Текст книги "Since You've Been Gone"

Автор книги: Morgan Matson

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I returned to the counter with a container about a third of the size of the giant one to find Frank and the guy both leaning over the counter, the newspaper between them.

“ Renaissance,” Frank said, tapping his finger on the newspaper, and I somehow wasn’t surprised at all that Frank Porter was now doing the word search with the mini-mart employee. The guy leaned closer, then nodded and circled the word.

“Backward,” the guy said, shaking his head. “They always try and get you that way.”

“Is that it?” Frank asked, looking down at the paper. “Any left?”

The guy must have noticed me then, as he straightened up and reached for the container, scanning it and giving it back to me. “And the rest on pump four?” I asked, handing him my twenty.

“Nicely done,” Frank said. He nodded down at the search, which was now just a collection of pencil circles, the list of words crossed out, and the few lone letters that didn’t fit in anywhere. “Emily, check it out.”

“Oh,” I said, not really sure what to say about this, since I’d never before been in the position to need to compliment someone’s word search. What was I supposed to say? That it looked really thorough?

But before I needed to decide this, Frank was already moving on, plucking my receipt from the counter and starting to fold it absentmindedly. “You ever do Sudoku?” he asked.

“Nah,” the guy said, tucking the pencil behind his ear. “Not my scene.”

“You have to try it,” Frank enthused as I turned to leave, suddenly feeling like I was in the way. “Once you get the hang of it, it’s addictive. Oh, man. You have no idea.”

I heard the guy laugh before the door closed, and I walked over to the pump. I tried to concentrate on fitting the nozzle into the container, and then not spilling the gas everywhere as it started to fill up, but really I was trying not to think about how acutely aware I was that there were two types of people—the type who could talk to anyone and make friends with them, and the type who spent parties hiding and sitting against trees.

“Hey.” I looked up and saw Frank coming to stand next to me. “You okay? I was going to help.”

“I think I have it,” I said. The numbers had started to slow down, and when they stopped, I put the nozzle away, firmly closed the container, and then bent down to lift it—but it didn’t budge.

“Let me get that,” Frank said, bending down as well to grab one side of it. We hoisted it up together, and only then did it occur to me that I could have filled up the container in the truck bed, and made things easier for us. It was just one more thing that had gone wrong tonight, and I added it to the list. “James said we should keep it in the back,” he said as we placed the container into the truck bed. “And even after it’s empty, you should keep the container in your trunk unless you want your car to smell like a filling station.”

“James?” I asked as I walked around the back to the passenger side. I hadn’t noticed a name tag, but maybe Frank had, or maybe they’d just bonded while doing the word search.

“Yeah,” Frank said, nodding toward the guy inside the store, who waved at us. “Nice guy. I think he’s going to give Sudoku a try.”

We got into the truck, and Frank started the engine and dropped a piece of paper into the cupholder with the origami frog—which was when I noticed that what had been my receipt was now folded into a crane. I wanted to ask him about it, but instead, I just put on my seat belt and looked out the window. If Sloane had been there, sitting next to me, I could have gotten her to ask with one look. She would have done it, too. She had never, in the two years I’d known her, backed down from any kind of challenge.

We were halfway back to the Orchard before I broke the silence and spoke up. Our interaction was coming to an end; I could almost see it shimmering in the distance like the finish line at the end of one of my long cross-country races. “Thank you again,” I finally said after silently trying out a few different versions of this. “I really appreciate it. I swear, I’ve never run out of gas before.”

“And I bet you won’t again,” Frank said. He nodded toward his dashboard, which was lit up like a spaceship, bathing his whole side of the car in a cool blue light. “Mine starts flashing and beeping at me if I get below a quarter of a tank, so I’ll usually fill up immediately just to get it to stop.”

“The gauge on my car is broken,” I explained. Normally I wouldn’t have shared this, but I didn’t want Frank Porter to think I was some kind of airhead, in addition to being the sister of a preadolescent adrenaline junkie. “So I just try and be aware of how much I’ve driven.”

Frank glanced over at me, eyebrows raised. “I’m surprised you haven’t run out before now.”

“No, I’m usually really careful,” I said. “But this week . . .” My voice trailed off when I realized I wasn’t about to tell Frank these kinds of details about my life: Sloane vanishing, me driving all over town looking for her, the list. “It’s just been a little crazy,” I finally supplied.

