by Joy Preble
I heave a noisy sigh. He fell for that?
He reddens again. “I said I knew physics. I never said I was smart.”
“You’re not,” I say meanly. He doesn’t disagree.
“So you were fine with all this?” I say, staring him down. To his credit, he does not drop his gaze. “What she was asking of you? Even with you thinking it balanced things. That doesn’t . . . You were totally good with it.”
My skin feels hot with emotion, the cool breeze drifting off the ocean like an assault to my senses. It had to be more than that for Paris. It had to be. No matter what the truth, there is more to this equation. My sister would not betray me this way. Not now. Not ever.
The heat is back in Max’s cheeks but not his voice. “I thought she wanted to hook us up,” he says. “Not that I . . . but when I met you, when you walked over to me with that piece of coconut cream pie—”
He stops walking. His toes crunch at the sand. “You weren’t what I expected. When a girl asks you to be nice to her little sister, well . . . you weren’t that. And then the more I got to know you, the more I wondered about the whole thing. I’d helped her set up the notes. It felt like a game. It was a game. Only when your sister didn’t show up like planned, I didn’t know what else to do. Then she texted me. Said she’d see us in LA. That was all she’d tell me. She said you’d figure it out. That I needed to let you. That she knew I’d probably think it was crazy but I should do it anyway.”
The sun is very bright on his face, gray eyes blinking now and then, his chin scruff fast turning into beard, the prickly hairs lit almost golden.
I turn toward the ocean because looking at him makes my heart contract. I meet a boy I could like, and it’s all a sick joke.
Max steps toward me, hair ruffling in the breeze, but he does not reach out. He knows better.
“You’re not what I thought,” he says again.
“Spinning your wheels, Max,” I tell him, and his hands clench, then release. “You don’t know me at all.”
He asks, “You know what Bose-Einstein condensate is?” and I frown because how random is this?
“I thought you secretly hated science.” My nostrils flare at his now-obvious lie. “Enough with the physics. Joke’s over, Max. Give it a rest.”
“Just listen,” Max says. His voice rises into the salt-tinged air. “You know how things are solids or liquids or gases, right? Well, there’s something else, too. A Bose-Einstein condensate—it’s different. It’s rare. This bunch of particles that usually don’t interact—which is lucky for the normal world because if they did, the universe couldn’t handle it. In this kind of condensate, the atoms are more like waves—like the ocean. If they ever all came together, they’d form a single giant matter wave. And it would be this hugely powerful thing.”
He moves toward me, but I step back, feet pressing the warm sand. Everything around us feels brittle and off balance.
“You’re like that,” he says, his voice serious. “Like this rare and wild thing. Leo, I . . .” He stares at me, but I look away because I can’t hear something like that from him—not now—and then he finishes, “I’m sorry.”
“About what?”
He grips my arms, tight and sudden before I can step away again, cinching his hands around them.
“Let go.” I tug, pulse going jagged. “Don’t.”
“Think, Leo. Why would she do this?”
“Get the hell off me.”
“Think.” He drops his hands. “Why? Why would she want you out of Vegas? Is there something she’s afraid of? There’s got to be something, Leo. Think about it.”
I kick the sand. “I don’t know. Something with her boyfriend, Toby.” But that doesn’t make sense anymore, does it?
“Maybe. But why would she lie to you?”
“Why would you?” I snap, and then feel a tiny bit sorry for it. The question swirls my brain anyway. Because he’s right. It has to be something.
When I was little and I was upset, I would add numbers in my head for as far as I could go until I calmed down. Three and five and eight and then I’d repeat it up and up until I lost interest or made a mistake.
I’m not little anymore, but I need to add up the clues that same way.
But I’m not thinking clearly right now. I’m scared and I’m angry. Everything is bubbling inside me, threatening to spill out and over.
I’ve left you the clues, Paris says in my head. Not my fault you’re so dense, little sister. You need to stop running.
