“You have to take me with you.”
“And why would I have to do that?”
“Because . . .” He grasped for a reason that wasn’t foolish. She didn’t need him. She’d be better off without him and his bumbling human mind, and yet, he was better with her.
“Because you love me,” he said.
In her eyes, heartbreak and regret, and he hated that he’d been the one to cause this, that she was suffering because of his failings. He yearned for her to look at him the way she’d looked at him the first day they met, like she saw into the very core of him and their shared future beyond. He yearned to press his lips to hers, one final time, to hear the stars sing her name. He yearned for so much, even as he felt it slipping away.
He reached into his pocket and took out a folded slip of paper. He handed it to her, and she unfolded it. “Is this supposed to be me?”
“No,” he said, and then, “yes.”
She sighed impatiently.
“I drew this before I met you,” he tried to explain. “She’s a warrior princess from the planet Aurelia, which is made up, by the way, at least as far as I know. Maybe it exists somewhere. Humans just haven’t found it yet.”
Celeste handed the paper back to him. “That’s nice.” Her voice flat.
“Don’t you see? She’s you. Or you’re her. Or . . . you get it, right? It can’t just be a coincidence that I drew her a few months before you showed up. That I drew her and she looks exactly like you.”
“It’s a drawing, Nolan. And she doesn’t look exactly like me. Her hair’s longer.”
“Yeah, but—”
“And the nose is all wrong,” she continued. “And her hips are wider. And the freckles.” She held up her hand, showing off her constellation. “Where are her freckles, Nolan?”
Nolan squinted at the drawing, certain he would see them, a tiny W at the base of her thumb, but there was nothing there.
He hesitated and into his silence, she spoke.
“I’m sorry, really, I am. I wish . . .” She shook her head. “I wish things could be different, but please, try and understand. I’m not that girl. I can’t be her even if I wanted to. I’m me, Nolan. What you see is what you get and, for whatever reason, that’s not enough for you. Please don’t make this any harder than it has to be, okay? It’ll be easier on both of us if I just go. So just tell me good-bye. Tell me good-bye and let me leave.”
She waited another minute, but he couldn’t say the words she wanted to hear. Some part of him thought maybe if he didn’t, she would stay. She gave a small shrug, said, “Good-bye, Nolan,” then turned and walked into the dark, disappearing down the very same alleyway she’d materialized from three short months ago.
Nolan barely made it to work on time the next day. He was scheduled for a three-to-close shift and didn’t think he’d need to set his alarm, but he hadn’t been able to fall asleep until four in the morning—his brain was on a never-ending loop, replaying every conversation he and Celeste ever had, every glance, every touch, every shared moment, every betrayal—and when he woke again, it was a quarter to three. He sprang from bed, pulled on the same clothes he’d been wearing the day before, and drove to the grocery store, clocking in at 3:01, technically late, but not enough that his manager noticed.
His brain was a fog, still half-asleep. He didn’t want to think of Celeste leaving him behind, but this was all he could think about. The image of her walking away sucked him into a slow-motion vortex, turned his thoughts to a dull, but constant roar.
He walked out of the break room and somehow made it to aisle four where a pallet of generic cereals waited beneath blinding fluorescents. He took a box cutter from his apron pocket and set to work, finding the repetitive actions of dragging a sharp blade through tape and shrink wrap, grabbing bags of Crispy Rice and slapping them down on the shelves, oddly comforting. The rhythm of it soothed him, and for a few minutes at least, he didn’t think about Celeste. Or the strange lights people were seeing and then denying they’d seen. He didn’t think about Patrick or the fight or his still-aching ribs or the many, many ways he’d fucked up every good thing in his life. He didn’t think about anything at all except the movement of his arms, the twisting of his body, the brightly colored bags of cereal. He was a cog in a machine. A robot made of metal parts that never got old and never broke down, never wept, never got rusty. A soulless machine who didn’t know the meaning of lonely.
Halfway through emptying the pallet, he registered movement, a vague shadow in his peripheral vision. He plastered a polite smile on his face, the smile he used for customers. But when he lifted his head, his smile slipped.
