Fragments of the Lost

by Megan Miranda

  The letter isn’t here. None of them are.

  I try the middle drawer, and here’s where the college letters are. He played lacrosse, but he wasn’t going to be recruited for it. That’s what he told me, anyway, explaining why he was so diligent about his grades.

  It was something I understood all too well, being related to Julian, who had been naturally gifted at something so definitive from a young age. Meanwhile, I was an above-average runner, but I had to really work for it. Nobody was going to come looking for me.

  Still, Caleb had offers to come visit schools. To stay with other students, see how things work. He was a good student. A decent athlete. His test scores were high. He would’ve gotten into a good school.

  The college pamphlets are from state schools. There are letters, folded up in envelopes with his name and address typed on the front, all touting their schools’ benefits and inviting him to consider applying. There are thick packets with applications inside, still untouched.

  I don’t see the hand-printed envelope that gave me the paper cut. He probably threw it out. I don’t see anything in these papers that would make him want to hide it from me. These are all for in-state schools. What was there for me to be so worried about?

  But in some ways, it was the beginning of the end.

  He made it a thing, by hiding it. Manifested the worry out of thin air. So at any mention of college, my stomach would knot, and my shoulders would tighten, and I’d picture a different Caleb, in a different place, with a different girl, while I stayed here, finishing out my last year of high school.

  He went on his first school visit in early September of this year, not even thirty miles away. I won’t be far, he’d said, not looking at me as he packed.

  His duffel bag was in the middle of his bed. I was standing near the entrance, watching his back. “Jessa,” he said, “you’re making me nervous, just standing there.”

  What I wanted to tell him was that he was making me nervous. There was something off in his energy, in the way he was moving, like he wasn’t focused on any one thing.

  I couldn’t watch anymore. Couldn’t put words to the feeling growing between us. “I have to go,” I said, “I’m meeting Hailey to study.”

  “See you in a few days,” he called after me, when I was already halfway down the steps.

  But his phone, the entire trip, went straight to voicemail. He said he forgot his charger. He said he was just really busy. But not too busy to return home with a school T-shirt and a hangover.

  Just leave it, Jessa. I hear him again.

  What’s the point? He’s gone.

  I decide these college letters will go in the box of his personal things. So his mother can see the Caleb who might’ve lived. All the potential paths he could’ve taken. All the men he could’ve become.

  Underneath the college letters are a collection of notebooks with spiral bindings that I recognize from school. They say MATH and ENGLISH and SCIENCE on the fronts, in black marker. He never got rid of them, even after the semester was over, saying they might be useful one day, which made me laugh. But he was serious.

  All this planning, Caleb. All these things you kept.

  And then there’s the letter opener, buried below. The light from the uncovered window hits the sharp point, and I grab it in my hand, the metal colder than I expected.

  The first time I saw this, one Saturday in early July, it was on his bedside table. I’d thought it was a knife. He thought that was hilarious.

  I’d been sitting on the edge of his bed, waiting for him to finish his shower. I’d used the hose in his backyard to wash away the sand and the salt. We’d just come in from the beach, the one place where everything felt normal, and I’d tell myself it was all in my head; the silence and the distractions, the distance I felt growing between us.

  He’d stood in the doorway, rubbing a towel over his drying hair, grinning. “Badass with a letter opener,” he said.

  “A what?” I looked again. It looked like a miniature sword, fashioned into a point.

  “An opener. For letters.” He walked across the room, took it from my hand, demonstrated on a folded-over piece of paper on his desk. A sharp tear of paper, the sound like nails on a chalkboard.

  “I’m sorry, we need a tool for that?”

  He smiled, flipped it around, showing me the base. “It was my grandfather’s. Then my father’s. Now it’s mine.”

  The initials DE were engraved into the silver handle. The letter opener became something else in his hand. Pieces of his family, passed down.