I know I’m just imagining her voice. I know on some level it makes no sense since all Paris has led me to do is run and drive and move. To disappear like she has. But I am desperate enough to take it seriously.
This isn’t only about me, my sister’s voice continues. You know that, Leo.
“We need to go back to the theater,” I say, already walking.
Max doesn’t argue, just trails behind.
“This doesn’t mean I forgive you,” I toss over my shoulder.
Max makes an agreeing sound in the back of his throat.
Oscar is waiting, elbows on the bar, chin in hand, thumbs resting on the bird tat on his neck.
“Figured you’d be back,” he says, something uneasy flickering across his face and then disappearing. My Leo and Paris dolls are lying faceup by his elbow. I pick them up, cradling them in one hand.
Oscar asks if I want a Coke with cherries. I do. He spritzes soda in a tall glass. Adds an extra cherry.
“Thank you,” I say, and we smile briefly at each other.
Max and I shove two of the little rickety round tables together, pull up two disreputable-looking folding chairs, one with a jagged rip in its pink seat cover.
Oscar sells a large plastic goblet of red wine to some guy in board shorts, sandals, and one of those hats with earflaps. The guy asks him for a straw.
I am grateful that Oscar seems to feel no need for any further explanation. He asks once, “You good, Leo?”
I nod. He watches me for a few beats. Then turns to pour kernels and oil in the small popcorn machine against the wall.
“Let’s go over it again,” I say to Max, then sip some Coke, spearing a cherry with my straw. “What the hell is she trying to tell me?”
And so we put our heads together, Max Sullivan and me, like two students studying for a test. I don’t know what else to do.
We review all of it, every note, every text, every idea and intuition.
The original note on Elvis’s leg that started it all gets discussed first.
“She wrote ‘he’s making me,’ I say, pointing to the words on the note that I’ve carried all this way in my pocket. “I thought it was a joke at first and then maybe Toby, her boyfriend. And now . . . I don’t know.”
“Does your sister have enemies?” Max asks, and I shrug and make a face.
“This isn’t a movie,” I tell him. But my heart beats hard just the same.
The note from the Eiffel Tower leg is next. Nothing much there except that it led us to the Big Shot on top of the Stratosphere.
“That’s why I put the money in the slot machine,” Max says sheepishly. “To give her time to set it up.”
I sigh. He says he’s sorry again. I say, “Let’s keep thinking.” And begin to wonder: Did she drive all this way alone? I guess she must have.
“I don’t know,” Max says when I ask him. “I didn’t think to ask.” But he bites his lip and I can see that maybe he wishes he had. Me, too, Max.
We talk about the Stratosphere for a while. Max refers to Nate as a douche, trying to divert my attention from his own douchiness.
I unfold the receipt from the Heartbreak that she’d written on, tracing my finger over her handwriting. Near the water, she’d scrawled. Where we were happy.
“You knew she wanted us to go to LA,” I say to Max.
He nods, blushing. He has done this so much since he confessed that I’m almost sorry for him. Almost.
“But that’s all I knew,
” he says. “Really, Leo. I swear. I wasn’t even totally sure about the theater, but you seemed positive, so by then I figured you were right.” He flashes his Boy Scout oath fingers again. I refuse to let myself smile.
Or to acknowledge that the Cali sunshine has added to the sprinkle of freckles dusting his nose. I hate that I still think he’s cute.
“I’m sorry, Leo. I can’t say it enough.”
“No you can’t,” I say. “Let’s just find her.” It’s the only thing that matters.
A bunch of moviegoers stream up the stairs into the balcony and through the porthole-windowed door into the little theater. I want to follow them. Sink into a fading plush seat and lose myself in a movie. Someone else’s problems. Someone else’s mystery. Sip my Coke, get one of those giant bags of popcorn with butter and forget all this.
“She wanted to come back here with me so bad,” I say, more to myself than Max. “She talked about it all the time. But she knew I had school. And . . . she knew I couldn’t. Not yet. I’d tell her when I got into Stanford. At least then if she went, we’d be in the same state.”