It had been nearly two weeks since the fight, and though the swelling had gone down, the bruises around Patrick’s eyes were still deep purple. Gone were his easy swagger and wide smile, too. Now he walked with head lowered, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He stopped a few feet from Nolan. “I didn’t come here to start anything.”
Nolan tightened his grip on the box cutter. “Let me guess . . . you just needed some Coco Roos?” He grabbed a bag off the shelf and tossed it at Patrick’s chest.
Patrick caught the bag and held it at his side. “I wanted to apologize.”
Nolan laughed and went back to unloading the pallet.
“No, really.” Patrick took a shuffling step closer. “What we did to you was shit, man. I mean it.” He dropped the bag of Coco Roos onto its proper shelf. “Friends?”
“Fuck off.” Nolan stabbed the box cutter through a piece of tape and slit open the last box of cereal he needed to unpack.
“Don’t be like that, Nolan.”
“You ruined my life.” Nolan threw the bags of cereal onto the shelf, no longer caring about getting them straight or whether he was crushing the cereal inside.
“I ruined your life?” Patrick’s hands curled at his side. “What about me? I was having a fucking stellar year. Straight As. Running my fastest times on the track. College scouts were starting to notice me. And then you had to go and fucking lose your shit over some stupid prank. You had to turn it into this big fucking deal and throw punches and get me kicked out of school. Now I’m stuck at some dumb-ass boy’s academy with a bunch of dumb-ass losers and no track team and I’ll probably end up at some fucking suck-ass state school. Because of what? Because of some stupid diary. You’re a real piece of work, you know that, Nolan? A real fucking piece of work.”
Nolan swallowed back all the words he wanted to say in his defense. He knew better now. Patrick didn’t care about anyone but Patrick. “Why did you do it?”
He shrugged. “Why not? Why’d you even write all that shit down anyway? I mean, you were kind of asking for it, you know.”
It wasn’t a good enough answer. Nolan took a long step toward Patrick. His foot knocked into the box he’d been unloading, turning it over and spilling bags across the linoleum floor. Patrick backed away from him, but Nolan crowded him up against a shelf and pressed the box cutter to his throat. Cereal boxes collapsed around them, bursting open, scattering puffed rice cereal in all directions. Patrick held up both hands near his head, fingers splayed. His Adam’s apple bobbed terrifyingly close to the sharp blade. He looked scared now, smaller and younger somehow. Nolan had never noticed before the black ring circling Patrick’s irises. Like a fence, a boundary, keeping the blue ink from spilling into the white.
Patrick reared his head back as far as it could go, trying to escape the blade. “It was Lucy’s idea.”
“Yeah right.” Nolan pushed the blade closer.
“I didn’t even know anything about your casebook until she told me about it.” Patrick spoke quickly, a whine edging his words. “She stole it from your truck and asked me to make a bunch of photocopies and pass them around at the game, so I did.”
For a second, Nolan’s fury wavered. “She wouldn’t do that.”
“She did, I swear to God. She was jealous that you were spending so much time with Celeste. She thought if she could
break the two of you up—”
Hearing Celeste’s name from Patrick’s lips was like a cracking bone, shattering glass, the force of a meteorite exploding through the atmosphere. Nolan forced his shoulders and arms forward, shoving Patrick as hard as he could, pressing the blade to his skin, drawing a thin line of blood. The shelf swayed. More boxes crashed down around them, cereal spilling everywhere.
“Think about it,” Patrick pleaded. “No one else would have been able to take that stupid book without you noticing. No one else even knew about it. Ask her, fucking ask her!”
Nolan kept Patrick trapped for another beat, their eyes locked, their chests heaving in unison, the blade trembling, blood beading a red smear against pale flesh, the air around them filled with fine powder, drifting, smelling of cinnamon, sugar, and oats. Then Nolan lowered the blade and took a step back, releasing Patrick. His heart slammed, he couldn’t catch his breath. Bright crystals sparkled at the edge of his vision. He didn’t know who he was anymore, when he’d become the kind of person who held a blade to someone else’s throat, the kind of person who lashed out like this, so violently, so primitively.
