The Survival List

by Courtney Sheinmel

  “No, it’s not,” Adam said. “Not if it would have some meaning for you.”

  “When your sister dies, you have bigger things to worry about than telling her old chickens.” I shook my head, and then I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. “God, that sounds like a metaphor. My friend Juno makes fun of me sometimes for all the metaphors I come up with. But this time I mean telling literal chickens!”

  “You have a nice smile,” Adam said. “And there’s something else, too.”

  My cheeks had warmed. “What?” I asked.

  “You’re a very interesting person, Sloane Marian Weber.”

  Now my cheeks were blazing. I took a sip of water to cool down. “Do you have siblings?” I asked, once I’d swallowed. “You didn’t answer before.”

  “Just me and the ’rents at home,” Adam said. “Speaking of whom, you certainly don’t corner the market on strained relationships with parents. They’re always up in my grill. I don’t hate them. But I don’t like them, and I don’t think they’re too wild about me, either—which I guess begs the question: Why do they care so much about what I’m doing on any given day?” He sighed and shook his head. “It’s so much easier when you can like the people you love.”

  “I never liked or loved anyone as much as I liked and loved Talley,” I said. “And you’ve been acting like a totally nice guy all through this lunch.”

  “Don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation to uphold.”

  “But I’ve been waiting for you to slip up and admit that you knew her.”

  “I told you that I didn’t.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “Do you have trust issues?”

  “No. But I have a dead sister, and she had your phone number.”

  “I don’t know why she had it,” Adam said.

  “And you’re hanging out with me, and you brought me to this place of all places—Grizzly Cove, with that flag waving front and center.”

  “If you’d asked me ahead of time if there was a flag in the parking lot, I probably would’ve said no. I’ve never even noticed it.”

  “And you asked to see the list, and then you nearly destroyed it.”

  “That was an accident. I swear.”

  “And,” I said, “you used the term ‘shit-slammer.’”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did,” I said. “On the phone when we first talked, you said it. That was one of Talley’s terms.”

  I remembered how I’d asked him about it at the time:

  What did you say?

  I said this day is going to kick my ass.

  Kick my ass was a much more common saying, and maybe it’s what he’d said to begin with. I let out a sigh. Grief was turning me into an insane version of myself.

  “Are you okay?” Adam asked me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think I must’ve heard it because I wanted you to say it—because I miss my sister, and I want answers, and wanted proof that you knew her.”

  “I didn’t know her.”

  “I guess I owe you an apology. I’m normally a much nicer person. People like me.”

  “I like you,” Adam said.

  “I’m so embarrassed.”

  “You don’t have to be,” he said. “Really. Just forget about it.”

  When Marco came over with the check, Adam pulled out his wallet. “No, no,” I said. “This is my treat.”

  “I can’t let you pay,” Adam told me.

  “Why not? Because I’m a girl?”

  “I want to be chivalrous. Is there something wrong with that?”

  “Sorry, but yeah. It’s benevolent sexism. It’s fine if a guy holds open a door for a woman because he got there first, as long as the woman could be the one to hold open the door if she got there first. Then there’s equality. But if the guy always holds open the door, like the woman is incompetent and she can’t do it herself, well, that’s problematic, and it’s actually not benevolent at all. It contributes to the cultural view that women need men to help them.”

  “Whoa,” Adam said. “Okay, well what if I want to treat you because coming here was my idea? It’d be rude for me to expect you to pay when you had no choice as to where we were going. Besides, all you got was a kids’ meal. My tacos cost much more.”

  “But I was the one who accused you of lying, so maybe I owe you the difference between tacos and a grilled cheese.”

  “No, you don’t. I told you to forget about it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “How about if we each pay for our own meal?”

  “If you insist.”

  “I insist.”

  “All right. I feel bad, though. I really was planning to take you to lunch. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  I shook my head. But then I changed my mind. “Could we go by Mr. G’s and Bel Air on the way home—if they are on the way home?”

  “They are now,” Adam said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ADAM SAID MR. G’S WAS CLOSEST, SO WE WENT THERE first. It was on the corner of a fairly busy street. Years earlier I’d pointed out to Talley that you could tell what the important streets were by the direction of the traffic. If traffic only went in one direction, it wasn’t such an important street. But when traffic went both ways, you could tell a lot more happened there.

  It was a little-kid observation, and it didn’t always hold true, but as we drove down Laurel Street toward Mr. G’s, I noted the traffic moving in both directions and I thought, Something important will happen here.

  At least I hoped it would. Adam circled the block a couple times looking for a place to park and finally pulled into a spot marked Bank Customers Only.

  Every time I did anything I wasn’t supposed to do, I remembered my sister: Don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness. As if I needed an excuse to remember her.

  We crossed the street and walked into Mr. G’s, and it was as if there’d been a sudden total eclipse of the sun. Outside it was bright, but the inside of the karaoke place was bathed in the blue-black color of nighttime.

  Even in the darkness, I could tell the place was mostly empty, which wasn’t a surprise. It was just past the lunchtime hour, which wasn’t exactly prime karaoke time. There was a handful of customers, including one woman onstage belting out her version of the old Aretha Franklin song “Respect”—and I mean belting, as if she had an audience of a few hundred, and maybe a few thousand.