He nodded as he made the turn back into the Orchard. It looked like, while we’d been gone, the evening had started to wind down—there were only a handful of cars still parked there. Frank pulled up next to my car, and even though I’d just been expecting he would drop me off, he helped me lift the container down and then held it steady while I filled up. I dropped the empty container off in the trunk, and when I walked back to the driver’s side, I saw that Frank was reading the bumper stickers that covered the left side. He looked at me, and I could see the question in his eyes, but I looked away as I got behind the wheel and crossed my fingers. I turned the key, and after a moment of sputtering, the car came to life again.

“Working?” Frank asked, leaning in my window a little.

“Working,” I said. I tapped on the gauge. “But don’t look at this. It’s always stuck on half empty.”

Frank leaned closer, contemplating it. “I would say it’s half full.” He smiled at me, and a moment later, I got the joke. But rather than laughing, or saying something in return, I just gave him a tight smile and stared ahead at the steering wheel. Frank turned to head back to his truck, and I suddenly wondered if this had been incredibly rude.

“But seriously,” I said, leaning out the window a little, “thank you. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to pay you back.”

He nodded and held up a hand in a wave as he turned his truck around to leave. But then he stopped and leaned across his truck to look down at me. “Actually,” he said through the open window. “There is something. Can you teach me to run?”

This was so not even close to anything I’d expected him to say that I wasn’t sure how to react at first. This might have been apparent in my expression, because Frank went on quickly. “I mean, I know how to run. I just want to get better at it, maybe train for a 10K or something. You’re on the cross-country team, right?”

I nodded at that, trying to disguise my shock that Frank had any idea what I’d been involved in at school—or, honestly, that he knew anything about me at all. And after I’d started missing practices and meets regularly this past spring, I wasn’t sure that I would still be on the team come fall. But I didn’t think that he needed to know any of that. “Sure,” I said, easily. I was pretty certain that this wouldn’t come to anything, that he would forget he’d asked me, and the next time I saw Frank Porter, it would be at the first day of school in September, when he would be welcoming us all as the senior class president. He had probably only asked so that I wouldn’t feel like I owed him anything. “Anytime.”

“Great,” Frank said. He gave me a smile, then pulled forward, signaling as he turned to leave, even though there was no reason for it. I watched his brake lights until they faded from view, then I turned on my iPod, connected to the ancient stereo via a line in, put my car in gear, and headed for home, ready to put this entire night behind me.

I opened the door slowly, so the hinges wouldn’t squeak, and stepped over the threshold. It was almost one thirty, and I held my breath as I waited for lights to turn on and my parents to thunder down the stairs, furious and demanding explanations. But there was only silence, punctuated by the loud ticking of the grandfather clock that had been in the house when we moved in and had proven too heavy to lift. I let out a breath just as I felt something brush against my legs.

I froze. Heart hammering, I looked down and saw that it was only the cat. “Move,” I whispered to him as he sat down on the threshold and started washing his paws, like he didn’t know that he was sitting right in the path of the door. We’d been in Stanwich a year before he showed up, mewling at our door one night. I was thrilled to be finally getting a pet, which had never been possible before. But even though we put a collar on him and filled his food and water dishes, it quickly became clear that he was not going to be a typical housecat. He came and went as he pleased, mostly living outside in the garage, only spending large amounts of time in the house once it got cold out. But just when you had given up on him ever turning up again, there he would be in the kitchen in the morning, waiting impatiently by his dish, like he’d never been gone. My dad had named him Godot, and over the years, we’d all gotten used to his I’ll be there if I feel like itpresence.

“Come on,” I said, nudging him with my foot, but gently, since I just had flip-flops on, and Godot was not shy about using his claws when he felt offended. But it was late, I was exhausted, and it been a long enough day, without having to deal with our cat. I wanted to go upstairs, cross Apple picking at nightoff the list, and then fall into bed. But just as I’d taken a breath to tell the cat to move again, something occurred to me. Had I earned the right to cross it off? I had gone to the Orchard at night, but I hadn’t picked an apple, and I wasn’t sure how literal Sloane wanted me to be with some of these. So before I could really think it through or talk myself out of it, I was pulling the door closed, startling the cat, who hissed at me halfheartedly and then stalked away into the night.

