Loud Awake and Lost (21 page)

“You are; of course you are.”

“So what is it? What's wrong?”

“It's not that anything's wrong. But it just can't go back to the way it was.”

“I'm not that stupid. I don't want it the way it was.” But Holden knew what I was delivering. He leaned into the support of the doorframe, his voice softening. “It's only…after everything we've been through, I feel like we could be stronger.”

Why was this so hard? Because I wasn't making the right choice? Was there any way to be one hundred percent sure? “After everything we've been through,” I said, “I think we'll just become ourselves again.” I took a breath. “I'm so sorry, Holden. And I'm really sorry that it took your brother, of all people, to realize how much I was hurting you.”

The moment struck me as nearly unbearable. I was ready to run—my usual solution. But Holden knew that. He caught me, his arms folding me into a hug as true and loving as anything I'd ever known.

And so I let myself drop into it, and it seemed that our whole world together was held within it, along with the knowledge that just because things have to end doesn't mean that they didn't matter, because they will always matter, and whatever we'd been to each other would build the next phase of what we were supposed to become, apart.

It was all there, and it was nearly impossible to let go, but I did.

Late that night, sleepless in bed, I craved my clicker again. I hadn't thought about it in so long, but my morphine clicker had been a critical part of those early couple of weeks, when pain had been deep and sudden as a flashing knife, or throbbing like a constant scream trapped in my body.

“The patient usually best understands her own pain management,” one of the faceless nurses had told me, wrapping my fingers around the metal instrument that was no bigger than a piece of chalk, the communicator between my vein and my IV drip. “Each time you press the button, this activator releases the morphine. Try not to do it unless you feel it's absolutely necessary. You don't want to get dependent on the drug.” She patted my shoulder. “And I bet you'd rather get outta here sooner than later, am I right?”

Right. My throat had been too dry and sore to answer.

Click-click-click.
The morphine was colorless but swam heavy in my bloodstream. I imagined I could hear a scold in every click.
Click-click-click
meant that I wasn't strong enough to handle the pain.
Click-click-click
masked the reality of what had happened to me, to us.

Of course I wanted to get out of there sooner than later. But I also needed relief from the agony of the moment I was living through.

The thing was, I'd been pretty disciplined at weaning off the morphine. Because I did want to heal. I did want to go home. After that first week of
click-click-click,
I'd allowed my thumb to rest on the round-button surface of the clicker. But I'd hold off pressing it.

Hold hold hold and then sometimes
click.
Rarely
click.
No
click
.

My brain had been a clicker of sorts, too. It had flooded me with sleep and daydreams, it had activated scenarios that forbid reality. Sure, I'd circled it. I hovered over the surface of it. I knew I needed to make contact with it. But if I was actually ready to handle my truth in full, if I really was strong enough to find myself, then I had to return to Bowditch Bridge.

By daybreak, I'd decided it.

I put the plan into motion using one of the recipes I'd learned at El Cielo. It was an apple crumble, a dessert item at the restaurant, but I prepared it with less brown sugar and half a cup of oatmeal. I thought I might be able to trick it out as a breakfast food.

“Morning, Mom.”

“Oh. You're up early.” She gave me a quick look—my presence had startled her—then she recovered with a smile as she poured a cup of coffee from the pot I'd just brewed. No flies on Mom. She knew I was up to something.

“Just thought I'd make you some breakfast.” And when I opened the oven, I was instantly gratified by the bubbling apple, oats, butter, brown sugar, and hint of clove.

“Mmm, smells good.” I could tell Mom was surprised. She was ready to call a truce, especially over baked apples.

“Here, I'll fix you a bowl. Oh, hey, also—if it's okay by you, I'm going to take the car into Midtown tonight to sit in on Lissa's
Nutcracker
rehearsal.”

“The car,” she repeated dubiously.

“And it's really easy to get parking up there,” I continued as I ladled out a serving. “Morning, Dad. Right on time. Here, sit down, both of you. Enjoy.”

Dad was sniffing the air like a bear that had woken from hibernation. I dished up a generous serving for him and set the bowl next to Mom's. It had been a while since I'd last put on my chef's hat—and after the other night, I had a hunch that both of my parents were searching for any way to find the middle ground with me.

“What if we give you taxi money?” Mom bargained. “I thought you and I had a deal, that we were going to practice driving together.”

