The Way Back to You (14 page)

I’ve answered that so often, it doesn’t register anymore. But this is Jade, not a random classmate or one of my mom’s friends who I’ve run into at the supermarket.

“It’s hard,” I tell her, my gaze on the squat and square blue building across the street. “Not having her around, I mean. But I’m doing okay.”

“Are you? Because it doesn’t seem like it.” I turn to her, and she holds up her hand. “She was your best friend. You’re more than entitled to not be okay.”

My shirt is heavy with sweat and rough against my skin. I just want it
off.
“Then what’s your point?”

Her voice is gentle when she says, “You’re different.”

I stop under a low, leafy tree. All I wanted was to avoid this conversation, but now that it’s happening, I’m aggravated Jade started it in front of a car wash. “How would you know if I’m different? We barely ever see each other.”

Jade rubs a hand down her face, weary. “I am so sorry that I couldn’t make it to her funeral. My mom was still looking for work back then and we didn’t have . . . I’m not trying to
make this about me. What I’m saying is, even though we live far apart, I’m always going to be around for you. And I want you to know that you can talk to me.”

It hurts to smile, but I do. “I do know that, you sap.”

Her expression softens. “
That.
That’s what you do whenever I bring up Ashlyn. It’s like shutters come down over your eyes, or someone turned off your switch. You check out and change the subject.”

Nausea roils deep in my belly, a pit that gets bigger and bigger. “You’re imagining things.”

“You can’t bottle everything up, Cloudy,” she says. “If you do, you’ll never move on.”

I swallow hard. The school counselor, my parents, they all said the same thing. If I didn’t talk about Ashlyn’s death, how it made me feel, I’d never get past it. But here’s the thing about talking: every conversation ends the same way, with Ashlyn still dead and me missing her so much that it’s overwhelming, excruciating, and relentless. And when you talk enough about something, you give it a shape. You make it real.

Why doesn’t anyone get that?

Jade puts her hands behind her back. “Don’t get me wrong, Cloudy, I understand needing to get out of Bend. But this trip is kind of . . .
unlike
you.”

I roll my lips together. “Meaning?”

“You’re lying to your parents, your friends, skipping practice—you’ve never left the squad behind like that. Your sister’s home alone. And all for a spur-of-the-moment road trip with Ashlyn’s boyfriend? That’s not you.”

My skin is tight enough to split open. So what if I left things back in Bend? It’s not as if I’m doing this for myself. This trip is about Kyle getting through something big—and I’m not sorry for it. Not when I’m finally helping him. How can I look out for Zoë, for the squad, and for Kyle at the same time? How many people can I be there for at once?

“You haven’t given me a straight answer since you got here,” Jade pushes. “What’s going on?”

Warning bells and shrieking alarms and blaring sirens sound in my head, but I say it, anyway. “You really want to know what this trip’s about?”

She shrugs at me like
of course. Of course I do.

So I tell her.

I tell her everything. Kyle’s rut, and the emails, and Ethan, and Palm Springs, and the Vegas wedding.

Her mouth opens the slightest bit as she absorbs it all, and before she can answer, I add, “I’m going to finish our run.”

Then, with my heart beating double-time and halfway up my throat, I turn away. And this time, I
am
running away from her, and her questions, but there’s nothing freeing about it.

I
t’s nine fifteen in the morning, and Cloudy and I have already been
go, go, go!
for over three hours. My amped-up mood as I breathe in dry Palm Springs air in a strip mall parking lot reminds me of how I used to feel around Ashlyn or Matty (or especially Ashlyn
and
Matty): motivated, energized, ready for anything.

“I wish you’d have stolen more emails,” I tell Cloudy, waving around Freddie Blackwell’s printed words. “He’s so formal. I can’t get a handle on his personality. Unless this
is
his personality.”

