You Were Here

by Cori McCarthy

  Chapter 13

  Zach

  Despite becoming BFFs with a dusty bottle of sherry, Zach hadn’t slept all night.

  And now he was at church, hungover and stiff with exhaustion.

  Silent prayer filled the chapel with shuffles and sniffles. Zach glanced around at his fellow worshippers while they dropped their faces toward their laps, shoulders hunched. Across the aisle, Mrs. Elderly, who matched her name spectacularly, mouthed every word of her prayer, and Zach tried to figure out what she was saying. Something like, Jesus, save my cat.

  Pastor Allen cleared his throat into the mic, and Zach’s older brother, Tyler, started playing a guitar riff that whined through the old wood church. This whole “rock worship” thing was losing popularity fast, although not fast enough for Zach. Zach’s dad had been so damn proud when Tyler was named lead musician, but then, his dad didn’t know that the only spirituality Tyler got from his role was an infamous on-the-altar hookup with Eleanor, the tambourine and triangle girl, after practice one night.

  Zach looked over the altar with its fake candles and flower basket. How had Tyler done that exactly? The altar was pretty high. Were they both on top of it or was Tyler standing? As if his brother knew what was happening in Zach’s mind, Tyler made eye contact with him and puckered his lips in a mock kiss.

  Note to self: never, ever attempt to figure out the logistics of Tyler’s conquests.

  Zach tried to think about something else, but his thoughts dropped on Natalie so fast and hard that his back ached. The fall through the roof had been nothing compared to Natalie’s latest and greatest attempt to flatten him.

  That’s always what happened. She’d dump him and piss him off, and then the next morning, after being alone with his blinking Nintendo screen all night, he’d feel her loss like she’d been ripped out of his chest. It didn’t make sense. How could he want to be with her and not want to be with her at the exact same time?

  It didn’t help that without Natalie, he had to sort through the trail mix of crap in his life all by himself. What to major in at college. How to handle his mom’s new boyfriend. When to tell Tyler to piss off. How to keep from strangling his always-judging father. You know, the usual.

  Zach loved Natalie—but not remotely like Bishop had loved Marrakesh. Zach felt red just imagining how Marrakesh and Bishop had had that crazed look for each other. He’d once overheard them screwing and been completely blown away by their R-rated pleasure screams. Zach’s blush made his face feel like a furnace. Was he supposed to make Natalie sound like that? If so, he was doing a horrible job. Then again, could anyone make Natalie that wild?

  Zach put his hood over his head and pulled the strings tight. He wasn’t supposed to think about sex in church, so of course, all he could think about was sex.

  Alianna elbowed him in the ribs. “You’re making weird noises,” his little sister whispered.

  “No, I’m not,” he said back.

  “Shhh,” their father said from the other side of the pew where he held his girlfriend’s hand. Zach’s father was wooing the freshly divorced Mrs. Dowen, and Zach was pretty sure they’d be married by next summer.

  Pastor Allen ended silent prayer, and yet Tyler’s guitar just kept on weeping. The pastor cleared his throat in the mic again, and Zach snorted a laugh.

  Zach’s father growled a warning.

  “I’d now like to invite the children to head to their Sunday school classes with the grace and love of Jesus,” Pastor Allen said.

  Alianna took Zach’s hand. “I have a plan,” she whispered. “Trust me.” She got up without letting go. She stepped around Zach and into the aisle, the whole while tugging him behind her like a leashed puppy.

  “Hey, let go,” Zach said. “I’m not a child.”

  “Let go, Alianna,” Zach’s father said. “You’re holding up the service.”

  Alianna pouted in the general direction of Mrs. Dowen. “I want Zatch to walk with me,” she said, purposefully using the name she’d given Zach when she was learning to talk. “Please, Dad?” she added just loud enough to get a thousand awws from the surrounding parishioners.

  “Oh, that’s sweet,” Mrs. Dowen said. The woman had two boys in college who wouldn’t attend church with her, and she found Alianna to be the most precious thing on the planet. Big mistake. “Let them go, Joseph,” she said to Zach’s father.

