowing him. You think that could be part of this whole . . . whatever this is?”

  Mom starts to say something but stops. “Oh, who knows, Boop?”

  “Sita really never talked about him?”

  “Wasn’t much to talk about.”

  “I s
till don’t get how she could know so little.” This story always bothered me. I see no shame in sowing oats, but a last name seems bare minimum.

  “It . . . happens,” says Mom carefully. “I don’t think the two of them had any plans to, er . . . stay in touch after . . . that night.” Ha. Mom is getting awkward now.

  “It’s so weird to me that you met him,” I say. “I don’t know how Priya didn’t just bombard you with questions all the time. That would drive me nuts.”

  “Well, it was really only briefly at the bar. I told you about it, right? All MIT kids? The menu on the wall painted to look like the periodic table?” I smile. She’s told me on a number of occasions—Mom Brain, as she calls it—but I let her anyway. (P.S. Of course Priya’s existence was predicated on a nerd bar.)

  “It was supposed to be our big girls’ trip to Boston, visiting our college friend Tasha at grad school.” For a moment, Mom’s expression is far away. “I still wonder whatever happened to Tasha. . . . Anyway, I was too tired to stay out very long. Everyone was giving me crap about it. Later they felt like jerks.”

  “Because you were actually pregnant with me,” I say with a happy sigh. “I know. Thanks for not binge drinking, Mom.”

  She laughs, blinking in thought. “I do wish I could have talked to him more, though. I remember he wore glasses. And Sita said he got cuter with beer.” Mom glares through a smirk. “If you ever do that, I will kill you.”

  The doorbell rings, and Mom and I look at each other, confused.

  “I’ll get it,” she says. After a moment I muster the strength to get back out of bed. I grab a few handfuls of clothes and shove them in the basket, revealing a few more long-obscured patches of floor. From downstairs I faintly make out the sounds of chatting. And right away, Mom’s shouting, “Zan, come down! There’s someone here to see you!”

  I walk out to the top of the stairs, startled to see Logan by the front door.

  I rush the rest of the way down as Mom’s eyes dart back and forth between us. There was a reason I didn’t invite him inside when I gave myself a ride home on his bike the other day.

  “Hi,” I say.

  He’s a bit less raggedy tonight, his hair clean and neatly tied up, his T-shirt free of wrinkles. “Hi,” he says back, shrugging with his hands in his pockets, like there’s no need to explain his being here.

  My mother’s eyes sink into me like OMG who is the cute guy and how come I don’t know about him?? I shoot her a look and her face drops. “Right,” she says. “Well, I’ve got some work . . . to do.” She walks backward as she talks. “It was nice meeting you, um . . .”

  “Logan,” he says with a wave as she bumps into the bottom step. I’ve gone full death-stare now.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I’m not here.”

  “You really don’t get out much, do you?” says Logan when her bedroom door finally closes upstairs.

  I have no comeback, so I say nothing and he follows me to the couch. I feel weird. This is definitely weird. I tug at the hem of my tie-dyed shirt, suddenly wishing I hadn’t chosen such tiny shorts to lounge in.

  We haven’t talked much since Thursday. We were placed in different groups in Spanish yesterday and had to do actual work. I’ve been pretty distracted these past couple of days, but I can’t say I haven’t thought about my afternoon with Logan. And seeing him here . . . It’s like he has this way of filling up the room. It makes me oddly happy. It also makes me want to hide.

  When he sits, I take the opposite end of the couch and grab a pillow for my lap.

  “Do you need my Spanish notes or something?” I ask after a weird silence.

  “No,” he says. “Actually, it’s about your friend. Remember how I sent her a follow request the other day? I noticed this morning that she accepted and followed me back.”

  “Oh,” I say, still perplexed by the sight of him in my house. It feels like worlds colliding.

  “Maybe I should have minded my own business, but it was bugging me. The whole story you told me, and how that back-and-forth at the restaurant just sort of stopped. Anyway I got curious, so I wrote a comment on her photo. To see if she’d respond.”

  “Wait, what?” I snap to attention. “Why?”

  “Thirst for knowledge?” he says, shrugging. “A general propensity for distracting myself with other people’s lives?”

  I frown at him. Logan does this thing, I’ve noticed, that makes the task of interpreting sarcasm versus sincerity nearly impossible. But right now, I’m too curious to care. “What’d you write?”

  “Uh, I think I said, like, ‘How’s it going?’”

  My face falls. “That was your comment.”

  “I admit, it wasn’t the most creative line,” he says with a grin. “But. Well, that’s not why I came over.” He moves next to me on the couch and gives me his phone. “Look.”

  thepriyapatel514 @loganhartist Things are going great! Hope the same is true for you, Logan!!

  “It’s weird, right? It almost seems like . . .”

