Loud Awake and Lost (22 page)

The oldest number that I knew. My breath rasped thin and shallow.

One, two, three rings.

Please, please, please answer.

And when I finally heard a voice on the other end, I couldn't even find the words to speak.

Rachel's house was modern, dark, and sterile—a contrast to the people who lived there. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd been in the Smarts' living room, with its lacquered black furniture and either dove-gray or dove-white fabric tones. Not the most comfortable place to straggle inside, shivering and sniffling and dribbling water.

Not that the Smarts minded. They moved around me like a herd of giraffes, long and quiet, soulful and dark-eyed. Rachel gathered pillows as her mother brought me random offerings from their nearly empty fridge—takeout Chinese sticky rice, some gingersnaps—and her dad attended to the remote control, finally settling on classical guitar.

Rachel had grabbed me a pile of blankets from the closet, and I was bundled up in most of them. She'd also taken a blanket for herself, and now she sat opposite me in a wingback armchair with her legs drawn up, staring at me like when she'd played the caterpillar in
Alice
in
Wonderland,
back in fifth grade and atop a papier-mâché mushroom.

“So you know,” she said quietly. “I want the real story of why you were out there. Just as soon as the 'rents vamoose.”

In answer, I burrowed tighter in my blankets. Was I really ready to tell? The shower I'd taken on my arrival had made me sleepy. I'd already called to tell my parents I'd be staying over at Rachel's tonight. Now I just wanted to sleep.

Rachel's house smelled like pine. It had already been decorated for both Christmas and Hanukkah, even though Thanksgiving wasn't for another week—but her mom must have had some free time in her breakneck career. And when Julia Smart had time, things got done.

“Ember, honey,” she said now, “Rachel's dad and I are going up, but I've got the spare room ready for whenever you want to head off to bed.” She stood over me, long and knobby-boned as Rachel, only with silver streaks through her hair and bifocals perched on the edge of her nose. “You look like you could use a good night's rest.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “In a few minutes.”

Rachel planted another gingersnap in her mouth. “Mom, I will totally take care of Emb, but right now we want privacy, hint hint.”

“All right, all right,” her mom said as she handed Rachel a napkin. “And I'm not lecturing, Ember, but I do think you should report to your doctor about this episode.” She lifted her palms. “Just one ole mom's opinion.”

“I will,” I promised.

She nodded and left, closing the door purposefully behind her. Rachel exhaled long, as if her mother's very presence had been keeping her breath locked in her body. She refurled her bean-sprout limbs into the armchair. “All's clear.”

My eyes filled with tears. They'd been hiding so long, and I was so ready to let them spill. “I went back to Bowditch Bridge.”

“That I know. That Mom and Dad and I witnessed when we came to get you, when we found you there shaking and soaking wet like a rescue dog. The question is—why the hell?”

I didn't want to say it. Out loud meant forever. I wanted the clicker.

Don't click. No more clicks.

“Ember, what's going on in there? I'm so shut out from whatever you're thinking! Bottom line! So just tell me, please. Tell me.”

Once I told her, I wouldn't be able to get him back. He would be gone. I knew that without doubt. But of course he already was gone. I pushed the truth past my last barricade of resistance. “I knew him. Anthony Travolo. I knew him, and I loved him, and he died, and I made him up again inside my head so that I could get back to him.”

“Okay. Now say that in English.” Rachel's eyes were owlish on me. “Here's where I make a lame dishrag joke, and I can't. I think I understand what you're saying…but how did you do it? And why?”

“Maybe so that I could let go of him on my terms. I could only give him up a little bit at a time. It was easy to believe in it. It was like my brain found a way to loop back. And he was a graffiti tag artist, so he'd marked everywhere we'd ever been together—from the Central Park subway stop to the Cobble Hill Cinema. I'd saved things, too. A matchbook that I found in my coat. A sketch Anthony'd made me that I kept in my jewelry box. And there was a voice mail message from the night before our first date to Coney Island, where I could tell that he was serious about me, that he was going to figure it out, find ways for us to be together, even though there were about a million other things going on in his life. I'd archived the message—so sometimes I'd play it as if it were about to happen all over again. And do you remember the time I left you that voice mail, when I called the cab on Halloween?”

“You said you'd met someone, that night. So…” Rachel frowned. “Was there even anybody else in that cab?”

“No, not on Halloween. But on New Year's Eve, yes. Anthony and I had left Areacode together.”
Waffles, waffles,
I'd giggled into Lissa's voice mail on New Year's Eve. The joke being that I'd found something surprising and better. I'd found Anthony.

“You were living out memories like they were happening in real time,” said Rachel. “It seems like a horrible thing to do to yourself. Because wasn't it like losing him all over again?”

