Loud Awake and Lost (10 page)

Why didn't Holden-and-me work out? The thought had been percolating in my head from the moment he'd picked me up. This day was a gold coin; it was shiny and perfect and I knew I would treasure it. I wanted to ask the question right then, with the sounds of raindrops plopping off the trees, the tobacco smoke in the air, and the whole afternoon hushed and serene.

What
happened
to
us?

Holden was giving me another Raphael the RA tale. “This dude, I don't know what his hygiene issues are, but he's got a huge bucket—honestly, it's more like a bin—and it's just crammed with all his shower supplies. Shampoo, hair conditioner, bodywash, body oil, zit cleanser, back scrubber, washcloth, loofah, you name it.” We were both laughing as Holden used his hands to try to describe it. “So one day, this other guy who lives down the hall, Jackson, so he and I decided that every night, we're gonna take exactly one item out of it, just to see if Raphael's gonna notice or put up a fight, if he cares or gets—”

It came at me like a handful of sharp stones thrown into my path, tripping me up—
swsssp
swsssp
swsssp.

Let
me
take
you
down, 'cause we're going to…Strawberry Fields.…

He was singing it in my ear. I could hear his voice as if he were as close as Holden—
and
nothing
to
get
hung
about
—because he was always singing, because he loved music, he loved Strawberry Fields and the “Imagine” mosaic and the wistful desire in John Lennon's lyrics and message.

In fact, that's why I was here. That's why I'd picked this place.

The voice was gone. I could feel that I'd locked myself up in tension—was this the whisper of another memory of Anthony Travolo? A song in my ear the way he whispered about his painting? Had he and I come here, to the park, together?

And if we had, so what? What good did it do me to think about it now? I could feel myself in a mental crouch, self-protecting and wary. So what? He was gone, and so was most of my memory of him, and today I was here with Holden, and that would have to be enough.

Holden was still talking, his voice pitched in a comic imitation of Raphael, though I'd utterly lost the thread of conversation. I blinked down at my rain boots. Grape-juice purple. I'd never buy these rain boots today.

“You still with me?” Holden reached an arm around my shoulders.

“Of course. So, hey, I heard about my breakup boots,” I said. “And Tom called me a club rat.”

“A tad harsh. Club-rat lite,” said Holden. “But where are the mysterious boots? Donated back to the Salvation Army?”

“I haven't seen them. I'm sure Mom knows. She probably hid them.”

“What got you thinking about your boots anyhow? Are your feet cold? Are you tired?”

“Not at all. Couldn't be better. But this coat must weigh three hundred pounds—there's all this loose change that's fallen into the lining. Can we sit for a second? I've got to dig out some of it.”

“Yeah, sure.” Holden found a bench and we sat. My free hand reached deep into my coat pocket. There must have been over three dollars in quarters, dimes, and nickels jangling around.

“Your coat is like your own personal wishing well,” Holden observed.

“No joke.”

Something else was lodged in the corner of the hem. I pulled it out.

A red and banana-yellow matchbook. In feet-shaped letters, the words
EL CIELO
were dancing a salsa above a Cobble Hill address.

“Oh. From last night.” As I flipped open the matchbook, I saw that a number of the matches were missing.

Because Kai had used them, striking all of those matches before tossing the matchbook to me.

This morning, almost everything about last night had seemed unreal. And when Kai hadn't called me—
again
—I could feel the memory begin to tamp itself down to a disappointing near unreality. Just like our afternoon on the fire escape. But last night had happened. Kai had been lighting matches from this very book, tossing them into the air like tiny fire batons. My brain reshuffled and redealt the memory. He'd taken my hand and spoken my name. “Don't get burned.”

He'd been shy, but also mischievous, as he'd flipped the matchbook to me—and then we'd moved out of that room, our bodies nudging and jousting to be close and closer.

Had Kai come to the club with another girl, maybe? In the haze of my head, in the shadows of the cab, I'd had and lost Kai. He'd slipped off and out of my reach as if testing me.