Patrick smoothed his hands down his shirt and brushed his fingers through his hair. He pressed his thumb over the small nick the blade had made on his neck and pulled it away again. He looked shocked to see blood there. Color drained from his cheeks. Before either boy could say or do anything else, Carol, the store manager, rounded the corner. She stopped and stared at the mess of boxes and crunched-up cereals, the two boys: one with blood dripping down his neck, the other holding a knife.
“What is going on here?” Carol wrenched the box cutter from Nolan’s hand.
Her eyes darted between them, demanding an explanation. Nolan hung his head. Sugar crystals shimmered on his shoelaces.
“Nothing.” Patrick began to slide sideways, maneuvering around the debris and pressing his fingers to his neck to cover the blood. “It was an accident.” He ducked around the end of the aisle and disappeared before Carol could question him further.
Carol focused her attention on Nolan. She glared at the box cutter, the blade now retracted, safe in its case, then at Nolan, and then she said, “I think it’s best if you clock out early tonight.”
Nolan took off his apron.
“Oh, and don’t bother coming in tomorrow,” Carol added. “We’ll mail you your final paycheck.” She unclipped a radio from her belt and spoke into it, calling another employee to bring a broom. There was a cleanup needed in aisle four.
When Nolan got home, he went straight to Lucy’s room and barged through the door without knocking. She was lying on her stomach in bed, reading a book, legs kicking the air. She had headphones on, bobbing to the beat of whatever song was playing. She didn’t look up when he came in. Her head still bobbing, she said, “Get out of my room, freak face.”
He marched over to her and yanked off the headphones.
“Hey!” She leaped to her knees and tried to grab them back.
He held them out of reach. “Did you take my casebook?”
“Give them back.” Her hand swiped the air.
“Did you take my casebook?” Nolan repeated, louder, still holding the headphones above his head.
“I gave it back to you,” she said. “I don’t know where the fuck it is now.”
“Watch your language.”
She rolled her eyes and made a final lunge, snatching the headphones from Nolan’s grasp. She slid them back on her head and lay down again, returning her attention to her book. “Get out of my room. Or I’m telling Mom.”
Nolan stood in front of her bed with his arms crossed over his chest. Lucy glared at him and took a breath, like she was about to yell.
“Call her,” Nolan said. “I’m sure she’d be very interested in hearing what part you played in getting me expelled.”
She clamped her lips together. Her cheeks puffed out, then she released her breath all at once in a loud, rushing sigh. She removed her headphones and rolled over, sitting up again and kicking her feet over the edge of the bed. “What are you talking about?”
“Like you don’t know.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that stupid fight. That was all you.” She stood and brushed past him to her dresser where she pawed through a collection of nail polish for a few seconds, before finally settling on a sparkling blue color. She returned to the bed and propped one foot on the edge, spreading her toes.
“Patrick came to the store.” Nolan tried to hang on to the anger he’d felt driving home, the righteous rage he had when he first burst into her room, but it was hard when she refused to look at him, when her head hung down over her knees, her hand carefully brushing sparkling blue confetti onto her big toe.
“He told me what you did,” Nolan continued. “He told me you stole my casebook and asked him to make photocopies to pass around school. He said it was your idea.”
Lucy lifted her eyes to his. “He told you that?” She looked hurt.
Nolan nodded.
She dropped the small nail brush back into the bottle, leaving half her toes unpainted. She stared out the window for a few seconds, as if trying to work out something in her head. When she returned her attention to Nolan, her eyes were swirling tempests. “He’s a liar.”
“You didn’t take it?”
She pushed her jaw forward and went back to painting her nails, with more violence this time. “I did take it,” she admitted. “But it wasn’t my idea. It was Patrick’s.”
Nolan sank onto the bed beside her, all the fight leaving him in a single breath. “Why?”
