Now, I feel the heat sputtering from the vents, loud and rattling behind the plastic. Max turns down the radio dial, all the way until it clicks. He still hasn’t looked at me. His hand is shaking, and I’m not sure if it’s from the cold.
“He knew,” he begins. My shoulders stiffen, and he shakes his head and starts again. “He knew how I felt about you. That’s all.”
“How you felt about me…,” I repeat, letting the thought trail.
“He knew because you asked us to join cross-country, for fun, and I did. He knew because of the day in the city, at the ball game. He knew because I always asked if you were coming with us.”
He licks his lips, and my gaze drifts to his mouth.
“So I wasn’t really paying attention to what Caleb was up to right then, I’m sorry. I can’t answer your questions. I was trying to hold together a friendship with him, when he knew I liked his girlfriend. I could deny it all I wanted, but he knew me too well. I was too busy trying to hide it to see what was going on with him.” His hands grip the wheel, though we’re parked, and his knuckles blanch white. “I don’t know where he was going. I don’t know who he was talking to. I don’t know why he showed up at the race that day, and then left.” He turns to look at me then, his eyes wide and searching my face. “He’d been distant, but I thought it was because of something else. I’m sorry.”
This is Max in the front seat of his car: He has these faint dark circles under his brown eyes; his dark hair sticks up at odd angles, like he’s run his hand through it over and over; you can see the lines in his long arms, the muscles flexing in emotion. His lips are parted and his eyes trace over the contours of my face. I’m trying to find a place for his words. Fit them in the moments when he pushed me away, addressed me with apathy, when he picked me up that last night and drove us around for hours.
“Max,” I say.
“I know,” he says. “I know.” What we both know: we are forever and permanently bound to Caleb. The line is drawn, at his home, at school, even in this car. We’re here in secret, so people won’t see, won’t talk.
But I think of Caleb saying those words: I know.
What must he have known, or thought? Was he merely grasping straws in the dark? “But he said it to me,” I say. “Not you. Me.”
He tips his head down, and I can see he doesn’t want to say it, the thing he’s thinking, the thing we’re both thinking. That if Caleb saw it in him, he must’ve seen it in me, too.
And then I’m there, in the passenger side of Caleb’s car, after he sees us at the meet, laughing before lining up at the start of the race. He was angry, they said. I see him driving away, the wipers slashing through the torrent. I’m there when he comes upon the bridge, where we all jumped, where he promised I wouldn’t drown, and Max held me until I fell. I feel Caleb lose control of the wheel, confused by the change in weight, and traction, and direction. The tumbling and disorientation as gravity takes over, and then the current, metal tearing, water pouring in from every seam—
Max’s hand is on my shoulder, and he’s calling my name, and I can hear my own breath. “What I’m saying is, it’s not your fault, Jessa. It’s mine.”
But I’ve had enough of fault, and lines, and words. How can I trust his when I’m discovering all these things I never knew about the person I thought I once loved?
Another car pulls into the lot, and I know it’s time for me to go. But my gaze is locked on the small plastic smiling face on the dashboard of Max’s car—one of those bobble toys that’s been here forever. A disembodied happy face. And everything about that terrible night comes tumbling back.
That day in September, after the race and the rain, Max had called as I was getting out of the shower. I heard the ringing as I was stepping into my bedroom, then saw his name on the display. I held the phone in my hand for several seconds, deciding whether I should answer, before doing it. We had been careful about boundaries, since the day we found Saturn. We didn’t hang out without Caleb, except for at practice, with other people around. We would text, with specific questions, like What time is the bus leaving for the meet, but we didn’t call each other.
Finally, the moment tipped, and I answered. “Hello?” I said.
His voice was low. “Please tell me Caleb is with you.”
I looked around the room, confused. Wondering why Max would want Caleb to be with me. Why the undercurrent of desperation. Nothing made sense.
“No, Caleb isn’t with me,” I said, feeling my face contorting with confusion.
He didn’t respond.
“Max?” I said, wondering if the line had gone dead.
A beat of silence, and then, “Jessa—” It came out in a choked whisper, and I sat on the edge of my bed.
“What is it, Max? What?”
I could count the heartbeats echoing in my head in the moment before he answered. “They think his car went over the bridge.”
I felt the air rush from my lungs. “What? They think?” There was nothing substantial about his sentence. I had just seen him. He was just there.
It was all maybes anyway. I could do maybes, too. “Then they’re not sure. He’s probably getting food or something. Or at a friend’s house.”
Anyplace else.
“The guardrail is missing,” he said. “Caleb is missing.”
But I was shaking my head. There was another explanation. He had my necklace. I’d asked him to hold it for me. The last time I’d seen him, from the starting line of the race.
“I’m coming to get you,” Max whispered.
I had gotten dressed and run down the stairs and waited on the front porch, mumbling some frantic excuse to my parents, who were too confused to object, who seemed to sense that we were fighting against some inevitable outcome.
I had thought Max was coming so I could help in some search, so we could figure out where Caleb truly was, and we could all breathe a sigh of relief. But he wasn’t. He drove to their house, with the cop cars in front, and the men framed in the doorway, and then he kept going, and I realized he didn’t know where to go at all, so we just kept driving.