By the time I got back to the Orchard, I could see that the last few remaining cars were gone. The place was deserted, empty except for the occasional red cup left crushed on the ground. Now that I was here by myself, the place no longer seemed like the scary battlefield it had been earlier, and I found myself walking easily though the same space I had been tiptoeing around the edges of only hours before. I walked across the grass, my eyes adjusting to the darkness, my path lit by the moon that had come out of its cloud cover. As I walked through the rows of trees, I looked for one with a mostly intact ladder, one that wasn’t as visible. I figured this was my best bet, since the really prominent ladders were the ones that got jumped on by drunk people, and those were the ones with most of the rungs broken. But the ladder I finally picked seemed to be in one piece, except for the first rung, which I skipped. I climbed it carefully, and when I reached the top and hadn’t gone plunging to the ground, I felt myself relax. I was up in the branches of the tree, and I could also see the view from up here—the parking lot with only my car now in it, the endless dark roads that led back to town.

It was months away from being apple season, but I was hoping that there would be a few. The apples I did see looked like the tiny, sour ones, and I had resigned myself to one of these when I spotted one, just a little out of reach. It wasn’t as big or as perfectly formed as a supermarket apple, but it was the best one that I could see. I grabbed it, and made sure to hold on to the ladder with my other hand as I gave it a hard yank. It came free of the tree, and I polished it on my tank top before I turned around and leaned back against the top step. Then, making sure I was balanced, I took a bite.

It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t quite ripe yet, but it wasn’t bad. And it really was pretty up here—maybe Beckett was onto something after all. I leaned more fully against the ladder and looked out at the view as I ate my apple, slowly, in the moonlight.

3

55 S. AVE. ASK FOR MONA

I stood in the parking lot in front of 55 Stanwich Avenue and stared at the sign in front of me. Paradise Ice Cream, it read in neon-colored letters. Where Every Cone Is a Dream!

I was in a small shopping plaza off one of the main roads that ran through town. I had been here many times before, but I had never paid attention to the numbers, so hadn’t know what 55 was until I’d pulled into the parking lot, following the directions on my phone. There were only a handful of stores in this shopping plaza—Captain Pizza, which was our go-to to-go pizza place; a beauty supply store; a running shop where I’d bought my last pair of sneakers; an accountant’s office; and at the end, Paradise Ice Cream.

It was the day after I’d gone to the Orchard. When I’d woken up that morning, out of habit, I’d reached for my phone to call Sloane, not remembering the current situation until a few seconds later. But unlike the previous two weeks, the realization didn’t send me into a tailspin. I’d gotten a letter from her, after all. I had instructions. I’d already crossed one of the items off the list, and I was sure I could do the rest just as quickly. I had a plan.

I took a deep breath and crossed the parking lot, passing Captain Pizza as I walked, my stomach growling at the scent of the fresh-baked pizza wafting out, despite the fact that it wasn’t even noon yet and I’d just eaten breakfast.  Through the window, I could see a blond girl behind the counter, leaning close to a guy standing by the register, smoothing his hair down and giggling.

I pulled open the door to the ice cream parlor and stepped inside, and a blast of cold air hit me. The place was very bright, with white walls and tables, and fluorescent lights overhead. It wasn’t huge—five tables with chairs, a long counter with the ice cream below in glass cases, and a freezer that displayed ice cream cakes and pints to go. There were large framed posters covering most of the available wall space. There was something about the photography, or maybe the way the models were styled, that made me think these hadn’t been changed in a few years. They all pictured people holding cups or cones of ice cream and looking blissfully happy about it. Take a Chance!read one that pictured a smiling woman with a cone stacked five scoops high. What’s Your Ice Cream Dream?read another, with a pensive-looking little boy contemplating a sundae.

There was a girl behind the counter wearing a shirt with a rainbow across the front. I guessed she was around my age, maybe a little younger. She hadn’t looked up when I’d entered the store, but instead was examining the split ends at the end of her braid.

“Hi,” I said, as I stepped up to the counter. She had a name tag pinned to her shirt that read Kerry, and I felt myself deflate a little as I looked at it. Because of course she couldn’t have been Mona—that would have made this too easy.

