“Second,” he says. “Well, third, but I don’t really count the thing with the dog.” He smiles and puts his hand on my shoulder.
We’ve entered into the living room. There’s an oval, braided rug in the center of the room with an oval coffee table right on top of it. On the coffee table is an oval tray with three crystal wine glasses on it. All the ovals make my head spin.
Footsteps fall above us. I turn to Zack. “Adrian?” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “I think it’s Charlie.”
We head toward the hallway where we can see a twisting staircase headed upward. There’s a little table at the bottom of the stairs, with framed pictures of older people on it. The pictures look like they were black and white but have been tinted with pastels in that strange way that makes everyone look overly rosy cheeked. None of them look like Adrian Wildes. “We’ve broken into a stranger’s house,” I say.
“Adrian Wildes is a stranger, too,” Zack says. He’s got his hand on the stairway railing. “Charlie?” he calls.
“Up here,” Charlie replies. His voice hitches as if the words are stuck.
Zack takes the steps two at a time, but I linger. The light in the house is strange, seeping in around the edges of the boarded-up windows. It’s just enough to see, but dark enough for shadows to hide.
Adrian could be upstairs. Dead. And if he is, I realize, I don’t want to find him.
Instead I find Charlie lying on his back on a twin bed. The windows up here aren’t boarded up, and more light filters in through the gauzy curtains. There’s a lacy coverlet over the bed, like something our grandmother would have in her guest room, and a small wicker table with a white lamp on it. Charlie looks like a smear of coal against all this white. He doesn’t move and it’s like he and Adrian have blended in my head or something, because I lurch forward and call out, “Charlie!”
He lifts up his head.
Not dead.
He points past us and I turn and look at the bureau. On top there’s a lace doily—another thing our grandmother would have—with three old bottles, one green, one clear, one purple. Next to them, in a tiny heart-shaped frame, is a picture of Alana Greengrass. I almost don’t recognize her because it’s not like a magazine picture. I pick it up to take a closer look. She isn’t wearing any makeup and her hair is blowing in front of her face. She smiles like she’s looking at the one person in the world who matters to her at all. And I realize that person is Adrian.
“He was here?” I ask.
“There’s some shaving stuff and a toothbrush in the bathroom,” Charlie says. “In the master bedroom, there’s some of his clothes.”
“How do you know they’re his?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer, so I go into the room myself. The picture is still in my hand and so I slip it into my pocket. Hanging in the closet is a big, bulky fisherman’s sweater. He was photographed wearing one like it a lot after he broke up with Alana Greengrass. But that was almost a year ago. If this is his sweater, and it is his house, we still don’t know when he was last here. What matters is that he’s not here now. Which I guess is why Charlie is catatonic on the bed in the other room.
I close the master bedroom door behind me when I leave the room. In the small room, Zack is sitting on the bed next to Charlie. “It means we’re on the right track,” he’s saying. Which isn’t true, not necessarily, but I don’t say so.
“We should get going,” I say.
The boys don’t move, but I can’t stand to be in this house another minute. It’s all of a sudden too stuffy, too hot, too awful. “I’ll meet you back at the car.”
I know I should stay with Charlie. I mean, he’s up there lying on that bed like he’s had a stroke or something. But I can’t. I can’t breathe.
Down the stairs and out the window. I don’t know why it was so hard to breathe in there. It’s like Adrian’s sadness has gone through the whole place. I could smell it. I recognize that stench from Charlie and from me. Utter, utter heartbreak that seeps up through the pores and sours everything around it.
I’m careful on the porch, but once I get onto the sand of the beach, I start to run. The cold air hurts my lungs, but I have to get that smell off me.
Up over the dune and then I see Caroline standing outside the car tapping her foot and looking from side to side. It’s odd. It’s like she’s playing lookout or something, and where is Jacob anyway? The front windshield is steamed up, but through it I can see a lump of a shape moving around. Jacob? What’s he doing in the front seat? It’s like he’s looking for something under the steering wheel.
