Loud Awake and Lost (15 page)

“There you are! It's almost midnight.” Mom didn't sound upset. Good, Smarty must have provided an alibi. I exhaled in relief.

“Is it? I must have lost track of time. Sorry.” I was shivering from the long walk home. “Mrs. Wilde says thanks for the orchids.”

Mom peered at me. “Your cheeks are pink. I'll make cocoa. It got cold out, didn't it? It's going to be like this all through the weekend. You know, sweetie, I realize it's only six blocks or so, but I would have picked you up from the Wildes' if you'd called.”

“Nah, I was fine. Cocoa sounds good.” I rubbed my chapped hands together, then pulled off my boots and stomped my feet. The temperature had plummeted. It had even been drafty and uncomfortable in the lobby of the St. George, where eventually I'd fallen asleep waiting for Kai, who never showed.

As soon as the kettle was boiling, Dad appeared, “yawning” in the doorway. Whatever. I knew them both too well. They'd both been awake, a couple of insomniacs, ruffling their feathers, waiting for me to come back to the nest.

“Your cheek is creased,” Dad observed. “You've been sleeping?”

“Yep, I was. Over at Holden's.”

It was a delicate moment of embarrassment to stew in, but I'd rather have them think that I crashed in Holden's bed than tell them the opposite—that for the past couple of hours I'd been curled up on a plastic couch in the St. George's dorm lobby, roused only when the security guard had shaken me and demanded to see my student ID—and then tossed me out like an orphan when he learned I had none.

Kai hadn't been in touch at all. I felt unbearably dumb.

“Tell me about your night.” Mom spooned out the cocoa mix. “Starting with, what's Drew's fiancée like?”

“She's okay.”

“Oh? Just okay?” Mom added the boiling water while Dad found a pack of campfire marshmallows in the cupboard and landed one in each mug. We slouched around the kitchen table as we had a thousand times before.

“She's the best Drew could hope for.” My hot mug felt good in my cold hands, and I hunched down to let the steam bathe my face. “Listen, I'm glad you both waited up for me, because I need to talk to you about something.” I sipped slowly, aware of their unsettled silence. “I think I need to start driving again.”

My parents were wearing coordinating pajamas. Probably not on purpose, but it seemed too coincidental to be pure chance. Mom's were moss-green flowers on a butter-yellow background, and Dad's were butter-yellow with moss piping. They looked like people from one of those comfort-living catalogs that sell pj's along with wind chimes and chenille throw rugs. Mom and Dad had been married forever, and it was hard to imagine what they'd been before they morphed like cookies in the oven into this warm, sweet pair. Yet they were incomplete without me; I was their Everything. I sometimes felt like each hug came with their assertion in my ear:

“Ember, you are everything we dreamed you'd be!”

“Ember, we love you more than life itself!”

It had always been a weight on me. A loving weight, but heavy anyhow.

And it made conversations like this extra hard. I could feel both my parents' instant, snap-to-it attention at my mention of driving, and I'd have bet anything they'd been wrestling endlessly with this topic in private for a while now, of how I hadn't expressed any desire to drive since I'd come home.

“See, because I think the longer I go without driving,” I continued, “the harder it will be for me when I do.”

“Absolutely! If you think you're ready! Let's get you back in the saddle!” Dad's voice was loud, to cover his all-too-evident doubts.

I nodded along with him. “I'd like to take it out Saturday. If that's okay.”

“Where are you going?” Mom was pushing a spoon around and around like a windup toy in her cocoa. Hydration was not helping her on this one. “And just to point out, you've never handled the Prius. Wouldn't you like me to go along with you? We could test-drive together, and work up to a big trip.”

Maybe that wasn't such a bad plan. Mom had taught me to drive the first time around, and she'd be a steady presence in the passenger seat. “Sure, tomorrow would be good,” I decided. “I should probably get in some practice before Saturday.”

“Wonderful.” Mom beamed. “Does that mean you and Holden are going somewhere Saturday?”

“Uh, yeah.” It'd be easier to let them think that I was spending Saturday with Holden. Though my parents' worry practically had tentacles. Sweet as they both were, their protective instincts were like a monster they'd expertly conjured together. I could almost see those waving arms reaching for me through the air, plucking me up, curling around to hold me in a lock, and then my parents whispering in my ear that I was their very best thing, and that I must never, never leave home again, ever.

“You and Holden! I can't say I'm anything but glad about that!” Dad's voice was cheerful enough to scare the neighbors.

“He's a good guy.”

