“It’s not a stupid test!” I fire back. “It’s . . . it’s . . .”
“It’s what?” he challenges. “What is it?”
It’s everything, I think, but I know it sounds ridiculous. Even in my head.
“You can’t judge someone based on a single personality quiz,” Nico says.
“I don’t do that,” I shoot back, but I can tell he doesn’t believe me.
I barely believe myself.
I glance down at the phone still clutched in my hand. At the countless personality quiz options stretching for miles and miles, just waiting to tell me some random, useless fact about myself. Just waiting to define who I am. Who everyone is.
Just waiting to put the world in a safe little box.
You just discovered your entire relationship with your ex was based on a lie! What do you do?
A Force him to pull over and take the quiz again . . . truthfully this time!
B Admit to yourself it doesn’t matter. His true identity was sealed the moment you opened that glove box.
C . . .
“Ali.” Nico’s voice breaks into my thoughts before I can come up with an option C.
“Yeah,” I reply, bracing myself for the lecture I’m sure is coming. He’s going to tell me I put too much stock in stupid things like personality quizzes. He’s going to tell me to just let it go. It’s not important. It doesn’t matter.
But he doesn’t. Instead he says, “Can we stop? We’re almost out of water.”
Because the truth is, Nico has never done anything that I’ve ever expected him to do. He’s never behaved solely like a Fixer or a Commissioner or any of the other fourteen personality types on that quiz.
He’s never fit into a box.
And I suddenly know what option C is.
It’s the option I’ve been avoiding for the past five hundred miles.
C Start over, forget the past, and let the real Nico reveal himself to you.
4:15 P.M.
TILLAMOOK, OR
INVENTORY: 1968 FIREBIRD CONVERTIBLE (1), CASH ($345.12), SEA GLASS (1 PIECE), LOST-KEY BUTTERFLY SCULPTURE (1), USELESS PHOTOGRAPH (1), SURFACE PRO TABLET (1)
Less than an hour later, we walk into a used camera shop in Tillamook, Oregon, with a Surface Pro tablet and walk out again five minutes later with an envelope of Seattle Seahawks tickets that Nico estimates is worth more than five thousand dollars, based on their face value.
Just like that.
Five thousand dollars.
That, combined with the car, will take us up to eight thousand.
I still can’t believe we’ve made it this far. From a rubber band, no less! It boggles my mind that this even works. That Nico knew it would work.
He makes it look so easy. To dig your way out of life’s problems.
I think about how he first proposed this crazy plan to me on the beach. “We trade up!”
He said it like we were seven and he was pitching me the idea of starting a lemonade stand.
Easy. We make the lemonade. We sell the lemonade. Life’s problems, solved.
Nico quickly updates our Craigslist post and suggests we keep heading north up the coast while we wait for responses.
“If they’re Seattle Seahawks tickets, we should have better luck trading them if we’re closer to Seattle.”
So, I guess we’re heading north . . . again.
As we continue to drive up the coast, I steal glimpses at the map on Nico’s phone. We don’t have much of the state of Oregon left. Pretty soon, we’ll have no choice but to cross over the border to Washington. Pretty soon, I’ll be forced to be in the same state where Jackson died.
“Whoa!” Nico shouts, jerking my attention back to the car, which is now decelerating at a breakneck rate as Nico swerves off the highway. He yanks the steering wheel and pulls into one of those scenic overlook parking areas. But he’s still going so fast, I’m terrified he’s going to drive straight over the guardrail and send us plummeting off the cliff to the beach below.
I grab hold of the seat as Nico slams on the brakes and we stop just short of the edge. “What the hell!?” I scream.
But Nico ignores me, leaping out of the car without opening the door.
I really wish he would stop doing that.
He runs to the edge of the lookout point and shields his eyes from the sun. “Yes!” he shouts, pointing at something in the distance. “That’s it! That’s totally it!”
