Before He Was Gone: Starstruck Book 2

by Becky Wicks

  ‘I can’t believe they won’t give you his contact details!’ Chloe says. ‘They can see you need to talk to him, Alyssa, it’s written all over your face, in eight full-length episodes…’

  ‘He has no cell phone. He told them not to give out any information. He doesn’t want to be found, Chloe. He has no fixed address anyway.’

  ‘No one can go off the radar for real, Alyssa, come on.’

  ‘OK, stop,’ I tell her, knocking back my drink in one. Noah grabs my glass and walks back into the apartment with it.

  ‘Double!’ I shout after him, flopping back against the railings.

  ‘Double for Double G, coming right up,’ he says and Chloe pretends to kick his butt.

  ‘He can’t deal with this alone,’ she says after a moment and I stare down at my feet. They look weird in sneakers. My cell buzzes. It’s a text from Shan:

  Yo slutty-pants, meet me at Pink Pussy tnt, 8 Ave? Marty wants to meet you xo

  I’m pulled from my misery for a moment as a smile spreads across my face. I’m so glad Shan lives in New York. It’s another reason to come visit Chloe and Noah now.

  Only if you wear the G-A-Ys, I text back.

  Burnt them. Bring me some signed Noah Lockton briefs or else, he replies.

  I put my phone down on the table as Noah hands me another drink. It’s so strange to use a phone after all this time. I forgot how crazy life is when you’re wired up to gadgets the whole time. I’m constantly connected now, but not in the way I’ve grown used to. I know what connection really feels like. It’s the sound of the wind in the palm trees, swimming past a reef with the ocean in my ears. It’s the feel of his lips on my body, his sandy arms around my waist from behind, his words burning through me, waking me up, mind, body and soul.

  Connection was freeing myself from every misconception I ever had about myself and just taking every day as it came. Without Joshua I’ve practically shut down. Disconnected again. All I know is that I’ve never missed anyone like this.

  ‘Did you call the support group - the one who told that blogger what those pills were for?’ Chloe says now.

  ‘I tried. They don’t know anything else.’

  ‘What about that climbing center in Austin? The one who set him up?’

  ‘They said he never came back.’

  ‘What else did they say?’

  I sigh heavily through my nostrils. The truth is, I hung up when the guy told me that. I had to, before I burst into tears on him. I’d been going round in circles all day, trying to get someone at the network to give me any information they could. I got nowhere. I did manage to get them to send the full uncut footage of what they shot on the beach that time though – the truth behind that kiss. The guy I spoke to felt sorry for me, I think, made me sign something over email that said I wouldn’t post it on YouTube.

  ‘Personal reasons only,’ I told him, before downloading it from Dropbox and watching it alone in the apartment. Chloe and Noah are the only ones who’ve seen it. They can’t believe how much crap was added; how much the truth was twisted just to get good TV.

  ‘I never knew it was that bad,’ Noah said, hands in his crazy hair. ‘The music industry’s screwed but that’s messed up!’

  The photos in the papers, on the blogs are so surreal, too. There are screenshots of me running off into trees, climbing up to the waterfall. Luckily they showed a little mercy… I was never shown fully naked, like Shan was when he got stung by the jellyfish. But though it could’ve been perceived as us playing each other to get ahead in the game, I can tell from the looks Joshua gave me, the looks I gave him that what we forged out there among all the bullshit was real.

  The sounds of Noah’s guitar pull me back to the present. Chloe takes my hand, leads me into the living room. ‘No more martinis for you,’ she says as she notices my tears. I didn’t even realize I was crying. I’m pathetic. ‘When do you start the culinary course?’ she asks, motioning me through to the kitchen.

  ‘I didn’t think about it yet.’

  ‘You still want to do it, right?’

  ‘Yes, but I want to travel. I want to go away.’

  ‘Where to?’ she says, eyebrows raised. ‘You don’t ever leave Boulder!’

  ‘Maybe things are different now,’ I say. ‘I don’t care where I go.’

  ‘You have gone feral,’ she grins. ‘Did you get that bikini wax yet?’

  I sigh and she leads me through to the kitchen, opens a box of cookies and pours them onto a plate. I shake my head when she offers them. Food like that still hurts my stomach. And cookies aren’t even real food.

