by Sara Beitia
Kogen was sitting on some pretty damn relevant information, Albert thought to himself as he held Lily’s letter gently in his fingers. Sitting on it while Albert was twisting in the wind without a clue, getting questioned by the police, his parents fielding phone calls from the local newspapers and the local TV stations, too, all wanting their take on the Lily Odilon story.
But putting the Kogen question aside for a moment, at least this note showed that Lily was okay for now. In trouble, but okay.
Still, Albert was disturbed by the thought of Kogen’s secret knowledge, as well as by Lily’s grim, cryptic tone—which was maybe her intention. He turned the letter over and over in his hand. If Kogen really was still angry with Lily over what had happened, and really was after her now because of it, maybe he should take this to the police. Even though Lily would object. But she had made it explicitly clear that she didn’t trust the authorities to protect her from her stepfather’s anger. And there was no question but that Albert would believe Lily’s take on things. If she said she was in trouble, she was in trouble.
That last conversation with Detective Andersen came to his mind. I’ve known him for years. I’ve known you for about ten goddamn seconds.
So for now, Albert wouldn’t trust the cops, either. He definitely had no reason to. What he needed was time to think it over before he decided what to do. Perhaps Lily’s paranoia was catching, because suddenly Albert was almost afraid the police were going to burst into the dining room right now, confiscate the postcard and letter as evidence, and grill him about every word until they found Lily and delivered her to her worried family. Her mother. And her stepfather.
Still, Albert had a few questions himself that he wished he could just ask Lily right now. What had gone on between Kogen and Lily the night she’d left, what was Lily afraid he would do if he found her, and what could Albert do about it? He had no influence over Lily’s “Machine of God,” and he had no idea how to help her, though help seemed to be what she was asking for, in her Lily-esque way. He wondered if Kogen ever got violent.
I’ll wait for help as long as I can … He understood now the fact he’d been trying to ignore since this mess had started: it was up to him—not the police, not her parents—to help Lily.
Albert folded the paper in half again and tucked it and the postcard back into the envelope, smoothing the flap as he thought about what to do. For now, he knew he had to hide Lily’s letter away somewhere, somewhere his parents wouldn’t see it, until he had a chance to think and come to some decision. At the thought of his parents, he looked up at the clock in a sudden jolt of panic—and he saw that less than fifteen minutes had passed since he’d arrived home from school. It just felt like a lot longer. His parents wouldn’t be home for a while still, yet he couldn’t shake the idea that in an amazing bit of bad luck, one of them would arrive home early today and somehow just know something was up. He knew he was broadcasting guilt as much as if he were standing in the dining room with a carton of cigarettes and a stack of porn. For his sanity, he needed to hide the lifeline Lily had thrown him right now.
Even under the weight of its responsibility, holding the envelope from Lily gave Albert some small comfort. He was holding a physical link to her, and that, at least, was proof she was still there. For the moment.
By the time Albert reached his bedroom, some of the initial shock had worn off. He went to the small bookshelf that ran along one wall under the window. On the front edge of the shelves were random stacks of CDs and books and papers; behind them, his childhood books were still in neat rows, buried and untouched for years. Kneeling in the careless jumble of dirty clothes and more books and CDs on the floor in front of the shelf, he read Lily’s letter over once more, then pulled his old copy of Treasure Island from the back of the shelf and tucked the envelope inside. He wished for the thousandth time that he had just one person he could talk to.
Then he thought about the way Olivia had studied his face at lunch, as if she’d been trying to read something there.
Olivia is certain that Kogen is following them, even after they’re past the city limits and back out into the black wilderness that borders the highway. Albert is doing his best to convince her that she’s wrong, but he can’t change her mind. Olivia’s constant glances behind them, and her gasping double takes every time a twig snaps or a car buzzes past them, are beginning to work on Albert’s nerves, too, until he himself starts to believe Kogen just might be on their trail.
For his sanity and hers, Albert keeps reassuring Olivia that it’s impossible, that Kogen hasn’t seen them, and that she’s probably mistaken about even seeing the guy at all. And as he keeps talking her down from her panic, he hurries them both on as quickly as possible.
Which isn’t actually all that fast. First, it’s too dark to see very well where they’re going. Besides that, they’re moving so far from the highway—at Olivia’s insistence—that the ground is uneven and littered with sticks and rocks and gullies that trip up their feet, tired feet that are already dragging. Albert’s so tired he feels like he might doze off while he walks; from the droop of her shoulders, he figures Olivia is feeling the same way. The whole thing reminds him of a story he once read about a guy—his own age, he seems to remember—who entered a walking race. The rules were simple: whoever kept walking the longest, won. Anyone who stopped walking was shot or killed or something. He can’t remember what the point of the race was—why the kid had entered the race in the first place, what prize made it worth the danger. But once you were in the race, the point was incredibly simple: to keep walking until the end, or else. There was no turning back, no backing out.
Albert’s meandering train of thought is interrupted when Olivia trips over a fallen branch at his left and, losing her balance, falls. She curses under her breath and stays on the ground. Without a word, Albert reaches down and pulls her up by the elbow, and they keep walking. And as they do, they continue to look over their shoulders every time they hear a bat fly overhead, or the wind rustling a tree branch.