“Ember!” Holden was shaking me. “Focus!” When I looked up, his eyes were flooded with concern.

I must have dishragged. My Serendipity lollipop had dropped to the ground, and I was holding the matchbook clutched to my heart. Heat in my cheeks and at the top of my head and the back of my neck.

“What's going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Something. You were like a million miles away.”

“I'm just light-headed.” My fingers quietly slipped the matchbook into my jeans pocket. It was a comfort, to feel it lumped there. “It happens. It's nothing. I'm still tired from last night, I think.”

“It's not nothing. You've got your doctor looped into this, right?”

“Yeah, of course.” I broke the intensity of his gaze, then took a breath and rechanneled. “Speaking of last night, I saw Lissa Mandrup. We hung out a little. Kind of lucky—it wasn't a plan; I just ran into her. She had some warm and fuzzy New Year's Eve memories that I couldn't access, but I'm getting used to that feeling.”

“Yeah, but the good thing about Lissa is she's a girl who's always fully committed to the moment she's in. Funny how after our breakup, you went for noise and I went for quiet. I spent most of that time in the library or holed up in my room.” Holden's hand in mine was always so sure. I could feel myself returning to equilibrium. Safe. Holden made me feel so safe. “Guess we both went more extreme than we actually are.”

“That's true. Anyway, it wasn't the perfect atmosphere for a conversation. I got really winded on the dance floor. God, Holden, sometimes it feels like someone else borrowed my body for a couple of months, trashed it, and gave it back with all these dings and scars and missing mental pieces.” I was embarrassed to hear the shake in my voice.

But Holden knew me well enough not to keep making me talk. After a few moments, he stood. Pulled me up with him. We began to walk down the other side of Strawberry Fields. “My advice, for what it's worth?” he said after a few more silent moments. “Let go of all that. These lost weeks are only a ripple across your life line. How could they be equal to the amount of effort you put into worrying about them?”

“Right. I know.” I nodded; I was resigned to the fact that nobody could truly understand. The kindness and the pep talks from Holden, Rachel, my parents—they were all so incredibly well-intentioned, and came from such a place of yearning for me to be better. But in my heart, I knew my friends and family were trying to solve a darkness that there was no way for them to mark, let alone dig into. “And I'm in good shape, considering,” I told Holden instead. “I know I'm lucky. I'm obsessed with what I've lost. But the whole reason I want to be in this world, living my life, is because I know the value of what I got to keep.”

“That's the Ember I know.” He stopped, rubbed the pad of his thumb across my chin. “But there's no answer in that accident. There's nothing there, actually. You'll only make yourself unhappy if you keep looking back. So why don't you start to build up new memorable moments? Like today. Right? Today was amazing.” Then he brushed my bangs away to touch the scar. And then, to my surprise, he kissed it.

I flinched. “Don't.”

“It's a badge of courage. It's who you are now.”

“Not yet I'm not.” I ducked my head and turned away.

Horribly, somehow I could feel right in that odd, painful moment the wrench that Kai hadn't called, and that he wasn't going to. It was very likely he had a girlfriend. Or maybe he just plain wasn't interested enough in me. Beyond the spontaneous, electric combustion that seemed to happen during these chance meet-ups, there was no place for me in that guy's life.

At the next corner, I reached into my jeans pocket to toss the matchbook into one of the park's giant steel trash baskets. How silly to be so sentimental. Kai hadn't given this to me as some kind of romantic keepsake. I didn't need any reminder of a night that held no logic or meaning.

Holden was right. Let go. Some things were better off forgotten. Be the moment. Live in beauty. Seize today. Except that wasn't exactly how it worked. Life wasn't as easy as messages on coffee mugs sold in hospital gift shops, and I should know—I had a shelf of them.

At the last minute, with the basket in clear sight, the matchbook stayed in my hand.

“Hey, Mom, where are my accident clothes?”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“You know what. From February, from the bridge. The hospital people have to give you those things.”

“Oh, Ember.”