  ‘Call the climbing center again,’ she says, folding her arms. ‘So he never went back to Austin but someone there might know something else. You’re not giving up. I’ve never seen you like this.’ She pulls out her iPhone, brings up the center’s website and hands it to me. My stomach knots, but she waves it under my nose till I grab it.

  It rings and the same guy as last time picks up. ‘I called before,’ I say. ‘I’m trying to reach Joshua Brenner.’

  ‘And Joshua Brenner is still not here,’ he answers. But there’s another voice in the background. The guy covers the phone with his hand. A muffled sound hits my ear and I roll my eyes at Chloe. But it’s someone else now, a female. She’s English.

  ‘You’re looking for Joshua, is that right? Who is this?’ she says. My body tenses. I cross the kitchen with the phone.

  ‘My name’s Alyssa. I don’t know if you know where he is but…’

  ‘I don’t,’ she says. Her voice sounds affected now, almost like she’s trying not to cry. ‘But I know who you are. Alyssa, Joshua didn’t come back here. He’s never here. I didn’t know how sick he was, he never told me either…’

  ‘Wait,’ I say. Realization floods over me. The English accent. I’m talking to his ex. The one he denied was his ex. ‘Oh my god, I’m so sorry,’ I say, feeling my heart spring back to life. Chloe’s eyes are bugging out in the corner but I turn away. ‘I just… I really need to talk to him.’

  ‘I watched the show, Alyssa,’ she says. She sounds as lost as I feel. ‘Listen, I know he has a cousin here in Austin. His name’s Evan Beaumont. He works at the St James Neurosurgery. I tried asking him where he was, I know they’re close, but he wouldn’t tell me. You’re welcome to try your luck.’

  ‘Oh my god, thank you,’ I tell her, rushing back to Chloe and grabbing her hand. Her eyes light up. ‘Thank you… er,’ I pause. ‘I don’t even know your name.’

  She’s silent for a moment. ‘He never told you, huh?’

  Oh, crap.

  ‘I’m Harriet,’ she says with a sigh. ‘Do me a favor. Look after him. He never wanted to let me try.’

  ‘I don’t know if he’ll let me either,’ I tell her and we’re both silent for a moment.

  ‘Good luck,’ she says on an exhale, and hangs up.

  I’m still gripping Chloe’s hand. ‘Google the St James Neurosurgery in Austin,’ I tell her, handing her the phone back. My fingers are shaking and I can’t do it. I pace the kitchen as she hurries to bring up the number and in ten seconds another phone is ringing in my ear and the receptionist is putting me through. Chloe grips my sweater sleeve. I motion that I need another martini and she doesn’t argue.

  ‘Evan Beaumont,’ the guy answers.

  My voice is shaking. ‘It’s Alyssa,’ I say.

  ‘Alyssa,’ he repeats slowly. ‘How can I help?’

  I can hear in his voice that he knows who I am. Desperation and relief flood over me as my words come out powered by the alcohol. ‘I know he doesn’t want me to find him,’ I hear myself saying. ‘But I need to know he’s OK. I need to talk to him, Evan. You’re the only person who can help me. You’re a neurosurgeon?’

  ‘How did you get this number?’

  ‘The climbing center, kind of. Do you know where he is?’

  ‘I said I wouldn’t say.’

  ‘He has no one else, Evan, you know that as well as I do. I know he's
stubborn, but I know how scared he is. Please, he shouldn’t even have been on that show!’

  ‘I told him that,’ he replies now. He sighs, long and hard. ‘The network told him that. But he said he could handle it. He thought he could win the money for the treatment…’

  ‘Treatment?’ My breath catches in my throat as Chloe hands me the drink. I can’t even drink it. I'm holding back my tears.

  He lowers his voice. I hear a door close at his end, like he’s shutting himself away from prying eyes and ears. ‘Listen,’ he says. ‘What Joshua has, Alyssa, is a rare paraneoplastic neurologic disorder. They thought it was untreatable but there’s a new drug. It’s just come out of trial stages. There’ve been positive advancements in patients so far - it’s halted all blackouts, improved memory, people are living normal lives…’

  He’s speaking faster now, like he’s been wanting someone else to tell as much as I’ve been wanting to hear this. Relief and hope and adrenaline sear through me as he carries on. ‘I guess we all hoped we could put him forward, but it’s not covered by insurance.’