It’s midnight and they’re in the middle of nowhere, not even sure they’re right about where they’re going, with cops behind them and maybe in front of them, too—and Albert feels like he can’t judge anymore if they’re doing the right thing. Going to Lily seemed right a few days ago—Lily herself is the only evidence left, and they have to get to her before Kogen does or things are going to get even worse for all of them.
But he can’t help doubting. Is this all pointless? Can we even find her?
Are he and Olivia crazy to think the two of them, alone, can fix the mess surrounding Lily?
Yet Albert also knows there’s nothing else to do but at least try. And so here he and Olivia are, heading on foot upstate in late winter like a couple of fugitives, hiding their whereabouts from the cops and their families. They’re both scared, and they’re in a hurry, and they’re dying for just a few hours’ rest.
But like in the story he’s remembering, the only thing to do is to keep walking, or else.
The steady effort of walking warms Albert, and, lulled by the rhythm of their steps, he slips into a mixture of memory and daydream about Lily.
It was November and Albert and Lily were at the reservoir, wrapped together in a denim-squared comforter and leaning against the back of her car, pulling in air that tasted of frost but was still a few weeks away from the real thing. They were parked in some empty afterthought of a picnic area on the high side of the dam overlooking the low water. The sun was a hard, cold ball of light in the gray sky and they’d just kissed each other for the first time.
So clear is the memory, Albert can almost smell the burned fields and frost in the air and the warm cinnamony scent of Lily’s skin.
Her hand found his under the blanket and gave it a squeeze. “So how do you like living in Little Solace?” she asked.
“I hated it when we got here,” Albert said. “But I’m starting to think I was completely wrong.”
“Really?”
He leaned down and kissed her on the temple, a new privilege that felt exciting and weird at the same time. Her face was pointed down or he would have tried for her lips again. “Being here gives me a jittery, trapped feeling—like I just have to run or I’ll suffocate. You ever get that feeling?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m kind of known for that. That, and breaking and entering.”
He laughed.
She shifted her weight and leaned against him. He put a shy arm around her shoulders. She said, “I don’t even remember that night. I only know what they told me—that I broke into my stepfather’s office and almost burned it to the ground. I’ve lost a lot of memory of what happened before that night, too … there’s just this blur, then a long blank space, and then it picks up a few months after everything happened. I don’t even remember why I was there, or who I was with.”
“Does it matter now?” he asked. He felt her body stiffen.
“Maybe. I feel like maybe it does, yeah. There’s … something … just kind of hovering on the edge of my mind, and I can’t quite catch it.” She looked up at him and smiled a wet-lipped, wide smile that reminded him of his dirtier thoughts. “I wasn’t always the girl everyone gossiped about, you know.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“I know, right? But before my mom got remarried, it was just her and Liv and me. I know I’m romanticizing it or whatever, but life was pretty good then. That’s how I remember it, anyway. Like every summer, the three of us would go to this dinky little cabin on Yellow Pine Lake and spend, like, all of August there.” She went on in a dreamy voice. “I remember that even in late summer it was always windy and cloudy at the lake. Liv would stay inside when it got rainy, but I wanted to be outside all the time, so when she was too much of a wuss to come outside, I’d go off on my own. Then I started to like it better that way, when I would be by myself for a while. One time that last summer I went off alone when Liv and my mom were sleeping. I found a secret place and stayed there all day, just exploring. I remember I had this sandwich and I fed it to some fish and some birds. By the time I left to come home it was almost dark and my mom was super pissed at me for making her worry. Liv made me show the spot to her later, but I never went there again.”
He could imagine such a place. “Sounds awesome.” His words came out wistful.
She laughed. “Didn’t you ever have a place like that?”
When he was younger, they’d hardly ever left the city, and definitely never stayed at a lakeside cabin during the summer. “Not really. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters to hide from, anyway. I wish I had.”
“A summer place, or a sibling?”
He shrugged, but he sometimes wondered what it would be like to have a brother.
“By the next summer, our mom was remarried and it wasn’t just the three of us anymore. We moved out of our house and I—” She stopped, giggling nervously. “Never mind. It’ll sound stupid.”
“Say it,” he urged.
“Okay, but don’t laugh. I just never felt like I belonged in this new idea of a family. I wanted it back the old way. You know how little kids are—I didn’t want a new dad. After that, we didn’t go to the lake anymore, either. It was the last good place, before everything changed.”
“Maybe someday we can go there together,” Albert said. It came out corny and awkward-sounding and he felt like a moron when he heard the words in his ears.
But she seemed to understand the way he meant it. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe we’ll find a new good place that’s only for us.”
And then she kissed him and he was glad, after all, that he’d said it.
“W hy aren’t you eating your dinner?”
Startled from his daydreaming, Albert looked up from the plate where he was slowly deconstructing a broccoli-and-ham quiche with his fork. “I am eating it, Mom.”