“What are you doing?” I call out from the passenger seat.
“Come look at this!” is all he says in response.
I get out of the car—utilizing the door like a normal person—and tentatively walk over to where Nico is still gaping at the ocean. I’m starting to worry that after three days in the car with his ex, he might have actually cracked.
But then I see what he sees, and a shiver of exhilaration travels through me. “Oh my God! Is that for real?”
“It has to be, right? It looks just like it!”
I squint at the giant rock formation in the distance: one large cone-shaped boulder flanked by two smaller, pointier ones on either side.
We watched the movie at least five times in the three months we dated. It was one of our go-to favorites for our Epic Eighties Movie Marathons.
“Totally,” I agree. “This has to be the rock formation from The Goonies.”
Nico fishes his phone out of his pocket and types something into a web browser. A few moments later he confirms it. “Yup. Haystack Rock. Featured in the movie The Goonies, which was filmed nearby in Astoria, Oregon.” He pockets his phone and taps his chin contemplatively. “How did that movie end again? It’s so weird. For some reason, I can’t remember the ending.” He flashes me that mischievous look of his. “I wonder why.”
I roll my eyes. “You know exactly why.”
“Oh, that’s right. We never quite made it to the end. Of several of those films.”
I go to jab him in the arm, but he catches my hand before I make contact. At first I think he’s just trying to stop me from hitting him. And maybe that was his original intention. But then, he doesn’t let go. And for a long, tense moment, he’s just standing there, holding my hand. His warm fingers tangled up with mine.
And for some reason, I don’t pull away.
But I can’t look at him. I turn back toward the rock. I let the silence fall between us. It feels lighter somehow now. Less a shadowy pit and more a warm summer breeze.
“That was really amazing what you did back there.” I can tell from the hesitant tone of his voice that it’s a subject he’s been trying to broach for a while. “With the dog. How did you know what to do?”
I glance down at our entwined fingers. “Chateau Marmutt. Last summer we had a massive heat wave, and I watched Pam save one of the Saint Bernards from the same fate. Those cold-weather breeds are just not cut out for the heat.”
“You’re going to make a really great veterinarian one day.”
I rip my hand away. So that’s where he’s going with this. “Nico—”
“I just don’t understand. Why would you give up a full scholarship to your dream? Why is that acceptance letter still sitting in your backpack?”
“I told you I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Ali, you’re meant to be a vet. You should go to school to become a vet.”
“Vet school will be there next year.”
“Yeah, but that scholarship might not be!”
“Stop,” I say so sternly it causes Nico to flinch. “Please, just stop.”
Nico falls silent. But he looks too contemplative. I worry he’s not going to just let this go. He’s going to keep pushing and pushing and—
“I couldn’t send it, okay?” I explode.
Nico’s eyes flicker to me, but he doesn’t speak.
“I tried,” I go on. “I had it all stamped and ready. I walked it right down to the mailbox. But my hands were trembling so badly, I couldn’t drop it in.”
“Why?”
/>
I close my eyes, letting the question wash over me. It’s a good question.
Why?
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
Nico presses. “I think you do.”
I sigh. He’s right. I do know. I’ve known since the moment the envelope first arrived. Since the first foreclosure notice appeared on our front door. Maybe since the day Jackson first left.
“Because if I leave my mom now,” I say quietly, “then I’m no better than him.”
Nico looks like he’s going to respond to this, but I don’t let him. I turn my back to him and stare out at the ocean. Even from way up here, high on this cliff, I can still hear the waves crashing far below.
We stand there for a long time, neither of us saying anything. Finally, without a word, I turn and walk back to the car.
“Any responses to the season tickets?” I ask as Nico sits down in the driver’s seat, hoping the change of topic will keep him from trying to continue our previous conversation.
It works. He fishes his phone out of his pocket. “Yes. Wow. Five.”
“Five?” I repeat, flabbergasted. “Already? What are people willing to trade?”