  Adam and I stood there in the doorway of Mr. G’s for a couple minutes, eyes adjusting to the dark, listening to her sing. She was as good as any singer I’d ever heard. As good as the goddess singing the live version of “Rhiannon” in Juno’s car. I wondered if she was a regular, and if she’d been onstage when Talley had been here. If so, I was sure Talley would’ve been as astounded as I was.

  “Respect” ended. The three or four people who were sitting in the audience clapped, and Adam and I did, too. The woman bowed, but she didn’t step off the stage. Instead, a man joined her and they began to sing another song together.

  A woman in a green Mr. G’s T-shirt came over and welcomed Adam and me. She said there was a twenty-dollar minimum per person, but we could sing as many songs as we liked. “And sit wherever you want,” she added, extending an arm toward all the empty tables.

  Adam looked at me. “You pick again,” he said. “That’s your job. Seat picker.”

  “Oh, we don’t have to stay,” I told him, and I turned back to the woman. “We’re only here because I think my sister was here. Maybe you knew her—Talley Weber?”

  “No, sorry,” the woman said.

  “May I show you her picture?” My phone was already in my hand. I pressed the button to light up the screen and held it out. She shook her head. No, she hadn’t seen Talley.

  “I’m pretty sure she sang something from Grease, if that rings a bell.”

  “Sorry, it doesn’t,” the woman said.

  “Is it possible to look up when songs from Grease were last sung, and who sang them?�
��

  “We don’t have the capabilities to look up such things,” the woman said. “I think there’d be privacy issues anyway.”

  “My sister died,” I said.

  “Oh. Oh my.”

  “I’m only telling you because you were concerned about her privacy,” I said. “If you knew her and she said that it was a secret she was here in California, you don’t have to worry. I already know she was here, so I don’t think she’d mind if you told me whatever you know—if there’s anything you know.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t know her, but I’m truly sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you.”

  “If you want to sing something from Grease, you’re welcome to. I could talk to my manager about waiving the minimum.”

  “No, that’s all right,” I said. “But thanks anyway.”

  “Are they regulars here?” I asked, gesturing toward the couple onstage.

  “Jenny and Gil? They come in every now and then.”

  “I’m going to ask them if they knew my sister. Then we’ll get going.”

  But Jenny and Gil didn’t know Talley, or so they said. Adam and I headed out. I could tell he felt bad that the visit had been a bust, because he was talking up Bel Air, saying he just had a feeling about it. He’d always been lucky at the arcade as a kid—he was the master of Skee-Ball and had earned so many tickets that he’d once won an enormous stuffed tiger. It was as big, practically, as an actual tiger, and it was suspended high above the booth, with a sign around its neck that said you needed ten thousand tickets to take it home with you. Most kids earned however many tickets they earned in a day—fifty tickets, maybe a hundred, and they made do with the lesser prizes. Fuzzy keychains, Slinkies, Chinese finger traps. That sort of thing. They didn’t have the patience to collect tickets, visit after visit, and wait till they had enough for something really special. But Adam believed in delayed gratification and he kept his eye on the prize. Plus he was just so exceptionally good at Skee-Ball.

  “It’s still in my room,” Adam said. “I did a big stuffed animal clean-out when I was in like sixth grade. I made my mom give everything away—except the tiger. I couldn’t get rid of my crowning achievement!”

  “Of course not.”

  “Look there,” Adam said.

  “Where.”

  “Out the window, to the right. See the turrets?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s Bel Air.”

  He made a turn and we went through the castle gates and over a (fake) drawbridge. The moat was just grass—or rather, patches of grass. Bel Air, on the whole, looked like it’d seen better days. The castle was a bit run-down looking, and there was paint peeling off the corner tower. “When was the last time you were here?” I asked.

  “I’m pretty sure it was Roddy Vega’s birthday party in seventh grade,” Adam said. “They have go-karts in the back, and you know, when you don’t have a license, that’s about as cool as it gets.”

  “I guess.”

  “It’s kind of sad, though, to come back to places you loved when you were a kid, and seeing it the way your parents must’ve seen it back then. And wait till you see inside—it’s even worse.”

  The lobby was a giant warehouse-like room with dozens of video games, pinball machines, and of course the Skee-Ball machines running the length of the back wall. I saw the prize booth with various knickknacks offered in exchange for tickets, and the giant stuffed animals suspended from above (though not a tiger).

  I asked the guy behind the counter if he’d known Talley. He said he hadn’t. There were a few other Bel Air staff members working the floor—you could tell who they were because of their striped referee shirts. It was the same answer every time, and the same answer when Adam and I went out back to the area with the go-karts and the miniature golf course. “And how late are you open?” I asked.

  I’d asked already, back when I’d called Bel Air from the stairwell at school. “We’re open eleven a.m. to eight p.m., Monday through Thursday,” a guy named Harris told me. “Friday and Saturday till ten, and Sunday we close at seven.”

  “Never till midnight?” I asked.

