Streetlights Like Fireworks (13 page)

The Very Thing He
Loved Most

As we head out of Boulder, I don’t ask Lauren what the plan
is. What does it matter? Done is done, and we’ve definitely hit done. Even
worse, Michelle’s suspicions have cast the entire venture in a negative light.
It hurts that much worse knowing in the end we’ll be remembered, at least by
her, as two people trying to pull off some sort of scam.

Lauren isn’t all that into what’s left of our journey now
either. Within the hour, she takes an exit. “I think we should find a place to
stay,” she says. “I mean, if it’s all the same to you. I just don’t feel like
driving much tonight.”

We grab a pizza and then drive another mile or so until
we spot a motel that looks cheap. We get a room, throw our stuff on the bed and
sit at the table with the pizza box open between us.

After a while, Lauren says, “I wonder what happened to
her.”

I don’t have to ask who she means. “I’m still wondering
if she might have been an imposter.”

Lauren sighs. “I wish. Amazing what time can do, isn’t
it?”

That’s what I’ve been thinking about too—that somehow
time can change a person that much. While a transformation like that doesn’t
seem possible, who will Lauren and I each see looking back at us in the mirror
twenty years from now? Ghosts aren’t the least bit scary compared to the
possibility of our souls slipping away like that.

But all I can say is, “Pretty freaking amazing.”

We sit there eating pizza, not talking for a while. Then,
Lauren closes the curtains, goes to the bed and stretches out. She pats the
spot next to her. “Feel like sharing again?”

I go and lie down next to her. I cross my arms over my
chest and stare up at the ceiling.

“No matter what, this was nice,” Lauren says. “We need to
remember that.”

“It was incredible,” I say. Which is totally how I feel.
At the same time, I can’t help wonder how I’ll feel about it years from now.
Whether all of it will seem like a ridiculous event experienced by some kid who
used to be me.

“I guess we could try looking at the bright side.”

How is it possible that Lauren always seems to know what
I need to hear? She’s just intuitive, I guess. “What’s the bright side?”

“Well, it looks like you get to keep the Telecaster. I
know that’s not what we set out for, but you did say it was a good guitar.”

“True, it really is a nice guitar.”

“You never know. Maybe something will come of it.”

“You never know.”

“That’s just it, you never really do. You just work with
what you have and go from there. Then, there’s the future and hopefully it’s
good.”

In that darkening motel room, those words make all the
sense in the world. Work with what you have and go from there. We’ve done just
that and gotten this far together. When I’d just imagined the future closing in
like a dark tunnel, suddenly I see light again.

“So, there’s something maybe I should have told you,”
Lauren says.

I can sense her waiting, so I ask, “What’s that?” But I
kind of know.

“When I asked you to hold that compass. Can you tell me
what you saw again?”

I know better than to think she’s forgotten. Still, I
tell her about the cloudy skies, the rivers and bridges, the apartment building
with ivy growing up the side. I tell her again about the guy looking out the
window.

Lauren doesn’t say anything for a few moments. Then,
softly, “It sounds like Portland.”

I shake my head, my hair rasping against the pillow. “I
don’t know. I’ve never been there.”

“Me neither. But I could totally see him living there. It
just seems right to me.”

I don’t ask who she’s talking about. Something tells me I
don’t have to, that Lauren now wants me to know what she was wondering about
when she asked me to hold the compass. Possibly, why she committed to this
journey in the first place.

“I was just a little kid when they left,” she says. “We
lived in Pennsylvania back then. And the night before, it was the Fourth of
July. We went to see the fireworks. That one night, we seemed just like
everyone else. You know, a happy family. I honestly don’t know, even now, but I
still sometimes imagine we really were happy that night. That my parents were
happy, like they must have been at one time.”

I wait for her to continue, not sure what to say.
Outside, I hear the thump of a car door and an engine start as whoever it is
drives away. Then, silence again. Just the two of us alone in the dark.

“Later that night, after they put us to bed, it wasn’t
like the fighting even ruined it.” Lauren keeps her voice to nearly a whisper,
almost as if speaking to herself. “It was background noise to us at that point.
Other kids fell asleep to the sound of the TV downstairs, or maybe quiet
conversation from their parents’ bedroom. But we didn’t know that. Nick was
eight and I was just six, so what did we know about how things were supposed to
be?”

Lauren reaches out and I take hold of her hand.

