Mom, 3:17 p.m.: This is your mom. Dad said I should text you to make sure you guys are okay. I said that this was your adventure and that you would tell us if there was a problem. You would tell us if there was a problem, right?
Mom, 3:49 p.m.: I have two scenarios for why you have not answered my texts. One: you are someplace without service or your phone has died. Two: you are acting petulantly. I will not allow myself to entertain a third possibility.
Mom, 4:03 p.m.: I am afraid I am contemplating a third scenario.
My phone’s battery warning blinks onto the screen. I dismiss it, type a word into a text message, and push send. My phone turns dark and I hope that the message made it out in time.
Lexi, 4:17 p.m.: Safe.
The path takes me all the way around to the front of the park again. There’s one bench alongside the path and I sit on it, pulling my knees up to my chest. In the dusk, I can still see Charlie and Zack wandering around. Charlie is stooped, his body changed by his breakup with Penelope. But what about me? I lost someone, too. I lost so many someones that I loved and I still manage to get up every morning and go to school and be a normal person. “What about me?” I yell.
Zack looks up and then trots down the path toward me. “You okay?” he asks.
“Peachy,” I reply. “Peachy and plum-diggity.”
He sits down on the bench next to me. “Adrian’s not here,” he says. “I’m not sure he’s anywhere.”
“You think he’s dead?”
“I’m not ready to go that far,” Zack says. “Well, maybe not out loud. But I think if he doesn’t want to be found, he has the means not to be found.”
“What would he be doing?”
“Something else,” he says. “Mushroom farming. Custom furniture making. Accounting. Who knows?”
“Harper says you can’t become a new person,” I tell him. “You can’t give up one life and start a new one.”
“Wherever you go, there you are,” he says.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s one of those old sayings. It’s like, no matter where you go, no matter how much your circumstances change, you’re still you.”
I think about this a moment. “What if someone else tries to change you?”
“You mean like your brother and Penelope?” he asks.
“Sure,” I say.
“I guess maybe I think that it doesn’t work? Like, maybe we all have a range for our personalities, and they can change you within that range, but not outside of it. I mean, unless we’re talking like trauma here. Like a blow to the head or something.”
“Because that changes your brain,” I say.
“Right.”
Zack keeps tapping his foot in a puddle, making tiny splashes. “You used to go out with Seth Winthrop, didn’t you?”
I snap my head away from him; it’s like he’s been in my thoughts, in my memories. “So?”
“So he’s kind of cute,” Zack says.
“You’re not his type.”
“That makes two of us, I guess.”
I look back at him. His face doesn’t look mean, but, still, I could slap him. “What do you know about it?”
He scratches his head. “I don’t think you actually want to know that,” he says.
“He’s not gay. If you think that’s some deep dark secret or something—”
“Nothing deep or dark about being gay,” he says. “As for Seth . . .”
“I know all of Seth’s secrets. That’s what broke us up.”
Zack nods. “If you could have known at the beginning, would you still have done it?” he asks.
“No. Why would I set myself up for that?”
“So it didn’t balance out? The good can’t hold up to the bad?”
“The good wasn’t really good. He used to—” But I stop myself from saying more.
Zack nods again, then he picks something out of his pocket. “I found it on the ground over there.” He hands it to me. It’s a poker chip with one red side and one pink side. In the middle it’s stamped with gold letters that say Shangri-La. “Two sides, right?”
“Right,” I agree, annoyed.
“I think that most things don’t have two sides like that.”
I roll my eyes. “Golly gee whiz, thanks for the advice, Granddad.”
He takes the poker chip back and slips it into his pocket. “Never mind,” he says, standing up. He doesn’t walk away, though.
“What?” I ask.
“What what?”
“What is it? What aren’t you saying?”
“Just that in art class, he used to draw you. All the time. One picture after another. Mr. Solloway finally had to tell him to find another subject.”
“Seth isn’t taking art this year,” I say.
“It wasn’t this year. It was last year.”
The air is still between us. In the distance, I can hear Charlie rustling around. “Screw you,” I say.
“What?”
“Why would you tell me that? Screw you!”
He smooths his hands down the front of his shirt as if he’s wiping himself clean of me. He turns on his heel and sets back off down the path. I wait a moment, and then follow him, hoping that we are leaving. He catches up to Charlie. They talk. Charlie nods. I hang back. Charlie calls back to me, “We’re going. He’s not here.” I refrain from telling him I knew that all along.
In the car, I put my head against the cool, fogged glass. When I shift my head, my forehead wipes a streak clean and I’m left with one clear spot to look out at the silver-black road and the silver-gray night. I wonder what those pictures look like. Are they sketches, the lines still rough? Are they inked with crisp clear lines? How did he see me? How did he put me down on paper?
He never once showed a drawing to me. Never once told me about it. Because, I realize, we didn’t match up. The paper version from his mind and the real world me just weren’t the same, and so he let me go.
We’ve driven about twenty minutes when Zack swivels around in the front seat so his face is looking at mine through the space between the headrest and the door. “I just thought you’d like to know,” he whispers. “That’s all.”