“And he must have walked you home tonight, yes?” Mom looked over her shoulder, as if half hoping that even though I'd been home alone for twenty minutes, Holden might suddenly materialize in the doorway.

I colored, half nodded. After I'd been tossed from the St. George, I'd checked my texts, only to find a smattering of notes from Smarty. Nothing from Kai, and of course there'd been no new messages from Holden. No matter how hurt he was, Holden wasn't the type to push for extra rehashing of what had just happened between us. If I said I wanted time, then time was what he'd give me.

“So what special thing are you two doing this Saturday?”

“Not sure yet.”

“But you know that you need the car,” Mom said, arching a brow.

“Where are you going
in
general
?” Dad squinted at me.

I was starting to squirm. I made myself stare at him directly. “We were planning to take Jolly out to the beach, if it's not too cold.”

Dad liked that answer. They both did. They also figured I meant a day trip to Lawrence Beach, out in Rockaway, where we'd always gone as a family, and a route I had practiced on back when I'd first gotten my learner's permit. A very smooth, safe excursion up the Belt Parkway.

I'd let them think it. Spare them the anxiety.

Kai or no Kai, a driving test had to be conquered.

Up in my bedroom, I checked my phone one last time.

One more from Smarty. Nobody else. Not that I was expecting different.

“Howdy, stranger. You should have come out last night.” Rachel had pulled up abruptly beside me as I walked down the hall. Despite Smarty's chirpy tone, there were thunderclouds in it, a warning of her temper.

“Sorry about that. Thanks for covering for me.”

“Sure, no problem. But I also left you a few messages. Did you get those?”

“Uh-huh.” Three, to be exact. The first—
hey where are you, I want to go to Floyd now.
The second—
just checked my text, why are you making me cover for you, are you showing up here later?
The third—
oookay, fielded your mom's call, so you're good. But you're not coming to Floyd at all tonight, huh? Holden's here and he looks depressed. What happened? Call me back!
And then a couple of missed calls.

“But you didn't answer any of them.” Rachel was waiting for an explanation that made sense.

“I was tired.” I fell in with her deliberately slower step as we moved down the hall. At the end of the stretch, which felt like it was thirteen miles long, I knew that Rachel would hook right for AP Biology, and I'd turn left for the Friday yearbook meeting.

“Tired,” she repeated.

“I'm sorry,” I said again. Except that “sorry” wasn't cutting it. And she was right, anyhow. It had been strange and rude to just drop out on our plans.

“It's just I thought we'd agreed on Floyd.”

“I know; you're right. We had.”

“So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think it was totally not cool that you didn't show up.”

“Smarty, I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to kill your night. I needed to be alone. Don't you think it would have been worse for me to come out with you all if I wasn't up for it?”

“If you say so.”

“Go ahead,” I told her. “You want to rage at me. I'm listening.”

“Fine. Okay.” Rachel stopped walking and planted herself squarely but gawkily, as if she'd been given a stage direction she wasn't sure how to implement. “Here's the deal. When you first came back from Addington, I know you were unsteady, but I swear, I felt like I finally recognized you. You'd been so distant, so out of touch those weeks before your accident. Right in the beginning, we were back. We were real, true friends again.”

“Of course we're real, true friends, Smarty—this is, like, a blip.”

“It's not.” Color stained all the way across Rachel's cheeks. “For you to take off from the party last night. For you to keep me in the dark while you make me cover for you. For you to not be in touch, to totally drop out of our plans together—how's that supposed to make me feel? And it's not just about last night. What about Halloween? What about your wonderful idea to jump in a cab with some stranger and leave me to deal with that?”

“You had Jake,” I said faintly.

“Whatever, Ember. I'd just started hanging out with him that night. You didn't know if or how that was working out. But since we're speaking of Jake, sometimes when I tell you I'm doing stuff with Jake, you look relieved. As if you'd way rather be by yourself. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I feel like you're disappearing from me again.” She gulped, braving it. “Why?”

I had to tell her; there was no real reason not to. “Smarty, I've met someone,” I answered. “The guy from Halloween.”

“That same one, Kai, who was in the cab that took off?”

I nodded. “And I don't know exactly what's going on between us. But I do know he's been on my mind a lot, I guess. More than our plans, more than school. More than anything else. It's hard to explain.”

Rachel crossed her arms and stepped back. To anyone else walking down the hall, she'd have seemed casual, in control. But I knew the agitation of my best friend's gaze on me. I'd seen it since she was little, when she used to worry that I'd use up all her yellow paint, since that was her favorite color. “So this person, Kai, is someone you don't ever want to introduce me to?”