“We fell asleep listening to two people who drank and
fought. Who’d reached the end of the line together. I guess we were just used
to it. But there was something different about that night that kept me
listening. I don’t know, I guess it was the intensity. Or maybe it was just me
being me, but I knew things were finally going to change. I could feel it.”

Lauren inhales deeply, trying not to cry. Her fingers
remain intertwined with mine in the space between us.

“But it was so quiet the next morning. And I remember
thinking—
hoping
—that I was wrong the night before. That it was just
another fight and everything would be back to normal. But when I walked into
the kitchen, it was just my mother sitting at the table. Her eyes were
bloodshot and puffy. I asked her where Nick and my dad were. All she said was,
‘They’re gone.’

“And that was it. She got up, walked down the hall and
closed her door. In a way, she never came out again. Part of me understands. I
mean, who could experience something like that and not be totally damaged?
These days, she has her boyfriend, his kids and his family. I’m just part of a
past she’d rather not think about. But that’s now, a million years later.”

“I’m really sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know.” It’s not much
to offer but it’s all I have.

“You couldn’t have,” Lauren says, squeezing my hand.
“Anyway, we stayed in that house for maybe another year while she kept thinking
they’d come back. But they never did. Like I said, part of me understands but
the other part never forgave her. For her, it was like if Nick was gone I might
as well have been too. I guess she just didn’t have any other way of dealing
with it. But that didn’t make it any easier. Eventually, we moved two states
away to the house we’ve lived in since. So much for the past, right?”

Lauren takes another deep breath, then exhales, as she
relives her pain from long ago that never stopped hurting.

“I’m really sorry,” I say again.

Lauren sniffs back tears. “Happy story. Sorry, I guess
I’m just tired.”

I’m not sure if I should say it but I do. “But there’s
something you’re not telling me.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know,” I say.

“Wow,” Lauren says. “So, do you totally know or are you
just guessing?”

I hear the smile come back into her voice. “I totally
know.”

“Good for you, Jack.” Again, she speaks softly but in her
voice I hear something new, an intimacy that wasn’t there before. Affection. “You’re
right. There’s something I haven’t told you. Which brings us back to the happy
story. The thing is, that compass used to belong to my grandfather. Then, my
father. And at one point—I don’t know, probably when I was like three or
something—my father gave it to my brother. Nick loved that thing, more than any
of his toys or anything else he owned. He kept that compass on him at all
times. He kept it in his pocket all day and when he went to sleep at night, he
kept it next to his bed.

“That morning, when my father left and took Nick with
him, I sat at the kitchen table waiting for my mother to come back up the hall.
She didn’t. She just stayed behind her door. I don’t know how long I sat
there—a long time, I’m pretty sure—but after a while I went down the hall to
Nick’s room. My father had taken everything. Maybe he’d packed it up the night
before or early that morning when my mother was still passed out. I don’t know,
but everything was gone. The toys, the clothes, even the books. But there on
the bed, guess what?”

In my imagination, I see it perfectly. “The compass?”

“Right, the compass,” Lauren says. “I don’t know how Nick
pulled it off. But there was just no way he did that by mistake. And there was
just no way my father ever would have let him leave it there. Maybe Nick knew
they weren’t coming back—I mean, I have no idea what my father told him—but
somehow he managed to leave just that one thing behind. The very thing he loved
most.”

“He was trying to help you find him.”

“Yeah, he was,” Lauren says. “But the thing is, I could
never get anything off that compass. I just couldn’t remain neutral enough, you
know, emotionally. Then you came along, stalking me and talking about some
guitar you found.”

“Hey, I wasn’t stalking—” That didn’t go all that well
the first time, so I switch direction. “Okay, sure, I was deeply obsessed. But
I also wanted to know about the guitar and that flash I experienced. I was
confused.”

“I know how that feels,” Lauren says. “I’ve been confused
for a long time.”

I’ve never once thought of her that way. It’s the rest of
us who seem confused while she’s always appeared confident and self-reliant. I
wonder if she’s admitted to anyone else that she feels as lost as the rest of
us. Something tells me I’m the only one she’s confided in, that it’s me she’s
chosen to trust.

Lauren turns toward me. She keeps her eyes—those amazing
hazel eyes—on mine as she draws closer. Despite all the times I’ve imagined
kissing her, wondering how it would go, if I’d be clumsy or nervous or if she
might even turn away, in that moment I don’t feel nervous at all. As our mouths
meet, it feels like the most natural thing in the world, a moment that has
always been waiting to happen.