  Zach stood up, and Alianna led him down the aisle and around to the side door—but not before Tyler instigated a whole new round of awws at the sight of the inseparable Ferris siblings.

  Once they were in the hall and the door clapped closed, Alianna let go. “It’s good for your image to be nice to me. Now that you’re back on the market, you’ve got to look like a sweet guy. You’ve got to seem like the opposite of Tyler.”

  “That’s not hard.” Zach started to walk her toward the Sunday school classrooms, but Alianna grabbed his elbow and swung him into the girls’ restroom. She locked the door and sat on the counter. The place reeked of potpourri and gas. Flower farts, he thought, mildly amusing himself.

  “Get comfortable,” she said. “We’re not leaving here until you’re out of the hoodie.”

  Zach glanced in the mirror. His hood was drawn so tightly over his head that only a small circle of his face was visible. Great. Was that what everyone was awwing over? “I’m just tired, Ali. I didn’t sleep last night.”

  “You never sleep.” She motioned to his wardrobe situation. “And believe me that that is not helping you find someone to get over Empress Natalie.”

  Zach tried not to snicker. “She hates it when you call her that.” Alianna ignored him and took a bottle of neon-blue nail polish out of her small Frozen purse. “You know, at some point, Dad’s going to catch on to the fact that you’re about twenty-five years old beneath all that fake kid behavior. Mom is already onto your tricks. Natalie never bought them to begin with.”

  “Hence my dislike of her.” Alianna shook the small bottle. “I’ll cross the Dad bridge when I come to it. Now tell me everything that happened last night, and don’t leave out why Tyler’s being a bigger butthole than usual this morning.”

  Zach collapsed on an overstuffed chair in the corner of the bathroom. “Hey, why do you girls have lounge seats in here?”

  “For nursing moms.”

  “Ew.”

  “Talk.”

  He told her about Jaycee and the swing set, about Natalie’s insistence that they follow the girl into The Ridges, and then Mik’s crazed appearance. He finished off by describing his fall through the TB ward roof, Natalie’s reaction, and his run from the cops.

  “I don’t know what’s up Tyler’s butt,” he added. His brother had woken him up by sitting on Zach, reeking of booze, and saying something about how freshly graduated girls were the hottest drunks. Zach took that to mean that Tyler had hooked up with one of the girls in Zach’s class, which made him want to puke. “I hate our brother.”

  “Tyler hates himself,” Alianna said, kicking off her shoes to paint her tiny toenails. “That’s enough for me.”

  Zach checked his phone. No texts from Natalie. Nothing. Would she actually stick with the breakup this time?

  “You need to stay broken up,” Alianna said eerily. “Trust me. You’re both better off with someone else. By the way, I’m supposed to talk to you about your major. Mom wants to get to the bottom of this before you sign up for classes.”

  Zach responded by pulling the strings tighter on his hoodie until his face completely disappeared, nothing but the tip of his nose sticking out. “I don’t know what I want to major in. Isn’t that why they have an ‘undecided’ major in the first place?”

  “Mom doesn’t buy that.”

  “Are you really going to be her snitch?” he asked. “That’s not your style.”

  “I don’t think it could hurt you to make some decisions. C
ome out from the hood, or I’m going to paint your nails.”

  Zach held out his hand, and his little sister scooted along the counter until she was sitting with her feet on his knees. She painted his fingernails carefully, and Zach loosened his hood until he could see what he called her “constipation scowl.” Alianna was blond and fine boned like Zach. Both replicas of their mother. Tyler was the one who was all shoulders and eyebrows like their dad. No wonder those two were no-fail buds.

  Alianna was his only ally—no, that wasn’t true. He also had Natalie. They’d been together since the eighth grade science fair. She’d been right there when his parents’ divorce broke through his house like an earthquake, and Tyler descended into what Natalie referred to as his “debauchery degree.” Natalie had never judged Zach for not being able to sleep. Or when he came too early, which was pretty much every single time. Not for crying either. He cried way too much, and she never said a damn word against him.