“What can I get you?” she asked, looking away from her hair and picking up the ice cream scoop from where it was resting in a cup of water.

“Oh,” I said quickly. “No. I mean—I don’t want any ice cream.” Kerry stopped shaking off the ice cream scoop and gave me a look that clearly said Then what are you doing here?I swallowed hard, and tried to make myself get through this. “I was . . . Is Mona here?”

“No,” Kerry said, looking at me strangely. I didn’t blame her.

I nodded, wondering if I maybe should have started with buying some ice cream; maybe that would have made this process go a little easier. I stood there for a moment, trying to think of how to ask this. It would have helped if I had any idea who Mona was, or if I knew why I was supposed to ask for her. “I just . . .” I started, not exactly sure how to describe what I needed when I knew so little about it myself. I took a breath and decided to just tell her, trying not to care how crazy it sounded. “A friend of mine left me a note, saying to come here and talk to Mona. So . . .” I stopped talking when I realized I didn’t know how to finish this sentence, without demanding that Kerry somehow procure her. This had already become much more humiliating than I had imagined it would be, which was, in a weird way, kind of liberating.

“Well, Mona’s not here,” Kerry said, speaking slowly and deliberately, like maybe the reason I was still standing in front of her, not ordering ice cream, was that I didn’t understand English well. “So if you’re not going to get something, you can’t—” The store phone rang and she picked it up. “Hello, Paradise,” she said, keeping her eyes on me the whole time, like maybe this was all part of an elaborate ruse to rob the place. “Hey, Mona. No. Not a customer. Just—”

“Is that Mona?” I asked quickly, leaning across the counter. Desperation was making me brave, and any sense of dignity I had when I entered the place was long gone. “Can I talk to her?”

“No,” Kerry said into the phone—but probably to me, too—taking a step back. “Just some girl who didn’t order anything. Wanted to talk to you.” She listened for a moment, then lowered the phone. “What do you want?”

“Okay, so my friend,” I babbled, speaking fast, lest Kerry change her mind, “she left me this list—her name’s Sloane Williams, I don’t know if that matters. Anyway, on the list, it said to come here and ask for Mona. So that’s . . . what I’m doing.”

Kerry just raised her eyebrows at me. “Did you get that?” she said into the phone. She tilted her head slightly to the right, listening to something that was being said on the other end. “Oh,” she said, looking at me. “I don’t know why she didn’t just start with that then. Okay. Yeah, I’ll ask her. Talk to you later.” She hung up and I looked in dismay at the phone on the counter, wondering if I should have tried to get on the phone with Mona myself. Kerry reached under the counter and pulled out a manila folder. She flipped through the papers inside, tilting them away from me so I couldn’t see what they were. She stopped, then looked up at me. “What’s your name?”

My heart was starting to beat harder now, but not from nerves—because it felt like I was getting close to something. “Emily,” I said, wondering if I should show some ID. “Emily Hughes.”

She nodded and pulled out a piece of paper and set it down on the counter. “You were supposed to be here last week,” she said. “Mona thought you didn’t want the job.”

I just stared at her. “Job?”

Kerry rolled her eyes, clearly losing any patience she’d once had with me. “Yeah, the job,” she said. “The one you applied for? Mona’s the manager?” She shook her head and reached back underneath the counter, and I pulled the piece of paper closer to me so I could read it.

Sure enough, it was an application to work at Paradise Ice Cream. It had been filled out for me in Sloane’s handwriting. There was Sloane’s email and phone number, but my name and work experience. Sloane had put herself down as my emergency contact, and under Additional Infoshe had added, I am a really hard worker, a wonderful friend, really punctual, funny, loyal, thoughtful, all-around awesome. Oh, and humble too.

I smiled as I read this while simultaneously feeling like I might burst into tears. The only thing that prevented this was imagining what Mona, or Kerry, or whoever, must have thought of this bizarrely confident application.

“Can I have this?” I asked, holding on to the application as Kerry stood up again, holding two white T-shirts.

“No,” she said, sounding exasperated with me, as she pulled it back and placed it in the folder. “We need to hold on to it. So we have your information in case you burn the place down or something.” She looked at me closely after she said it, clearly thinking I might be capable of this. “Anyway, I’m sure Mona mentioned the salary when you applied. So we need someone five shifts a week, two of those have to be weekends, and Mona does the scheduling tonight, so she can e-mail you.”