After a while, I focused on the smiling face of the bobblehead toy on the dashboard in front of me, and nothing more. Watching as it bounced along. Something so normal, so simple.
We drove and drove, for hours. Until his phone rang in the cup holder, and he pulled over to pick it up, and I could overhear, with finality, in the moment he squeezed his eyes shut.
He picked me up so we wouldn’t be alone, when we heard.
Max sees me staring at it now and says, “That was his, you know.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“He won it in one of those toy vending machines on the boardwalk. Determined it was a piece of crap. Stuck it there on the way home. Said it fit the décor.”
I laugh, slightly. We were always teasing Max about his car.
“But he was right,” Max says, grinning. “It really does.”
The whole time I’d been focused on this, trying to keep my mind from drifting to Caleb—when really it was him, all along.
No one answers the door at Caleb’s after school. The car is here, and after enough time has passed, I try the handle. It turns, and the door squeaks open as I gently push it ajar.
“Hello?” I call, my voice echoing off the walls. I peek inside, and the paintings and pictures are down. The area rugs removed, so all that remains are discolored squares of wood, darker than all the rest.
“Eve?” I’ve beaten Mia’s bus by at least an hour, given that I’ve left before last period, like I promised. I take out my phone, standing just inside the entrance, and scroll to the contact she’s entered in my phone. I send her a text: I’m here.
I hear a chirp from somewhere in the house—through the kitchen. Eve is nowhere to be found. I call her name again, softly. I don’t see her phone anywhere. Peering down the hall, I see her bedroom door is closed. I send another note: The front door was open.
This time, the chime
comes from close by. Through the closed door leading to the garage. I place my ear to the door, and I hear something moving across the floor. My phone chimes as I’m reaching for the handle: Go on up. I’ll be there shortly.
The door to Mia’s room is open on the second-floor landing, and the floor looks exactly the same as the last time I peered into her room. As if even the disarray and life I had envisioned was an illusion. Maybe everything was frozen in time here too, after all.
As I step through the entrance of her room, the surface of her desk beside her bed comes into view, covered in books and pencils and crayons. Everything’s scattered. And then I see a navy blue edge, and I’m propelled across the room on a mission.
Half-buried under an open sketchpad is the case for his glasses.
I wasn’t even looking for them today, but here they are, in my hand. The last piece of Caleb that I thought would lead to some other understanding, that could lead me to where he might have been going. But instead they have been here, in Mia’s room, all along.
And I realize the truth then, have to look it in the face. That maybe I’m only seeing what I want to see. That maybe there is no other place Caleb was going. That his mother was right, and he was coming back to talk to me, and he was angry, and he lost control of the car, and he drowned. And it’s as simple as that—what everyone already thought.
And then I hear footsteps, coming from above. From Caleb’s room. Down the stairs. I’m trapped. If I go out into the hall, try to make it down the steps, I’ll be seen. So I hold myself very still instead, hoping the footsteps keep going.
But they don’t. They round the corner, and suddenly Mia’s standing in front of her open doorway, staring at me—holding Caleb’s case of glasses.
“I just wanted to know where they were,” I say. I’m appealing to a child, I’m begging, I’m pleading. Please don’t tell.
“Give them back,” she says, stepping closer. Her eyes are wide and she speaks with a strength I’ve never heard from her before.
“Okay.” I hold them out in my hand, and she swipes the case from me, gripping it in both hands. I wonder what story she has, what piece of Caleb she sees in these glasses. I want to tell her, suddenly, about the moment I saw him in them, and loved him. I want to hold the glasses and tell her the story and let her see it, too.
“He can’t read without them,” she whispers.
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. The words I want to say are caught in the back of my throat. I crouch down in front of her, nod, try to think of some comforting words, something someone else would say. “You can keep them,” is all that comes out.
She shakes her head, quickly. “They’re not yours.” She juts her chin up high, daring me to say otherwise. Then she steps aside so I can see the door, and understand that she’s sending me on my way.
I pause in the entrance, confused as to why she’s home this early. “Why are you home from school?” I ask.
“I’m sick,” she says, like it’s obvious. Then she shrugs, as if she can tell how flat the lie falls. “We’re moving anyways.”
I’m just glad she’s talking to me, and I try to keep up the momentum. “Do you know where you’re going?” I ask.
Then she narrows her eyes and closes her mouth, remembering who I am, why I am here. “My mom was right. You’re sneaky.”
I jerk back. “No, I’m not. I’m just…” Is that what she thinks of me? That I’m in here doing something I’m not supposed to do? “I’m just asking because I’ll miss you,” I say, and I realize that’s true.
But Mia just steps aside from the door, until I get the message. “You were sneaking around my room,” she says.
“I saw the glasses from the hall. I had been looking for them.”
“They’re not yours, Jessa,” she repeats.
Her gaze shifts to the window as I repeat my own plea. “Please don’t tell.”
I’m still shaken by the conversation with Mia. About what she said, and what she thinks. What else am I supposed to be doing in this room, other than sorting through his things? That’s the entire point. Eve asked me to do it.