“I don't know. It was always so amazing to be in it, to immerse myself in it. And that New Year's Eve—it's indelible, it stands out from everything. He followed me out onto the fire escape. He kissed me at midnight, right as the fireworks went off.”

Rachel was using the long fingers of one hand to crack the knuckles of the other. Her mood had clouded over. “Look, Embie, I've got to say this—I knew you were seeing somebody, before the accident. I knew there was a guy, someone important, someone time-consuming—and I should have told you. Especially after, I had to wonder if Anthony and you had been close. But you never mentioned him, so I couldn't shake you up like that. I wanted to protect you, to keep you moving forward. Not stuck in some tortured nightmare.”

“So you
did
know Anthony?” I struggled to sit up higher.

“No! I never met him, ever. But sometimes you'd ask me to cover for you, like when your Mom called. I knew somebody was taking up all of your time. The thing was, after the accident, you had so much to deal with when you came home. And this guy, Anthony, he hadn't been part of anything—of your old life, with me, or with Holden, or anybody. He was your secret door prize, and you weren't sharing. So I made a deal with myself. I'd bring it up if you brought it up.” Rachel looked miserable. “And now you've brought it up. Going back to the bridge—it shook something loose, didn't it?”

I nodded. “I remember it now.”

“Even our fight?”

“Even our fight.” It was coming back to me. A horrible drag-out right upstairs in Rachel's room that had left both of us in tears and pitched in a grudge match.

“And I said stupid things, of course. I was mad that you'd retreated from me. So I said things like, ‘I hope your taste in guys isn't as crappy as that jacket.' Jokes that Claude remembers and holds me to, of course. I meant to be hurtful. I blamed the new guy for stealing you from Holden. I blamed your new art-house and club crowd. And then, three days after that fight, you almost died.” Rachel put her hands over her face. “And all I could think was I'd never been able to tell you I was sorry.”

“Rachel, stop. Really. It was such a long time ago. I'm sure I was awful, too. I wish I could remember precisely all the stupid petty things I said, so that I could apologize for them.”

But she wasn't listening to me. She was shaking her head, lost in her recollection. “You can't believe how bad I felt, standing by your hospital bed, you looking like that, your eyes all pulpy and bruised—you were so far away from us all. I was watching those drugs pumping into your veins, and I just kept praying please, please, please God let her be okay. Let her wake up so that she can forgive me.”

“You were there for me that night, and at Addington, and you're here for me tonight,” I reminded her. “I called you knowing you'd show up.”

“Ember, I'm so sorry I never got a chance to meet him!” she blurted.

“Oh.” That startled me. I nodded. “Me too.”

“But now I want you to tell me everything,” Rachel continued, her eyes starry with emotion. “I'm not kidding. Tell me all about how it felt when you first saw Anthony. Start with that night. I want to hear every single detail, Ember.” She tucked the blanket so that it covered my feet, making sure I was comfortable, and in my gratitude, I could feel the burden of everything that had been unspoken between us start to dissolve, as Rachel sat rapt, waiting.

She was here for me now, and I wanted to tell her all of it. I could feel the whole entire story contained within me, pressing for release, ready to become real in my voice and in her listening.

“Technically, it was his brother, Hatch, who I met first,” I began. “He'd gotten a job to hand out flyers that Anthony had designed, for this New Year's Eve party at a new club in Bushwick. I was walking down the street—I'd just bought my boots, and I was feeling really good. I felt like anything could happen.”

“And then,” said Rachel with a little smile, “something did.”

I stopped by El Cielo right after school. It wasn't open for dinner yet, but Hatch was already there and working on setup, as I knew he would be, rolling silverware and refilling the containers of ketchup, hot sauce, and red-pepper flakes.

“You want coffee?”

“Sure.”

He had to brew it first. I sat at the front bar and watched him shake out a filter and scoop six cups of grounds into the industrial-strength coffeemaker, one of those machines sturdy enough to withstand a hundred novice waiters and waitresses. Hatch had had a growth spurt this year, and he looked so much like his big brother that it was hard to take my eyes away. Isabella would be coming in soon, and so would the prep cooks and waitstaff. We had about half an hour in private.

Once the coffee had brewed, Hatch poured my mug. One sugar and a splash of whole milk. He'd absorbed that detail about me, just as he'd learned anything else about me that could be discerned through the power of observation. Hatch was a sensitive kid that way; there was a special wattage in him that burned like a flashlight, trained on others.

We'd met back when I'd first come into the restaurant, early last January. I wasn't supposed to be there, obviously. And Anthony had warned me not to act like Hatch and I knew each other too well.

“My aunt will already be suspicious of you,” Anthony had told me. “And my little brother has a crush on you. So consider yourself double-warned.”

“Oh, save it,” I'd answered. “Families love me.”

