Everything We Lost

by Valerie Geary

  Nolan’s was the only vehicle left parked on the side of the road. A patrol car had pulled up behind it. Headlights and a blinding spotlight shone into the cab and stretched long, strange shadows across the desert. A uniformed officer walked a slow circle around the pickup. He spoke into his radio, then turned when he heard footsteps approaching and pointed a flashlight beam into Nolan’s eyes. His other hand went for his gun.

  Nolan stopped walking and raised his hands above his head.

  “Is this your truck?” the officer asked.

  Nolan nodded, too afraid to speak. For an instant, he worried that Celeste had waited for him, but he didn’t see her lurking anywhere and hoped she’d hitched a ride from someone else. As long as she wasn’t here, as long as this cop didn’t learn of her existence, she’d be safe.

  The officer lowered the flashlight to Nolan’s chest. He was a silhouette behind the beam, a dark and anonymous blob. His voice was gruff and void of emotion. “Go ahead and come on over. Put your hands flat on the hood for me.”

  Nolan hesitated. He thought about running, but the officer had a Taser on his belt. And a gun. The best thing to do was play along, do as he was told, do whatever the officer asked, and get this over with as fast as he could. He hadn’t been drinking or doing anything illegal that he knew of, and if he didn’t give the officer a reason to arrest him, he didn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t be driving home within the half hour, driving to find Celeste.

  He did as he was told. The spotlight on the patrol car shone into his face. He lowered his head, stared down at his fingers spread wide, and tried not to panic.

  The officer reeked of leather and some kind of spiced aftershave. Metal rattled on his belt. “You got a name, kid?”

  “Nolan Durant.” His voice trembled without his permission.

  “Carrying any weapons, Nolan? Anything sharp?”

  “No, sir.”

  The officer roughly patted down Nolan’s arms and chest, his hips and the backs of his legs. He took Nolan’s keys from his pants pocket and tossed them onto the hood, out of reach. “Do you have your driver’s license with you?”

  “It’s in the truck. In the glove box.”

  The officer’s radio crackled and squawked. Nolan flinched. The officer muttered something to the dispatcher on the other end and then raised his voice again. “You want to tell me what you’re doing out here tonight, Nolan?”

  “Stargazing.” It was the truth. Mostly.

  “All by yourself?”

  Nolan thought of Celeste, her lips soft and warm, her body fitting so perfectly with his, how quickly and beautifully she came to life under the stars, how quickly she’d disappeared.

  “Yes, sir,” he answered, swallowing around a hard knot forming in his throat. “Just me.”

  The officer leaned in close, first grabbing Nolan’s right arm, then his left, then pulling both hands behind Nolan’s back. He tried to look over his shoulder, but his arms twisted too tight, and any position other than looking straight ahead caused pain. Handcuffs bit into his wrists.

  “What’s going on? Am I under arrest?” Nolan couldn’t keep his voice from sounding panicked; he didn’t even try. “I didn’t do anything.”

  The officer turned Nolan so his back pressed against the grill. The handcuffs were tight, and Nolan’s fingertips tingled from lack of blood, but he was too scared to complain.

  The officer turned off his flashlight. He was younger than Nolan expected, probably no older than thirty, black and clean-shaven, his dark hair trimmed close to his scalp. Stitched in white thread across his shirt pocket was his last name: Williams. There was an intensity to his gaze, and Nolan really started to worry then, afraid the man would be able to work a confession from him without Nolan saying a single word. He would see Celeste reflected in Nolan’s eyes, smell her on his skin, penetrate his thoughts and find her there too.

  “Have you had anything to drink tonight, Nolan?” Officer Williams asked.

  “No, sir.” He shook his head.

  “Drugs?”

  “No.”

  “Do you deal?”

  “What? No, of course not.”

  “And this is your vehicle? This one here?” He pointed the butt of his flashlight at Nolan’s pickup.

  “Yes,” Nolan said, wanting to get to the point, to get through this next part as fast as possible so the handcuffs could come off and he could get the hell out of here. “Yes. The registration’s in the glove box. With my name on it. And there’s an insurance card too.”

