Loud Awake and Lost (16 page)

How could I have forgotten him? I was a freak.

I woke up in a fog. Finding Anthony's note last night had spiraled me into a dark and restless mood. I hadn't been able to complete my homework, or even a clear thought. Instead I'd roamed around the house, accepting Mom's cups of tea and half watching television, and I'd gone to bed unsettled. Awake again, I was wrapped in a thinner skin of the same depressed confusion.

It was still dark outside. Not even 6 a.m. But today was the day. My entire body was tingling as I looked out my window on the blue cold sky. As I showered and dressed, it began to distract and then take over me, winding me up like a cuckoo clock. It was like Christmas morning, when I was the only one awake, slipping and slinking around the house, silent as a cat.

There was my whole entire life to dwell on Anthony Travolo. But today…today was another kind of day. And since it was here, I wanted to reach for it with both hands.

I left my parents a note:

Went to the beach. On my cell if you need me.

They'd be frightened. They'd be furious. But technically, they hadn't forbidden this. As I pulled up in front of the St. George, I knew my hopes for the hours ahead were what was giving me driving confidence. My thoughts were splintery with anticipation.

Of course I was here much too early. It was a little bit silly. Almost the moment that I turned off the engine, the need to sleep taffy-pulled at me, and eventually I succumbed to it, though for how long I don't know, because my eyes opened to see that the sun had broken its clean gold into the sky. And there was Kai, walking out the door of the St. George, right on time.

Same green jacket, but this time he'd thrown it over a pewter-gray sweater, along with faded-to-charcoal jeans. His hair was sticking up sweetly and everywhere like a baby hedgehog, and his skin was scrubbed to a deep glow.

Kai had shown up. Why would I have doubted him? And now the reality of what this day could be sparkled. I yawned, stretched, struggled to sit up. A needle-shower of excitement, relief, and disbelief was spiking my skin as Kai opened the passenger door and climbed in.

“Hey, you.”

“Hey yourself.”

He fastened his seat belt, docked his iPod, pressed play.

No way. Although, hadn't we been talking music that first time, out on the fire escape? I must have mentioned Weregirl. It was too obscure otherwise. “Good choice,” I mentioned after a minute or so.

“Yeah, I'm kinda fan-zoning Weregirl right now,” he said.

“I downloaded them a few weeks ago, and now I know every song by heart.”

“Me too.”

“There are no coincidences,” I joked. And while the day felt like fate, as if the stars had all lined up just for us, I hadn't bet on anything. I hadn't gotten my hopes up. When it came to Kai, I knew better. I just had to hold on to the tentative belief that so far nothing on the horizon pointed to this day going terribly wrong.

Coney Island was forty-five minutes out, according to my GPS. Almost the length of the Weregirl tracks twice through. Every song belonged to us. The music took Kai to the same place— I could tell by his fixed yet soft expression as he stared ahead, and by the way he sang along. His voice was low but clear, and totally unself-conscious. I loved the sound of Kai's voice over Weregirl. I wished I could record it—I made my brain try.

The boardwalk was almost deserted. We parked and fed the meter, and as we headed up the wide-planked herringbone walk, Kai caught me off guard, picking me up and spinning me around. My eyes closed, I was transported, my fingers tested his pulsing throat, the sides of his face, as he kissed me and set me down again.

“Ooh, look…cotton candy!” Suddenly shy of the moment, I turned away and broke off from him toward the cotton candy cart ahead, trotting up the walk to buy a twist of spun sugar from the pudgy old man in the striped hat, who twinkled at me as if we were old friends. “A pretty girl, and all alone,” he said. “That's no good.”

“No, no. I'm with him.” I pointed to Kai, but he'd drifted a ways down the boardwalk and was staring out at the sea. He looked so all by himself out there, so unattached to anyone, that I felt greedy claiming him just for myself. Especially when he didn't seem to belong to anyone.

The cotton candy man gave me a funny look along with my twist as if he, too, thought I was mistakenly attempting to claim Kai. I took my change and bolted, running hard to catch up since he'd walked even farther ahead, so that by the time I got to him I was out of breath, and the candy was beaded up in crystallizing sugar.

We split the treat, the sticky blue staining our lips. Kai bought tickets for the Wonder Wheel—and we cranked up up up in the swinging seat until we were suspended at the top. Kai's kiss was brine and salt and sweetness that melted on my mouth.

Then we wandered Surf Avenue, stopping for a corn dog at Nathan's for me and a hot dog with everything for Kai.