  “I want her back,” he said to Alianna.

  “No, you don’t.” She scowled at his thumb. “Why are your nails so freakin’ huge? I can never get enough paint for the whole thing in one swipe.” She wiped the paint off his thumb with a paper towel and started over again. “You just don’t want to be alone, Zatch. That’s no reason to be with someone. That’s not love.”

  “It’s something like love,” he said, because he was certain of it. When he was in the depths of his insomnia, awake for the third night in a row, his eyes burning from staring at the TV, Natalie was the one who crawled through the basement window and curled up with her head on his lap. It didn’t always help Zach knock out, but it sure as hell made him feel better about not being able to sleep.

  “What happens when she goes to college?” Alianna asked, and Zach ignored her and the question just like he had when Jaycee was asking.

  “Will you help me get her back?”

  “I’ll think about it.” She sighed and moved on to painting his other hand. “And only if you start to stand up to her.”

  After church, Zach was relieved to find Tyler heading to his frat house uptown and not coming back with his dad and Alianna. Zach kept the overhead lights off and descended into his basement bedroom. His old room had been tucked beside his parents’, and sometime around the second year of their nocturnal screaming matches, he’d blearily moved downstairs. He’d even become the coolest guy in seventh grade because of his lair.

  That was the upside.

  The downside was that he never relearned how to sleep. Whenever Zach closed his eyes, he heard his mother crying and his father telling her that she was stupid. Whenever Zach closed his eyes, he felt like he was a little kid again, praying for Jesus or the boogeyman to come get him. Whoever was faster.

  The small rectangular window by the ceiling was propped open, the curtain pushed aside. By the early afternoon light, Zach could make out Natalie’s outline in his bed. He kicked off his shoes and crawled under the covers beside her. She’d wept all over his pillow, and the sogginess smelled of booze. She was also wearing some guy’s old shirt.

  “What happened?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice tiny and wounded. “I went to Kolenski’s after The Ridges. I thought you’d be there. I wanted to make up, see if you were okay, but you weren’t there, and I…got drunk.” She started to cry so hard that the mattress shook beneath them.

  “It wasn’t cheating,” he said, because he knew her that well. “We were broken up. If you made out with someone…” He sighed. “It’s okay. I’m not mad.”

  And he wasn’t mad, which was weird. He was just glad that she had come here. To him.

  “I slept at Jaycee’s house. She…oh my God, Zach, she hates me.”

  “I didn’t get that impression. It’s more like she’s mad at you. If she’s mad, you can do something to make her…not mad. You know?”

  “Like what?” Natalie said, a sliver of hope in her pillow-muffled voice.

  “Let’s just sleep for now,” he said. “You’ll feel better when you’re not hungover.” He pulled her into his arms and his whole body slumped. Maybe if he was the most supportive, wonderful boyfriend this summer, they’d stay together when she left. They could do the long-distance thing, and he’d even drive up to New York every couple of weekends. That would make for some unbelievable missing-you sex…

  He still had two months. He could do this.

  She was shaking, so he leaned over her shoulder to kiss her. She pulled away after a brief moment, her lips bumping on his as she spoke. “Did Bishop make it home okay last night?”

  “Yeah, he texted. He wants to go hiking around man-made ruins again. That’s the first thing he’s cared about since Marrakesh. Go fig.” Zach bowed to a huge yawn. “He’s going to the Columbus Museum of Art today to look at some statues or something. He’ll be back tonight. Hey, maybe Jaycee could take us out again, and you two could talk.”

  “Maybe.” Natalie seemed deep in thought, and he wondered if she was thinking about Jaycee or the other guy—whoever she’d kissed. Who was it? Kolenski? Zach felt himself dropping into sleep before he could get too worked up. Natalie’s emotions were always unbelievably tiring. The essential cure for an insomniac.

  Chapter 14

  Jaycee

  I sat at the edge of the driveway, arms circling my legs, head resting on my knees.

