Loud Awake and Lost, page 14
The overhead track lights were so white they made me see purple.
On impulse, I snapped them off.
Better.
Humming electricity was an absence that filled the darkness—sterile and antiseptic, delivering me into memories of the unyielding shape of that narrow cot at Addington. So far from my own soft bed and its sweetly shabby friendship quilt. Every room at Addington had a bedside call bell. I’d never used mine.
Press it, they encouraged. Press it and a nurse will appear at your side within moments to meet your demands. Help to the bathroom. A glass of water. A hot-water bottle. Anything.
I’d looked at that bell every night, wishing that it had the power to summon the people I really wanted. My parents, my friends. Those empty, lonely nights where all I’d done was stare up at the ceiling, waiting to heal, had seemed to drag on forever.
Cold was seeping into my bones. I moved slowly, feeling my way, ducking around the refrigerator and out of view in case the wrong person showed up. I sat cross-legged on the ground with my back against the wall. Then I closed my eyes, letting the freeze sink me. Adjusting to it. A minute passed. I heard the door open.
I exhaled. He’d come. I leaned around. “Hey! I’m over here,” I whispered.
Silent as a panther, Kai found me. I could smell him, that intoxicating hint of him, as he slid down next to me in the dark.
“It’s freezing,” I whispered. “I’m not sure I can be here for that much longer.”
“I know, I know. I can’t stay, either. We’re getting slammed. But I’m—wow, I can’t believe you came by.”
“Are you surprised?”
“Hell yeah, I’m surprised. A girl like you, wanting to hang out with a starving student slash waiter like me. What would your parents think?”
“What do you mean a girl like me?”
“A girl like you,” he repeated. “I guess I could say a pretty girl, or maybe I’d say a girl from a fancy landmark district, who goes to Lafayette and buys lunch in a bento box, and can even use the chopsticks. But what I really mean is a girl who knows her own mind.” He smiled. “Yeah, that’s mostly what I meant.”
“Oh.” It was a cool thing to say, though I wasn’t sure that’s how I’d have defined myself. But it wasn’t not true, in relation to Kai. For one, I knew I wanted to see him again. And I’d gone out of my way to find him. “Well, you couldn’t possibly be starving,” I said, deflecting his intensity even as I stored away his compliment. “The food’s too good here.”
“That’s my aunt who heads up the kitchen.”
“She’s a genius cook. I’m surprised you don’t weigh an extra hundred pounds.”
“Put the blame on my good metabolism.” Kai was fiddling with something. His flask, I realized. He unscrewed the top and took a long sip. I could smell the dark-roasted coffee, and I didn’t have to taste it to know that it was strong.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met a guy who drinks coffee from a flask.”
“It was my dad’s,” said Kai. “The only thing I’ve got that’s his.”
“What happened to him?”
“Nothing, except that he ditched. Classic lost soul, and he’s part of the reason why there’ll only ever be coffee in my flask. My mom died—cancer—when I was seven and Hatch was three. Isabella’s really my great-aunt, my grandmother’s sister. She’s been raising us since I was in third grade.” He gave me the information in a voice as flat as a glass of milk, but when he offered the flask, I had a feeling that he didn’t let just anyone drink from it. I took the smallest bird sip.
“Coffee makes me nervous,” I confessed.
“Yeah? Are you nervous around me?”
“Only because I think this is our last visit,” I answered. “Honestly, I just can’t tell if you really want to see me or if you’re avoiding me.”
“Both,” Kai answered. So matter-of-fact it was almost jarring.
“Okay,” I said. “Both.”
“If you think I’m never thinking about you, you’re wrong. Your name’s been like an extra beat in my heart since I saw you. But the thing is, it’s complicated. I’ve got a lot going on. Too much. My aunt isn’t big on me getting serious with a girl, and my aunt’s got a major vote in my life. I’m dealing with school, the restaurant, my kid brother. There’s no room for me to screw up or screw around.”
