Remember Me Like This (7 page)

J
USTIN HAD TOLD
G
RIFF THAT THE
K
ARANKAWA
I
NDIANS HAD
fashioned the Teepee Motel’s concrete teepees from real animal hides. This was two years before he disappeared, and Griff believed him. Their parents, no matter what they said, couldn’t convince Griff that his brother was snowing him, that it was just an old motel, a cheap and kitschy place for tourists to stay near the marina. Griff knew better now, but he still associated the Teepee with his brother. The place reminded him of the time in his life when his allegiances had pivoted, like a sundial, away from his parents and toward Justin.

Now, half-demolished, the property resembled a quarry. After the first of the year, the demolition had halted because the developer who’d bought the property was backing out. Seven teepees remained. Mounds of pale rubble stood where others had been; they were jagged and tall clusters, with jutting slabs of concrete and rebar. Snakes of dust fell from the mounds when a wind blew from the bay, sidewinding across the parking lot or into the drained pool. The left-handed kidney was flawless: ten feet in the deep end, three feet in the shallow end, with two concrete steps and an embedded ladder. The coping that rimmed the top of the pool was so pristine—exactly the kind that skaters with private backyard ramps coveted—that Griff always expected it to be crowbarred loose and stolen. Even on days when he didn’t skate, he tried to check the coping.

The coping was still there on Wednesday afternoon, but Fiona wasn’t. Sunlight splayed over the long slab of concrete, the ground absorbing and expelling the insistent heat. Already Griff was glazed in sweat. Every few minutes, a heavy wind blew ashore and sprayed him with dust from the rubble. It was too hot to skate, but if Fiona showed up, Griff didn’t want it to seem as if he’d been waiting pathetically, so he took the broom the skaters kept hidden under a pile of palm fronds and occupied himself by sweeping out the deep end. He inched around the pool, extending the broom up the transitioned
wall, then dragging it down again like a painter. After each swipe, he stopped and listened for Fiona. He tried imagining what she had to show him: A car? A new bike? A tattoo? What if she’d tattooed his name on the small of her back? He remembered how she bit his tongue, his bottom lip, and then his nose, and how she’d skipped away. He pushed the dust and pebbles into the drain. His shoes and calves looked powdered. When lines of traffic passed on Station Street, the tires sounded like waves.

Then, a wash of memory: A year ago, his mother had come into his room while he was sleeping and sat on his bed. He didn’t know how long she’d been there before he woke up, but he suspected it had been a while. Griff could smell the night on her, the dew and the still air. His stomach tightened. He thought she’d learned news of his brother. When he asked if she was okay, she said she’d read something before bed that had gotten her curious, so when she couldn’t sleep, she’d decided to conduct an experiment. She walked to the marina and listened to the waves with her eyes closed, seeing if the noise would console her. According to one of her library books, the reason babies were comforted by the
ssshhhhh
sound was because early humans had lived close to the ocean and the sound reminded infants of waves; it returned the listener to some vestal state, soothed anxieties in a primitive, essential way. When Griff asked if it worked, she said, “No. No, Lobster, it most certainly did not.”

Now, after sweeping the pool for almost an hour, he felt dejected and gullible. He thought he might stink a little, too, and wondered if he’d been in such a rush that he forgot to use deodorant. Sweat ran into his eyes, burned. He sailed the broom like a javelin onto the pool’s deck.

“Missed me,” she said.

“Fiona?” He jogged up into the shallow end. He said, “I didn’t know you were up there.”

“I’m a ninja. Hence my all-black wardrobe.”

He climbed from the pool and started to ask how long she’d been there, but when he saw her, he stopped, stunned. He said, “Your hair.”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” she said.

She’d dyed it. Bright green, almost fluorescent. She looked like a different person, older and more severe. He hated it. He said, “I love it!”

