by L. E. Flynn
Jasper says nothing, just makes a grunting sound. When we’re in my car, he rubs his eyes with his fists and shakes his head. For the first time, I notice how red his eyes are and wonder if he has been crying. Or not sleeping. Or both.
“I don’t know. Reasons people disappear, I guess. Exit strategies. You were there, right? The night of the party? Did she say anything to you? Like, anything strange? You saw her last.”
I hear her voice in my head, as loud as if she were here. What am I going to do with you?
“No,” I say quickly.
“But you left the party with her, right? I mean, she didn’t say she was going anywhere except back to her dad’s place?”
It’s like he already knows I didn’t leave the party with her, even though that’s impossible. “The police already asked me all this. We left together.”
It’s a lie I can tell so easily. Maybe I should be horrified by how quickly it leaves my mouth, how true it sounds. If I tell it enough times, I might even start to believe it. I wonder if I could always lie like this but never knew it until now, or if I can only lie this well to protect someone.
“Fine,” he says, rubbing his forehead. “I’m just trying to retrace her steps. Like when you lose something and try to figure out all the places you’ve been with it that day.”
“That’s what we’re about to do.” I put the car into reverse and pull out of the parking lot.
When we’re leaving the school, I recognize a vehicle parked in the visitor lot out front. A crappy wood-paneled station wagon with LIVE TO SURF and BEACH BUM bumper stickers. Somebody is sitting in the front seat, hunched over the steering wheel. He’s sobbing into his arm, and I’m torn between slamming on the brakes and hitting the gas pedal.
It’s Trixie’s dad.
Jasper notices him too. He flattens himself in his seat, then bows his head into his lap.
“Just drive,” he says, his voice pleading. “This isn’t the way I imagined myself meeting Trixie’s dad.”
I just need you to drive. Some of the first words she ever said to me. I do it, just like I did it then.
My hands are shaky as I make a right-hand turn onto the street. “You never met him? Weren’t you over at her house all the time?”
Jasper rolls down his window and the breeze blows his hair off his forehead. “She came over to my place, not the other way around. He probably had no idea I existed. It’s not like I was picking her up for dates or anything.”
“Why didn’t you take her out on dates?”
“We were friends who hooked up from time to time. Nothing more. Neither of us wanted anything more than what the other was willing to give.” He drums his fingers on his knee.
But I’m not sure he’s telling the truth. I know how much he cared—cares—about Trixie. He used to write her little notes and stick them in our locker. That doesn’t sound like something a friend with benefits does.
I think about what she said the first time we met. I had this thing with my lab partner. I think about Jasper being the one she was trying to escape from. She mentioned that he was in love with her, that he had feelings way stronger than hers would ever be. She made it sound like things got too serious, like he got attached. But maybe she was the one who was afraid of getting attached.
“I’m sure you get it,” he says. “You knew her too.”
I knew her and I knew my place. Now I suddenly wonder if she liked me because I stayed put, because I only jumped when I was told to jump and sat still on command. Maybe Jasper didn’t do as good a job at staying put. Maybe he was spilling all over the edges because he couldn’t fit neatly inside his box.
“How did you meet?” I say, desperate to change the subject, because thinking about our friendship like that makes me feel like I gave up everything for nothing at all.
“She never told you? Of course she didn’t. Nobody could keep a secret like that girl.”
“We just didn’t talk about stuff like that.” I don’t know why I’m defending her when she’s not around to hear me lie for her.
“Sure you didn’t.” He clasps his hands into a ball on his lap. “All girls do. Anyway, we met in class. I was a freshman and she was a year older. I was intrigued by her. She didn’t know I existed.” He laughs, but it’s not a funny laugh. It’s a sad one, each syllable thick and dense. “I remember we did a project at my house once and it was obvious she didn’t want to be there. She was like some kind of caged bird, looking for a way to escape.”
I wait for him to keep going but he stares at his hands instead. His fingernails are painted black, just like his whole outfit. Trixie never painted her nails, not once in the time I knew her. I guess she was too busy changing the rest of herself to care about something as insignificant as her nails.
“But then she came over one night,” Jasper finally says. “She snuck in my bedroom window at two in the morning. And you know, my room’s on the second floor. So she must have climbed a tree or something to get up there. The ultimate romantic gesture.” He lets out a long breath. “Anyway, I should have asked questions. I should have turned her down.”
“But you didn’t.”
He shakes his head. “It kept happening. Mostly, she started it. Somehow, she always knew where to find me.”
I think back to those times when Trixie wasn’t around during lunch hour, when I’d eat by myself in my car, hoping she’d show up. Those times when I’d leave school late after practice and there she was, sitting beside my car like she’d been waiting for me forever. I never thought we were unbalanced like that for a reason.
“When did it end?” I ask him, because it suddenly seems important. “When was the last time she came over?”
He leans forward, and in my peripheral vision, I can see him trace the edge of his jawline with his thumb. I imagine Trixie doing the same thing, touching his face, outlining his features like a map.