“Sure. I get it. Absolutely.” I didn’t at all. Was I part of “screw up” or “screw around”? “Actually, no, I don’t get it,” I added in a next breath of openness. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“Me either,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to deny it. We connected. I feel like we want the same things, in a way. Like, I’ve got this theory about people—that there are people who stay and people who go. And you’re like me. You want out.” I could feel Kai watching me. “Because you’re not in life to obey it, to stay stuck in a system and a rule book and a set of expectations that were predetermined practically before you were born. You’re looking for more, right? So am I.”
It was so true that it was jarring. I thought of my parents, sweetly prodding me to be their perfect ballerina. Picking out all the ruffles and flowers of my clothes closet. Nudging me, even, toward Holden—the perfect boyfriend. “Yeah, I’m going,” I admitted. “I’m not sure where yet, but I’m facing in a new direction, and I’ll get there. Eventually.”
When I glanced at him, Kai’s eyes seemed to glitter like mica in the shadows. When he slipped the flask back into his waiter’s apron pocket, we were close enough that our shoulders touched, and it seemed perfectly natural for my hand to drift to his forearm.
“So, now that we got that outta the way.” He laughed. “The real issue is that we’re a coupla goofballs who can’t stop thinking about each other.”
From that, it took nothing to touch my lips to Kai’s neck, allowing myself to taste his skin, the recipe of him. He turned to face me full-on, tipped up my chin and kissed my mouth. I kissed him back. More than a kiss. I felt drowsy and reckless, but what could I do? He transfixed me; he’d been stalking every corner of my mind since the moment I met him.
“I missed you,” I confessed. “And when I saw you the other night at Areacode, I just knew—”
“Ever since the first night,” he interrupted, his words cartwheeling over mine, “I’ve been writing about you.”
“Seriously?”
“And sketching you, imagining you. Inventing you, sometimes even making you up as I went along. There’s so much I don’t know about you that I need to learn.”
It was a strange moment for Holden to flash across my mind. And not Holden, the guy who was overly endorsed by my mother and father, but Holden, who knew everything about me. All of the friends and memories that Holden and I had in common, bumping in and out of each other’s paths since grade school, when I knew him first as Rachel’s cousin. Holden was a “stayer”—he’d never have the desire to leave New York. Even his college life was a stone’s throw from home. But there was also something wonderful about Holden’s being so known to me, familiar as a fingerprint. Whereas I knew Kai was tricky, like a fish swimming upstream, flashing in and out of my life.
“Don’t lose me again, Kai. Please?”
In answer, he kissed me. Maybe it was because it was so dark, but I was immediately lost in him, in his touch and the scent of him, all mixed up with the onion-bread garlic smell of the restaurant. Kai immersed me completely. Anesthetized me. Nothing else mattered more than this moment.
“Hey, I’ve got an idea. Let’s do something,” I whispered. “Something planned. Something just us two.”
“Sure.” He nodded. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
“I’m up for anything.”
“Anything? Cost and time being no object?” Kai had shifted to a casual tone—did that mean he wasn’t serious about this? “Maybe we could go out to Burning Man, in the Black Rock Desert. It’s supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Or we jump on a plane to England, hit the Glastonbury music festival. I’ve always wanted to check that out. And Barcelona, and Florence. But I guess first I’ll need to get a passport.”
“Okay, okay, very funny; I know you’re joking,” I said. “But I’m serious.”
“And there’s always ice fishing in the tundra,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Which is about the same temperature as in here. Damn. Makes me sleepy.” He turned from me to cover a yawn, and I could see his silhouette, the delicate notch of his neck and the joint where his jaw met his ear. He’d presented these destinations as jokes, but I had a feeling that his mind had lingered over each and every one of them. He was frustrated with it—the lack of money and time. He wanted so much.
“Let’s go everywhere,” I said. “I’m on for all of it. Nothing you’ve said sounds completely out of reach to me.”
“I really do need to start hanging out with you.”
“Exactly.” I was perfect for him. He’d never find a better fit. I could dream any dream with him.