I’m sitting at the back of my vehicle beneath the open hatch with my legs dangling above the cement. Three feet to my left, Cloudy is using the cargo area as her craft table. She’s standing as she arranges mugs, artificial daisies, chocolate bars, biscotti, and a variety of coffees, teas, and hot cocoas in a basket. Once she’s done, we’re going to deliver it to Freddie, Ashlyn’s lung recipient. We’re going to try, at least.

“There weren’t other emails to steal,” Cloudy says. “Before, the Montiels communicated with the recipients only by letters through the transplant organization. And there was no way I
was going to take official United States mail from their house.”

“Oh, fine.”

At this point, I’m talking just to talk. I’ve become
so distracted
by this girl. Officially, it started during “Twist and Shout” in LA the night before last, and has only gotten more intense since. I like it, though.

I like that we’re able to converse again. I like getting to spend our days together. I like that she looks at me as if I’m her friend. I like . . . her. More than I should. This bland email from Freddie is the only thing keeping me from staring nonstop at her face while she concentrates on taping each item where she wants it in the configuration.

An elderly couple strolls past us. Like everyone I’ve seen out and about in Palm Springs, they’re wearing sweaters and long pants, while I’m in shorts. It’s hard for me to believe they all find it cold here.

“What else do you know about this guy?” I ask. “What are we getting ourselves into?”

“I haven’t read the actual letters. But Freddie’s a former golf instructor, I think?”

“It says here he has a new job lined up for when he gets back from his trip, so maybe it won’t be ‘former’ for long. I wonder where he and his wife are headed.”

“Australia and New Zealand. That’s what Mrs. Montiel told me.” Cloudy holds out the basket, so I take it from her. “I think it would be cool to travel there someday.”

“Me too,” I say. “If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you pick?”

She hops up, holding the sides of her skirt against her thighs as she takes a seat beside me. “South America and especially Machu Picchu in Peru.”

“I’ve never heard of that.”

“It was a lost city to the outside world until, like, a hundred years ago, and the engineering was supposedly very advanced. People still don’t know what it was used for, so it’s this great mystery.”

“So that’s the one thing you want to see more than anything else, then?” I ask.

“Um.” Cloudy motions for me to lift the basket, and then I kind of maneuver it around while she wraps it in crinkly, plasticky stuff. “No, that would be the tulip fields in Holland.”

I laugh. “Holland? That is nowhere near South America!”

“I know. I’d say that Machu Picchu is my ideal
destination
. But you asked for one
thing
. And that would be beautiful, colorful tulips surrounding me in all directions. What about you?”

“For my one thing? I guess just something ancient? I’m into checking out places people built hundreds of years ago. Like, there’s this cliff dwelling near Sedona called Montezuma Castle. It’s from the twelfth century. People aren’t allowed inside anymore, but you can look up at it from the ground. I used to imagine living there. That was before I understood the meaning of ‘national monument.’”

“Will we have time to go there today?” she asks.

“Yup. It’ll be on our way.”

Excitement and nervousness swirl through me. At this moment, I’m closer to Arizona than I’ve been in almost two
years, and as long as everything goes according to our new plan, I’ll be there with Cloudy before the day is over.

At the pier yesterday, Cloudy told me she wanted to stay with Jade’s family for at least a couple of nights. Today was supposed to be the day we explored Los Angeles. But after she came back from her run with Jade last night, she’d changed her mind. Matty’s parents let him book their time-share in Las Vegas for us for Thursday and Friday nights, and since this is Tuesday, Cloudy said we should try to find Freddie this morning, and then head to Sedona afterward. This way, I’ll get to spend time with some of my own friends during our trip, too.

I’m very on board with this plan. I want to show Cloudy my old town, which is different from anywhere in the world (or so people say). I want to catch up with my friends—especially Will, who we’re going to stay with. I want to discover if me spending time in the place I lived before I lost Ashlyn will help me find a way to become someone who resembles Back to Normal Kyle. It’s an ambitious goal for a two-day visit, but I’m hopeful.