He let me try his first—“Gorilla-style! With peppers and onion, the best!”—and then he finished it in the next three bites. “Watch out, true believers. I'm going for another one. Best hot dog in New York.”

“Only because it belongs to this day.” Though the walking, the delirious excitement was catching up with me. My reserves were beginning to ebb.

Somehow Kai knew this. He took my hand and guided me, without speaking, to the dunes, where we stretched out side by side, staring up at the sky as we laid our lives bare. When Kai spoke, I got the sense in his hesitation and his stammer that he didn't confide in too many people.

And yet here I was, and I was listening hard.

His dad had been troubled, he told me. His few, dim memories were of a well-intentioned but angry guy who couldn't be anchored to a sick wife and two sons. He remembered his mom more vibrantly, with her coaxing voice and her spill of curly black hair, a comforting presence until she was abruptly gone. “But it's my aunt who's really taken care of us all,” he said. “Mom died knowing Isabella would look out for Hatch and me. That's why I owe it to Hatch. Pay it forward and all that.”

“You two seem close. Are you a lot alike?”

“Nah, Hatch is a practical dude. I'm the one chasing rainbows. Even if it means working sixty hours a week at El Cielo, scrounging for grants and loans for school. Which reminds me.” He slipped his phone out of his knapsack. “Let me take your picture? It's for a project I'm working on.”

I was instantly self-protective, shielding myself from his phone lens. “Really? Now? Me? I don't know, my hair's all frizzed out from the Ferris wheel and the salt—and I haven't looked in the mirror all day!” But Kai just laughed, didn't seem to notice or care, and he seemed so happy for me to be in his lens that soon I was laughing, too, as he clicked shot after shot.

“Enough!” I put up my hand, ducking away.

“One more, then the torture's over. I think you gave me some interesting moments, anyway.” As I sat up, Kai did, too, mirroring my position, knees knocked and toe to toe. Holden always took a different angle, he liked to keep an arm over my shoulder, protectively herding me into enclosures as he warded off all and any danger. But Kai met me as my equal.

Ever since my ordeal of recovery had begun, I'd had to hear the refrain about everyone's confusion about that changeling self I was evolving into right before the accident. Holden, Rachel, my other friends, and my parents all spoke about it. How I'd been pushing them away. Leaving them behind. On this beach, with this guy, I knew that I must have been pushing in a new direction, toward another destination—and not just because I'd felt rebellious. I was acting on the impulse that Kai himself had spoken of, that evening when we'd huddled together in the cold-storage room. We both craved experience and variety and change. I, who'd been given so much, and Kai, who'd been given so little—we both needed something more, and we were going to figure out how to get it.

Kai had gotten me to remember that.

For a while we stayed out on the dunes, listening to the gulls, the tips of our ears and noses lightly frozen, the sea wind riffling over us until we were goose-pimpled and hungry again—and then at some point there was funnel cake and a burger that we inhaled with a shared bottle of water. I closed my eyes as Kai caught me and pulled me deep into the long grasses up the dunes. We knocked against each other, playful, then we quieted as we watched the sun burn off the end of the day.

The sea and sky looked like crumpled aluminum foil. I could feel my body's familiar desire—insistence—for sleep pulling and enfolding me. It was only natural; I was healing, and it was safe here besides. I settled my cheek into the crook of Kai's arm and stared out sleepily over the horizon. In my mind's eye, the Volvo was a plastic toy pirouetting weightless over the bridge.

A moment of time, blink and gone. And yet nothing could have stopped it; the forward momentum of that car was its inexorable destiny, bridge to water, life to death. I let the icy
what-if
sweep through me, submerge me. I didn't speak, didn't move. Kai's presence was indivisible from the air I breathed, and I couldn't bear to say the wrong words, or any words at all. Not if it meant that I would break the spell.

I was home in time for dinner, though I wasn't hungry. In the kitchen, I found a box of takeout pizza with two slices of plain cheese saved for me, plus a homemade three-bean salad. My parents were downstairs watching a movie.

When I joined them on the sectional, Dad scooted over and patted the space on the couch between them. “We just started, if you want to join,” Mom whispered with a tiny, hopeful smile.

As if everything was fine. As if they were completely relaxed that I'd taken the car out all day, and that I'd only answered their nervous, attempting-to-be-measured texts (such as Mom's
I hope you're being careful, Sweetie
) with the occasional one word (
yep, ok, soon
)—depending on the question.