  Officer Williams stared at Nolan, his expression unreadable.

  “Go ahead.” Nolan gestured with his elbow to the keys on the hood, frantic for the man’s eyes to be off of him now. “Have a look.”

  Officer Williams grabbed the keys and unlocked the driver-side door. He ducked his upper body into the cab. Nolan craned his neck, trying to see what the man was doing, but he couldn’t get turned around and the angle was bad, the spotlight on the patrol car keeping him from seeing anything properly. A few minutes later, Officer Williams straightened and held up something for Nolan to see. A clear, plastic sandwich bag, twisted at the top and knotted, inside which were a dozen or more white pills that looked like tiny aspirin tablets.

  “What is that?” Nolan asked.

  For the first time that night, Officer Williams’s expression changed. His mouth twisted into a smirk, and he shook his head like he was disappointed. He balled up the bag in his fist, shut the door, and returned to where Nolan stood. “I’m placing you under arrest for possession of an illegal substance.”

  “Wait.” He struggled against the handcuffs. “That’s not mine. Please, listen, you have to believe me. I’ve never seen that bag before. That wasn’t in my truck when I parked. That wasn’t . . . I don’t even know what those pills are. Someone else must have put them there.”

  Ignoring his protests, Officer Williams took Nolan by the elbow and guided him to the patrol car.

  8

  Lucy spent the rest of Saturday night in her motel room, watching reruns of Law & Order and eating potato chips and a Snickers bar from the vending machine, the only dinner she could afford since she had to pay for another night’s stay. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could live off her credit card. A few more days, maybe, before the balance snowballed into a burden. She thought about calling her father and asking to borrow more money, but she could imagine his response. Most likely he would demand she come home. Most likely he would want the money he gave her for the apartment returned immediately. And there was no chance in hell he’d even consider financing her dead-end quest. At one point, during a commercial break, Lucy opened her laptop and a Word document and tried to re-create from memory a timeline of what she remembered from the night Nolan went missing, but this proved more frustrating than useful, white space swallowing the page, the cursor mocking her with its incessant blinking.

  Sunday morning, after a restless night’s sleep, she called Detective Williams. He was surprised to hear from her, but told her to come down to the station before eleven; he was catching up on some paperwork and would be more than happy to try and answer whatever questions she had. Lucy showered and dressed, then drove thirty miles south to the Inyo County sheriff’s office in Independence.

  On her way there, she had to pass by Owens Valley Radio Observatory, and though the actual site was some distance from the highway, the telescopes were visible from the road. She tried not to look at them, but they were impossible to ignore. So tall, so regal, their wide, white faces tilted at a sharp angle, reflecting the sun. When she was a little girl, she’d imagined herself working there someday, side by side with Nolan, scanning the skies for mysteries. Now this place only served as a reminder of everything she’d lost.

  Detective Williams met Lucy at the front desk. He looked young for a detective, midthirties or a little older, and was dressed casually in dark jeans and a gray polo shirt. Stitched onto the front of his shirt beneath the left collar was a small sher
iff’s star that matched the Inyo County seal. Other than that, there was nothing about him to indicate he was law enforcement. No handcuffs, no badge, no gun.

  After a quick handshake, he escorted Lucy into the main office. Most of the desks were vacant of people, though cluttered with papers and coffee mugs, as if the occupants had simply stepped away for a moment. Across the room a uniformed officer worked at a computer. Somewhere a phone rang. Tacked to a bulletin board were sketches and photographs of wanted men and women, their half-dead eyes staring out across the room. On another board were the faces of children. Girls and boys of varying ages and ethnicities, all of them smiling and happy, their innocence not yet shattered. These pictures had been taken at school or on vacation, when they were safe with their families, during a period of time when their future was bright—before they went missing. Lucy scanned the posters for Nolan, but none of the faces were his.

  “After you called, I pulled up your brother’s file.” Detective Williams gestured for her to take a seat in a plastic chair beside his desk. “I remember him.”