As soon as I have that thought, I realize what’s going on: he’s trying to hot-wire the car. Why anyone would want to steal crappy old Miss Ruka I have no idea, but it looks like that’s what he’s doing. “Hey!” I yell, and start running down toward them. “Hey!”
Caroline looks up. “Jacob!” she says.
A muffled “What?” comes from inside the car. I’m almost back to them now.
“Jacob!” Caroline says again. Her voice is thin as a reed.
“What?” he replies. His voice is louder and annoyed.
“What are you doing?” I demand.
His head pops up. I can see it through the foggy windshield, just a hazy gray shape, but I can imagine his face: surprised and annoyed and maybe a little scared.
“Are you trying to steal the car?” I ask. I speak to Caroline because Jacob, shitty coward, stays in the car.
She looks over her shoulder, back toward the house.
“What the hell? It’s a crappy car. Why would you steal such a crappy, gross car?”
“Because we need a car,” she says. Her voice is as dull as radio static.
Jacob finally opens the door and slowly, slowly eases himself out.
I watch Caroline’s sleeves. If they are car thieves, then maybe my hidden knife theory isn’t so crazy after all.
“We just need to get out of town,” Jacob says. He’s holding up both his hands, but he’s not the one I’m worried about.
“So ask us for a ride,” I tell him.
“Do you have the keys?” he asks. He steps closer. My mouth goes dry.
“No,” I say. I stick out my chin.
This is a bad choice, I think. Confronting a junkie is pretty much always a bad choice.
Another step closer to me. “Just hand them over if you do.”
My gaze flicks from him back to Caroline. “Why do you need to leave?” I ask her.
“We just do,” she says. “This town—we need to get out of here.” She shakes her head.
Jacob takes another step. My lips are paper. My breath shallow and ragged. What will he do to me? How much does this car mean? He is bigger than Seth, taller and heavier looking.
“We’re taking this car,” he says.
“No, you’re not.” The words just come out. He’s not expecting them. I can tell by the flicker in his eyes. He hasn’t thought this through, I realize. Neither of them have. I look at Caroline’s twitching hands. Do they think they’re going to drive someplace and sell the car? “You should go,” I tell them.
Caroline puts a hand on Jacob’s shoulder, but he shrugs her off. “We need this car,” he says.
“You can’t have it,” I tell him. “It’s not yours to take, okay?” Tears well in my eyes. “You might think you need it, but we need it, too, and it’s ours, so just get the fuck out of here before Zack and my brother get back.”
He takes another step forward and I push him. Hard. He rocks back into Caroline, who tries to catch him, but they tumble backward together.
“Lexi?” Zack calls from behind me. “Lexi, what’s going on?”
Jacob and Caroline scramble to their feet in front of me. I want to push them down again. Again and again. I am angry and sad and it’s all mixed up inside of me so my fists are clenched and hot tears burn my cheeks.
“Lexi?” Zack asks when he gets up alongside me.
“They were trying to steal the car,�
�� I tell him.
Zack looks at them. “Get in the car, Lexi.” His voice is calm. “You, too, Charlie.”
I pop the driver’s seat forward and crawl into the back seat. Charlie takes the passenger seat. Anger radiates off of Zack.
He sits in the driver’s seat and starts the car with the door still open. “I suggest you get out of our way.”
He slams the door shut and spins the car around. We fishtail back and forth, and then he hits the gas. Miss Ruka sputters and coughs, then we peel off down the road. Jacob slaps the hood as we go by, but that’s it.
“We’re just going to leave them there?” Charlie asks.
“They were going to leave us,” I reply. “Is the car okay?”
“I think so,” Zack says. “But as you know, she is a very delicate machine.”
I spin around and watch Jacob and Caroline get smaller and smaller until they’re just little specks on the horizon.