  Now I wonder who this would go to next. Mia has a different father. Maybe his mother knew of some other descendants of his grandfather. Maybe there were cousins. He never mentioned them, if he had them.

  There was something serious about the moment I’d held it in my hand that first day, as if I were holding generations and history and blood and weight.

  But I’d made light of it instead, desperate for these moments when we were laughing, and everything felt fresh and surface-new. I took it back from him and held it in my hand like a miniature sword, keeping light on my toes, backpedaling as if defending myself. He sidestepped behind me, wrapped me up in his arms so I lost my concentration, kissed me on the neck and disarmed me in the same breath. Smiled with the letter opener in his hand as he spun me around.

  “Cheater,” I said.

  “Practice,” he said, smiling wide. Then he turned and flung the letter opener at the wall, like we’d seen in a hundred different action movies. But it ricocheted off the wall at the base instead, landing on the carpeted floor with a faint thud.

  I’d burst out laughing, from the impulsiveness, from the ridiculousness. Anything to fill the silence, where the gap between us grew.

  —

  The spot on the wall where the letter opener hit has a faint chip in the paint, and I find my eyes drifting there now. I can see it, in the light. But there are several scratches. I stand, as if compelled by the wall across the way, and I walk around the bed, my fingers raised in front of me, until they touch the wall, the chips and dents in the gray paint. I run my fingers through the grooves, unable to decipher the dent he had made that day from all the others.

  Because it seems like he must’ve sat on his bed, practicing that throw, over and over, afterward. Seeing if he could get the point to stick in the plaster. Driven by the idea of it. Practice, he’d said.

  I bring the letter opener closer to my face, turning the blade over. There’s a streak of gray along one of the edges, like it had been embedded in the wall. And suddenly it’s not my hand, but his, clenched in a fist around the base. For a second, I catch the faintest scent of the river, and my grip loosens, the blade drops, and Caleb is gone again.

  Bending down to pick up the letter opener, I see a shadow in the shape of feet under the gray bed skirt that skims the floor. Almost as if someone is standing at the other side of the bed, watching me. But lifting the bed skirt, everything slips into focus: they’re just shoes. I pull out the boots, which turn from shadowed shapes to a muddy brown in the sunlight. The rubber soles still have pebbles lodged in the grooves. The laces are undone and stiff from dirt and dried water. I put them aside, thinking trash—because really, they’re kind of gross—but they’re also pretty good hiking boots, or so he informed me.

  When we went hiking in the beginning of June, I wore sneakers. My running shoes. They’d gotten me through all sorts of terrain, up and down hills during cross-country practice, through wind and rain and the occasional snow day.

  Caleb picked me up that Saturday morning before dawn, and I was the only one awake in my house. It felt like the world was ours. He raised an eyebrow at my gray and purple bag. My backpack, really. And my choice of footwear. My sneakers. It felt like he was criticizing me with his look, when all he’d said the day before was, Will you come on a hike with me tomorrow?

  “Sorry, I didn’t have time to go shopping for camo-style hiking gear,” I said. “But it gets the job done
.”

  We left at six a.m. and drove for just about two hours, past signs for the Delaware Water Gap.

  I slept on and off most of the way there. The crunch of loose gravel under the tires was what woke me, as we pulled off the main road. My head was leaning against the window. I caught Caleb staring out the front window, looking up.

  “We’re here?” I asked.

  We pulled off the road at a sign with an arrow, a hiking trail name, an icon for picnic tables. Caleb eased slowly into a small circular lot made of dirt, where another pair of hikers were loading up supplies from their trunk.

  He shifted into park. Twisted in his seat for his hiking boots, changed out of his sneakers.

  This was my second indication that hiking was not going to be what I thought it was. My first indication being the six a.m. start time.

  It didn’t take me long to realize that the sneakers were a mistake. The rocks were slippery with morning dew, nearby moisture from the stream trickling down beside us. I stayed on the dirt path, feeling blisters forming at my heels, even though I’d run in these shoes up and down hills and dirt tracks before. There was something to the motion that was different, and at one point I threw my backpack to the ground and let out a huff.