Cloudy takes the basket and her hand brushes mine. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but when our skin touches, all this heat radiates through me. It’s so strange to be feeling anything about another girl—and stranger still that the girl would turn out to be Ashlyn’s best friend, who seemed to hate me until this trip. With the convoluted history of Cloudy and me, I know I should tamp it down, knock it off,
get over it
.

I don’t want to, though.

She slides the wrapped basket behind us and then pulls out a spool of ribbon and tiny scissors from the shopping bag beside
her. “You still didn’t answer your own question. What’s the
one
ancient thing that’s going to make your life complete?”

I consider. “Probably the Egyptian pyramids. I’ve seen them in pictures and movies all my life, but to be there in person? That would be amazing. They’re five thousand years old. Did the people who created them have any idea they’d last so long? I mean, what were their lives even like then?”

“From what I’ve heard, not so different from now. They had indoor bathrooms, played board games, and, you know, occasionally shaved off their eyebrows to keep away evil spirits. Or is that what they wore black eyeliner for?”

I chuckle. “I’m not sure. But do you remember Crystal Curby shaving her eyebrows last year? She told Matty it was a sign of mourning because her cat died. I checked online and that was a real thing in ancient Egypt.”

“Whenever someone died, they’d shave off their eyebrows?”

“
Only
when their cats died.”

“Ohhh. Because they worshipped them.” Cloudy glances up from the intricate bow she’s tying and nods toward Arm, sleeping in the backseat. “Kind of like how you are with a certain bundle of fur?”

“She
is
the coolest cat to come around in several millennia.”

I wonder if Cloudy believes in reincarnation. A couple of days ago, she said Ashlyn must be pissed about not getting to use the frame she’d picked out for her magazine article. That doesn’t sound like any kind of heaven I’ve heard of before, but it’s probably what she was meaning?

She trims the ribbon and attaches it to the basket. “All done.”

We both climb down and view her handiwork from a couple of feet away. “If I’d tried to make a gift basket,” I say, “it would literally be a basket with a pile of gifts in it. You’re insanely skilled at this.”

“I’m all right. Lita’s the team’s designated bow maker. She does these pretty loops and uses a needle and thread to make them stay perfect. Mine is atrocious in comparison.”

“Well, I think yours looks awesome. So there.”

Cloudy smiles at her sandals. “What do you think? Are we ready for Freddie now?”

“We’re ready.”

AFTER I’VE MADE a couple of turns from the parking lot to get us headed the right direction on East Vista Chino, two things happen at once: Cloudy reads from her phone that my next turn will be in 1.3 miles and “What Sarah Said” by Death Cab for Cutie starts playing on my stereo.

This song. This is the song I’ve been avoiding for months because it’s too honest, too real, too painful. The opening piano notes alone have made me cry more times than I like to think about. But I haven’t deleted it from my playlist for one reason: this song means more to me than any other.

“What Sarah Said” describes what’s it like when someone you love is in the ICU. The lyrics nail every detail. The nonsensical thought that maybe slowing your own breathing could help them somehow. The smells, the sounds, the vitals monitors, the waiting room, the magazines, the vending machines, the nervous pacing. The complete helplessness of knowing there’s
nothing you can do, that you have no choice except to wait for whatever’s going to happen.

I move my finger to the button that will skip the song like I’ve done hundreds of times before. Then I hesitate. Maybe it’s because I’m sitting next to this cool girl who’s come up with a scheme to help us both move on. Maybe it’s because the kitten crawling in the backseat gives me irrational hope. But mostly, it’s because even though I don’t want to listen to this, part of me is curious to discover whether I can. I want to know if I’m physically capable, after all these many weeks, of hearing these words set to this music and not
losing it.

So I let it play.

The first sixteen seconds is piano only, then the drums and cymbals kick in, and at forty-two seconds, the vocals.

The piano is relentless. That’s how it’s always felt to me. My hands squeeze the steering wheel tighter with every verse. Each description in the song conjures up a real memory from my own time visiting Ashlyn in the ICU and it makes my eyes sting and my chest ache. This song might have been written for the sole purpose of killing me, but I’m not letting it.