“It's more like he's not someone I want to share right now. Not while I'm trying to work things out with him. I guess what I'm saying is I need my space.”

Rachel flinched, as if my words were a stick that had poked her. “Fine, Embie, okay. I can handle that. He can be your secret Mr. Wonderful; I've got no problem with that. But don't shut me out completely, either. I mean, come on…” Her voice trembled, and I knew she was trying to keep it together. “Best friends since kindergarten should count for something. And I still want to be friends—if you just tell me how.”

But Rachel had said this to me before, last year. We'd had this fight…I could feel the reverberations of it, a distant ripple through my brain. “Let's talk about all of this later, okay? Or I'll be late for yearbook,” I said. “I'll come find you after, and we can hang out.”

“Only if you want,” she said quietly. “Don't do it as a favor to me, Ember.”

I nodded. “Right.” She knew me too well, knew that I ached to make it better. But in half confessing Kai, I'd put her on guard, and I was thankful that I didn't run into Rachel again—though it took some careful footwork, including leaving campus to hit the corner soup kiosk for lunch and skipping my last afternoon class.

Mom was waiting for me as I walked in the front door.

“So I thought you could take me on an errand!” She tossed me the car keys. “I need to get to the post office. I already took the car out of the garage, so we're set.”

“Oh! Cool.” I'd assumed that Mom was either going to “forget” about my request to drive today or put up a resistance when I reminded her. “Let's go.”

Unlike the station wagon, the Prius handled light and silent. Sort of like maneuvering a paraglider after steering a barge. With Mom buckled in, I eased it gingerly out onto the road, then began the journey by inching around the block, and finally onto Cadman Plaza.

The cold snap was here to stay, and there was a threat of rain in the wintry air; plus the Friday-afternoon rush hour was in full trafficky tension. Similar, I realized, to the conditions of
that
night. Which was not a good thing to dwell on.

“You can go a little faster,” Mom murmured. Mom was a good driver, and I'd liked to think I'd inherited her skill. I wondered if I'd ever be considered a “good” driver again.

A guy behind me zipped past me illegally, honking long as he leaned out his window.

“Learn how to drive, you idiot!”

“Some people.” Mom sighed. But as I pressed and released the gas-brake-gas, I knew that I was going too slow, second-guessing basic actions and overly attentive to the road rules. By the time we pulled up to the post office, I was sweaty with the effort.

“Stay here. I'll be right out,” Mom promised.

I nodded, but after a minute or so I got out of the car myself, to buy a coffee at a corner food cart. I felt shaky, and flashbacks of this afternoon's conversation with Smarty weren't helping. Through my nerves, my longing for sleep was like a brick wall I could feel myself hurtling toward.

Back in the car, I leaned against the headrest and closed my eyes. The rapping on the window startled me. Hot liquid sloshed from my cup onto my wrist—“Oh!”—as I pressed the button to unroll the window.

It was Isabella from El Cielo. She looked even tinier in her street clothes—a beige plastic raincoat that flapped past her calves and a clear rain hat that poked up like a wizard's cone to accommodate her bun.

“Ember.” Her eyes on me were a complicated fixation of sorrow and curiosity—the same as when she'd seen me at El Cielo.

I nodded.

“It was good that you came in, that night.”

“It was?”

“Yes. You were right to come.”

I stared, shy. My brain was a thick fog, offering me no certainty for what I was supposed to say next.

“And I want you to come back again,” she continued. “Come assist me in the kitchen. I watched your hands—how you wanted to chop, to work. I saw it in the way you were watching me. You want to learn. I will teach.” She touched her fingertips to her heart. “
Ayúdame,
and it will help us both.”

I laughed, a bit anxiously, a dry, sandpapery sound. “Me, working at El Cielo?” That was crazy; it would be like stalking. “Thank you. Thank you so much. But I would be an inconvenience. A trouble to you, even. Underfoot and all that. And I'm really busy with school. So I'm not…” My barricaded defenses sounded false. Isabella could see right through me. I looked down at the reddening scorch mark of coffee across my wrist.

She
knows
about
the
accident.

Looking back into her black eyes, I was sure of it. She knew about Anthony Travolo. She knew what had happened, and she also knew that once I'd loved to cook, that cooking had been my joy and comfort. She knew, and she pitied me.

“It would be the right diversion,” she said.

“You're very kind. It's amazing that you would offer me your kitchen. But I…I don't think I can.”