But my mind was also shutting down a bit, too. The dark freeze of this industrial-chrome storage room had cast a sleep spell.
“But for now, I wouldn’t mind starting small.” My voice was hardly a whisper into silence. “I’m more of a burger-and-a-movie girl. A walk-in-the-park girl. We don’t have to go anywhere.”
When Kai spoke, his tone was clipped. “Look, Ember. It sounds awesome now, but girls don’t stick to me. I’ve hardly got anything to offer. No time, no money, nothing.”
“So you’ve said. So what? I’ll do anything, even if it’s nothing. I just want to see you. I don’t care what we do—it makes no difference to me.” I couldn’t remember any other time when I’d been so serious, or so truthful. I also knew that I was on a tightrope, and that the breath of Kai’s rejection might blow me right over.
“Coney Island,” Kai said suddenly.
That was a bit out of left field. “Coney Island?” I repeated.
“Yeah. Why not? I always wanted to see Luna Park in winter.”
“Then sure. Great!” After all, it was a relatively simple destination. And I’d been to Coney Island once before, a long time ago, with my parents in the dead of August. The afternoon had ended in a massive summer thunderstorm. I’d listened to the ghostly sound of the wind whipping down the boardwalk, and I’d inhaled a corn dog from under a kiosk umbrella as we’d watched the storm sweep through, rain sluicing our legs and turning the cornmeal batter damp, which made it taste even better. It was one of those detachedly pleasurable memories of childhood, and it tumbled into my lap as true as if it had happened yesterday.
I could take the car. Flatbush, then cut across to Ocean Parkway. The possibility of this day was something to fight for. That scent of it, like Kai, was exactly what I craved.
The icy air of the cold-storage room was its own insistent counterforce. We had to get out of here soon. I yawned as I tucked my numb fingertips into my armpits. “Is this real, then? Coney Island? With me?”
“Ember, I don’t even know how to be more serious.”
Hearing my name gave me confidence. “Okay, cool. I can drive us there,” I offered. I wasn’t even sure if it was true—I hadn’t driven a car since that night. And yet I had to do it at some point. Despite all my anxieties, I had to put myself behind the wheel and strap myself in and make myself go. Here was my perfect initiation. I’d drive to Coney Island with Kai, and in the process I’d reclaim my driving skills, yet another part of a precious whole I’d lost that night.
But I could get that back, I knew I could. The risk was worth it.
“Want to say Saturday?” he suggested. “Then I’ll call you once I’m sure I can get the time off. But I better head upstairs, or I’ve got no job to get back to.” As he leaned forward to stand, his mouth grazed my ear. Kai was so effortlessly sure that everything he did would be everything I wanted him to do. And he was right.
“How should we handle this?”
“I’ll go first. You wait a minute.”
In the shadows he was hard to see. He wasn’t kidding about this, was he? “So…if you can get off, then I’ll pick you up?”
“Uh-huh, that works. I’m in the dorm residence at the St. George—you know where the St. George is, right?”
“I do.”
“Cool. We’ll pick a time.” He gave me another kiss that left my lips either heat- or ice-burned.
And then I was alone in the Arctic.
After a minute or so, surprise. The overhead light flipped on. It wasn’t Kai. I covered my eyes against the fluorescent flash. I listened as brisk footsteps approached the walk-in. It opened and something was slid out. Then came the smack of the sealed door shutting. A pause—I held my breath. The stranger left, and I hadn’t been caught. Whew. I looked down at my arms in wonderment. My skin was icy as a Popsicle, with a lacy formation of goose bumps making a purplish space-alien pattern on my flesh. I’d been down here a long time.
When I raced back up the stairs, I knew that Isabella, though she kept up her same waltzing pace, was also circumspectly watching me. So was the busboy. Not in the nicest of ways. Definitely with intensity.
“Your check is paid,” he told me formally as he served me a dish of custard that I hadn’t ordered. His voice wasn’t particularly friendly.