  ‘How much is it?’ I ask him, holding my breath.

  ‘It’s eight hundred thousand dollars.’

  40

  Joshua

  Southeast Oklahoma seemed like the best place. Not too many people know me. I landed some work out at a ranch called The Pioneer, building a storm shelter and taking tourists out on rides.

  Telling my employer - the gap-toothed, overweight forty-something woman called Carol - that I know full well when a blackout’s coming on by now was the only way I got the job. I had to thank my lucky stars she wasn’t too concerned. I think the way her teenage daughter looked at me like I was some sort of celebrity who just stepped out of the TV had a lot to do with her hiring decision, but either way I’m grateful.

  I was told to buy a freezer, as well as enough groceries for a month before I got here. There’s not much around outside of Beavers Bend State Park, which suits me just fine. They pay good money. I get a tent space, water and electricity, some meals too, so all up it’s perfect. As perfect as it can get.

  I have four women, all in their forties with me right now, chattering among themselves on four horses. It’s fifty degrees and we’re all in sweaters and I still can’t remember ever being this cold. I’m keeping quiet between pointing out whatever birds and trees I can remember along the Mountain Fork River, though one woman recognizes me from Deserted and keeps asking questions.

  ‘What was it really like out there?’ she’s saying now, trotting up beside me in her red jodhpurs and matching red hat. She irritates me instantly. ‘Did they give you protein bars off camera and massages every night? I mean, you didn’t really have to sleep in that shelter, did you?’

  ‘No massages. Only protein was the fish,’ I tell her, looking straight ahead at the path.

  ‘And the goat,’ she says with a laugh. ‘Looked like fun from where I was sitting. I wouldn’t mind being out there with nothing much to do; no responsibilities. You’ve sure got a great tan for the winter, too, huh?’

  I don’t even respond. She knows nothing. She hasn’t had to fight the ocean in a thunderstorm for food, or sleep with sand flies eating her face. She hasn’t had to climb a palm tree thirty meters in the air just to get a drink. And she hasn’t had to smell Punk’s feral sweater after thirty days of sweating in it with no laundry detergent. There was nothing fun about it. Other than Alyssa.

  I canter on ahead, motioning for them to follow me. I’m miles from the ocean - a notion that throws me when I wake up in the mornings and stick my head outside. In the moments before I open my eyes I’m back in that cave with her under my chin, my arm around her, listening to the waterfall. I saw a few episodes of the show with Evan when I went to collect my car. Watching them back was weird. The close ups of the crabs scuttling along the shore, the long-shots of our camp from the helicopter; endless turquoise shallows spilling out into blackness, showing just how deserted we really were.

  ‘I can’t believe you were there. I bet you can’t either,’ Evan said as we sat on his couch and I struggled with a slice of pizza my stomach wasn’t quite ready for. ‘That water is so blue. Is that real, or is that special effects?’

  I had to laugh, but as I watched myself diving with the spear, slamming it into snapper after snapper like some madman on a mission, I felt a kind of pain; a loss I couldn’t even convey. It rips through me now, again, a million light years from it all with the saddle beneath me and no sand for miles. For all the things I caught in that ocean, all I can think about is the one that got away.

  I slow the horse, run my hand along its mane as the women catch me up. I can hear them whispering and giggling behind me. I curb my irritation. ‘Time for tea?’ I say, jumping down and reaching for the flask in the saddlebag. I tie the chestnut mare to a maple tree and it starts to chomp on the thinning grass.

  ‘Are there any coconuts, animal?’ the woman who knows me quips.

  ‘Not unless you can find a palm tree around here,’ I say, helping her down and handing her a sheet of tarpaulin to spread on the grass by the river. You never know when the rains might come. I sit down with them, help myself to the sweet, hot tea, hand out the cookies. I still can’t eat them. They’re not even real food.