Her face opened up, brightened. She’d been kneeling by the edge of the pool, but now she picked up the broom and began sweeping her way toward one of the teepees. The sun was laying long cones of shadow on the concrete. Griff followed her. The back of her neck was white as porcelain. Blood jumped in his veins. He hoped he hadn’t done anything weird while she was watching him.

They sat in the shade, Griff on his skateboard, Fiona leaning against the teepee with the broom across her lap like an oar.

“I lied,” he said. “I knew you were here, especially if I did anything weird.”

“You’re a very thorough sweeper. When George and Louise fire our current maid, I’ll slip them your name.”

George and Louise were Fiona’s parents. That she called them by their first names, even when they were in the same room, had always saddened Griff. A stream of cars came off the ferry and passed on Station Street. Griff didn’t know what to say; he wished he’d planned things to talk about, phrases and jokes to deploy. He wanted to make her laugh and to kiss her again and to ask why she’d disappeared these last few days and if she’d kissed him because of Justin. He didn’t want to betray how overjoyed he was to see her, how relieved and nervous. He thought to tell her about the
ssshhhhh
sound, but instead he asked if she remembered the seagull with the broken wing.

“The one that idiot Blake Boggs hit with a rock? I brought it scraps from the kitchen.”

“I wonder what happened to it.”

“Coach Cantu wrung its neck behind the gym, that’s what happened to it.”

“I thought maybe he took it to one of those people in the phone book who rehabilitate hurt birds and then release them.”

“Blake was trying to impress Rhonda Smirnoff, who is, by the way, a rampant slutbag.”

Griff had seen them making out by the lockers. Rhonda always smelled like cigarettes. He said, “Isn’t she his girlfriend?”

“She wasn’t before he hit the bird,” Fiona said. “Why are you thinking about such an uplifting story?”

“Where’s your bike?” he asked.

Fiona regarded him, squinting and smirking, as if deciding how to answer.

“Well,” she said, “after our dumpster date, I went home and was too heated up to sleep. So I did what any normal girl would do and turned myself into a radioactive brussels sprout. When I came down for breakfast on Sunday, Louise spit out her grapefruit juice.”

“Then she took away your bike.”

“You’re a boy on whom nothing is lost.”

There were clouds in the sky, thin and tattered. He stole glances at her hair; it was growing on him. He could hardly picture how she’d worn it before.

She said, “Are you having a seizure?”

“What?”

“Your foot.”

It was tapping again, though Griff hadn’t noticed. He looked toward the marina. A gull was twisting over the water.

“Griffin Campbell,” she said, her voice full of dark surprise. She grabbed the edge of his skateboard and wheeled him toward her. “Griffin Michael Campbell, are you
afraid
of me?”

“No way,” he said.

She pulled him closer, scooted around so that she was in front of
him. She leaned in, pressed her forehead against his. His eyes had closed, but he thought she was smiling. She said, “No way?”

“A little, maybe.”

“A little?” she whispered. “Only a little?”

“I’m sorry about your bike,” he said.

“I don’t care about my bike.”

“I don’t either,” he said. Her hands rested on his thighs. He could hear her breathing, feel the heat of her skin. To anyone seeing them, he thought, they would look cold. He said, “I care about you.”

“And you like my hair.”

“I do,” he said. “I love it.”

“And you want to kiss me again.”

“I do,” he said.

“How much?”

“A lot.”

“You want it so bad you can—”

A hard, sharp whistle cut her off, and they sat bolt upright. Griff’s heart kicked. He couldn’t tell where the whistle had come from. The cadet she’d dumped? A cop? Someone from the construction crew?

Fiona said, “It’s your grandfather.”

Papaw was sitting in his truck, idling just outside the Teepee’s chained-up driveway. His window was down, his elbow hanging out like a fin. Even from across the parking lot, Griff could see Rainbow panting—her tongue pink as candy—in the passenger seat. It was all disorienting, defeating.

“He doesn’t look like the happiest camper,” Fiona said.