She shrugged. “He asked me to.” Then quickly added, “He didn’t tell me what he was going to do with it, he just asked if I could bring him your casebook. If I’d known he was going to show everyone . . .” She jammed the brush back in the bottle and twisted it hard. “I had nothing to do with that part.”
She waved her hands above her toes to help dry them. They were tiny blue crystals now, glittering sapphire toes.
“Anyway,” she said. “You totally overreacted.”
Nolan sprang from the bed and began pacing her room. “The things I wrote in there were private! You had no right—”
“You freaked out over nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” Nolan said. “You know it’s not nothing.”
She tipped her head, watching him closely. “Just because you write something down doesn’t make it true. You know that, right?”
He stopped pacing.
“I mean, you can’t really believe any of that stuff actually happened.” Lucy said. “You don’t really think Celeste is a . . . what did you call her? Star Being? You can’t possibly think she’s actually from outer space. You know how crazy that is, right?”
“What Celeste may or may not be is none of your business.”
Lucy’s expression hardened again. “You weren’t this bad before she came around. You were actually, you know, kind of normal. You were fun. People liked hanging out with you. I liked hanging out with you. But then Celeste shows up.” She said the name with a sneer. “And it’s like she’s got some kind of power over you or something, I don’t know, you just . . . you’re just different.” She shrugged again and lowered her feet to the floor. “You know, I’m actually glad it happened this way. Maybe now you’ll start thinking straight again. Maybe I’ll finally get my brother back.”
The whole time she’d been talking, Nolan’s fingers had been curling tighter, his nails digging into the palms of his hands, his knuckles tingling.
“I’m not crazy,” he said quietly, and then pleading with her to remember, “you’ve seen as much as I have.”
“No, I haven’t,” and she sounded sad about that.
“What about the lights we saw as kids?” Nolan insisted. “Remember? Right after Dad left? We were in the backyard and you said they looked like yo-yos? Or . . . or . . . what about over the summer? At our stargazing rock? You and Patrick were both there when that craft app
eared.”
She scowled at her lap, her shoulders curling forward as if she was trying to disappear.
“You used to hunt for them with me!” His voice grew steadily louder and more frustrated. “You had your own pair of binoculars. You said you saw them. I remember.” He rubbed his temples, trying to think of a specific time when Lucy had been the one to see the UFO first, when it had been her pointing it out to him instead of always the other way around.
“I remember playing with you in the backyard when we were kids,” she said. “I remember you pointing up at the sky and saying, ‘Look, Lucy! A UFO! Do you see it?’ ” She imitated his squeaking, cracking little boy voice. “And I said I did because you’re my big brother and I wanted you to keep playing with me. I didn’t want you to tell me to leave you alone, so I pretended to see whatever you wanted me to see. But there was nothing up there, Nolan. There never is. I don’t see any UFOs, because UFOs don’t exist. And these Visitors, little green men, Star Beings, whatever you want to call them, they don’t exist either. Not actually. All of the things you claim to see are just figments of your freak imagination. It’s not real except in your own twisted brain.”
“Don’t say that,” he said. “You’re just having trouble wrapping your mind around something as big as this, that’s all. And it’s all right. That’s completely normal. Someday you’ll be ready to accept the truth and you’ll remember what you saw, you’ll remember everything.”
“No, I won’t, because there’s nothing to remember. There is no ‘this’ to wrap my mind around. Don’t you get that? There isn’t anything bigger.” She flapped her hands in the air, gesturing at nothing. “We’re it. You and me and Mom and all the other stupid, ugly people on this planet. That’s all there is. We’re all there is.”
Her words pricked his skin. “No,” he said. “There’s more. I’ve seen it.”
“Everyone thinks you’re a lunatic,” Lucy said. “You know that, right? Mom thinks you have a brain tumor. And the kids at school think you’ve gone full Mad Hatter. The whole school is treating me like a pariah because they think whatever you have is contagious, like crazy runs in the family and if they get near me they’ll catch crazy, too.”
Everything We Lost Page 33