Adrian Wildes is actually kind of a good-looking guy. He has that cloud of thick, dark hair, and chocolate brown eyes. And even though it’s total cheezeballs—and in a crap song to boot—he has that line about always letting you fall asleep first, just holding you until you slip into sleep. So cheezeballs—but also kind of nice.
I imagine what I’d do if we actually found him. I allow myself this fantasy even though it’s outlandish. In my mind, the guys are gone and it’s just me and Adrian. And he takes me to the hotel he’s hiding out in. It’s a nice hotel. The bathroom is huge with a tub with jets and there are thick robes you can put on when you get out. There’s a balcony that overlooks a river. And every morning, room service wheels in a cart with fresh fruit and pastries. So we go to his hotel room. And we just talk and talk and I find out he’s really not so bad.
“I know I come off as a douche,” he says.
“Total d-bag.”
“But it’s partly a way of protecting myself. I keep the real me hidden away so the public can’t take it from me.”
“And I suppose you’re going to say you only share the real you with a few people and one of those few, rare, special people is me? I’m not falling for it.”
“Well, I was going to say that, and it wouldn’t be me playing some game. But I’ll wait, and you’ll see.”
So I do wait. We stay in that hotel for days. It’s a suite and I can sleep on the couch. He doesn’t make a move.
We talk and talk and eat pastries and talk and I realize that he was telling the truth, that he’s not a total d-bag.
When we finally come out, I’m Lexi Green, The Girl Who Saved Adrian Wildes. Our picture is in all the gossip magazines.
It would just burn Seth right up.
BEFORE
November
Sometimes when Seth
and I were having sex, I closed my eyes and pictured Adrian Wildes instead. Not to get me off. I don’t know. He made that sex face when he played the guitar, so it was easy to come up with the image in my mind. I pictured Adrian Wildes, imagined it was him grunting in my ear, and then it was over.
If you close your eyes and keep yourself still, you can transport your body just about anywhere. Any place your imagination can conjure, you can go there. Sun-drenched beaches. Outer space. Under deep, deep water.
You have to hold on.
There might be jabs of pain, of pressure holding you down.
But it’s all worth it for the journey. All worth it.
You can do anything for seven minutes.
“We should probably use condoms, huh? Or maybe you should go on birth control?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Yeah. I think you’d need your parents’ permission or something. Let’s get dressed.”
Pulled on underwear. Bra. Sock. Shirt overhead.
“I’m glad you always agree in the end.”
Your head popped out of your shirt’s neck like a turtle. He put a hand on your shoulder, gently where before it pushed hard into your bone.
“You’re so good, Lexi. So, so good.”
NOW
The boys have to pee again. “Can you see from the map where the next exit is?” Charlie asks.
“Why can’t we just pull over?” I ask. “I mean, isn’t the joy of being a guy that you can just pee wherever you want to. Rocket-launcher pee all over everything, everywhere.”
“Pee isn’t like a rocket launcher,” Charlie says.
“Speak for yourself, young man,” Zack replies.
“So, pull over and have a literal pissing contest and then we can get back on the road.”
“Since when have you been in such a rush?” Charlie asks. “I thought you didn’t think we were going to find him and didn’t care if we did.”
“We’re going home now, right? He wasn’t there, so we’re following the river back to Trenton and then home. Right?”
“Rest stop,” Zack says, and Charlie swerves the car over so hard my head hits the side.
“Sorry, Lexi,” I say. “That’s okay, Charlie. I know you have a tiny bladder. You’re right! I do have a tiny bladder! Thank you for noticing.”
“Zip it, Lexi.”
He pulls the car into an angled parking place. I think about staying in the car, but I know that I should go now, because in an hour I could be the one who has to go, and I don’t want to hear about it from Charlie. So when Zack gets himself out of the front passenger seat, I say, “Can you pop it?”
And Charlie of course says, “I thought you didn’t have to go.”
“I’m being proactive. Maybe you should have done that back at Shangri-La.”
It’s one of those squat buildings with a few vending machines and the bathrooms to each side. The light above the women’s room isn’t working. I hesitate. Zack and Charlie head toward the men’s room. It’s stupid, really, but my feet won’t move. A deserted rest stop bathroom. It’s stupid. If I yelled, Charlie and Zack would hear me, I think. Maybe. I don’t know. I’m just being stupid, but I still can’t seem to make my feet move.
“Wait up!” I call.
Charlie looks over his shoulder. “What?”
“I’m coming with you. Want to check out the men’s room, see if it’s any different from the women’s room.”
Charlie shakes his head, but says, “Suit yourself,” so I follow them in. They head right for the urinals, weird white sink-ish things against the wall. I go into one of the stalls. The toilet is all silver metal with no tank. I squat above it, but no pee comes out. Of course. I don’t want them to hear me. So I start singing the lumberjack song from Monty Python.
“Lexi!” Charlie calls, but Zack joins in.
I can kind of hear the stream of their pee under our singing, but I tell myself that they can’t hear me. Anyway, I barely have to go. When I finish, I call out, “Everyone done? Everything put away?”
“Yes,” Zack replies. “The anaconda is back in its cage.”