I knew my parents better than that. They were in no way mellow about my falling off the radar. In my absence, they'd had discussions, they'd made a plan. And after the romantic comedy was over and I'd said my good-nights and retreated to my room and opened my email, I found my answer.

A note from Dr. P.

A note that had my parents' agitated phone call to him all over it.

Hey, Ember—

Just checking in. Hadn't heard from you in a bit. Happy to hear that you are continuing to make strides with rehabilitation. (Your mom keeps me posted.) And I wanted to congratulate you on getting behind the wheel again—that's good forward initiative. I'm all for it!

At the same time, I wanted to take this opportunity to restate something we talked about in terms of maladaptive reaction. Which is just a fancy way of saying “not as easy as it seems.” Not that any of this is “easy” for you, but I think I should put you in touch with a wonderful cognitive behaviorist, who also happens to be a great pal of mine—Dr. Linda Applebaum.

Her office is right on Front Street, so that's walking distance from you. She's easy to chat with, and I think you'd truly benefit from a therapeutic alliance with her.

A professional analyst would be a constructive alternative to the well-meaning bias (hey, I'd even go so far as to say
INTERFERENCE
) of family and friends. I've spoken with Linda myself just this evening, and she's got a great way of talking anyone down from a tree or out of a jam. She's waiting for your email or call, so whenever you're ready to do this on your own steam, she's there.

Are you looking forward to Thanksgiving?

Best,

Dr. P

Dr. P strikes again. I could almost see him going through the first draft of this email, adding in all of those friendly parts, the “hey” and “pal” and those homey Lissa expressions “out of a tree” and “in a jam,” plus the end mention of Thanksgiving. The real question was: did my parents and Dr. P really think I needed a shrink, just because I'd borrowed the car?

I'd done therapy sessions three times a week at Addington. My psychiatrist there had been a really cool guy, Dr. Lawrence Lim. Everyone called him Laurie, which reminded me of
Little
Women.
Who didn't trust a guy named Laurie? And my Laurie was no different. We'd gone through some of my Anthony Travolo issues, my shock and guilt—though at some point I must have shut it down when I'd stopped talking about Anthony completely.

But now I pictured Laurie's spotless office, his glass bowl of loose Starbursts, his comfy armchair that I always got to curl into with my handful of Starbursts and my daily troubles. I hadn't thought much about any of that until now.

My parents were right. I was never going to talk with them about Anthony, or the night of the wreck. I'd always be rearing up and away from them. They didn't know how to reach me, either, no matter how good their intentions.

“Sorry, just checking in. You need anything?” Dad might say, poking his head in my bedroom door. “Are you all right, Ember?” Or I'd wake to feel my mother's papery hand on my forehead. Reassuring herself that her daughter was alive and breathing—and hadn't slipped into another coma.

But I didn't need a “therapeutic alliance,” either. I was doing all right. Didn't today prove it? No speeding ticket, no fender bender, no side-of-the-road meltdown. Why would I need any more outside help than I already had? Sure, Rachel and I had hit a bump, but we'd repair. We always did. And Holden and I would never be less than friends.

And everything I had with Kai—even if I always wanted more—seemed to sustain me just enough until the next time I saw him. If I were going to talk to anyone, maybe I would prefer it to be someone without that bias, someone who hadn't been with me through this ordeal, or had only known me after I'd lost Anthony—and I had a bleak feeling that my loss of Anthony was bigger than my conscious brain was prepared to reckon with.

The next morning, my parents were cautious with me.

“What are you doing today, sweets?” asked Mom.

“Homework, maybe see a movie with Rachel.”

It wasn't the answer they wanted. But they'd obviously made a pact with Dr. P not to talk about yesterday's disappearance. I waited until they'd stepped out around the corner to their favorite diner for their usual Sunday brunch, and then I took out the car again, down to Livingston Street, just to think. I pulled into an outdoor parking area near one of the main federal courthouses.

I bought a coffee and donut from the food cart. With all the car doors locked, I ate my breakfast. It was maybe five minutes, maybe twenty, but unlike last night, this sleep came with real peace in the lingering closeness of yesterday with Kai. He hadn't called or written, but I was getting used to this rhythm. The way we spent time together didn't obey the natural laws of dating. Instead I'd have to tap into the dream, find the brine and beach sand, and the sweet softness of that particular memory.

When I woke up, it was clear to me that if I was really in the “jam” that Dr. P had mentioned, I actually did know someone who I could talk to. So obvious. It seemed silly that I hadn't called Lissa before.