  “You do?” Lucy didn’t think she would have forgotten Detective Williams. In this area, a black man in a uniform was something memorable. Plus, he was handsome, and projected the kind of seriousness that she would have latched onto if he’d been an active part of the initial investigation. As far as she could remember, this was the first time they’d ever met.

  “Yes.” Detective Williams leaned back in his chair. “I arrested him for possession a couple months before he went missing.”

  Lucy’s hands curled in her lap. The party at Ship Rock. She hadn’t thought about that night in years. It was her first high school party, and she’d lied to her mother about where she was going, mumbling something about a sleepover with the small group of girls she’d been hanging out with since elementary school. But those girls had stopped talking to Lucy over the summer, or she had stopped talking to them. She couldn’t remember who stopped talking first, but it was because of Patrick and the others, because her old friends didn’t like her new friends and her new friends thought her old friends were babies. Lucy was the only freshman to be invited to Ship Rock. She couldn’t not go.

  Megan and Natasha had picked her up at the end of her driveway a few hours before the party started. They went to the mall first because, according to Megan, Lucy’s billowy white skirt and red flannel top made her look like a Raggedy Ann doll, and according to Natasha no one wore cowboy boots anymore and braids were out, too—“You’re fourteen, for God’s sake, not four.” They gave her a makeover, cutting her hair straight across at her shoulders, then stripping the brown out with bleach until her hair was white-blond and straw-crisp, finally dipping the ends in a bowl of pink dye. They wouldn’t let her see until they’d washed her hair, blown it dry, and flat-ironed it straight. Only then did they turn her toward the mirror. An unfamiliar woman with rock star hair stared back at her, eyes lined thick black and smoky, her lips smeared the color of burst-open cherries. She looked like the kind of woman who had sex for fun. Lucy smiled, and the woman smoldered. Lucy touched her cheek. The woman did too, a gesture of longing. Megan and Natasha stood behind her, inspecting their work.

  “Patrick’s going to flip,” said Natasha.

  “He won’t be able to keep his dirty paws to himself,” said Megan.

  They laughed a twin laugh, their matching chestnut hair spilling waterfalls around their cream and perfect shoulders. They’d found out about Lucy’s crush a few weeks ago after practice when she’d accidentally dumped out the contents of her backpack onto the locker room floor. They were helping to gather her things when Megan held up a folder with Patrick’s name scribbled on the front and surrounded by hearts. “I think someone’s in loooo-ve.” They didn’t tease her about it, though. Neither did they run and blab to Patrick. Instead, like older sisters, they took her under their exquisite wings, promising to turn her from ugly duckling into graceful swan. Lucy touched her hair again, wishing they had dyed it to match theirs, wishing it had the same shine and sleekness and depth. She lifted a piece to her nose, grimacing at the chemical scent of bleach. Natasha and Megan smelled like gardenias. They spun her around again and held up clothes against her scarecrow frame, finally deciding on a tube top and jeans that hugged her in such a way as to create the illusion of curves. Natasha wolf-whistled. Megan shimmied her hips. They told her Patrick would have to pay attention to her now. They told her he would be falling all over himself, drooling like a Labrador puppy.

  But when they got to the party, Patrick took one look at Lucy and, with his nose screwed up like he was smelling someone’s dirty sock, asked, “What did you do to your hair?”

  She drank then, can after can of lukewarm, fizzing beer, until her stomach swam and her ears buzzed and the crushing pressure on her chest dissipated. She was as light as a bird, as air, a feather. She felt nothing, was nothing, and fuck Patrick and his stupid perfect hair and his stupid perfect lips. She was a goddess with rock star pink hair. She was the sun, burning hot and setting the world on fire. When she walked, the earth rose up to meet her. Fairies streaked by, hissing ribbons of red and yellow. She reached to catch them, but someone jerked her back, laughing, screaming, “You fucking pyro!” and she realized the fairies were flames. Then she was twirling between Natasha and Megan, or they twirled around her. She told them to stand still, she was trying to count the stars. They laughed, champagne bubbles popping, and handed her another beer.