After the party at Areacode, I'd tracked Anthony down. I'd had his matchbook, with an address that I was sure would lead me in the right direction. It's why he had given it to me, before he'd followed me out onto the fire escape. So even when he hadn't called me, I'd known how to reach him. He'd admitted it, later. That although he'd taken my number, he'd left it up to me to make the first move.

I'd come in and sat in the back bar. I'd watched for Anthony's signal, and then we'd sneaked downstairs to the cold-storage room where we could talk without interruption.

But I'd met Hatch that night, too. To love Anthony was to create space for his baby brother. We hung out first on New Year's Eve, at the St. George dormitory, with the reverberation of Areacode's DJ beat matches and mash-ups still thudding in my ears, we'd watched Bela Lugosi movies with Hatch until 4 a.m., when Anthony had walked me home.

Another time was a few weeks later, in freezing Cobble Hill Park, where the whole gang, led by Alice de Souza, had painted that amazing mural. Hatch and I'd watched from the bench, as Alice, Maisie, Anthony (though he was “Kai” that night; he was always Kai on guerrilla-art nights), his friend Antz, and a few others had created a summer forest of trees.

We'd clapped and hooted as he'd tagged the bottom—that
K
for
Kai
that was also a sideways
A
for
Anthony.

“I'm getting addicted to coffee,” I admitted to Hatch now. “Funny thing was I never used to drink it before.” I'd slipped the flask from my backpack and set it on the bar. He saw it, and I knew it was too much to acknowledge it. He took it in silence, quickly, without looking at me, and he disappeared downstairs—to lock it in his employee locker, I bet. When he returned, some minutes later, his eyes were red. I knew better than to explain how I'd found it. It was his now, that was what mattered.

He slid onto the barstool next to me, a boy who was beginning to act in so many ways like a man. “Sometimes I stay in his dorm room,” he confessed, almost tonelessly, staring ahead. “I've got the key card. It's still activated.”

“Even after a year?”

Hatch nodded. “They kept it empty. I'm sure that'll change come spring.”

My heart quickened. Anthony's room had been a study in intensity, a still-life whirlwind of mess and inspiration. If only I could go there. Just to sit on the edge of his bed, to pore through his papers, his books, his prints, the vellum and watercolor and charcoal sketches rolled up on shelves and stacked in orange crates.

“I want to see it, Hatch. Just for a night. If you'll let me, please. I want to see his room again.”

Hatch seemed unsurprised at this request. He reached into his back pocket for his wallet and pulled from it a plastic card with a magnetized stripe on one side.

I slipped it into my jacket. “Thank you.”

“The journal's in the top drawer of his desk. You know what it looks like.” Hatch shrugged. “It's yours, anyway. I read it once—but it wasn't for me. Everything that's in that notebook is about you.”

I nodded. Yes, I wanted that journal. The journal that Anthony had cracked open and started writing the night we met. He'd never let me see, not once. But I knew that this evening I'd go to his room, and I'd spend the night reading everything in that notebook once, twice, three times over.

And when I became too sleepy to read, I'd curl up on the empty bed, and I'd tuck his notebook under my cheek, and I'd fall asleep with all of his outsized, kind, funny, strange, wild thoughts burning up my brain. In my dreamworld, I would feel him take me in his arms again and unwrap me, his body heavy on mine, his hands cupping my face, kissing me just as he had that last weekend, the weekend I'd stayed with him in the dorm before Valentine's Day.

“It's so noisy tonight.”

“Dorm life.”
His breath in my ear had sent warmth from my neck down my spine.
“How it always is. Thursday means the start of the weekend. I got used to it this semester. But it's making you uncomfortable, so let's just go to sleep.”
He made a curve of his body that mine fit perfectly inside.

He was right. It was hard to feel intimate when it sounded like a house party in every other room.

And then, my idea.
“Listen, I think I know a place we can go next weekend. Upstate.”

“I don't care what we do. Long as I'm around you.”
Pushing his nose into the hollow of my neck. Whispering.
“Ever since I met you, I've been nonstop. Ideas for one painting, then for another—it's totally crazy.”

“Ha. Does that make me your muse?”

In the darkness, I sensed his mind circling the thought in earnest, though he didn't answer.
“Talk to me more about this getaway.”
His arm closing me in.

“My dad's sister, my aunt Gail. She lives up in Mount Kisco. I know she'd like to meet you. If you can get the time off, I'll drive us.”

“She'd be cool with that? With…us?”

“No doubt. She'll love you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I love you.”

That night, everything had seemed so perfectly, effortlessly possible.

“Next weekend, then.”

“Only thing is it's supposed to snow maybe.”

“What's a little snow? Makes it more romantic, right?”

And I would feel his body again, heavy over mine. I would feel him slip away from me into sleep. And then I would close my eyes, willing myself into my unconsciousness, to disappear first before he disappeared again.