An old man in a short-sleeved polo holding a box of Swedish Fish opens the door to the theater and music and dialogue filter out. I hear Jack Nicholson’s voice from the movie, but not what he’s saying.
Tommy likes Nicholson—at least that’s what he told me. One time when Paris and Mom were both out, I watched The Shining with him. For a while after that he’d see me and say, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” one of the famous lines from the movie. But after the first time, I didn’t think it was funny at all, just sort of sad.
We go over the rest of what we know. The postcard of the Hollywood sign with the name Toby on the back. The Leo and Paris dolls, now resting gently on the scarred table.
Max picks up my doll, grinning at its dorky white cardigan on which my sister had stitched my name. “Cute.”
I make a face. “She was telling me something with these. That much I’m sure of.” I review it again: How when I looked into the dollhouse—was it just yesterday?—the Paris doll was propped in the rocking chair, facing the four-poster bed that held the Leo doll. And the message Paris had left in the other dollhouse bedroom—the one that urged me to leave. Now. To find my sister.
“What if she needed to take your money?” Max says. “Maybe it wasn’t just to get you to come find her.”
But for what?
Once again, he shakes his head. Once again, he looks embarrassed and confused.
In physics, you have to read the problem carefully. Develop a mental picture. Identify the known and the unknown quantities. Plot a strategy.
Establish what you don’t know.
But how do you know what you don’t know when you don’t know anything at all?
“If she was so desperate for me to get out of Vegas, then why isn’t she here? Why not come with me? If she’s in trouble, why not tell me?”
Something cold slithers up my spine. I think about The Shining again. About how the wife thought her husband was writing this great novel, but really he was typing that one line over and over on all those pieces of paper. Sometimes that happens, I know. We ignore the warning signs.
What if there was something so bad Paris couldn’t say it? Is that possible? But even then, why all this? Why make sure I ended up so many miles away?
Max is looking at me now, something dark and unreadable in his expression.
“Leo,” he says slowly, like he’s working it out in his head. He’s looking at the dolls again, not at me. “When you called me—when I came to get you . . . I’d left a message for Paris already, telling her that I didn’t think I could convince you to keep on with the whole scavenger hunt. And she’d told me not to worry, but honestly? I was ready to blow the whole thing off.”
Max lifts his gaze, eyes suddenly fierce on mine. “But you called. And I thought when I saw you . . . Leo, why did you call again? Why me?”
A million answers fill my head. A million possibilities. I can’t give voice to any of them.
But he’s looking at me, really looking.
“I had a fight with my stepfather,” I say carefully. “My mother took his side.”
“Did it have something to do with your sister?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
My heart is beating very fast. Coke backwashes in my throat, burning.
“Leo?” Max’s voice is a question now. I keep my eyes on Oscar’s bird tattoo. Wondering what it would be like to fly free like that.
In my head, I see Paris’s room—so uncharacteristically chaotic. So many nights lately when she wasn’t sleeping, just crafting jewelry like a maniac, stockpiling necklaces and bracelets. And waking me up in the middle of the night to go driving. To eat pie at the Heartbreak. Because she’d broken up with Tobias. That’s what she kept saying. That’s what made sense.
At least I thought it did. What did I know about boys, really? Or how it feels to break up with one? When Paris asked me about Buddy Lathrop, I told her he was cheap and a bad kisser. But the truth was that Buddy liked me. He thought I was pretty and he said so. I think now that he meant it, but how would I know? I was not pretty, not inside where it counted. It was easier to tell him to go to hell.
Still, if something else was wrong, Paris would have told me. Or Mom. That’s what people do. They ask for help.
Except when they don’t.
But if Paris was in trouble, I’d know. Wouldn’t I?
A memory rises of that day Tommy took us all to the Sugar Factory, him and Mom sipping Purple Passion while Paris and I ate grilled cheese with strawberry jam.