  “Come on,” Caleb said, unamused.

  “Maybe I should leave the bag and just try running.”

  He checked his watch, looked up the trail again, tapped his heel against a rock while I adjusted my socks. “Anything that will make you go faster,” he mumbled.

  I swatted him with my bag as I hooked it back on my shoulders, and he grinned, relenting.

  I kept my eyes on his boots while we moved, trying to step in his steps, breathe when he breathed. Within minutes, I was in perfect sync with Caleb, and I felt close to him, even as he was facing away, looking away, in silence.

  Eventually his steps sped up, and he was scrambling up the rocks, and I fell out of sync, silently cursing both the lack of traction on my shoes and Caleb for not waiting. Then, abruptly, he stopped. I almost ran smack into his back. He was frozen in a clearing made of boulders, and we were on the top of the mountain. There was a drop-off beyond, and the valley and the river stretched below us, in endless green and blue.

  “Oh,” I said as I came to rest beside him.

  Caleb’s mouth was slightly open, and his eyes had this faraway look, and I thought, in that moment, that he was heartbreakingly beautiful. Without looking, he reached a hand over for mine, lacing our fingers together—both of our hands pulsing hot from the hike, a sharp contrast against the cold of the breeze on the exposed overlook.

  He didn’t take a picture, and neither did I, because I understood. You couldn’t really capture it. Anything we did, forcing the look and feel into a flat two dimensions, would strip the moment for the both of us.

  I sat on the rock behind us, and Caleb looked down at me. “We’re not done,” he said.

  I scrunched up my face. Thought about the length we’d already walked, and would most likely have to walk back. “You were right,” I said. “About the sneakers.”

  He reached a hand down and pulled me up, pulled me close, so it was just us and the trees and the sky. “It’ll be worth it. I promise.”

  The trail snaked downward this time, down off the mountain, into the trees, the path turning back to roots and dirt. The sound of birds calling, insects crying, and the hint of something more, in the distance.

  We were making our way toward something—what had started as a faint hum was slowly becoming a roar. Eventually we reached a clearing, which gave way to a wide river trailing between large, flat rocks, and a waterfall streaming down from the rocks behind us. Close to the shore, the mist rose up off the water, coating everything.

  On the other side of the river, there was a group of people having lunch, and a few others swimming. In the distance, through the trees, there were a scattering of tents, a makeshift campground. Caleb sat on a stone at the water’s edge, used a stick to try prying a rock from the sole of his boots.

  “This is the end,” he said.

  “Of the hike?”

  He grinned. “That. And New Jersey.”

  “Ohh,” I said, raising my hand to my forehead, as if surveying a foreign territory. “The fabled land of Pennsylvania? I’ve heard stories of such a place.”

  He laughed, extracted a larger section of mud from his shoe, and tossed it into the river. Then he fell silent. He was watching the group on the other side of the river—a father, a mother, children. There were other adults, presumably relatives. A few people were swimming, independently, closer to the waterfall. I wondered if he yearned for something, if he saw what was lacking in his own life. Or if he was just hungry for their food.

  “We should’ve done the picnic thing,” I said.

  He seemed startled by me standing there beside him. The sound of the water was hypnotic, making the nearby voices fade away.

  “Oh, and who would’ve carried that?” He shook his head and pulled out his camera. “Come on,” he said, unlacing his shoes.

  I did the same, glad track season was over, because my feet were pretty beat-up looking from the hike, and my coach would have a fit if I came to practice complaining about blisters.

  Caleb waded out a little into the river, holding my hand, and I was unprepared for the shock of cold. But he kept moving, until we were as deep as I wanted to go, in clothes. The water was up past our knees, touching the base of his shorts, and mine.