I come out of the stall and head for the sink. “Listen, obviously I can’t speak for the average homosexual male, but girls aren’t really interested in anacondas. Too scary.”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s not the size of the ship, it’s the motion in the ocean and all that,” Zack says.
I turn on the tap. Only cold water comes out, and there doesn’t seem to be any soap in the dispenser. I rub my hands together hard.
“Lexi doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Charlie says. He’s finished washing his hands, but the hot air dryer doesn’t work, so he wipes his hands on his pants.
Above the sink is a mirror. Well, really it’s a rectangular slab of metal. I can see myself in it, but no details. I’m just a blur of basic face-like shapes: eyes, nose, pink mouth, swirl of hair. “Give it a rest, Charlie,” I say, still looking at my reflection.
“She just likes to talk about sex,” Charlie says. “Sex and swearing and whatever else she thinks will shock you.”
I bite hard on the inside of my cheek. I can’t notice any difference in my reflection, but I am sure my whole body is washing over with purple rage. I turn off the tap and wipe my hands on my own pants. “You’re an asshole, Charlie. How’s that for shocking?”
“Pretty mild, actually.”
“Pretty truthful, though,” I reply.
I push past him and step out into the cold night. The air hits the inside of my nose and makes me breathe in sharply, just like I did with Seth. I close my eyes, try to slow my breath, try to forget where I am. Just like I did with Seth.
BEFORE
October
The streets in Portsmouth were crowded with tourists. We ducked into Macro Polo, which was basically a whole store of gag gifts, but kind of upscale gag gifts, if such a thing could even exist. There was fake poop, but also books of hipster haiku. I flipped through that one:
The coffee was not cool.
Yet. He drank it all the same.
Being hipster burns.
I looked up at Seth to read it to him, but he was holding out a tiny booklet to me: Good Feelings Book.
“You need this,” he told me. “Because you are so earnest.”
I frowned. “I’m not earnest with anyone except you.”
He stood so we were right next to each other. He was taller, but still our hips lined up, and our legs stretched to the ground like they were one. He flipped open the book and we read together, “Look up an old friend when you’re feeling down.” He turned to another page: “Art nourishes the soul like food nourishes the body.”
“Gack,” he said.
The pages were all perforated so you could tear them out and give them to someone, I guessed to make their day better or something. I couldn’t imagine doing that. More so, I couldn’t imagine receiving one. What would I do if a stranger appeared in front of me, holding out a tiny slip of paper? I would shake my head and say, “No, thank you.”
My stomach dropped and I leaned away from Seth, reaching over the table to pick up a book of funny cat pictures.
Then again, it might be nice to have a little positive message handed to you, especially on a bad day. Just a little thought to show that we were all humans. “An example of the empathetic heart,” Dewey DeWitt might call it—that’s what he said we needed to bring to each text we read.
“See, what we need to do is write the real truth of things on the back.” Seth ruffled the pages with his thumb. “Home is where they take you in no matter what,” he read. “I mean, gack, right? Not everyone’s home is like that. How would that feel if you had an abusive father and an alcoholic mother? How would that feel if you have no home?”
“You’re right,” I said. “These are Good Feelings for people who already feel pretty good.”
“Come on,” he said. He walked toward the register with one of the tiny booklets.
“Really?” I aske
d. “Won’t that just encourage the company to make more of these ridiculous things?”
“Commerce marches on regardless of what the people want,” he replied.
“Well—”
“Anyway, our purchase is barely a drop in a bucket.”
“A single molecule of water,” I replied.
“Sure,” he said.
He bought the book, told the clerk we didn’t need a bag, and handed it to me. I slipped it into my pocket. I thought I would never, ever pass one out—not a real one or a mean one. He slipped his hand into mine and we walked back out into the tourist throng.
“Coffee?” he asked.
“Okay.”
I liked Breaking New Grounds, but he liked this place with an eastern European name and a weird graffiti mural out front, so we went there. My latte came with an elaborate design in the foam and I was trying to make out what it was when a woman in her fifties came in. She had on high-waisted jeans with an elastic waist. Her hair was cut short and it poofed around her head. She carried a little purse with a huge gold snap. Seth watched her come in and shook his head.
“So I was thinking you should try out for the play,” I told him.
“What?” he asked. His eyes were still on the woman.
“The play. They’re doing The Importance of Being Earnest. It’s really funny. And I think you would be great as one of the Earnests. Hannah wants to work on costumes or something, and I thought that could be fun. Or backstage or something.”
The woman ordered a mocha with skim milk. “Make it a decaf,” she said. “And can I get whipped cream on that?”
“Jesus,” Seth muttered.
“What?” I asked.
“What does she think this is? Starbucks?”
I shrugged. “Anyway, so what do you think?”
“About what?”
“About the play.”
“Yeah, I think you and Hannah would do a good job with costumes. You don’t need to be able to sew or anything, right?”
“But are you going to try out?”
He turned from the woman and looked at me. His eyebrows were knitted together as if he was seeing me for the first time and wasn’t really sure what I was. “Why would I try out for the play?”
“Because it’s acting. I thought it would be good practice for you. For your YouTube stuff.”
Good and Gone Page 14