Looking Back Just
Long Enough

I open my eyes the next morning to a world that feels
completely different from the one I lived in the day before. Lauren remains
curled up next to me, still sleeping, and I watch her even though I know she’d
call me a stalker for staring at her. I’d be happy to stay right here, in this
moment, for much longer but suddenly her phone buzzes against the bedside table.
Lauren’s eyes open and meet mine, the corners of her mouth lift in a smile,
then she rolls in bed to grab her phone.

I listen as she tells whoever it is that we’re still
close to Boulder—that, sure, a couple hours sounds good. Then she puts the phone
down. “Okay, then,” she says. “I guess we should get moving.”

“Come on, for real?” I say.

“I didn’t tell you who it was.”

“Michelle Carter, right?”

Lauren sits up. “I don’t know—you tell me. I mean, it
could have been another one of my Facebook friends.”

I prop myself up on my elbows. “It was Michelle.”

“Doesn’t everything you experienced yesterday tell you it
couldn’t possibly have been Michelle. Seriously, the woman’s a complete bitch.”

Of course, I’m totally grasping at straw. I feel my face
turning red. “Right,” I say, shaking my head. “Who was it?”

Lauren bursts out laughing. “Michelle Carter! Give
yourself some credit. I knew that as soon as the phone rang.”

“Not true. When it rang, you were sound asleep.”

Lauren is already out of bed, walking toward the
bathroom. I throw my pillow at the back of her head and miss.

“Nice shot, Pajama Boy. How do you know I was asleep? Was
I snoring?” She kicks the pillow aside and keeps walking. “I’m taking a shower.
And locking the door, so don’t even think about it.”