She dropped her fork onto her plate and pressed a hand to her forehead, like his words caused her actual physical pain. “You haven’t taken three bites. What’s wrong with it? You like quiche!”
“Nothing is wrong with it,” Albert said, struggling to keep his voice mild. “It’s good. I guess I’m not very hungry.”
She gave his father an impatient look when he made the mistake of looking up from his own plate. “Luis? Are you going to say anything?”
“You’re upsetting your mother,” Albert’s father said. “Stop playing with your dinner and just eat it.”
Lily’s letter was all Albert could think about. When his father had arrived home from work first, Albert’s books were still sitting in the neat pile he’d made on the dining room table when he got home from school, and his homework was still untouched. Ever since then, Albert had been under the observation of one parent and then two, right up until dinner was put on the table. Now, hoping to get them off his back, Albert stuffed bites as large as he dared into his mouth, barely chewing before swallowing. He only choked once. He was hoping to excuse himself as soon as he’d eaten enough to satisfy his mother. While he chewed, his mind turned to the letter hidden between the pages of Robert Louis Stevenson and the melodrama of the message Lily had sent him.
“Albert?”
He was jerked out of his thoughts again to see that his mother was staring at him in an irritatingly demanding way. “What?” he said, still trying to keep the impatience from his voice, if only to avoid a lecture on manners to go with the lecture on proper dinner consumption.
“I asked how your day was,” she said. “Luis?”
“Quit staring off into space and answer your mother,” his father said.
Albert thought about his day: getting tripped in the hall before second period, suffering the super-fun lunch tray disaster, getting a D minus on a geometry pop quiz, and, oh yes, finding something sticky and putrid and definitely dead in his locker at the end of the day, thoughtfully placed on the gravy-stained T-shirt he’d left there after lunch.
“It was fine,” he said.
He had a stomachache and a headache and a heartache, and now he also had some kind of mystery dumped in his lap … one where the stakes were very personal. But he was seventeen and almost six feet tall, and if he mentioned problems he was liable to get a sardonic “aren’t you a dainty little orchid” from his father—a remark he’d been chastised with for as long as he could remember, one he’d had the gist of long before he understood the joke.
“It was fine,” he said again, adding “this is good” through a mouthful of food, gesturing at his plate with his fork.
This turned out to be the right answer, and having given it, Albert was allowed to withdraw back into himself. As long as he remembered to eat his food. Not just allowed to withdraw—encouraged. Sometimes he wondered if his parents felt as trapped with him as he felt with them. The older he grew, the more strained their little family became. As far as his parents were concerned, the only right way to be was the way everyone else was. They wanted him to join a team, to dress like a “nice young man,” to keep his hair trimmed, to smile and remember people’s names, to never admit to being anything but happy-go-lucky. To never admit to feeling doubtful or afraid or unhappy. A good son was someone they could brag about but who kept politely in the background and would never give them headaches. He’d been assured once—patronizingly, by an arty old aunt who lived in New York and still dyed a magenta strip into her hair—that this was normal, but he wished he had a brother or a sister, at least, to even out the sides.
Albert’s relationship with Lily had been a threat to his parents’ perfect two-against-one dynamic. Before, Albert had never had anyone who was automatically on his side—but Lily was, always, about whatever. In the first few weeks they’d hung out together, his parents somehow never managed to remember Lily’s name, and they often found reasons why she couldn’t come to the house and even more reasons why Albert couldn’t go out.
That didn’t stop him from seeing her, of course; it just made it harder. But the fact that it was difficult w
as also somehow exciting. And when he’d realized how strongly he felt about Lily, Albert had also realized that there were far better things to strive for than pleasing one’s parents.
He and Lily never did anything that would’ve sounded exciting if reduced to a list on paper, but it was exciting, anyway. And weird. Love—Albert was soon sure that he was in love with Lily, no matter how much his parents hinted that they knew what that was all about, even if he didn’t yet—was a weird experience. From almost the first time they were together, they could talk about everything—the big things like life and death and love, and smaller things like the music they liked or the movies they dug. They laughed over things only they thought were funny, and it was like they’d always known each other. He felt like himself with her—but smarter and surer and realer, in a way he never did at home.
“Why don’t your parents like me?” Lily had asked him after about a month. She’d dropped it right out of the blue while they were sitting in her room one day after school. “Is it the sex thing?”
At this point, Albert and Lily hadn’t actually gotten to the sex thing. “Well, if you think that would help …”
She’d punched him. “I just mean, you’re their only kid, their baby, and they’re probably not that comfortable yet with the idea of some girl showing up and metaphorically making you into a man. Forcing them to deal with the fact that you’re not their little boy anymore and all that crap.”
He’d kissed her for a long moment, liking the idea of all that crap. She’d pushed him away, looking at him as if she actually expected an answer. He said, “Who cares?”
She’d frowned, not letting it go. “Be serious!”
“I am serious. When I’m with you, that’s all there is. Like right now, I’m pretending that I don’t have to be home in the next twenty minutes and that we have all the time in the world. I don’t want to talk about my parents.”
“You know I’m right,” she’d said, wrapping her fingers in his and looking at their hands.