  ‘Where’s Alyssa?’ the woman asks suddenly, biting into one. The question; her name makes me swallow my tea too fast and I burn the back of my throat. I put the cup down and lie back on the sheet heavily. ‘I thought you looked cute together,’ she carries on and it’s all I can do not to get up, mount the horse and gallop away without them. She puts a hand on my arm and I turn my head. Her brown eyes are kind and more than a few crinkles line the edges. ‘Is it really something they can’t cure?’ she asks.

  I search her face as I struggle for the right words. I should’ve known there was no escape. I double-doomed myself, going on that show and losing.

  ‘What are you doing out here, honey?’ she presses. ‘Does anyone know where you are?’

  This time I do stand up. I walk to the edge of the river, letting my eyes train a scissor-tailed flycatcher skirting over the water. Why does my brain forget the things my father said and did, the games I played with Evan growing up; yet it lingers on the curves of her body, the feel of her tongue sweeping through my mouth, every word she said about her dreams of opening a restaurant? Even her goddam baklava recipe. It’s all there. I want it to go, but it won’t. She’ll be the last thing to leave me.

  ‘Why do you torture yourself?’ Evan asked me as I walked to the car with my tent and my backpack back in Austin. ‘You want to be with this girl, don’t you? Alyssa?’

  ‘I got sidetracked,’ I snapped back.

  'You're running away again, Joshua,' he said. He was right. But I have to keep moving. I have to let her go. Maybe I'll leave a part of her in each new place and eventually it won't hurt anymore. Either that, or she'll just be everywhere.

  No.

  Kiss or no kiss with her ex in front of the goddam nation, I was insane for thinking I could be with Alyssa. I can’t bring anyone into this. My mind was screwed even more than usual, being out there with nothing else to think about. Alyssa shouldn’t be with that rock star asshole, but she sure as hell shouldn’t be with me. She has a life to live.

  I turn round, gather up the tarpaulin and cookies, help the women back onto their horses and guide us slowly back along the river. I manage to avoid all conversation, except for a friendly goodbye, but Carol wanders up to me as I’m brushing down the chestnut and the dusty twilight is closing in.

  ‘Someone called Evan just called for you,’ she says, leaning her bulky arms over the stable door in the barn. ‘He says you need to check your email.’

  She watches as I put the brush with the tack on the shelf and shut the latch after me. I follow her across the campsite, where my one lonely tent and cooking station is sitting out of the way of the trees. The house is a good ten minute walk away and we do it all in silence.

&nb
sp; When we reach the brick house, Carol points to an old PC surrounded by piles of cookery books on a desk in the cluttered kitchen. Her chubby daughter watches me from the wooden dining table in the middle and I catch the way her forkful of some kind of pie hovers above her plate in star-struck fashion. I also notice she’s wearing a Noah Lockton fan shirt. Of course she is.

  I nod at her, take a seat in the uncomfortable wooden chair, bring up Hotmail. The keyboard is full of dirt, like my fingernails. I haven’t checked my email at all since I left for the island. Nobody ever emails me anyway, but there’s a forwarded message from Evan at the top of my inbox. ‘Watch this,’ is written in the subject line.

  I click the message. It’s a link to a video. Blood heats in my veins as I press play. What I see makes me freeze.

  It’s Alyssa, crossing the sand on the island; Sebastian running after her, grabbing her, kissing her. My fingers curl into my palms. I don’t want to see this again - is he kidding me?

  But there’s more. She’s pulling away from him. He’s gripping her shoulders and she’s still pulling away.

  ‘Alyssa, you have no future with him.’

  ‘I have now. Now is all that matters.’

  ‘You won’t be saying that when he doesn’t know who you are.’

  ‘You don’t know who I am!’ She’s staring at him now, swiping at her mouth. ‘I wish you hadn’t told me what you just told me,’ she tells him. ‘But it doesn’t change how I feel. It doesn’t make me not want to be with him!’

  ‘Oh my god,’ the girl screeches behind me. I swing around suddenly. I didn’t even hear her leave the table. ‘I love Alyssa,’ she tells me, grinning. ‘You need to bring her here! Will you bring her here?’

  I realize I’m shaking. I can’t even talk. But she’s pointing at the screen again, eyes wide. I turn back. It’s Alyssa with another girl. Her friend Chloe, maybe? I've seen her before.