I’m getting down to the basics up here. There’s the bedding, the computer, the backpack, the odds and ends. But the shelves have been cleared, and his desk drawers have been emptied; his clothes have been packed away, and the walls are bare.
I can’t bring myself to strip the bed. It feels so violent, and final.
Instead I go for the closet, empty of clothes, now just an assortment of shoes and shoeboxes and whatever lingers on the shelf up high. Most of his shoes are lined up in pairs, and I leave them paired this way, stacking them in a large brown box. There are cleats and snow boots, flip-flops and sneakers—all different angles of the same Caleb. And then, in the right corner, there’s a pair shoved into a plastic grocery bag, tied at the top.
I rip it open, and immediately understand why. There are sand granules. And the pair of old sneakers smells like the ocean. I picture Caleb in front of me, kicking up sand with each stride. The burn of my lungs and my legs, and the glare of the sun off the ocean.
—
I was supposed to be training on the beach, which I hated, the sand kicking up and the ground giving way, everything in slow motion, like running in a dream. If hiking was Caleb’s thing to introduce me to, this was mine. It was a run I needed to do as part of summer training, but hated doing alone. Something about being on the beach by myself, before anyone else was up. Something about the feeling that at any moment a tidal wave could sneak up on us, wipe me out, with nobody knowing.
“Hailey, come on,” I’d begged her on a weekend in mid-July, while we all sat on beach blankets, side by side.
“I’m not doing that. I hate running in sand.”
“Hailey, September’s going to hurt.”
“Then let September hurt. I’m enjoying my summer.”
Hailey was also naturally faster than me, not needing to train as hard, or as consistently, to be able to stand on the starting line and run just over three miles in under twenty minutes. She could transform from “girl in a dress with red lipstick” to “girl who can kick your ass in red lipstick” in the time it took to slip on running shoes.
“We should do it,” Max had said to Caleb while I dug through my bag for more sunscreen.
Caleb made a face, but then he saw mine, so hopeful, leaning toward him. Pleasepleaseplease, I mouthed. I was one step away from asking Julian, and I really didn’t want to ask Julian.
“Fine,” he said. “Looking forward to kicking your asses tomorrow.”
I rolled my eyes. “Wear old shoes,” I’d told them.
“I thought people ran barefoot on the beach,” Max said.
“You don’t want to do that for five miles.”
Max pursed his lips. “I’m regretting this decision already.”
—
I didn’t know precisely how fast Caleb was until that day. I’d seen him on the lacrosse field, and I’d seen him doing line sprints during practice, but I had no idea whether he’d be able to pace himself for a distance run in sand.
We sat on the worn wooden steps leading down onto the beach while Max retied his shoes. “So,” I said, squinting from the glare of the sun on the ocean, “we head that way until the pink hotel.” The pink hotel was as good a landmark as it got on the beach. I’d mapped it out beforehand. “Then we turn around and come back.”
Caleb nodded. Max leaned over the splintered railing, peering down the beach.
Caleb grinned. “Loser sings the national anthem on the corner of the street.”
“Oh my God,” I mumbled, “what is it with you two and the national anthem?” There was always some variation of that, in a bet. Singing it in the middle of class (Caleb), or at the sports banquet dinner (Max, before he got shut down by the athletic director), or on the train into the city (Caleb, but then the whole train got into it, and we all sang, so really that one didn’t count).
Caleb shrugged. “Ready?�
� he asked.
I started jogging, and Caleb took off at a near-sprint, his sneakers kicking up the sand in front of me.
“Dammit,” Max said, and he kicked into another gear, desperately trying to keep up. Max played shortstop, and I knew he could sprint. But they were both going to burn themselves out in the first hundred meters, I decided. I was going to beat them both within the first mile.
Except I didn’t.
I caught up with Max halfway to the pink hotel, but Caleb kept getting farther and farther ahead. He looped back, passing us, never letting up speed. “Jessa,” he called as he blew by, “don’t you dare let him beat you or you’ll be belting ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ in the parking lot!”
“What?” I shouted back. I had assumed the bet was only between the two of them. I dug in deeper and pulled away from Max, but in the last section, he pulled even. He was breathing heavily, nearly spent, but his strides were twice as long as mine and he was going to win, I could feel it.
I closed my eyes, imagined this was a race and not practice, that the person beside me was any other person and the ground below was solid and I was stronger than them, and had practiced harder, and longer, and I had more left in the tank. I felt my steps pull even with his again, and in the last few meters before the spot Caleb sat on the steps, I sprinted with everything I had, and I beat him.
I collapsed onto the sand in front of Caleb, who was smiling. It seemed he was just barely out of breath.
Max groaned, crossed one leg in front of the other, and fell onto the sand. “I let you win,” he said, his chest heaving as he lay on his back beside us.
“There is no way you let me win.” I kicked sand onto his shins.
Max rolled onto his knees, kicked off his shoes, peeled off his shirt. “I’m just gonna…” He trailed off, making his way to the edge of the water. He walked in up to his knees, his thighs, then turned around so he was facing us and let a wave hit him in the back. He stumbled, fell, let the wave push him up onto shore.
Fragments of the Lost Page 15