“Oh.” Kai comped my dinner? I hadn’t expected that. The general acceptance of my presence here was no small thing. I nodded my thanks to Isabella and tapped my fingertips to my heart in appreciation of her kindness. Then I looked the boy in the eye. “Thank you.”
But I’d seen all I could of Kai; he was probably too busy to come talk to me again, though after I finished my dessert and left, I stayed another minute outside the restaurant. There, I could see Kai only as a swiftly passing shadow.
I stood quietly for a while, anyway. Looking in.
Walking home, I let myself unwind and process it.
I couldn’t have told anyone, least of all myself, much about Kai. I didn’t know his favorite color or what kind of music he listened to or his religion, if he was a cat or dog person, if he liked sweet or spicy, if he was finicky or mellow. I didn’t know if he played sports or if he preferred M&M’s or Twizzlers at the movies.
And yet the connection was so firm and so true. I also knew that no matter how many details I ultimately coaxed from Kai, his favorite breakfast cereal or if he played basketball or soccer or liked to swim or fish or whatever, none of these things would add up to the extraordinary whole of what I liked about him, and why he was mine.
Because he was. More than Holden, more than Rachel, more than anyone else I’d ever met, I knew that this guy, in his essence, belonged to me.
It was as simple, it was as insane, as that.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Travolo,
There are no words to express the pain of your loss, and I am writing to you with a heavy heart.
To the parents of Anthony Travolo:
I have been trying to write to you for many weeks now, but every time I sit down and attempt to communicate everything that is in my heart, I realize just how limited language can be.
For Anthony’s family,
I’m not even sure if you want to hear from me, but the longer I go without writing to you, the more disappointed I am in myself. And so I have vowed that as soon as I finish typing this letter, I am sending it.
I highlighted the next block of text and deleted it. None of this was coming easily. It wasn’t coming through for me at all. Maybe I was just deluding myself that I had the skill to create a letter that could capture the core truth of everything that I wanted the Travolos to know. But I was no closer to hitting send. It might be better to check into whether I could get hold of a phone number instead.
Condolences by phone. It seemed worse.
What I really needed to do was to visit them.
19
Exactly Their Person
It had been one year plus one month since I’d been over to the Wildes’ house. But when Thursday arrived, I was dragging my feet. Drew Wilde’s engagement party was going to be stiff and uncomfortable. That was a given. The problem was, I’d ended up promising Holden again on the phone, and now here it was Thursday, and my word was my bond. I couldn’t go back on it. Especially not to Holden, who lived by those honor codes.
But I’d prepared as best I could. I’d even bought an outfit for it, at a funky little consignment shop on Smith Street that was around the corner from where I did physical therapy. It was a plain black dress with cobwebby sleeves. Even on sale, it was a bit more than I’d wanted to spend, but nothing else in my closet made sense to me, style-wise.
A cobweb dress, check. Black tights, check. Plus the boots. Was me.
Mom couldn’t stop all the black, but then again I couldn’t have stopped Mom from hitting Floral Heights and returning triumphantly with two giant tiger orchids, which she told me I needed to present as a “hostess gift” for Holden’s mother and for Drew’s fiancée, Raina.
“This is too awkward,” I’d protested. “I swear to you, Mrs. Wilde doesn’t even want these. She’s super picky about flowers.” Privately, it also seemed as if showing up with big expensive orchids was kind of like an apology—and for what? For breaking up with her son last year?
Luckily, Rachel swung by to pick me up so that we could walk over together. And she wasn’t into presenting an orchid any more than I was.
“Really, Nat?” she asked, deliberately using the nickname my mom disliked.
“And just so you know, I’m telling Mrs. Wilde you bought them,” I called to Mom as we walked out the door. “So you’ll have to take full blame for currying favor.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. This is just good manners,” Mom insisted.
“Okay, executive decision: your orchid is for Drew, and mine is for Aunt Eleanor,” said Rachel. “I’d rather puke on my shoes than give Drew anything. I mean, I had to grow up with that kid; he’s also my cousin, unfortunately. He was such a bully to me and Holden back in the day.”