“The last time she came over was the day of her graduation,” he says. “She told me she had two tickets and I wouldn’t be able to go. Not that I wanted to. That’s the kind of gig for a boyfriend.” He says the word boyfriend like it’s toxic.
Two tickets. Her dad and I each got one, sat side by side in the sweltering auditorium.
“Anyway, she came over that night like nothing had happened. But I wasn’t in the mood to see her, so we kind of had a fight.”
“And what, you never saw her again after that?”
“No, she just stopped texting me back. I saw her only once, when she was on her lunch break at the restaurant. I was standing outside and she wouldn’t talk to me, so I figured her days of climbing in windows were in the past.”
I grip the steering wheel tighter, panic ripping through me as Jasper’s voice grows bitter. “That’s impossible,” I say, but even as the words come out I know it’s completely possible. I was that easy to lie to. That easy to blindfold and lead around.
“It’s the truth,” he says flatly. “I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“But she was always on her phone, all summer. She was always messaging somebody.”
He leans back into his seat, presses his forehead against the window. “So, what makes you think it was me?”
“Because she said it was you.” Suddenly, I feel like a total idiot, like the joke is on me. I had believed every word she said. If she had told me goddamn Santa Claus was real, I would have stayed up on Christmas Eve, waiting to catch a glimpse of him.
“Well, it wasn’t. If there’s one thing I learned from not being Trixie’s boyfriend, it’s that she said what she wanted you to hear. And not a single word more.”
It’s too hot in the car now, too small and confined. There’s an extra passenger with us, radiating doubt, unfurling uncertainty in handfuls.
If Trixie hadn’t been messaging Jasper, that meant she was writing to someone else. Somebody who made her phone vibrate constantly, an angry beetle in her hand.
Somebody with an awful lot to say.
19
“Do I look like a fucking Tricia?” she said when I asked her where Trixie came from. “Or a Patti? I don’t think so. When I was a little kid, my dad always said I had tricks up my sleeve. Tricks, he used to call me. So I turned into Trixie.”
“The nickname stuck,” I said.
She shook her head. “No, he was pissed. He loved the name Patricia. Named me after his mom, who died when he was little. He refused to let me legally change my name to Trixie. But it didn’t matter, because I wouldn’t answer to anything else.”
“Cool,” I said. She was the opposite of me. She answered only to what she wanted to be called. I answered to everything, from everyone.
“You could do it too, you know,” she said, tugging on the end of my ponytail. “You could be anybody.”
What I really want, I couldn’t tell her, is to be you.
The question is, when she stopped wanting to be Trixie Heller, who did she turn into?
20
WHEN WE GET to the beach, I’m afraid to get out of the car, even though this was my idea.
“For the record, I still think this is a bad plan,” Jasper says, stretching his arms over his head. The bottom of his shirt rides up, exposing a strip of pale white stomach. “These people are dangerous.”
I pull the newspaper article out of my pocket, the one I fished out of our recycle bins right before the garbage truck came by. The one with the headline I have memorized:
ROBSON HIGH STUDENT’S DISAPPEARANCE RULED SUICIDE
“I know. But we have to try. I won’t be able to let it go if I don’t at least ask someone.” Trixie’s grainy picture smiles up at me, a crease in the middle of her face. Wherever she is, does she think I’m looking for her?
“Well, at least stay close to me. This is out of my comfort zone too. At least we can be uncomfortable together,” Jasper says when we’re out of the car, reaching for my hand. His is cold, despite the heat. This is the first time I have ever really held hands with a boy, and I’m pathetic for thinking about it like that.
Morrison Beach is overrun with homeless people. Standing in the pavilion, sitting in the sand, sprawled out under the grove of trees dividing the beach from the road. It used to be a big issue when I was a kid. I remember Mom talking about how we had to clean up our city if we ever wanted tourists to come, and me asking why tourists were so important anyway.
But now, it’s like the police just gave up on trying to keep them off the beach. Or else they struck some kind of deal with them. You stay out of our hair, and we’ll stay out of yours.
Jasper and I walk onto the sand and my breath catches in my throat. I haven’t been down here since before she disappeared, and maybe it’s too soon. Maybe it’s always going to be too soon. Everything about the beach reminds me of her. The places we spread a blanket out and sat, watching the sky turn yellow and pink and black. The wet sand by the water, where we built a sandcastle with the sun beating down on our backs. The shaded spot behind the fish-and-chip place, where she showed me how to smoke my first joint.
Jasper squeezes my hand, pulses my skin into his. “You know, we can go back to the car and forget about this. There are other ways to find her.”
“No. There’s something here. I just know there is.” I’m lying. I feel nothing besides overwhelming uncertainty.
We walk past the homeless people. Some of them look up at us, some of them make jeering noises. Most of them are in various stages of passed out, some holding bottles. I don’t see Byron St. James anywhere.
I know I’ll recognize him. He was all over the news, telling the story, talking about how he wanted to help because he knows people who have committed suicide. A lot of people felt sorry for him, but some just figured he was looking for his fifteen minutes of fame. He had this big shock of blond hair and looked younger than most of these guys, and he was always wearing the same lime-green vest, the kind made of that vinyl material that dirt rubs off of.