In his head, Griff was making sure he’d called his father before coming to meet Fiona. Not calling one of his parents before leaving the house was the offense for which they had no tolerance. But he knew he’d called. He was positive. He said, “Rainbow must have gotten out again.”

Griff stood, trying to remember when he’d last been in the backyard. He skated around the pool, hoping he looked cool and unafraid from where Fiona sat. When he reached Papaw’s truck, he said, “Did I leave the back gate open?”

“Nobody pawns anything when it’s this hot, so I was going for a drive and saw her making a break for it.”

“I changed her water before I left,” he said. “Maybe—”

“You been here long?”

“A little while. It’s too hot to skate. Fiona and I were just talking. She dyed her hair.”

Rainbow lay down on the seat, her muzzle on her paws. Papaw clicked off the truck’s radio. He said, “You talked to your folks?”

“I just left a message like I’m supposed to. Leaving a message counts.”

Another wind came off the bay, kicking up more dust. Griff had to close his eyes until it died down. He wondered what he could say to get Papaw to take Rainbow home and leave him alone with Fiona. He imagined himself sitting down beside her, saying
Now, where were we?

Papaw fixed him in his gaze—it was as if he were seeing Griff from far away—then turned to look through the windshield. Rainbow groaned. She liked car rides. Sometimes when his father went out to look for Justin, he took her along.

“I need to move some things around in my garage,” Papaw said finally. He shifted the truck into gear. “If you’ll help an old man out, I’ll kindly keep Rainbow’s escape to myself. I’ve got steak in a bag if we get hungry.”

“Sure. Should I come over after you’re done with work?”

“Ivan’ll close up,” he said. “Hop in.”

“I need to walk Fiona home,” Griff said. “Her bike had a flat.”

“Lobster, my boy, that tide’s already gone out for the day.”

When Griff turned to look back at where they’d been sitting, he
saw that Fiona was gone. She might have left before he’d even reached the truck. He felt exhausted by everything, confused and goaded by the turns the day had already taken. Papaw rapped twice on his door with his knuckles, and Griff walked around the back of the truck, dragging his fingers along the tailgate.

I
N THE INITIAL SEARCHES
,
THE TOWN OF
S
OUTHPORT HAD
cleaved to the hope that Justin had just gotten lost in the dunes. Or he was hiding. Children did it occasionally. Maybe he’d twisted his ankle in the hummocky sand. Maybe sunstroke. It seemed possible that if volunteers sprawled wide enough, if they stayed alert and confident enough, he would soon be found. He’d be sunburned and dehydrated and scared, but unharmed. The mood was serious, not maudlin; at the time, imagining a happy ending required no great effort. They thought of the ordeal as a storm that would, despite its present course, spare them.

But he never returned. The days turned to weeks—then months, then years—and they couldn’t ignore how naïve they’d been. They had been, they realized, like Justin himself. Or almost like him, for they had to work to stay naïve. He’d had an easy smile. Neighbors asked him to water their plants and take in the mail while they were away. They remembered the photo of Justin and his younger brother in the
Southport Sun
after the boys had set up a table to sell rocks and shells the way other children sold lemonade. They remembered how, on Halloween, the parents would wait hand in hand on the sidewalk while their boys trick-or-treated; hadn’t the younger brother dressed as a cloud one year? His father, the Texas history teacher whose class students jockeyed for, always remembered your
children’s names and asked after them. His mother, if she recognized you, would launder four shirts for the price of three at the dry cleaner’s. After the ordeal began, she’d sometimes refuse your cash altogether. They were good people. After Justin Campbell set out for the beach on his skateboard and never returned, people donated money to the rescue efforts, papered their storefronts with his image, volunteered for search parties even when they knew the best thing would be to find nothing at all. They answered detectives’ questions and feigned optimism when they rounded an aisle in H-E-B and saw one of the shattered parents picking out frozen dinners. Then they went home and thanked God the Campbells’ lives weren’t theirs.