I blinked at her. “You mean I got the job?” Kerry didn’t even bother responding to this, just flipped through the folder again.

“Mona wanted to know if your friend was still interested.” She pulled out another paper, and I could see it was Sloane’s handwriting again, this time filling out her own application. I saw, in the section that dealt with scheduling, Sloane had written in all caps, NEED SAME SHIFTS AS EMILY HUGHES!!!

I got it then, finally. She’d had a plan for us to work together after all.  And judging by how empty Paradise was, she had picked the ideal place. Unlike last summer, when our marathon chat sessions were always being interrupted by people who wanted their food brought to them or their orders taken, this would have been the perfect job for us. We would have gotten paid to hang out all day, with minimal customer interference.

Kerry gave a loud sigh, and I realized I hadn’t answered her. “No,” I said quickly. I noticed that Sloane had left the Additional Infosection on her own application blank. “She’s . . . not available for it any longer.”

“Okay,” Kerry said, putting Sloane’s application back in the folder. “Do you want the job or not? Because if not, we need to call the other applicants.”

I thought about it as I looked at the two neatly folded white T-shirts on the counter. It wasn’t the worst idea in the world. I needed a job, after all. And Sloane had gotten me one. She had put this on the list, after all, so that I’d know about this job even after she’d left.  And I had a feeling that it most likely wouldn’t be super demanding. I nodded. “Yes,” I said. “I’ll take it.”

“Great,” Kerry said, sounding decidedly unenthusiastic about this as she pushed the shirts in my direction. “Welcome to Paradise.”

By the time I made it home again, it had turned into the hottest part of the day.  The Volvo’s air conditioner was barely functional, so normally I didn’t even try it. But when I’d attempted it today, only hot air had come out at me, and I’d quickly turned it off. Normally, the open roof let a breeze in, but instead, it just felt like I was sitting directly in a sunbeam I couldn’t get out of. I made a mental note, as I pulled into the driveway, to get the wooden piece for the roof from the garage, if only to cool the car down by providing some shade. As I walked up to the front door, new employee T-shirts in hand—they had rainbows on them like Kerry’s had, I’d been dismayed to see—I was regretting the fact I hadn’t gotten any ice cream after all.

I let myself in, careful not to make too much noise in case my parents were working. But when I passed the dining room, it was only my dad sitting at the table. His laptop was open, but he was leaning back in his ergonomic wheelie chair, reading a thick book, highlighting occasionally, so focused on his task, I was pretty sure he didn’t even sense me in the doorway.

I found my mom in the kitchen, washing off a peach. She turned when she heard me, giving me a tired smile, and I had the feeling they’d been working all morning. “Hey, Em,” she said. She looked down at the shirts under my arm. “Did you go shopping?”

“I got a job,” I said, shaking out one of the shirts and holding it up so she could see it. “Paradise Ice Cream.”

“Oh,” my mother said, raising her eyebrows. “Well, that’s . . . good. And I’m sure it’ll be nice and cool in there, right?” Without waiting for a response, she went on. “Did you eat?” She looked around, then held out the fruit in her hand to me. “Peach?”

“No, thanks,” I said, crossing to the fridge, grabbing a bottle of water from the door and taking a long drink.

“I meant to ask you,” my mother said as she patted her peach dry, “is everything okay with you and Sloane? It feels like we haven’t seen her around in a while.”

“Oh,” I said. I looked down at the scuffed wood of the kitchen floor, debating what to tell her. Only yesterday, I’d wanted nothing more than to tell my parents, to get their help to find her. But that was before the list. And the list made me feel like Sloane had a plan, and me running to my parents for help wasn’t part of it. “She’s out of town for the summer,” I said, looking back at my mom, rationalizing that, technically, this wasn’t even really a lie.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” my mom said, her brow furrowing. My mother felt everything quickly, and deeply, and cried at the drop of a hat. It was the reason none of us ever wanted to sit next to her when we saw sad movies. “That’s going to be hard for you, Em.”

My mother took a bite of her peach, but I could tell that there were more things she was about to ask; I could practically feel them, questions like whereand whyand for how long, questions I couldn’t begin to answer. So before she could ask, I said quickly, “So Beckett seems pretty excited about this camping trip.” I was almost positive that he was away at day camp, but I looked up to check the doorway, just in case.

