He ran past the edge of the forest and the sign for Grandview in pursuit of his happier, more balanced self. The imaginary Nate and Bailey disappeared as quickly as they had shown up as Nate arrived at Main Street. He stopped and sat down on one of the benches outside the library. His heart beat sharply against his chest, and his breathing was short and labored. Nate wiped the sweat off his face and stretched his throbbing legs out in front of him. He closed his eyes and put his face up to the warming sun.
"Nate?" Nate opened his eyes at the sound of his name.
A petite woman with bright red hair and orange glasses stood in front of him. He scanned his brain frantically, but he couldn't place her. She looked younger than him and like someone who
really
didn't belong in Grandville. She wore a deep green sundress with thin pink straps and a pink hippopotamus motif all over it. Her hair was swept up into a messy chignon and the sunlight bounced off the pink-and-green sequins that covered her high-heeled shoes. She looked bright and fashionable, which made her completely at odds with the other people wandering around Main Street. There seemed to be a glow surrounding her.
"I'm really sorry. I know I should probably know who you are, but I can't bring it to mind. I'm really bad with names and faces," Nate said, a little flustered. He stood up, wincing at the pain in his legs, and put his hand out.
"Don't worry! There's no real reason you should remember me. My name is Emma. I was friends with your sister when we were kids. I'm Abel Jones's sister. You remember him—reformed big, dumb bully." Emma's voice was sweet and singsong and she shook Nate's hand gently.
"Of course! Emma. You look incredible. I'm sorry. You caught me at a bad moment—for some reason I thought I could run for six miles without any warm up or any kind of preparation. Who knew unfit people shouldn't fling themselves into frantic exercise?"
"I have something that will help you," Emma said enthusiastically. "It's a new kale smoothie I'm trying out. No dairy, no sugar, no gluten. It's just nutritious, organic produce. It'll fix you up straight away. I'm telling you, once you get over the way it looks and the way it tastes, you'll become an addict. It'll add ten years to your life."
"Umm. Okay. That actually sounds—maybe not
good,
but
necessary
. Lead the way," Nate said, following Emma as she crossed the road, her heels clicking chirpily on the asphalt. She looked like she was skipping, her body buoyant as she led the way to the café.
As Emma unlocked the door, Nate looked at the building. In the front were trays of fuchsia and yellow flowers so beautiful that they looked like they should have been in a painting and two sets of pale blue tables and chairs. The front door was the same color as the tables and artfully distressed so that it looked like a perfectionist's idea of a farmhouse door. The sign above was pastel blue, fuchsia, and yellow, tying all the colors together in a striking focal point. The windows were adorned with blue-and-white checkered curtains that looked like picnic blankets.
Nate followed Emma into the café and looked around in amazement. It was so much bigger than he remembered and beautifully decorated, like something that belonged a world away from Grandville. The tables were made from thick hunks of woods that had been allowed to keep their natural shape and warp so that the whole place looked like an upmarket country kitchen. Above the counter were two blackboards with the food and drink menus written in loose, blue chalk script. The whole place looked warm and inviting and was clearly a product of a lot thought and care. Emma's passion seemed to have been absorbed into the walls.
"It's gorgeous, Emma. It's really, really beautiful. I remember when my mom used to bring me to this place when Sarah was ill. It was just awful; the whole place looked like it was covered in a film of grease. It doesn't even look like the same place," Nate said still looking around the bright and homey cafe.
"Thank you so much. It had been closed for a couple of years when I took it on—it was going for cheap. When I told people my plans to open a vegan café, everybody looked at me like I'd gone crazy. Things started slowly, but I'm doing okay now. It was a leap of faith, but I just knew I could make it work. I could see it in my mind," Emma said as she put some vegetables, powders, and some kind of rice milk into a blender. The liquid went a seaweed green as the ingredients were blitzed together on high speed. Nate eyed it suspiciously.
"The quinoa porridge sounds really good. I didn't eat anything before I started running. Could I get some of that too?" Nate asked.
"Sure, here's your drink. I can't wait for you to try it!" Emma said excitedly.