Mom looked so crestfallen that I returned my attention to the pot. Not exactly a happier view. The polenta looked like sludge, dense enough to bind bricks. Mom and Dad were both waiting at the kitchen table, set for three. But now, with this new topic, it was as if I'd lit a flare. We'd been discussing Dad's golf handicap, right before. Which had been a breezier topic.

But I pressed on; I had to. “I want my biker boots back. People keep telling me about them. How I wore them every day. But I can't find them. They're not in my closet, or in the coat closet, or the winter clothes closet. I must have been wearing something on my feet that night, right? So I'm guessing it was those boots.”

“Ember, please. Lower your voice.” Mom took a sip of her wine. I pressed my lips together, then ladled out my sautéed button mushrooms and served the dish to the table. At least the mushrooms would sneakily disguise my polenta issues. “And you'll just have to give me some time to think about where I put those things.”

“The boots have got to be here. I know you, Mom.” I went to the drawer for the serving spoons. “You're two parts neatnik and one part hoarder.”

Dad smiled. “The girl's got your number, Nat.”

“I didn't want to start rummaging around in the basement and messing stuff up,” I continued, “but I bet they're in one of the bins, somewhere between the Christmas tree lights bin and the summer patio cushions bin, and probably with an ‘Ember—car accident' label.”

Dad let out a whoop of laughter, but Mom looked perplexed. “It's hard to say exactly where I put—”

“Come on, Natalie. You absolutely know you stored them down in the basement.” Dad swept a hand through the air as if swatting a fly. “If you want those things back, Embie, they're yours. I think it's actually a plastic bag on that back shelf near the ski poles. And I'll bring it up after dinner.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Though I sensed Dad's forced casualness, and Mom's silent discontent. But how could I not be curious? What boots had the power to bug Tom? What kind of jacket would Lissa Mandrup covet?

After Holden had dropped me off this afternoon, I'd gone through all of the upstairs closets with a fine-tooth comb. No boots, and definitely no style of jacket that Lissa ever would have wanted to buy off me.

I cut the polenta into slabs as thick as pound cake, as Mom refilled her glass. “Thank you, Ember.” Though she refrained from saying “This looks delicious”—assumedly because it didn't—as she shifted forward to serve herself a precise, mathematical square. “Did you and Holden have a nice day?”

“We did.” I sat up, spine arched and ready to field the Holden questions.

“He's become a real man,” said Dad. “He wears college well. Matter of fact, I'd like to see Holden coming around here again.”

“Will he be?” asked Mom.

“Sure. I mean, why not? We're still good friends,” I answered.

“Good friends doesn't count for much if he starts dating someone else,” said Mom. “And he's a lovely young man. Holden Wilde would be the One That Got Away, I'm afraid.”

“And I bet he does pretty well with the ladies,” Dad added.

I nodded in absent agreement. So parenty. “He's become a real man” and “the one that got away” and “does well with the ladies”—those were just the kind of dorky Mom-and-Dad-style lines that I might repeat to Holden later, so we could crack up. Holden and I shared a long-standing private joke that my parents' approval had always worked just a tad bit against him. And it wasn't completely untrue, either—though I never would have admitted it.

But even if I wasn't going to confess it to my parents, it was impossible to ignore that something had rekindled with Holden. When he'd dropped me off earlier, lingering on the steps as the sun set, the sky cold and bright and pale as champagne, he'd invited me to Drew's engagement party at his house this coming Thursday.

“Ooh, I don't know.” I'd grimaced. “That could be all kinds of nonfun. I'm not tops on your mom's list.”

“Please. It's gonna be all of Drew's Young Republican friends, and I'd really like you to be there, to even the odds,” he said.

“Well, when you sell it like that.” I laughed, then asked, “Is Cassandra busy?”

Holden paused before answering. He was seeing her, I could tell. Her name meant something private to him. “Look, I can't spring my family on Cassandra just yet. Or vice versa.”

“So I'm the old hat, the ole pal?”

He stared at me evenly. “More like first choice.”

“How about…I'll think about it?”

In response, he'd kissed me. A sweet kiss, on the lips. Not a dangerous, electric Kai kiss. But it gave me butterflies just the same.