  “Those have been the hours for as long as I’ve worked here,” he said.

  “How long have you worked here?”

  “Nearly three years.”

  “In all of your time here, have there been any late-night parties or anything like that?”

  “Like birthday parties?”

  “Sure, or any other kind of party that went really late. Like maybe someone rented the place out and invited people to stay till midnight?”

  “How large is your party?” Harris asked.

  “Oh, it’s a hypothetical party, not a real party,” I said. “If I had enough people to rent the whole place out, could I?”

  “I’m sure you could, but it’s not really my department. Let me introduce you to my manager. Yo, Melinda—” Harris called out.

  A woman in the company striped shirt and ripped jeans walked over, and my mind flicked to my father, who was (not surprisingly) staunchly anti–ripped jeans. He’d made an actual rule about it—not only would he not buy them for Talley and me, but also even if we were spending our own money, we were not allowed to come home with clothes that had purposeful rips in them. He didn’t care if all our friends were wearing them, and it was the height of fashion. To him it was offensive. “When I was in college, my jeans were ripped and patched because I didn’t have a choice—because I couldn’t afford anything else,” he told Talley and me. It was about as close as he ever got to talking about all the loss he’d experienced, and how life was harder for him, after his parents died. Talley and I obeyed the no-rips rule.

  But now, of course, a pair of Talley’s jeans did have rips in them. The jeans that were cut off her body in the hospital, and were now at the top of my closet, with the rest of her “effects.”

  “What can I help you with?” Melinda asked.

  I asked her the same questions I’d asked Harris. Melinda said Bel Air wasn’t ever open at midnight, and if anyone had ever tried to sneak in, there were alarms and security cameras, but those things hadn’t been tripped up in a long time—the last time was a fraternity prank. A couple of kids tried to scale the castle walls in the middle of the night, but it was two years ago, and they were guys. One of them broke his leg. The management at Bel Air felt that was punishment enough and didn’t press charges.

  I showed Talley’s picture to Melinda, just to be as thorough as I possibly could, though I didn’t expect her to recognize Talley—and she didn’t.

  Adam and I walked back out to his car. “I don’t have to be anywhere for a while,” he said. “Actually, I don’t have to be anywhere till tomorrow morning, when I’m going to my mom’s office against my will. So you just say the word—anywhere you want to go, we’ll go there.”

  It was a kind offer, but I was done for the day. “Thanks,” I said. “But can you just drop me at my aunt’s house.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I GOT HOME AND TOLD AUNT ELISE ABOUT WHAT I’D learned in my travels around the Bay Area with Adam, which of course wasn’t much of anything. “I thought the list was one of Talley’s puzzles, and that all I needed to do was get out here and the answers would be waiting for me. But I haven’t been able to figure anything out.”

  “You figured out the getting-out-here part,” Aunt Elise said. “And the diner, not to mention Crescent Street. I’m particularly grateful for that.”

  “I’m grateful, too,” I told her.

  And it was true—I was grateful to have my aunt back in my life. But sometimes, even when you’re looking right at someone for whom you are technically grateful, there is too much sadness to actually feel the gratitude. It was like Rabbi Bernstein saying that in our time of mourning, we should be grateful that we got to have Talley in our lives. I was grateful to have had Talley, but that wasn’t what I was feeling at her funeral.

  In
the rock-paper-scissors of feelings, sadness covers gratitude.

  “Do you mind if I go upstairs and lie down for a few minutes?” I asked Aunt Elise.

  “Not at all,” she said. “I was going to do the same thing down here.”

  I helped her get settled on the couch, propping her leg up on a special foam pillow, and I brought over a glass of water. Then I went upstairs to my little room and softly closed the door.

  This was the room Talley had stayed in, and I knew that even though time had passed, and Aunt Elise had probably vacuumed in here, dusted the shelves, and stripped her sheets off the pullout couch (before she’d broken her leg), molecules of Talley remained. In physics class last fall, we’d learned about something called Caesar’s last breath. Back in Ancient Rome, Julius Caesar exhaled his last breath and died. That last breath contained sextillions of molecules, and within a few years, those molecules traveled around the planet. Now in each breath that we inhale, we are taking in approximately one molecule of Caesar’s last breath. It sounds unbelievable, but it’s completely true. And it’s not just Caesar’s molecules—we’re also inhaling molecules from the exhales of every being who ever lived on the planet. Your favorite musician: you’re inhaling her breath. Your sworn enemy: you’re inhaling his breath. The Brontosauruses and dodo birds and the California grizzly bears: you’re inhaling their breaths, too.

  I inhaled a long breath—I inhaled Talley and everyone else in the whole wide world—probably more of Talley than all the others, because she’d been here, in this room. She’d slept here. I held that breath in the back of my throat for a few seconds, not wanting to exhale and let her go. Dust motes were dancing in the beam of light coming through the window. When I was little, long before I took physics, Talley had told me about molecules. “They make up everything in the universe,” she’d said. “And they’re invisible to the naked eye.” A few days later, we were sitting in the den. The blinds were drawn shut, but there were bands of light coming through, and in them I could see the illuminated dust motes.