The Leaving (18 page)

I love you
.

I’m leaving
.

Lucas

Lucas snapped a picture of Miranda when she came out of Ryan’s room. He’d been awake since too early, too eager for the day to start, and was on the couch teaching himself how to use his new camera.

“Not this again.” She shuffled toward the bathroom.

“Excuse me?” He studied the photo on the screen, liked the lighting but not the framing. He looked up—“Not
what
again?”—and found her blinking at him.

She tilted her head. “I had a boyfriend once. Took pictures of me all the time without asking me if he could. It was annoying.”

“Oh,” he said. “Sorry.”

“Why are
you
up so early?” she said.

“We’re going to try to find that author today.”

“Yeah?” She scratched her head. “Did you talk to the police about all that?”

“Not yet,” he said. “We want to see if there’s anything to it first.”

She turned to go into the bathroom. “Well, good luck with that.”

Scarlett would be there any minute, so Lucas started to pack up a bag. Just his camera. The book. Some cash. He considered going out to
the RV and getting the gun and bringing that, too. He could hand it to Scarlett, as a test to see if Scarlett also knew—

CLICK HISS.

Maybe they all did.

And if they did, why?

Had they been
trained
?

She texted that she was there and he went out and it was already too hot and he was overdressed in jeans and a T-shirt.

“Hey,” he said, getting into the car.

She wore a gray tank-top dress and had black sandals on, and he had the feeling that each time he saw her she was somehow a little bit more herself. Her knees were knobby and pale by the steering wheel. She handed him a clear pouch of some kind.

“This is it,” she said. “This is what I swallowed. I mapped it and it’s not that far from Tarpon Springs. We have to go there. Today.”

Lucas took the penny out and studied it.

I love you
.

Flipped it over; it glinted.

Manatee Viewing Center: Anchor Beach

“Do you remember it?” he asked. “This place?”

“I don’t. But I must have been there, right?” She shook her head. “Because why would I swallow something like that? It seems, I don’t know . . .”

He completed the thought: “Desperate.”

“Yes.”

“Which is closer?” he asked. “Tarpon Springs or Anchor Beach?”

“Tarpon Springs.” She nodded. “We’ll be there in time for lunch.”

They suffered through beach traffic, then followed signs for Tam pa, Sarasota, Orlando, and something about leaving town—something
about the promise of other places—seemed to lift a weight the size of a large stone off Lucas’s chest.

He wished he’d told Scarlett everything when he’d told her about the tattoo.

Wished he’d told her about the gun.

Wished he’d told her about . . .

AVERY. THE RV. STANDING SO CLOSE. ON HER KNEES. ELBOWS TOUCHING. ELECTRIC.

No, maybe not that.

How had she learned how to drive?

Had he?

There was no point in asking; she wouldn’t know.

Her mother’s car’s rearview mirror was loaded up with junk. A string of shiny green shamrocks caught the light of the sun. A pair of fuzzy dice entwined with them. An air freshener shaped like an orange, with two green leaves, couldn’t do much to fight the smell of cigarettes.

They’d kept the windows down as long as they could, but when they hit the main highway, they had to close up.

She turned the radio on and scanned the stations and listened to a handful of songs for a few seconds each. “I don’t know any of these songs,” she said. “You?”

“No,” he said.

“Do you think we just never listened to music? Or did we somehow just forget that, too?”

“I don’t know.”

“And why do I know how to drive? It seems like if we could drive we could . . . leave. Or escape.”

“Maybe we didn’t want to escape,” he said. “Maybe we thought wherever we were was where we were supposed to be.”

“We must have.”

“Who have you told?” he said. “About Anchor Beach?”

“No one,” she said. “I thought we should go there first. I don’t trust anyone. Except you. Is that weird?”

He shook his head. “Not to me.”

“Who have
you
told?” she asked. “About the book. About Orlean.”

“Just my brother,” he said. “His girlfriend.”

A sign for the Ringling Brothers Circus Museum conjured the image of a large statue of an elephant; Lucas imagined figures made out of wood or plastic perched on trapeze bars overhead. He hoped there’d be a big tent, a photo opportunity where you could put your face into a ring-master’s body, with a super tall hat atop it. Or maybe a midway, with funhouse mirrors, where he and Scarlett could stand side by side and be small and tall and warped like he felt inside now that he’d lied to her about Avery.

His guilt ticked up with the car’s odometer, increasing with each mile of the long drive.

And yet he kept his mouth shut.

Finally, the exit for Tarpon Springs came up and they drove down a long four-lane road lined with fast-food restaurants and motels with hourly and day rates posted on big white boards with black letters.

At a light, Scarlett turned to him and they shared a look that meant things he couldn’t articulate but mostly that they were a team. He was becoming increasingly sure that they had been in love.

And still were?

Could be again?

Had he given her the penny?

Been there with her?

HIS HANDS. HER HAIR. HER MOUTH. HER NECK.

MEMORY? FANTASY? SOURCE ERROR?

Once?

More than once?

But first this.

Daniel Orlean.

“Where do we start?” Scarlett had just parked in a municipal lot and they were heading for the main street through town.