And I couldn't deny that the prospect of my taking Cassandra's place as Holden's date, made me feel a touch smug. I'd been an unofficial member of the Wilde household for my entire sophomore year, plus that summer into my junior fall, and I wasn't sure if I was ready to jump off the diving board into the anonymous pool of girls who didn't matter anymore. Especially now that Holden and I had been enjoying this new closeness. Serendipity, and the walk in the park afterward, hadn't been unromantic, and it had held all the memory of when we had been a couple. He and I were older now. We'd lived through things. Survived them.

Midway through dinner, the doorbell rang.

“I'll get it.” Mom stood, and was back in a moment with Rachel.

“Yay! Perfect timing! Good job, me!” She whooped as she sprang into the kitchen and took a plate. “I must have a sixth sense. Because I just
knew
I wouldn't have to eat leftover pork fried rice tonight.” Like me, Rachel was an only child, but Rachel's parents were both corporate trial lawyers, with all the crazy hours and long nights and last-minute meetings and work-slog weekends. Which meant that Rachel was on a first-name basis with every takeout restaurant in her twenty-block delivery radius.

Watching Rachel, seeing her ease and comfort here as she dished up her plate, I wondered what last year had been for her. Without me. Without my home to rely on. It couldn't have been especially great.

After dinner, we were excused while Mom and Dad handled cleanup. “It's only fair to give the chef a break,” said Mom.

“Cool. You don't have to offer twice. Hey, and Dad? Will you bring me—”

“I will. As soon as we're finished here.”

“Thanks.”

“Bring you what?” asked Rachel as we grabbed ice cream sandwiches from the freezer and then hauled upstairs to my room.

“Just some of my old clothes,” I said. “I need to do a closet cleanout.”

“Cool. I'll help.”

Rachel started to look through my clothes closet, which was stuffed with fluttery blouses and ruffled dresses. The other day, I'd sorted out everything into piles of “wear” and “never.” On my chair was the wear pile: black jeans, broken-in boyfriend jeans, black leggings, brown leggings, plus two thin gray sweaters and one navy sweater from the bottom of my drawer. Voilà: my new neutral-palette uniform. I'd also chosen two white and one black long-sleeved T-shirts that were really just the tops to thermal underwear packs Mom had bought for me to use as pajamas.

“Birdie got me hooked on these,” I said, remembering. “She was always layering undershirts and leg warmers, and when the dance studio got too hot, she'd unpeel herself like an onion.”

“If you're ripping off her style, you should swing by her office and say hi,” said Rachel. “You know Jake's little sister, Mimi, is taking dance this year? And she has a mad girl-crush on Birdie.”

“Everyone does.” It pained me. When it came to dance, there'd always been two things I'd wanted: Lissa's talent and Birdie's passion.

Rachel was still shifting hangers, examining dresses. “Remember how your mom used to come back from Loehmann's with armloads of clothes for you?” she asked. “She must be bummed you've gone and drained all the color out of your working wardrobe—again. See, even if you drop over a bridge and lose your memory, you still end up making the same fashion choices.” She stepped back, hands on her hips, as she gave a final appraisal of the flirty girlishness that took up most of my closet. “Except I think this stuff is what needs to be on the chair, right? And the pieces you actually want to wear get the priority of the closet.”

“I'm not sure I'm ready to do that to Mom yet. And full disclosure, my dad's about to bring up what I was wearing the night of the accident.”

“Ooh. Creepy.” Rachel dropped her last bite of ice cream sandwich into her mouth. “But I get it. Memory helpfulness and all. Hey, Holden texted me that you two hung out today.”

“Mmm.” I smiled.

“That sounds like a private
mmm,
so guess what? I won't be nosy. But guess what else? I went to the movies with Jake this afternoon.”

“Ah. And?” I wriggled my eyebrows. “What'd you see?”

“Does it matter?” She smirked.

“So is this official?”

She shook her head in a vague non-gesture. “Too early. I will say that all tickets and concession-stand items were paid for by him.”