Nate took the drink and had a cautious sip. He braced himself for the worst, but was surprised how much he liked it. It definitely wasn't the best thing he had ever tasted, but it wasn't nearly as bad as its appearance suggested.
"Come and chat to me in the kitchen while I do your breakfast," Emma added.
Nate walked into the small but modern kitchen and perched on one of the stainless steel countertops. He watched on as Emma pulled ingredients that he had never seen before from various cupboards and got to work. "Did your brother tell you that I met him last night?" Nate asked.
"No, he didn't. How was that for you? Did you want to punch him?" Emma asked as she poured some precooked quinoa into a breakfast bowl and began peeling an avocado.
"Well, when I first saw him, I was a little floored. I suppose I kind of did want to hit him, or shout at him, or at least say something mean to him. But he was actually kind of nice. It was a bit disconcerting," Nate said, picking at a strangely shaped mushroom.
"Tell me about it. It was so strange: he was a jerk and then one day he was a nice guy. He came out of the closet, and the next day he woke up as one of the good guys. I think once he knew that everybody was cool with the gay thing, he lost a lot of his anger. I spent so much time as a kid hating him for the way he treated people. The way he treated you. I'd beg him to stop, to change, to treat people with the kindness that I knew he was capable of. But he was just like this immovable object, so wound up and, I think, bitter. Bitter that he had this secret that he didn't want to carry around. I didn't speak to him for a while. But then he admitted that he likes guys and all that anger and bitterness just seemed to evaporate," Emma said nonchalantly.
"You know, I'm always amazed at stories like that. I came out and it was like I'd set a bomb off," Nate said, inhaling the broth scent of the cooking food. "But I must say I thought his transformation was incredible. I never thought that I'd describe Abel Jones as nice, but it was actually a pretty good evening."
"Did you at least give him some hell?" Emma enquired.
"I don't really know. I reminded him of some of the horrible things that he did, I didn't let him off the hook—but he seemed so apologetic that I didn't really want to go on about it. He caught me at a bad moment and he made it better," Nate replied, casting his mind back to the night before.
"Talking of siblings, I was thinking about Sarah the other day," Emma said.
"Oh, really. How come?" Nate asked, surprised at the quiver of emotion running through his voice. He was shocked that thinking and talking about Sarah still hit him so hard; he thought that he had dealt with his feelings a long time ago. He couldn't remember the last time that he'd talked about Sarah like this.
"I bought a yellow coat from a vintage store. I saw it in the window and I couldn't help but smile. I just couldn't stop myself from thinking about your sister in the boiling heat, wearing that damn coat and eating ice cream. The sweat was pouring off her," Emma said, handing a large bowl of quinoa to Nate.
'When I look back at it, she was just so cool. She was like some kind of tiny iconoclast—I bet she would have been something to do with fashion. She always wanted her picture taken; can you imagine what she would have been like with Instagram?" Nate chuckled lightly, feeling more connected to his sister's memory than he had in years. They both turned when the door opened and a group of people walked into the café. "You go and serve them. I'll go and find an empty table in the café and try to do some writing. This is delicious, thank you so much."
"Good! Just say bye before you leave," Emma said perkily as she skipped out of the kitchen.
It Looks Like We're Gonna Climb a Hill
Nate looked at the blank piece of paper. He picked up his pen and began to write.
"The thing is..."
He scribbled it out and began again.
"You see, the thing is… Here's the thing… The thing people forget is…"
Nate scribbled the sentences out again and rested his forehead on the table in frustration. He couldn't understand why he couldn't find the words that he needed. Most of his books had been written during times of change in his life, but this time he couldn't think of anything to say. He wanted to write about heartbreak, pain, and moving on and starting again, but nothing was coming to him—not even some crazy rambling that he could discard later or edit down to something worth reading. Nate was certain there was something creative that could be salvaged from how he was feeling; he could feel the boundaries of something new and fresh, something that would please his fans and say something truly important, but he couldn't find a way of getting it down on the page. He looked up and began to write again.