“Mom, I know how to drive. I have my license. And I'd much rather work on my driving while I'm feeling good about it.” I turned on the spigot, focusing on my sponge and suds as I cleaned out the mixing bowl. Letting them work out their private eye and hand signals.

“You know where the keys are,” said Dad after a pause. “Especially if there's seconds on this crumble for me.”

Relief. “Thanks.”

“Please, please be careful.” Mom was not fighting the decision, but she wasn't enjoying it. “This is so yummy, Ember. It reminds me of something…something you might have made…before.”

Might have made before the accident. It was hard to keep my smile to myself. “Thanks, Mom.”

The school day felt eternal. The words
Bowditch
Bridge
seemed to either fog up or slice through every moment. After classes and physical therapy, I took my homework to Tazza, a sandwich shop where I had a cup of coffee. Would coffee forever make me think of Kai? Probably.

Dance practice had always been finished by six. On the night of February 14th, I'd started the trip upstate sometime after seven.

And if I'd been picking up Anthony Travolo, then where from?

I refused the clicker. I closed my eyes.

From
Pratt, of course. You'd take the subway, and then you'd walk over the bridge together. It was a way to catch his little bit of free time.

Not too much dissection all at once. I could feel my body shut down like a power plant.
Click-click-click.
My sweat cooled. One more coffee, one more check on my watch, and maybe I was ready. All along, I'd been leading myself to this night, listing toward it as a final phase, that last known place.

Because it was waiting for me. It had been waiting all along.

Weregirl had been playing that night. I'd hinted about the concert we'd be seeing next month. I was never good at surprises, and this gift had thrilled me. The two ticket printouts were still in my desk drawer; I'd found them under a bunch of papers just last week.

Tonight, the car seemed overly large and powerful to be handled by a single person. I drove slowly, listening to the GPS even though I knew the way. Exiting off the George Washington to US 9, briefly onto the Palisades. There weren't many cars on the road as I pulled onto the roundabout leading to Mountain Road. Another ten minutes, and it was truly desolate up here. Being a city girl, a city driver perpetually sharing the streets and claiming my space, I was struck by how so many roads upstate were lonely and unlit.

Tonight, my vision was illuminated by three-quarters of a moon in a cold black sky. It would have to be enough. I hunched over the steering wheel. Turned up the volume on one of my favorite songs—“Half-Life,” the title track.

That night, I'd hit the bridge at a quarter past seven—the emergency call had come in at 7:21. There'd been a snowstorm that afternoon, three inches in the city by four o'clock, followed by sleet. Ice on the bridge had made it a slippery hazard. I'd known that.

If I'd been older, more cautious, more experienced, would I have crossed the bridge safely? Would I have been able to hold on to us?

A businessman named Jim Lyford, in the car behind us, had been on the way back to his house in Fishkill after a dinner in the city. He'd been in the coast guard, a detail that probably made all the difference in the outcome of that night. He'd just turned onto the bridge when we went over, and his series of reactions to what he'd witnessed had been instant and flawless.

He'd moved with the precision of a specialized task-force member, calling it in as he pulled off to the side of the road, then bracing for the dark water, plunging through and diving deep. Wrenching open the car door once the pressure equalized, and then using his CPR training when he'd got me above water…Later, he told me that the best way to save a life was never to doubt that you could.

Jim and his wife, Diane, had visited me in the hospital a couple of times in those first weeks. I barely remembered them outside the haze of kind voices and hovering faces. When I could, I'd written him, and he'd written back, and there had been a couple of back-and-forths since—it was one of those highly bizarre relationships crafted from a completely unprecedented situation.

But I'd been lucky. Everyone wants to think they could do what Jim Lyford did that night. There'd have been no way to save us both. But the accident haunted him, too. How could it not?

My brain was spinning with it. My hands were fixed and rigid on the wheel as the bridge came into sight. My adrenaline was burning off as I stopped at the dip; the reach wasn't more than ten yards, but panic had taken over and made a wall—I couldn't get past it to propel the car forward. I turned into the curve, off-road, edging closer to the bank. My body seemed to find my brain's messages on a delay—stop, brake, cut the engine, unfasten my seat belt.

Exposure therapy, Lissa had said.

Yes, I was in shock. Rolling in it, powerless to it. My entire body was shaking as I forced myself to get out of the car and walk to the bank on rubber legs. The water was partitioned off with rope and multiple nailed warning signs, the letters in Day-Glo yellow—even if you couldn't read, you'd know not to take another step.