  We stood in the river, on the border, rocks and dirt under our toes. “We’re not in New Jersey anymore. But we’re not in Pennsylvania, either,” he said.

  “We’re nowhere,” I said, and the current ran over my bare feet, up my bare legs, numbing and enticing all at once.

  I hopped onto his back, made him carry me out, laughing as my toes tapped the surface of the water when he pretended to drop me.

  We tried to get a picture when we were back on the shore, the two of us in a frame, the waterfall behind us. But our faces were too close, blocking everything. One of the men who’d been swimming was now wading up to his knees, and he offered to take the photo for us. “You guys look like you could use some help.”

  Caleb passed him the camera, and the man shook off his hands to dry them first before taking it. He didn’t count us down, or say ready or anything; he just took the shot and handed the camera back. In the photo, I’m half wincing from the cold on my feet, and Caleb seems distracted, looking somewhere beyond the camera. Neither of us is truly smiling, but there’s something beautiful about it, still. Maybe it’s the waterfall. Maybe it’s the way we were both caught unprepared. Or maybe it’s everything surrounding us. The mist coming up off the water. The scattering of people at the end of the frame, caught midmotion, hands scooping water, an arc of water droplets, a child with his hand on the way up to block his face.

  —

  It was worth it later, he was right. If only for the drive back, and the stop at the drugstore, and the way he set me in the backseat, holding my bare foot in his hand, wrapping the Band-Aid around.

  And because, when he dropped me off, my legs sore, my body sweaty and gross, he said, “Thanks for today, Jessa.”

  It was the last time he thanked me for anything and meant it.

  —

  I throw the hiking boots in an empty box and the sound echoes through the room. I remember that waterfall photo—the last photo of us that had been on the wall. The beginning of the end. I make my way back to his desk, needing more.

  After emptying the rest of the middle drawer, I move on to the last.

  The top drawer is in disarray, as I had expected. There’s the calculator to the side, a heap of papers, ticket stubs, receipts. All thrown in, one on top of the other. You can work your way down to the bottom, like moving back in time.

  Except there’s something wrong with the chaos. The receipt on top is from a year ago, covering the concert tickets from last spring. I piece through them gently, so as not to disturb the
balance.

  Near the bottom, completely out of order, I find two ticket stubs from a Yankees game, his and mine, a secret my parents still didn’t know about. I wasn’t supposed to be in New York City at all. I wasn’t even supposed to be off the school grounds.

  —

  Late April. Max and Hailey and Sophie. A guy named Stan who lived in the city, who Max knew. Hailey’s brief failed date with Craig Keegan. All of us bursting with energy on the train station platform, skipping out on school.

  Max had gotten bleacher seats through his friend Stan, twelve bucks apiece, a perfect outing on a sunny April afternoon. It was unofficially senior skip day, so half the school would be missing anyway. Julian was visiting the UPenn campus for the long weekend, and my parents were driving him up and spending the day. Skipping school was not something I did often (or ever, really), and the day buzzed with the added adrenaline.

  We took the train into the city, switched to the subway, riding it out to the Bronx. Holding on to the bars overhead in the packed subway car, holding on to each other. Taking the stadium ramp up and up and up until we emerged to the sunlit arena, the green and brown of the field, the players moving like miniature figurines in the distance.

  I don’t remember much about the game itself. I do remember the hot dogs, the pretzels, the ice cream. How far away we were, in the bleachers. The players indistinguishable below. Three hours laughing with Caleb and Hailey, and Hailey giving me a look about Craig Keegan, like, This is so not happening. Craig had spent most of the time asking Stan what other tickets he could get. Max was the only one who seemed to be paying attention to the game. The rest of us were just there for the thrill of it.

  On the way home, we got caught in the exit rush, streams of people funneling back down the ramps, out into the street, down into the subway station. Caleb and I had calculated how much it would cost for four subway rides, and put the money on a card together—not realizing the card itself had a purchase fee.