  Our eyes meet. “She’s acting like she knows you.”

  We sit there quietly for a moment, staring down at the phone. My brain has hit a wall. It does not compute. None of this is right. Is she flirting with a stranger? And what’s with all those cutesy exclamation points? Although, I don’t know. I sigh. “Maybe she thinks you’re . . . cute?”

  “I mean.” Logan stretches his long legs onto the coffee table, gesturing to himself.

  “I take it back,” I say, rolling my eyes.

  “Can’t,” he says seriously. “Can’t take it back.”

  “I bet she has you confused with someone else,” I say, moving on. “But hey, you’ve got her talking. Maybe you should write back.”

  “Okay,” he says. “How about this . . .”

  loganhartist @thepriyapatel514 A lot of people miss you, you know.

  “It’s good,” I say. “That could get us somewhere.”

  Logan scans the room. “I like your house, by the way. It’s so . . . quiet.”

  “Quiet, huh? What, is your aunt keeping you up with ragers all night?”

  He grins. “Hey. Bonnie can get down when she wants.”

  I relax into the cushions. “Well, it’s usually more hectic here. My little brother’s out.”

  “How old?” asks Logan.

  “Seven.”

  “Huh. My sister’s six.” He pulls up a picture on his phone. The girl’s hair is even blonder than his, curled into ringlets around a beaming, tiny-toothed face. “Brittany.” Our heads almost knock together as I take the phone in my hands, and I get a waft of clean boy smell. Priya loved that smell. #255, was it? The best ones always smell like soap. “We call her Bee.”

  “Cute,” I say, feeling suddenly jumpy. I straighten up. “And uh . . . She’s in Chicago with you? At your aunt’s house?”

  “She is.” He collapses back into the couch. “She’s not too happy about it. New house. New friends . . .”

  I nod, all business again. “You should bring her over sometime. Let her meet my brother. Although I should warn you. He’s something of a serial monogamist. The kid’s had more dating experience than I have.”

  “Really,” says Logan, an eyebrow raised. “Care to elaborate on that?”

  “Nope,” I say coolly, though I mentally smack my own forehead—really walked into that one, didn’t I? The numbers paint a sad picture. Guys kissed? Just one (unless you count Eddy, which—NEVER). Brian Poulos from my coed weeklong soccer camp two summers ago was cute and nice, and from our talks on the phone, Priya thought he sounded deserving of a romantic gesture. It was his last year, so in an effort to get the experience over with, I hit him with a cowardly I’ll-never-see-you-again-anyway kiss on the day we were going home. It was a significant upgrade from Eddy’s cold-dead-fish lips. The kiss was kind of funny, actually, both of us smiling and self-conscious as we pulled back. But it was also kind of . . . wet.

  Afterward I felt no need to gush and cry and call everyone
I knew. I didn’t start relating to every love song on the radio. Not surprisingly, when it comes to actual boyfriends, the number is a big, fat zero.

  Logan checks his phone. “Huh.”

  “What?” I say.

  “Priya again. That was fast.”

  “Seriously?” My pulse quickens. “Read it.”

  He clears his throat, appearing suddenly dubious. “Sad face. Heart emoji. ‘Miss you guys.’” He blinks. “Okay, she definitely thinks I’m someone else.”

  “Who?” I throw my hands up. “Who could she possibly be mistaking you for? We don’t know another Logan at Prewitt. And who is you guys? She didn’t have like . . . a big cohesive group or anything. Maybe she thinks you’re one of her boyfriend’s friends at Northwestern?”

  “Older man, huh?”

  “Yeah. He’s British too, so that makes it extra sophisticated.”

  Logan thinks a moment as I pout into my throw pillow. “Have you tried talking to him? Maybe he could explain some of this.”

  “We never met. Wanted to, but it never happened. It’s a hike up to Evanston and they’d only been dating a few months when she moved.”

  “How’d they meet?”

  “In a class at Northwestern. Our school ran out of them.”

  Logan frowns. “Ran out of what?”

  “Of classes. Priya is ridiculously smart. In most subjects, but languages especially. The girl speaks like a billion of them.”

  “A billion, huh?”

  “Beyond English and Hindi, she’s got Spanish pretty much down. She kept up great with the guys at the restaurant, even the jokes, which are the hardest. She taught herself some French online. And I think she and Nick met learning Arabic at Northwestern. Mandarin and German were on deck. Oh! And she can sign. I think she has it in her head that one day she’ll be this, like, master communicator. She told me once that in a perfect world, she would travel all over and speak to every person she met in their own words—no barriers between them. I thought that was so cool.” Logan’s smile is soft and easy as he watches me talk. It makes me sort of squirmy. “Anyway. By the start of sophomore year she was too smart for the majority of the teaching staff at Prewitt. They didn’t even try to deny it.”