“I like your hair that way,” he told my sister, who reached up and fingered her long braid. We were sitting outside at a small four-top near the railing by the street. Tommy’s elbow knocked into her water glass, almost spilling it.
“Damn tiny tables,” he said, and slurped a big sip from my mother’s straw.
When Tommy went to the men’s room after all that too-sweet booze, my mother leaned across, eye to eye with my sister. “Don’t ruin it for me,” she told her.
“Leo, what?” Max sounds far away. He reaches out a hand, but my own hands are clutched together in my lap. The floor feels oddly unsteady and for a second I think earthquake, but the quaking is my own.
My brain offers up a montage of images: Tommy sitting in the dark in the kitchen. Pressing that fifty-dollar bill into my hand. And later, in my room, telling me my sister is eighteen and she can do what she wants. Acting all concerned about me touching her stuff. Asking if Paris was off with some guy.
I clutch the table. It is like being on top of the Ferris wheel, the cart swaying hard, then tipping, nothing to keep me from falling.
Max says something else now, but I’m not listening.
More images: Tommy’s finger tracing my arm.
No. Paris. Not Paris. He wouldn’t have. She . . .
Nothing happened. We don’t need the cops, he said. Your sister knows how to take care of herself.
But what if that wasn’t true? What if she didn’t know she had to?
My mouth and throat go dry. The rip on the filthy pink seat cover scrapes the back of my leg as I push from the chair. The room closes in: Oscar at the bar. The greasy smell of popcorn. The muffled sounds of unintelligible dialogue seeping from the theater. The fading posters of movie stars long dead.
“Tommy,” I say, not looking at Max. I can’t look at him. I can’t . . . “He . . .” My mouth won’t form the words.
Max figures it out anyway. Because when I finally lift my gaze, I see the look on his face and I know.
“You think he’d do that? Your stepfather. Would he—”
“She didn’t tell me,” I say, denying still. “She didn’t tell me.” How long has this been going on? Am I right?
Max makes some kind of motion—to hold me maybe?—but I’m already stumbling down the stairs and he’s behind me, saying something and I think Os
car yells my name but everything is loud white noise.
I will kill him. In my head, I see it. See Tommy dead.
But I can’t be sure until I find Paris. I need to hear it from her.
Why didn’t she tell Mom? No matter what, she’s still our mother. But I know that answer, too. Knew it when I called Max. When I made my choice and walked out the door. My mother sided with her husband when she screamed at me and sent me to my room. Would she have heard the truth if it was offered?
Maybe trusting Max with me was the only thing Paris could think to do.
Talk to him, she told me. I dare you. And then: He’s nice, right? He is.
She wanted to be sure I liked him. If I liked him I’d trust him. I’d let him help me and when she disappeared, together we’d find her.
But every place I go she’s not there.
“We’re missing something,” Max says, and I stop on the sidewalk, breathing hard.
“No we’re not. My stepfather has hurt my sister. He’s . . .” I can’t say the words. I can’t think of him touching her. “I’ll kill him.” This time I say it aloud. “If he’s touched her . . .”
My heart careens from my chest, tumbling toward the ocean.
“Leo,” Max says. “It doesn’t make sense. If he was . . . doing something to her”—I flinch as he says it—“then even if she wouldn’t tell you, wouldn’t she come here with you? If she was worried about herself and by extension about you, why would she just disappear? Why would she ask me to drive you around and . . .”
He’s right. It doesn’t add up.
“Think, Leo. I mean, if you’re right. I know it’s the worst . . . but if you are . . .” He pauses, and I have to force myself to keep looking at him, to keep standing here, because all I want to do is run again.
“Let’s say I’m Paris,” Max says. “And I can’t find the words to tell you what’s really wrong—maybe I think you won’t even believe me—I just want you out of there, want you in LA because for whatever reason this is where I think you’ll be safe or far enough away or whatever. If that’s the case, then I’d be here to meet you. We know nothing’s stopped her. At least I think we do. So why wouldn’t she be here to tell you the real story?”