  Then her brother and his stupid secret girlfriend. Out of nowhere. Both of them suddenly in front of her, and Nolan wagging his finger, scolding her like she was some fucking idiot toddler who’d colored permanent marker rainbows on the wall, scolding her like she was their mother. She tried to get him to leave her alone. Didn’t he understand what it was like? Couldn’t he see he was embarrassing her? Hadn’t he been fourteen once, dying to be older and popular? But Nolan wasn’t normal, had never been normal. He didn’t care about fitting in. He didn’t see the point. She didn’t think it could get any worse, but it did. Patrick stumbled over to them, and at first Lucy thought he was coming to get her, but then he put his arm around Celeste. Falling all over himself for Celeste, drooling over Celeste. He didn’t see Lucy at all.

  Nolan was distracted then. He turned his back for a second, and Lucy fled into the dark with Natasha and Megan pulling her along, calling him a freak, a nutcracker, a dildo dodo dipshit. “How do you even stand living with him?” one said, it was too dark to see which. The other, their voices were almost identical, screeched, “If he were my brother, I’d fucking kill myself.”

  They raced up the side of a cliff to the moon. Lucy leaped to grab hold of it. She wanted to swing, to perch, to hang like a trapeze artist upside down, wearing the night sky as her cape, the stars as diamonds woven into the fabric. She leaped and stumbled and fell to her knees in the dirt. Not light enough, goddess enough, to defy gravity. She bet Celeste could, though, catch the moon, pull down the stars, make the whole universe orbit around her perfect, mysterious brilliance. Lucy’s stomach heaved and she puked. Most of it splattered on the ground, but some of it dribbled down her chin onto her shirt, and more caught in her hair. It smelled bad. She backed away from the puddle, but the smell followed her, was her. She puked again and then reached her hand up for help. Natasha, Megan . . . anyone? But they had abandoned her, and she was alone with the moon, who laughed at her now, leering over her shoulder. The night-sky cape strangling her, the stars turned to glass.

  She pulled herself up and, on unsteady feet, walked to the edge of the cliff. She looked down expecting to see the bonfire, but instead saw Megan’s car driving away, taillights red in the dark, a steady thump of bass stretching the distance. Her stomach knotted. The plateau was spinning now, too fast. She sat in the dirt with her back against a rock and held her head between her knees waiting for the feeling to pass.

  Voices climbed up the side of the cliff. One was her brother. She started to stand, relieved that he hadn’t f
orgotten about her, that he was climbing up this steep plateau to make sure she was all right, and she wasn’t all right. She would tell him that. She would apologize and let him take her home and tuck her into bed and then she would tell him he was the best brother in the whole wide universe. But then she recognized the voice of the other person, Celeste, and so she slumped back down behind the rock, staying hidden in the deep night shadows.

  She didn’t want them to see her like this, alone and covered in her own vomit. She didn’t want to hear Nolan say I told you so, or see the smug better-than-you smirk on Celeste’s stupid, perfect, porcelain moon face. She would wait for them to leave and then she would go and find Patrick and then whatever happened after that would be up to him.

  Lucy peered around the rock to see how much longer she would have to wait. Celeste and Nolan were lying on their backs now, looking up at the stars, and Lucy’s disdain for Celeste deepened. Stargazing was something she and Nolan did together, what they had always done together, and now this girl from nowhere, who had stolen her brother’s time and attention and more recently Patrick’s heart, now this bitch was stealing the stars from her, too.

  They stopped talking and started to kiss. Their faces mashed, their hands fumbling, their bodies bucking. Lucy turned away from them and glared at the sky. She should be the one kissing someone tonight. Nolan wasn’t even supposed to be at this party; he hadn’t been invited. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fucking fair. Well, she didn’t have to just sit here and watch it happen, did she? Patrick was probably still at the party, alone and feeling betrayed like her. Drunk and looking for comfort.