“Let’s see.” Nico scrolls his thumb up the screen. “The first response is from someone in Vancouver, Canada. Nope. We don’t have passports. Next. There’s also a response from someone in Portland. That’s not far too from here.”
“What are they offering?”
Nico peers at the screen and frowns. “Whoa. A bedroom furniture set. Nope, too big.”
As he continues to scroll through his e-mails, vetoing trade options, I think about the question Emily Sweeney asked me this morning.
Why is he really doing this?
If I asked him, would he tell me the truth? Or would he just lie to me again?
The way he lied to me about his laptop being in the shop. The way he lied to me about never having traded up on Craigslist before. Which is clearly not true. The way he lied on his personality quiz.
And, of course, the way he lied about where he was that night of the comet.
Yet, I’m starting to wonder if all the lies are somehow connected. Like threads branching out from a complex spiderweb that I can’t see. All I can feel are the wispy spindles of cobwebs tangling around me.
But what if they all lead back to something? What if I could follow each individual strand all the way back to the center? To the piece that ties everything together.
The missing laptop.
The Craigslist trades.
The night of the comet.
The glove box.
Would it revise the story? Just like Emily Sweeney told me to do?
Would it rewrite our history?
Could it change everything?
“Okay, here’s a promising-sounding one,” Nico says. “Someone wants to trade their old RV camper!”
I frown. “An RV camper sounds promising?”
“Yeah, those things are worth some big bucks!”
“I can’t drive an RV camper around.”
Nico looks undeterred. “I would drive it.”
“And who would drive the Firebird?”
“Oh, right.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, like air hissing out of a slashed tire. Then, with some kind of newfound determination, Nico straightens up in his seat and says, “Okay, enough is enough. No more excuses. You’re going to learn how to drive this car once and for all.”
Nico wasn’t technically the first person to ever try to teach me how to drive stick shift. Jackson started to teach me when I was twelve years old, after he came back from touring with the band.
Of course, I never actually got in behind the wheel. I was still too young (and too short) for that. First, he taught me how to shift gears.
We sat at the end of our driveway in Russellville with the car idling in neutral. Jackson was in the driver’s seat and I was in the passenger seat, my left hand placed tentatively on the stick shift.
“Okay, do we need to go through it again?” he asked me.
Jackson had his faults. But impatience was never one of them.
I shook my head. “Nope. I got it.”
He smiled that dazzling smile at me. “Good. Then let’s take this baby on a ride.”
He compressed the clutch and gave me my first directive. “First gear.”
I easily maneuvered the shifter to the left and up into first. Jackson slowly eased off the clutch and onto the gas. The car rolled forward. “Well done. Let’s try second gear.”
Jackson engaged the clutch, and I pulled the shifter straight down.
“You’re a natural!” he called out as we picked up speed, inching up to twenty miles per hour.
I grinned, feeling the wind on my face and the summer breeze in my hair.
“Okay, let’s move her up to third gear.”
This one was trickier. I bit my lip and concentrated on the little diagram etched into the top of the shifter. I maneuvered up and slightly to the right. But I didn’t quite get there. The gears screeched and whined. I looked to Jackson in a panic, certain I had ruined his most prized possession. But he just laughed. “It’s okay, kiddo. Third is the hardest to find. Here. I’ll help.”
His hand landed atop mine. It was warm and comforting as he helped guide me and the shifter into the slot between first and fifth gear.
“Okay,” Jackson said, giving the engine a playful rev. “Are you ready to bring her up to fourth?”
“Yes!” I shouted over the rush of the wind.
“Get ready . . . steady . . .”
Jackson poised his foot on the clutch.
I gripped the shifter.
Jackson lifted his hand from mine.
And for a split second, I felt like I was free-falling.
“Now!”
I yanked the stick shift down into fourth. The car zoomed forward. Jackson let out a “Woo-hoo!” and I squealed with laughter.