I’m not breaking down.

At the three-minute, ten-second mark, Ben Gibbard sings about what Sarah said (“Love is watching someone die”), and I know I’ve made it. I let out a loud, relieved breath like I’ve sat up again after body-weight bench pressing.

And that’s when, with three minutes still remaining, the music stops.

I turn my head toward Cloudy, who’s holding my phone and
staring at me wide-eyed like I heaved the weights right onto her. Her voice is accusing. “You didn’t skip it.”

It hadn’t occurred to me she’d been paying attention the other times. “It was an endurance test. And I passed. It’s the first time I’ve not skipped ‘What Sarah Said’ since, like, November. Have you listened to it before?”

She shakes her head and sets my phone down to focus on her own again. “North Palm Canyon Drive. That’s us. Stay in this lane and go left at the light.”

“A couple of weeks after Ashlyn died,” I tell her, “it randomly came on the radio, and I felt like the singer was stealing thoughts straight from my brain. I listened to it over and over again until one day, I couldn’t anymore.” I wait at the traffic signal for a few seconds, and then make the turn. “I was kind of starting to hate myself because I hadn’t wanted to stay until the very end with her. I didn’t want to watch her die.”

“Kyle, we didn’t have the choice to stay. Mrs. Montiel said only the surgical team was allowed in the room when they turned off life support. Because of how organ donation works.”

“I know. But deep down, I was relieved. This song made me wish I’d been strong enough to have gotten upset about not being given the option, you know?”

“Turn right on North Via Las Palmas.” Cloudy removes her sunglasses from the top of her head and puts them on properly. “Then it will be another right onto South Via Las Palmas.”

Her tone is clipped. I can’t tell if she’s upset about this discussion or simply trying to keep us from getting lost. I’d like to
talk it through, though. Of anyone, I know she’s the person who can understand.

“While listening to that song again,” I say, “there’s one thing I just now realized. I used to think I’d never get the image of her in the hospital out of my head. I thought I’d always be haunted by it. But it’s mostly gone now. If I try really, really hard, I can sort of picture the scrapes on her face and hands, the bandages, all the tubes and cords, but my brain has rewritten the memory. All I see is her, looking the way she’d always looked before.”

Cloudy sighs so softly it’s barely louder than breathing, and my stomach tightens. I’m pushing this too far. The last thing I want is for her to think I’m being a jerk. “I’m glad I can survive that song again.” I speak in a rush. “That’s all I was trying to say.”

It takes a few seconds for Cloudy to put on a small smile. “Song conquering is a very good thing.”

At that, I shut up and let her continue guiding me toward our destination.

THE DIRECTIONS LOOP us back to the main drag once, but it isn’t long before we’ve figured out where things went wrong and I’m pulling us into a circular driveway. Freddie’s house is an A-frame with an attached flat-roofed garage jutting forward from the far side. Behind the property, the palm trees are overpowered by mountains, which are now so much bigger than when we were three miles away.

“Here we are!” Cloudy sings. “Are we really ready for this?”

“Yup. And I’ll let you do all the talking so I don’t screw it up.”

“I don’t see a car, so let’s hope it’s in the garage. It’s already seventy degrees. If we have to wait for him to come home, this might be one miserable, sweaty stakeout. Plus, the chocolate won’t survive.”

I put down the windows all the way so Arm won’t get too hot while she waits. “You don’t think she’ll jump out and run away to live in the mountains, do you?”

“No way. She
lurves
you. She’d never leave without you.”

“If you’re wrong, I’ll be shaving my eyebrows off.”

“We both will be.”

Cloudy retrieves the gift basket and together, we head up the walkway past the flower beds. Due to the house’s design, we’re standing completely under shade almost ten feet before we reach the front door. A big red-and-white sign demands our attention as we get close: NO SOLICITING. No Charities. No Food or Menus. No Home Estimates. No Petitions. No Politics. No Religion. No Salespeople.