There I was thinking we’d finally moved past “Pajama
Boy.”

~~~

“Figures we’d have to drive back in her direction,” I say,
once we’re on the road again.

“Hey, Mr. Negative, don’t complain. Are you forgetting
the part about us being shit out of luck yesterday?”

I haven’t forgotten at all. And the possibility of
getting some sort of tidbit to keep us heading onward together couldn’t make me
more happy. Still, I resent Michelle for the way she treated us. Who can say if
maybe she isn’t luring us back for some creepy reason? Chances are, that’s
exactly what she’s doing. Probably, as soon as we pull into the parking lot of
the restaurant where she told Lauren to meet her, cops will pounce on us for
having stolen Jessica’s guitar. Something like that. I’m not sure if it even
makes sense but I just don’t trust her.

“Stop sighing,” Lauren says.

“I didn’t sigh. That was just breathing.”

“Breathing? You sound like a dying whale.”

“Oh, come on.” I have to laugh and, after that, I do my
best to stop sighing. I’m not entirely successful.

Half an hour later, we park in front of a Ruby Tuesday’s
about twenty yards from the highway. “Why did I expect something more upscale?”
I say.

“Try to stay positive,” Lauren says, as we get out of the
van.

Still, I look around, expecting cops or some sort of
double-cross. Nothing like that. Just people heading inside for lunch before
going who knows where. We open the door and make our way through the foyer.
Michelle sits waiting on a wooden bench near the front desk, ticking her nails against
the screen of her iPhone. When she sees us, she puts her phone in her purse and
stands. She looks tired, with dark circles beneath her eyes. In contrast to
yesterday’s affluent-suburban-mom ensemble, today she wears faded jeans and a
soccer team t-shirt, presumably having something to do with the boys I spotted
in her living room photos.

Michelle doesn’t say anything past hello in the time it
takes the hostess to guide us toward a table. A waitress appears almost
immediately and we order coffee, then Michelle changes her mind and asks for a
glass of red wine.

After the waitress leaves, she says, “I’ve already been
up for hours.”

We both know what she means. The wine, of course. After
all, it isn’t even noon yet. Neither of us say anything. Really, what is there
to say?        

Michelle adds, “Didn’t really sleep all that much
either.”

“Are you okay?” I ask. It seems strange feeling suddenly
sympathetic toward her when only yesterday she acted like the we might steal
something on the way out of her house.

Michelle nods, but then says, “Yeah, not so much.”

The waitress drops off our drinks and Michelle tastes her
wine. She grimaces and sets her glass down. “The house wine is even worse than
expected,” she says, smiling just a little.

We both nod, again not sure what to say, but Michelle
saves us any more discomfort. “Look, here’s the deal. You weren’t supposed to
happen. Whatever you’re doing wasn’t supposed to happen. That thing, that whole
life…” She goes to pick up her glass again but changes her mind. “Well, it was
just a really long time ago.”

I stop stirring sugar into my coffee. “But we’re just—”

“I understand,” Michelle says. “I talked to Trevor.
Which, by the way, is how I got Lauren’s phone number. He said he trusted you
two. Oh, and like I said before, I haven’t talked to him in years. Just so you
get where I’m coming from with all of this, okay?”

Michelle stares at us like we should understand but I
definitely don’t.

“Okay, here’s what I’m getting at. There’s a reason I
haven’t talked to Trevor in such a long time. In case it wasn’t obvious, I’ve
changed over the years. A lot. As in, I became every freaking thing I thought
I’d never become. The house, the cars, the money, the horses. Oh, let’s not
forget the husband who’s
working
all the time, if you catch my drift.”
She pauses, then says. “I’m sure you get it. But the thing is, I spend a lot of
time trying to convince myself that I’m actually happy. There’s the kids,
right? They’re almost your age now, so they have basically zero interest in me
now. But, still.”

Michelle’s eyes start to fill as she speaks. She grabs
her napkin from the table and scrunches it at the bridge of her nose.

“I’m sorry,” Lauren says. “Maybe we shouldn’t have
bothered you. We just weren’t sure what else to do.”

Michelle shakes her head. “Don’t be sorry. Not your
fault, okay? Sure, I’m bitching about it now but it hasn’t been all bad. The
fact is, I’m lucky. Shit, people are starving out there in the world. Living on
the streets, dying in wars, who knows. So, I have a crappy marriage these days.
Whatever. The thing is, once upon a time, I was a totally different person. A
renegade chick in a band, the girl who told the world she stood for something
meaningful. What pisses me off is that I tried to forget her—that amazing girl.
And I almost convinced myself she didn’t matter anymore.”

At that moment, the waitress returns to see if we’re
ready to order. Michelle reaches into her purse and hands her two twenties,
then tells her, “This is for the drinks. The rest is for you. Thank you.”

The waitress hesitates a few seconds, not quite sure how
to react. Then she thanks Michelle and rushes off again. Michelle turns her
attention back to us. “Sorry. Like you need to hear all this crap.”

“What you did still matters,” I say. “You guys created
something that hasn’t been forgotten. Most people can only dream of doing
something like that.”

Michelle dabs at her eyes again. “I can’t tell you how
much that means. Especially from someone who came all this way expecting
nothing in return. The fact is, I treated you two like crap yesterday and I
hated myself for doing that. It’s not you I’m mad at. It’s me. And I have been
for a long time. I just couldn’t admit it to myself.”

Michelle takes another sip of her wine, then turns to
Lauren. “Check your phone when you leave. I left you a text when I saw the two
of you come in.”  She looks back and forth between the two of us, waiting to be
sure she has our attention. “Here’s the deal. I spoke to Jessica last night. It
wasn’t easy, believe me, but I managed to convince her that I trusted you. I
told her what you had. It took about an hour but finally she allowed me to give
you her address. Do you want to know what she said?”

Lauren and I both nod furiously.

“Jessica said, if you share that address with anyone she
will stab you in the heart twenty-five times after you’re already dead. Just so
you know.”

When Michelle says it, I have no doubt we’ve finally
found Jessica Malcom.

~~~

Once we’re outside, Michelle gives each of us a hug,
something unimaginable the day before. As she draws away from me, she slips an
envelope into my hand. Before I can ask, she says, “Right, it’s money. Don’t
worry about it. I’ve got plenty. And, yes, I do remember what it’s like to be
young and broke. Just be safe, okay?” She looks quickly back and forth between
us, then turns and walks toward her car.

A moment later, she’s sealed inside her white Mercedes
and driving off. I check to be sure, but it doesn’t seem like she looks back.
Maybe a glance in her rearview mirror, but I guess I’ll never know. Somehow
that seems about right for Michelle. From what we’ve learned about her, she
isn’t a person who, for good or bad, spends a great deal of time looking back.

We climb into the bus and Lauren immediately tugs her
phone from her pocket. She checks her texts, bounces in her seat and starts
laughing.

“What?”

“You don’t want to know,” she says.

“Come on, just tell me.”

I try to see her phone but she switches it to her other
hand. “Only if you promise to remain calm.”

“I’m calm,” I say. “Really. So, where now?”

“Well, let me put it this way. What road trip would be
complete if it didn’t involve two coasts?”