For the next few hours, Jackson and I drove all around town. Up Route 128 and back again. Past the Frosty Frog, the library, the high school, and Brewed Awakenings (the local coffee shop). When we slowed at intersections, we waved and catcalled to people. When we streamed down open roads, we made animal noises into the wind. And the whole time, Jackson worked the pedals while I shifted. Up and down. From first to fifth and back again. Until I really did feel like a natural. Until the last three years felt like just a bad dream, and now I’d woken up to find that Jackson had never left on my ninth birthday. Had never written that Post-it Note. Had never forgotten to take me to Tomato and Vine for an early birthday dinner and then driven me to that creepy abandoned park. Had never chosen Fear Epidemic over us.
To this day, those few hours in the Firebird remain one of my favorite memories of Jackson. If I close my eyes tightly enough now, I can still feel the breeze on my face. If I listen closely enough, I can still hear him shouting into the wind beside me. If I try hard enough, I can still feel his hand atop mine, helping me maneuver into those tricky gears. And in that moment, I can almost glimpse the life I would have had if he’d stayed for good. If that large, reassuring hand had always been there. Forever. If it had waved to me as I took off on my first day of high school. If it had shaken Nico’s hand the day I first brought him home. If it had embraced me when I found out I was accepted to UC Davis with a full scholarship.
If it had never let go.
If it had stayed around, worked hard for a decent wage, signed mortgage checks.
If it had never scribbled that second Post-it Note.
I’m sorry. I have to do this.
What would have become of us if he’d stayed?
Would Mom and I still be losing the house?
Would I be going to the college of my dreams in the fall?
Would Jackson still be alive?
Later, after our hair was windblown beyond repair and our voices were hoarse from all the screaming, Jackson took me to the Frosty Frog and bought me a triple scoop. For old times’ sake, he s
aid. I tried to ignore the gnawing of guilt in my stomach as I remembered the last time we’d come here. Back when Jackson was hiding money from my mom in his trunk and I was his unwitting accomplice.
The weather was perfect. We sat outside on a park bench, licking our cones in silence, until Jackson nudged me with his elbow and said, “Hey, I want to ask you something.”
“Hmmm?” I responded, chocolate fudge brownie melting between my fingers.
“Do you remember your ninth birthday?”
My fingers (and tongue) froze. I nearly dropped my cone on the sidewalk. Never in the past three years had Jackson ever spoken directly about the day he left. Never had he admitted to what he’d done. How badly he’d let us down.
Every conversation I’d had with him since that day was always some veiled attempt to justify or excuse or redeem.
I swallowed down the lump of ice cream in my mouth. “Yes.”
The word felt like it was balancing in the air between us. A fragile thing that, if not caught, could crash to the ground and shatter.
Jackson stretched his legs out in front of him on the bench and took a large bite of his cone, chewing pensively. “I think about that night all the time.”
There was something different about his voice. It wasn’t the same charming voice he used on Mom when she was yelling at him or on strangers to instantly gain their trust. It was raw and hesitant.
“Really?” I asked. I didn’t know what was happening right now, but I knew I wanted more of it.
He placed that same reassuring hand on my arm but didn’t look at me. “Yes, kiddo. Every single day, for a year, on that tour bus, I thought about it. About how badly I screwed up. About what a mess I was. About how much I regretted what I’d done.” His voice started to crack.
I gaped at him in disbelief. Was Jackson Collins actually going to cry? I’d never seen my father cry. My mother cried all the time. Mostly in secret when she thought I couldn’t hear or didn’t know. But I’d always assumed Jackson was incapable of any emotion but frivolity.
In the end, though, he didn’t cry. He simply took another bite of his cone and swallowed hard, like he was swallowing down much more than just sugar and flour. He continued to stare at the ground in front of him. “Well, anyway, I just wanted you to know I will never do that to you again. I promise.”
The Geography of Lost Things Page 24