“Nice to hear that chivalry isn't dead.”

“I'm mostly happy that I'm hanging out with a guy who's not shorter than me. You don't realize, Emb, all the advantages of your shrimpdom. When I was going out with Patrick Case, he lent me his jacket and the arms were a little short. For a girl, that is distinctly not a cool feeling.”

“Wait—when were you going out with Patrick Case?”

“You were at Addington. It was super casual, and it's way over. Hey, and Jake's asked me out for Friday, too,” Rachel added shyly, “so I was wondering if I could borrow those Indian gold and jade hoops of yours?”

“Of course. Hang on.”

Rachel and Patrick Case. I barely knew him, except that his untied construction boots always made him look a little bit homeless. It wasn't important, but information about anything I missed while at Addington probably would always catch me off guard.

In my jewelry box, I'd placed the matchbook next to Kai's little sketch of me. As I plucked the earrings from their notched holder, I wondered if maybe it would be better to toss out the Kai items. He hadn't been in touch all day or night—clearly I wasn't someone he'd fixated on the way I'd fixated on him. Out of sight, out of mind and all that. So maybe I wasn't being fair to myself to hold on to these objects of defeat, keepsakes that were like my temp teeth—an impression hardened from a moment that had no permanent use in my life.

And thinking of Areacode was a little bit like thinking about Rachel and Patrick Case—a not-quite-reality. The night flowed back to me in a roar of noise, fake heads on spikes, toxic punch, fog and shadows, and me trance-dancing—with Kai and without him—light-headed and spaced-out.

I shut the jewelry box hard, to snap out the memory. “Here.” I handed Rachel the earrings.

“You're the best.”

There was a soft knock on the door.

“Sweetie? Delivery.” Dad was holding a blue recycling bag, tied in a slip hitch—Dad's knot of choice when he wanted things to stay sealed. “Here you go, with love from me and Mom.”

As he passed off the bag, his hug was hard, his cheek a quick press to the top of my head. He didn't want to do this. My heart clutched. “Night, Dad.”

After the door shut, Rachel and I climbed up on my bed, facing each other, the bag plopped between us. “You know what? I'm not sure I want to open it.”

“Just do it,” said Rachel. “It's your Pandora moment. And you need to know what's in there.”

“Okay, you're right. Here goes.” I worked out the knot, then I pulled up the items one by one. A thin, deep purple cardigan and a white T-shirt, patchily bloodstained rusted brown, and neatly sliced—probably by an EMT's sterile scissors. The softened jeans were also seam-sliced, the right leg cut to ribbons. Just looking at the jeans, I could feel a bone-deep tingling in my legs, and could see those monstrous purple bruises stamped on my skin. God, I'd thought they'd never heal.

Unlike my body, there was no salvaging these clothes.

“I see the boots,” whispered Rachel.

I fished them both up with effort, as if out of a pond. Wide and blocky, the silver grommets were encrusted in dried river sludge. The boots themselves looked huge, too big to fill. But they were intact, and broken in, presumably to the shape of my feet. Rachel reached into the bottom of the bag and pulled out my black leather bomber jacket—
whenever
you're selling
—ripped and water-stained, like an old carcass.

We were silent. My fingertips followed the wavy traces of water and rusted blood, plainly visible against the sheepskin lining.

“Go ahead,” said Rachel. “Test them.” She nudged a boot closer to me. I set them both on the floor and slipped one foot, then the other, deep inside. They were heavier than anything I'd worn all year—including my hospital Crocs, my tennis sneakers, my loafers, and my rain boots.

As I walked around the room, my steps as careful as a biker Cinderella, Rachel folded the ripped clothing and tucked the items away into my bottom dresser drawer.

She would know that I'd need to hold on to them. They were my grim keepsakes.

Neither of us spoke as I slid into the jacket. Rubbed the sleeve back and forth against my cheek.

“You look cool,” Rachel commented. “Okay, so maybe I wasn't loving it last year. But I'm revising that opinion. I think you grew into this look. Could be because you seem tougher, with the scars and all,” she joked.