At the top of it, an old boat sat in a canal with a display out front about the town’s history as a sponge-fishing hub. Lucas stepped up to an antique scuba suit on display and felt like he knew what the bends felt like; he’d been plunged deep into The Leaving and was now coming up out of it and into the light too quickly, without guidance. A thick rope net full of yellowed sea sponges made him wonder what his brain looked like, with holes in it that hadn’t turned up on his MRI. Holes where memories should have been.

Scarlett pointed down the road. The sign on a corner building said “McHale’s” beside a shamrock. Unlit neon signs in the window promised Miller High Life and Rolling Rock. Three empty kegs formed a line by the side door.

“Looks pretty dive-y to me.” Lucas said.

No one there knew Orlean.

No one at the next place, either.

They were on their fourth bar, and Lucas was thinking it was just about time to either give up or change strategies altogether when the bartender met eyes with him. “Sure! I remember Danny.”

AVERY

She’d forgotten entirely about Sam’s cousin’s wedding. So when Sam had called that morning and asked her if she’d come with him to pick up his suit “for later,” she’d panicked and choked and couldn’t think of an excuse. So here they were, in Men’s Wearhouse. If she’d ever been to a more depressing place, she couldn’t remember it.

Rows and rows of suits. All lined up like soldiers in some sleeping army that might at any moment come to life and attack—maybe hit her over the head with a briefcase or strangle her with neckties.

Black troops here.

Gray troops there.

Occasional AWOL brown or cream. Sam disappeared into a dressing room to try on his newly tailored suit, so she sat in a leather armchair and called Emma. There was a lot of background noise on the other end.

“Where
are
you?” Avery asked.”

“The mall in Bonita Springs. Oh my god, I just saw Courtney. She told me if you don’t audition, she’ll probably get the lead and I want to kill her.”

Emma said, “Yeah, just hold on a minute.” But not to Avery.

“Who are you with?”

“Just my mom and brother,” she said. “My brother who is
driving me crazy
.” Then after a second, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Avery said. “Tell him I said to buzz off.” The urge to cry snuck up on her and she tried to dodge it. “And listen up. You’re a
way
better singer than Courtney. Just make sure you
project
. You’ll be onstage. Not in your shower.”

“You can’t bail on this.” Emma sounded far away. “I only wanted to do it because you were doing it and it’s like the only remotely fun thing to do between now and summer vacation.”

Avery stood and started walking among the suit troops. “It just doesn’t feel like a priority right now? Things are so crazy.”

“Well, it’s good that there’s the reward now, right? It’ll be good to have answers and it seems like you’ll have them soon.”

The reward had been announced that morning; a tip line had gone live.

“And then what?” She stopped in front of a wall of ties. Men were so weird. The idea of Sam in a suit . . . something about it bothered her.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what then? When there’s not this big thing hanging over the three of us anymore.”

“You’ll get back to normal.”

“But we never really were normal.”

“Well, then you’ll become normal.”

Avery closed her eyes and tried to picture normal.

Her and Lucas, girlfriend and boyfriend, kissing at the lockers between classes.

Going to prom together.

Huddling in bleachers on cooler fall afternoons, watching football.

Making out in her room while trying to get homework done.

Going to movies.

Bowling.

The beach.

Her mother decorating for Halloween again, maybe even baking.

“Avery?” It was Sam standing beside her.

“I gotta go,” she said into her phone. “Call you later.”

“He needs like twenty minutes to fix a problem with the pants,” Sam said. “Let’s get lunch.”

The IHOP was frigid and everyone was old and/or overweight. Their booth table held tented placards that announced SIGNATURE SPRING PANCAKES!—loaded up with whipped cream and more—and some new menu item, HAND-CRAFTED GRIDDLE MELTS!

A slow death between two slices of bread.

Everything looked and sounded and probably tasted fake.

They ordered and Avery looked out the window at the suit store, and imagined a platoon crossing the highway—Left! Right! Left! Right!—sending cars into tailspins and armed with enough ammunition to turn the IHOP into the international house of pain and take it down to the ground.

He dropped her back at home to get ready and drove off before she even hit the mailbox because now they were running late.

The pelican’s mouth was open.

She looked in.

Another note:

WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT TRUST THEM !
—MAX

Up the street Mrs. Gulden’s yippy dogs were having a conniption.

S
c
a
r
l
et
t

On their way out of the bar, down a long flight of stairs, Scarlett skipped the bottom step

landing hard on her right foot
on the ground level.

A moment later Lucas did, too.

/   /
 /            /
     /

“Why did you just do that?” she asked.

The entry foyer smelled like old beer and cigarettes. The smell had crept into her hair, her pores, her nostrils—would probably stay with her all day.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Why did
you
just do that?”

She shrugged.

Realized she’d done it before.

The steps from Tammy’s back deck down to the patio in the yard. Had he done it that day, too, and they just hadn’t noticed?

She said, “Habit?”

     /
/
  /

Then thinking out loud: “Maybe we were somewhere where that mattered? Where the bottom step was . . .” She looked at the stairs there in the hall . . .

“Squeaky?” he offered.

She pushed the door to the street open.

Rogue drops were falling from clouds the color of steel.

He reached out and took her hand and squeezed it and she squeezed back, ran a thumb along his thumb.

Which also felt like a habit.

They held hands the whole way to the car.

They had a new destination.