Such a weak response. All that I wanted to say and instead I said nothing. Mom was exiting the post office. Her brow furrowed when she saw that I was speaking with someone. Isabella straightened, turning to follow my gaze.

“Entonces,”
she said quickly. “You have the address. We are open six days, six nights a week. Closed on Monday.” She hurried off. Her head—nearly doll-sized and much too fragile—was bowed against the wind as she pushed in the direction of the subway.

My hands gripped the steering wheel; I was braced for Mom's questions.

“Who was that?” she asked as she opened the car door.

“Some lady, asking for directions.”

“But you didn't know her? You seemed to know her.”

“Nope.”

Thankfully, she said no more. We drove home in silence. Whatever sliver of nerve had given me the confidence to think I could drive this car—even poorly—was gone. I'd lost. I bumped the curb twice and almost turned the wrong way down a one-way street. At least Mom didn't say anything, for which I was grateful.

“You think I'm not ready,” I said once I'd gotten us into the garage.

“Practice will help,” she answered. “But maybe you and Holden could figure out another, nondriving plan for tomorrow? And then you and I can practice again together. We'll ease into this.”

“Sure.” No way. I was going, and I was going with Kai. If Kai was with me, I'd be my best me. For driving, for everything.

Inside, Dad had made enough tacos to serve a soccer team, but soon I grew weary of him asking me if I wanted to have Holden or Rachel over for dinner.

No, I didn't. I couldn't. I wouldn't.

Upstairs in my room, the night stretched empty.

I played and replayed my saved voice mail.

“Hey, Emb, it's me. We are on for Coney Island—I got Chris to cover my shift, so…totally looking forward to Saturday. Got me thinking, too, that I haven't been out there since I was like, what, eight years old? Okay, so I got class in twenty, better roll. Looking forward to it. Said that. (with a sheepish laugh) Awright.”

My lips moved along with his words. I smiled every time I heard him laugh. Each time I played the message, it was like the very first time. Over and over and over again, and it never got old.

My body was sleepy, but my brain was avid for more activity. I resaved Kai's message, did some homework, then spent a bit of mindless time online. My usual searches, my usual obsessions. I went into my mail. I'd been searching my in-box archives for so long that I thought I'd covered everything. In my downloads, there'd been some other invitations to art exhibits, to a documentary showing at the Landmark Sunshine, and an invitation to a student group show at LaGuardia High School, where Anthony Travolo was listed showing his work along with a bunch of other kids, including Maisie.

But I'd placed this email in a folder marked “Travel.”

It was the only email. It was from him.

Okay, you wanted a story about something from fifth grade. You are kind of freakishly specific sometimes, Leferrier.

But I'm at your service.

So here it is: An All-True Fifth-Grade Story by Me, A. Travolo.

First time I struck out with a girl was fifth grade. Anna-Luisa Renaldi. I knew I'd caught her attention earlier that day, with my mucho kickass oral report on Ralph Nader (an A-minus, my only A that year). Me and my swollen head were on the playground at lunchtime recess when I saw: it was time to make my play. Problem was, I had
nothing
to offer except a few lame Jet Li moves. I'd practiced jujitsu over the summer. The more Anna-Luisa watched me, the stupider and riskier I got, until in my final action-hero sequence, I jumped and swung out into a high-kick slash half-gainer.

Instant wipeout. Face, meet pavement. Pavement, face.

No way to recover from that one. I blamed greasy monkey bars. I blamed my no-friction tennis sneakers. I blamed Anna-Luisa's shiny eyes. I blamed all of her schoolyard girlfriends for chattering and pointing at me like a pack of monkeys.

But she pretty much never looked at me again.

I'm too old for the monkey bars. But now I think there's a pattern to the insanity. When I saw you that night, I remembered every single thing about Anna-Luisa, and what I'd thought was love. Or at least my best fifth-grade version of it. I knew it all over again times a thousand.

I'm not wiping out this time, Ember. And when I see you next, I'm gonna show you my best Jet Li. Watch for it.

His email address was there in the address bar. On impulse, I sent a blank message to the account. It bounced back to me—null, of course.

My heart pounding, I printed his note, folded it, and buried it in my jewelry box along with everything else. His story knew how to make me laugh. It was sweet and charming. It was Anthony, talking to me so easily, so winningly—this guy and I had connected, and I couldn't or wouldn't look deeply enough in my heart or my mind to find him there. The boy I'd killed. Something was wrong with me—more wrong, even, than what Dr. P and all the Addington staff and my parents and Holden and Rachel and every last person in my orbit could begin to understand.