If I made it out along the lip all the way to the drop, I probably could get myself onto the other side.

My jacket was too light for the weather; I was goose-pimpled under my clothes, and mud oozed and squelched beneath my boots. When I'd reached the drop-off point, I pushed down the rough rope and hauled myself, one leg and then the other, over into what felt like a fresh darkness. Water slapped at my boots as I walked the bank. Everything was so much closer to me now.

No clicks.

I caught the final hours and wound back through them.

We'd been planning Valentine's Day for a couple of weeks. It was so hard to find time together, with all of his school and work commitments. But somehow, we'd been delivered this pocket of freedom. And I knew that Aunt Gail would be cool about me showing up with a guest—because Aunt Gail was cool about everything. But I didn't want to tell her too much in advance, just in case she slipped it to Mom and Dad. Who were typically less mellow about these things.

But there was nothing to let me think that everything wouldn't work out. Earlier that day, I'd packed, driven into the city, found meter parking, and stayed in the car, waiting for Anthony to finish class. I'd brought homework, knowing that he'd bring work, too. Even this weekend, he'd find ways to cram in some extra studying. But he'd also wanted to make it special, too. For us. Valentine's Day was the six-week anniversary of when we'd met for the very first time, on New Year's Eve, out on the fire escape of Areacode.

When I looked up, in the gathering twilight, I could see him perfectly, and I watched him walk in that way that was also a bit of a saunter, as he swung out of the front door and saw me, then crossed the middle of the street. Anthony would never
not
cross a busy street. He lived in the city as if it were his alone. It's what gave him the nerve to tag, even if his street art had made him a target for the cops, whom he dodged the way Road Runner consistently beat Coyote. With a wink, though, as if it were all a game.

That evening, I watched him with a full and beating heart. His messy, just-out-of-the-shower hair. The raindrops making a pattern on his shabby olive jacket that he wore open, always, whatever the weather. I could see that beneath it he was wearing a favorite T-shirt he and Hatch had silk-screened together last year for Day of the Dead. I'd never been big on clothes with skulls and crossbones. Those grinning dancing skeletons on Anthony's chest had unnerved me.

Had I felt it even then, a chill of foreboding? But I'd said nothing, as he'd swung into the passenger seat, and then leaned over and kissed me. Anthony's kiss, so unlike anything else I'd ever known.

As if my lips had no other purpose but to meet his.

We stopped for gas, for coffee. The rain had strengthened as we hit the usual Friday traffic. We hadn't reached the Henry Hudson Parkway before Aunt Gail's text had chimed:
Sushi or pizza? Or pizza with sushi?

Anthony had read me the text. “What should I write back?” His fingertip hovered. “Dinner with a plus one?”

“No, no. Not yet. I don't want to throw her off. You'll need to charm her with your real-live awesome.”

“Easy.”

We'd laughed. We were laughing at everything, that evening. Hours rolling out like a red carpet in front of us. That weekend, for once, we had all the time in the world. Anticipation had made us bold. At the next red light, I'd leaned over and kissed him full on the mouth until the light changed and the cars behind us started to honk, and we laughed at that, too.

Why was I walking so far out? I was freezing, it was impossible to see out here. I was so far from my car. And yet I plunged on in a blind stumble farther and farther into nothing—and what was I looking for? The air sharpened my breath. I shouldn't have come, my lungs weren't strong, my corpse-stiff bones were wrapped in a wet cardboard of useless muscles, but still I plowed ahead—listening to the sound of wet sand sucking beneath my boots—and when I saw it, I wondered if I'd been guided here all along.

The moon was shining just enough to direct me to the dull flash of silver, and it might have been anything—but I knew it was only one object, empty and buoyant because we'd finished the coffee, with a plan to stop somewhere for a refill once we'd made it outside the city.

“You live on coffee.”

“Coffee and you.”

Flung from the car to wash up on the bank and lodge here, caught in the long sea grasses all these months, the water lapping at it, anchoring it, a message in a bottle, a message that was mine alone.

When I pulled it from the mud, I used my sweater to rub at it until I could see the initials
R.G.O.
Though I knew, of course—but only then did I let my knees buckle, because I no longer worked; some deep, animal part of my brain wasn't allowing me to operate myself, to find the strength to get control, to get myself back to the safety of the car, to drive away from all this. For a while I stayed slumped and heavy in the grass, until my hands reached into my jacket pocket, fumbling for my phone. It was too dark to see—I punched the numbers mostly blind.