"Why did this happen? Why did you do this? Joshua, how could you do this to us? Why? Why? Why?"
Nate looked down at his handwriting. The black writing looked desperate and stark against the white paper. He stared at the words as if he was looking for some hidden answers to his questions. The word
why
felt overwhelming and monstrous, like some insurmountable hurdle that he would never get over.
"The writing's going well, then?" Nate looked up from the page, startled by Abel's deep voice.
"Yeah. Fantastic, actually. I've managed at least five unusable words in an hour. I'm making really good progress."
Abel's hair was messy, like he had just woken up, and his face was beaming with a bright smile. He held two mugs in his hands. "I bought you a cup of coffee. Well, not coffee, actually; Emma doesn't believe in it, so I bought you a cup of chicory and rice milk—I hope you'll forgive me."
"I don't think I've ever tried chicory before, so thank you. Please, sit down. Save me from the hell of writer's block." Nate motioned towards the seat in front of him and took one of the mugs of chicory from Abel. It smelled sweeter than coffee, a little like hazelnut syrup.
"I think my sister is the only person in the whole world who could create a successful café that doesn't serve actual coffee. She's... she's… I don't even know what she is," Abel said. Nate smiled as he watched Abel try to get comfortable on the pale blue café seat. Abel's body was too big to fit on the kitschy chair and he constantly moved his body around; he looked a little like Alice in Wonderland, lost in a world of bird-covered mugs and dainty cutlery. He was a mountain man stuck in a hipster's paradise.
"I think this place is amazing. I can't believe it, it's incredible. And to be honest, this chicory is okay. It doesn't really taste like coffee, but I can imagine getting used to it. It tastes like I imagine a root to taste. Foresty," Nate replied, taking a sip of his drink.
"I don't think that foresty is a compliment. Or even a word. 'Oh, I had a delicious dinner the other day, it was so foresty,' " Abel laughed.
"It's not, but it's not a complaint either."
"So, why can't you write? Too much on your mind?" Abel asked, shifting forward in his seat.
"Maybe. Or maybe I don't have enough things on my mind. At the moment I'm only really thinking about two things: Joshua and Bailey. While that might be fascinating and frustrating for
my
brain, I'm not sure a book with 'what am I going to do?' Written over and over again for three hundred pages would make for a very satisfying read," Nate said, crumpling the piece of paper up and putting it back in his bag.
"I'd read it."
"No, you wouldn't."
"Okay. I probably wouldn't
finish it
, but I would definitely buy it and put it on the bookshelf. I'd even recommend it to friends," Abel replied.
"I think it would be cool to see you buy one of my books; I can just picture you wandering through the self-help aisle and taking that pink book to the counter. In my experience, you don't exactly fit in with my main demographic." Nate couldn't help but smile as he pictured Abel sitting in the middle of the teenage girls and moms who made up the bulk of his book tour audience. He looked at the elephant clock above the counter and saw it was still early.
"I think I know something we can do to help you. It's something I saw on a TV show once," Abel said excitedly.
"A lobotomy?"
"I was thinking of something a little less extreme, but if my idea doesn't work then we can definitely go down the lobotomy route. And, you know, we shouldn't take electro shock treatment off the table," Abel added jovially.
"You're right. I hadn't even thought about that! So what's your plan to get me out of my funk?" Nate asked, his interest piqued.
"I'd rather show you than tell you. It'll sound too corny. Do you trust me?"
"I don't see any reason why I should. I think we established last night that you are a pretty douchey person." Nate broke into a grin.
"
Was
a douchey person. But that's good point. Do you think you could trust me for the next hour and a half?" Abel asked.
"Are you planning on kidnapping me? Because I have to warn you, I have sat through hours of pre-school karate classes and I have picked up a few things. My body is a dangerous weapon at this point."
"They have pre-school karate classes now? Why weren't they around when I was a kid?"
"I don't think you needed them. If my memory serves me right, you found plenty of ways to get into fights without the help of karate. You used to take on the seniors the minute we started school," Nate replied.