FIVE
Once upon a time, a princess was born in a kingdom on a cliff. The view of the sea was so magnificent that no man could go to the edge of the cliff without throwing himself from it. Many great men were lost, and so the king issued a proclamation: any man who could go to the edge of the cliff and resist its pull would have his daughter’s hand in marriage. Princes and commoners, old men and young, wise and foolish men, they all traveled from near and far to test their will, but not one could pass the test. Each man who ventured to the edge of the cliff threw himself into the sea.
NOW
Zack and Charlie’s windows are down even though it’s cold out. It’s like the air inside the car has turned so stale it could suffocate us and we would just be this drifting car. They’d never be able to figure out what happened to us. They’d think it was a group suicide.
My heart, though, is not still. It’s pounding. What would Jacob have done if I had not pushed him? And if Zack and Charlie had not shown up? Would he have scrambled up and punched me? Thrown me to the ground and patted and pawed at me looking for the keys I didn’t have? My body shakes.
“What do you think they were on?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Zack says.
“But they were on something, right?”
“Or wanted to be,” Charlie says.
We learned about what addiction can do to you in school. To your body and your brain. Jacob would’ve hurt me. Badly. For the stupid car that I didn’t even have the keys to, he would’ve hurt me, because his brain was telling him that made sense. If Charlie and Zack hadn’t come. It will always be like this. I will always be at risk. Because there will always be someone bigger and stronger than me. And that’s what was burning me and making my heart race, my pits sweat.
We’re back on the road to Pennsylvania, to the abandoned amusement park. It’ll be three hours or so before we get there. Then, what, another eight or so home? I pick up my phone wondering if I should text my mom now and let her know that it’ll definitely be another day. I will leave out the part about someone trying to steal our car. But I don’t get to make that choice because evidently the cheap-ass cell phone plan my parents got for us doesn’t work in the rest of the country.
I’m trying not to think any more about Jacob and Caroline back by the ocean. It’s not like I feel bad for them, not really. I mean, they tried to steal our car. And Jacob was going to—I don’t know. I don’t know. But seeing Caroline there, twitching and blind with whatever it was she felt for him—maybe I could feel a little bad for her.
“You think they’ll call someone to come get them?” I ask.
“What does it matter?” Charlie replies.
“I don’t know. I just—” Then I shake my head because it’s all too mixed up and I’m not sure what it is that I want to say.
I pick up the bag of snacks. The boys hit it pretty hard on the way out of New London, but there’s a couple of granola bars left, and those raspberry hard candies. I tear open a granola bar. It’s the hard kind and crumbs get all over me even though I am taking tiny, careful mouse bites. I feel bad for half a second but then realize it will be the freshest, healthiest thing in Zack’s car.
“Hey, your cousin Kristy said you like to cook,” I say.
“Yeah?” Zack responds.
“But this car is like fast-food city.”
“I have a taste for the finer and the lower things in life,” Zack responds. “Some days you just can’t beat processed bun, orange cheese, and gray meat.”
“Some days it’s porcini ravioli, some days it’s a super-deluxe cheeseburger,” I say, thinking of our Last Meal game.
“What kind of cooking do you do?” Charlie asks, and I think maybe I should write it down because it’s the first time in months he has expressed interest in something other than himself, Penelope, or Adrian Wildes.
“Italian. Some French. I really like making soup. Last Christmas I got an immersion blender and it changed my life.”
“What’s an immersion blender?”
“It’s like a blender but it’s a stick so you can put it right into the pot. My soup game upped like seven levels with that thing.”
“You should have me over for soup,” I tell him.
“I didn’t know you liked soup.”
“Everybody likes soup.”
“Penelope doesn’t like soup,” Charlie says.
“Penelope is a goddamn moron,” I say. I really don’t mean to. It just kind of blurts out. But honestly, I mean, who doesn’t like soup? Like, at all? She had to make that choice. Like, she was sitting around and said, “Hmm, what’s a strange food quirk I could have? Drink milk like a cat? No, too weird. And some guys don’t like cats. Soup? I could eat only soup. Oh, no—no soup. That will make me unique!”