  Waiting for Mik.

  I’d finally gotten a text from him during dinner—if you wanted to call it a text. The message was an empty bubble, but I’d fired back a dare that I thought would work. Especially if Zach was right about Mik’s, uh, interest.

  Moonville Tunnel. Pick me up at sunset.

  I pulled at my shirt. I really needed to stop sweating. This was one of the first summer days not to bow to the chill of dusk. I closed my eyes and tried to remember how we cooled down in the past: a cannonball in the overchlorinated city pool, followed by a challenge from Jake to drink the whole gallon of lime-green Kool-Aid. Summer didn’t taste like that anymore. It hadn’t for years, but I still reached back to that place where things were simpler. Paper airplanes and lightning bugs and so many bonfires that my memories glowed with the stick-skinny shadows of Jake and Mik leaping over flames.

  Every time my mom caught us, she would line up the boys, sometimes with Natalie and me, and lecture us on safety and responsibility. Natalie would say that she agreed, that she had warned us. Then Jake would call her a snitch, and she’d cry.

  I burned when I thought about my mom. How long would she stay at Stanwood this time? Would she even want to come back when she was released? The last two times she’d been sent home, her doctor had said she was ready, not her. And she told us that over and over.

  Would you like more coffee, Laura? my dad would ask.

  I wasn’t ready to come back, she’d say.

  Or Would you like to go to Jaycee’s first track meet?

  I wasn’t ready to come back.

  My head hurt. My eyes smarted. I didn’t want to think about my mom.

  I checked my phone, but there was nothing besides Mik’s empty text. Would he show? No clue. And why in hell was I so uneasy about it? It wasn’t a date, no matter what Natalie and Zach had implied via all those liking and kissing comments. That stuff made me uncomfortable. Made me itch. It also made me check my phone a thousand times per hour and trade out my sports bra for a real bra, which made my shirt snug in the right spots.

  Of course that felt weirdly obvious, and I pulled on one of Jake’s button-down shirts like a security blanket. I had to admit that I’d never changed three times in one evening before. Is this what Natalie’s life was like? Terrible.

  Mik’s old blue car appeared down the street, and I stood, hugging Jake’s urbex journal to my chest. Mik pulled in the driveway, and I tried to jump in, but I wasn’t fast enough. My dad must have been watching. He was already halfway down the driveway,
nearly running toward Mik’s car.

  “Drive,” I told Mik, but he only took a quick look at me—long enough for me to see that he had recently showered and wasn’t in his trench coat—and got out. They shook hands before the hood of the car. Then my dad put his arms around Mik as fast as he had gone after Natalie. I couldn’t hear what my dad was saying to him, but I just about died when he patted the side of Mik’s face like some sort of mobster godfather giving his blessing. And then Mik’s lips moved.

  Mik said something.

  Natalie’s speech that morning about him talking to some people came back like a bug bite, and I wanted to scratch the words into oblivion. So Mik really did talk to some people. I just wasn’t one of them. He couldn’t even text words to me, apparently, although he had gone to a party and saved Natalie like some kind of superhero. Speaking of, why had he even been at that party? That didn’t seem like his scene, but then, what the hell was his scene?

  Mik and my dad both looked back at me in the car. I waved. Not sweetly. More like what the hell, guys? Mik slid back into the driver’s seat while my dad came around to the passenger window. I rolled it down, and my dad’s face leaned through the square.

  “Should I give you a curfew?” he asked. “Midnight?”

  “I’m eighteen. I don’t have a curfew,” I said, tucking Jake’s urbex journal under my knees and hoping that my dad didn’t see it.

  He looked at Mik. “I suppose I should say something about having a shotgun and a shovel, but I really don’t have either, so just bring her back safe.”

  Mik nodded.

  “I love you, Jayce.”

  It was an unspoken, iron law in my family; you never left without saying I love you, because what if you never came back? What if Mik wrapped his car around a tree or aliens descended in a blue flare of abducting light beams?