“Yeah,” my mother said with a smile. “Your dad, too.” I nodded, figuring that this meant the trip was still on, and I hadn’t done the wrong thing by basically telling my brother as much. “Though I don’t know why,” my mother said as she shook her head, rotating the peach, looking for a perfect bite. “Sleeping outdoors when you’ve got a perfectly good bed has never—”

“Andrea, listen to this,” my dad said, bursting into the kitchen. He was holding a thick book in his hands, and talking fast and excited. “Tesla and Edison were friendswhen he first came from Paris. Edison called him a genius.”

“Scott,” my mother said. “I was in the middle of talking to Em.” But I could tell that she was only partially in the kitchen with me now. It was like I could practically feel her wanting to get back to the play, and I was pretty sure she’d already forgotten about Beckett and camping.

“It’s really fine,” I said quickly, backing out of the kitchen. “You guys go write.”

My mother bit her lip and looked at me, and I gave her a bright, Everything’s okay heresmile and headed upstairs, but not before I heard them start to talk, their voices excited and overlapping, saying words like laboratoryand patentand alternating current.

I took the stairs up to my room slowly, feeling the temperature seem to rise with every step. I flopped down on my bed and looked up at the ceiling, where I could still see the tape marks left over from the rotating pantheon of teen heartthrob posters I’d put up during my middle school years. I reached for my phone, which was, of course, free from any texts or missed calls. And even though I knew it would probably just go to her voice mail, I found myself pressing the button to call Sloane. Sure enough, her voice mail recording started, the one I knew by heart. I waited until the beep, then took a breath and started.

“Hey, it’s me. I got the job, the one at Paradise. So thanks for setting that up for us.” I said the word automatically, but a second later, reality hit me like a punch to the gut. There would be no usat Paradise. Just me, working in a T-shirt with a rainbow on it. “I’ll have to tell you what happened. It was really funny, this girl thought I was crazy.” I listened to the silence, the empty space where Sloane’s voice should have been, already laughing, asking me questions, reacting in just the right ways. “Anyway. I’ll talk to you soon.”

I hung up and, after a moment, pushed myself off the bed. I dropped my new T-shirts into my drawer and pulled out Sloane’s list. I didn’t think I was going to be able to get anything else done today—I knew I’d have to do some brainstorming before tackling the others. I carefully crossed off number seven, then returned the list to its envelope and the envelope to the drawer. Then I looked around, at a bit of a loss.

I didn’t want to stay in my room—I actually didn’t think it would be healthy to, if I wanted to avoid heatstroke—but I didn’t want to tiptoe around my parents downstairs. And I didn’t want to go over to campus, or go downtown by myself. I was starting to get a jumpy, claustrophobic feeling. I needed to get out, but I’d technically just come back. And where was I supposed to go? I kicked off my flip-flops and tossed them into my closet, where they landed on my sneakers and gave me my answer.

Without thinking twice, I pulled the sneakers out of the closet, then reached for the drawer that held my workout clothes. I wasn’t sure it was going to make anything better, but it was the only thing I wanted to do at that moment. I was going for a run.

JUNE

Two years earlier

I shook out my arms and tried to pick up my pace, trying to ignore how my breath was coming shallowly. I hadn’t run since school had ended two weeks before, and I was feeling it with every step. I’d made the cross-country team as a freshman, but had lagged behind the rest of the team and wanted to get my times up over the summer so that I would have a chance of making it again in the fall, when I knew the competition would be more intense.

Since there were too many people and too many excuses to slow down in my neighborhood, I’d gone out of my way to run in this one. It was a good ten miles from my house, and I had a feeling my return might end up being a walk—and a long one, at that. I’d spent almost no time in this part of town, Stanwich’s backcountry. There weren’t any sidewalks, but running on the road didn’t seem to be that big a deal, since there were also almost no cars.

I was just debating if I could keep going, or if maybe the time had come to give up and start walking, when I saw the girl.

She was pacing back and forth in the driveway of a house, but she stopped as I approached, and shielded her eyes from the glare. Then, to my astonishment, she started waving at me—but not the normal kind of saying hello waving—the kind of waving castaways on islands did to flag down passing ships.