“Yeah.” Charlie sighs. “Probably.”
But it doesn’t feel like a victory. It feels like being pulled under muddy water at night. And even though it’s true that Penelope is a moron, I wish I hadn’t said it because hearing Charlie admit it is somehow a thousand times worse than hearing him go on about how great she is. Like, he knows. He knows. And somehow that is worse for him. Knowing how awful she is, but still wanting her? That’s the actual worst.
BEFORE
October
Remy Yoo—the evil ex—was at the sink when I came out of the bathroom stall. She was washing her hands with about six pumps of the pink, industrial, powdered soap—enough to take off a layer of skin. But her hands were perfect. Her fingers were long and slender, the nail beds perfectly round. She played the clarinet, and I guess she was really good. It was easy to see why when you saw those fingers. I was entranced by them, the nimble way they moved, and of course I couldn’t help but picture them dancing over Seth’s skin. Seth and I had been together a month and a half, but he was with Remy for almost eight months, and my time with him seemed frail in comparison. He’d told me how it was with her, the way she trampled his heart. She sounded like a total Penelope.
“Do you have epilepsy or something?” she asked me.
“Huh?”
“You’re staring at my hands. Not moving. Like you’re having a seizure.”
“Just waiting for you to move.”
She stepped aside so I could wash my hands, but only if I stood right next to her.
So this was what it came down to? A turf war in the second floor girl’s bathroom? Fine. I could stand my ground.
I stepped forward, turned on the hot water. The soap was gritty against my skin. I hated school bathroom soap and school bathroom smell. Even more, I hated standing next to Remy Yoo, so close I could feel her breath.
“I suppose you figured out that I followed you in here.” She pulled a cosmetics bag from her backpack and started applying black eyeliner to her lids.
“It occurred to me.”
“I just wanted to know if you’re okay.”
“Okay?”
“With Seth.”
I smirked and turned off the water. I had to reach past her to get a brown paper towel. She didn’t flinch.
“We’re super,” I said.
“I dated him last year.”
“I know.”
So this was where she staked her claim.
“Do you know why we broke up?”
“I don’t have time for your sad saga.”
“It’s not a saga. It’s a simple story, really. He wanted to have sex and I didn’t.”
I crumpled the paper towel and tossed it into the wastebin. “So he broke up with you and now you’re ready to screw him and want him back?”
“That’s not exactly—”
“Sorry, Remy, you had your chance.”
She put her hand on my arm—wrapped those perfect fingers around my bicep. “I know, okay. I know.”
We stared into each other’s eyes—hers golden brown and lively, but not flashing, not angry. She looked sad. They were mother’s eyes. Worried eyes.
I shook off her arm. “You don’t know anything.” I yanked open the bathroom door and then added, loud enough for it to echo down the hall: “Bitch.”
A head popped out of one of the alcoves. Zack Donovan. “Lexi?” he asked. I kept walking.
I guess I should have warned Hannah. I guess that’s how these things work. She wouldn’t have listened, though. She wouldn’t have listened and this time I would have been the bitch.
NOW
I fall asleep. Or something like sleep. It’s like I can still feel myself in the car, and even hear Charlie and Zack talking about which kind of SUV is the least douche-y (another word previously foreign to Charlie’s vocabulary. Had he let Penelope jab something up his nose in a DIY lobotomy? That would explain a lot, actually).
The car shakes back and forth, and it’s like that is shaking the smell of old French fries out of the rugs. Probably from Burger King. Zack seems like a Burger King kind of a guy. Me, I prefer Wendy’s. Not that I frequent fast food or anything.
I’m not sure how long it’s been when we bump over the rumble strip. My forehead smacks against the cold glass of the window. “What?” I ask. “Are we there?” I don’t think three hours have passed with me dozing, and the light still feels like midday light.
Good and Gone Page 10