“I think we should just go home,” Jasper mutters, his head down. “Or to the library. It’ll be quiet there, so we can think.” His hand is getting hot and sweaty against mine, which means he’s either nervous or scared. Or both.
“Just give me another minute.” I stop to do a sweep of the crowd. But we’re almost at the graffiti-sprayed brick wall, the one that leads out to the highway, and he’s not here.
My chest starts to hurt as I turn my head slowly. Jasper squints into the sun, still clutching my hand. Part of me wants to drop his, but a stronger part wants to hold on for dear life. Especially when I see a person I was not expecting to find here.
Beau Hunter is under one of the trees, on his knees in the sand, drinking from a bottle. He does some handshake with one of the homeless guys and exchanges something in a manila envelope. I know that at any second, he’s going to see me here with Jasper and everything will be ruined.
“Let’s go,” I say, yanking Jasper toward the brick wall. There’s an opening nearby, where the words YOU’RE REACHING OR PREACHING are drawn over a spray-painted monster’s mouth. Trixie and I used to slip through there instead of taking the long way around.
But when we get to the wall, Jasper just stands there, paralyzed in one spot. The opening is too far away. I glance over at Beau and he’s still there, drinking in the sand. He’s wearing a blue baseball cap, not the one he wears at school but the same one he had on the night of Alison’s party. When he took it off, his hair was flat against his head and the ends curled around the back of his neck.
He’ll think I followed him here. He’ll wonder where else I followed him, who else I have been talking to. Unless I can make it so that he never knows I was here. His head begins to turn in our direction.
I press my back against the wall and let go of Jasper’s hand. His drops to his side and he stares down at it, almost like he’s just now realizing it’s attached to his body. He doesn’t have time to react when I grab the outside of his coat and pull him toward me. Beau will see the back of Jasper’s head and the dirty fabric of his jacket and think he’s just another homeless guy.
My face is pressed into Jasper’s neck. He smells better than I thought he would, like soap and a bit of cologne. For some reason, when I used to see Jasper last year—when Trixie and I would pass him in the halls without so much as a wave—I always assumed he smelled bad, like sweat and wool and cigarettes. But I can tell, up this close, that he doesn’t smoke at all.
And I don’t know why—maybe because we’re close enough to smell each other and our hearts are beating together, or because of the adrenaline rushing through our veins—but Jasper tilts his head down an inch and our lips meet, featherlight. We’re both completely still, lips touching, breath halted, and I know I should say something, like This isn’t right, but when I open my mouth, the only thing I do is press my lips harder against his. Then he sucks my bottom lip into his mouth and I feel a sob build in my throat and I should pull away, but instead I wrap one hand around the back of his neck and push my tongue against his teeth. I forget that he’s him and I’m me, and it’s like we’re just at the beach for the same reason lots of people come here. To make out without getting caught.
I only pull away when he puts his hand on my waist and reality comes crashing down. I’m disgusted with myself. Disgusted for betraying her, even though she made it clear he was never her boyfriend.
“I’m sorry,” we both say at the same time. It’s too hot for us to be this close, and I let go of my grip on his coat. When I step back and look over his shoulder, Beau is gone.
21
I MET BEAU at a party freshman year. Kind of cliché, I know, which is why I never told you. Then again, you never asked.
I had gone outside for some air and he was standing on the deck, staring straight up at the sky. His Adam’s apple poked out and the collar of his polo shirt gaped open to reveal tanned skin underneath.
I just stood there, staring at him. I didn’t know what it was. Sure, he was handsome, in a floppy-haired, preppy kind of way, but there were better-looking guys. It wasn’t his bottomless blue eyes as much as it was the peace on his face, the kind of expression that made me think everything would be okay.
I stared at him for a long time, then craned my neck up to see what he was seeing. I expected something fascinating, a full moon or a shooting star, but there was just dark-blue sky, the indigo color of the skinny jeans Alison was wearing.
“You see him too?” he said.
I shook my head. “Who?”
He took my hand like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Look up again. It’s Orion. I’ll show you.”
I still didn’t see it, but eventually I said I did anyway, because I wanted to feel like we were seeing the same thing. And when I stopped looking up, he was looking at me.
As it turned out, Beau was friends with Brad Colton, the guy Alison would spend freshman and sophomore year obsessed with. Plus, he made the football team, and I was a cheerleader, so I saw him more and more. At games. At parties. In the cafeteria at lunch. A few times, he bought chocolate milk and gave it to me because he knew how much I loved chocolate anything. He remembered things like that, little things, ways to make me smile. Ways to make me light up inside. Ways to touch me without being obvious. He would offer me rides home on his bike, even though I was out of his way, and when I stood on my driveway after, I waited for him to lean over and kiss me, imagining how it would feel. But he never did, and I didn’t either.
Jenny and Alison teased me because they knew he liked me and they knew I liked him. But they didn’t know I loved him, not until I told Jenny that day on the deck. Love was so much bigger.
He never had a girlfriend. I never had a boyfriend. I was too scared to ask him out, so I waited for him to ask me, but maybe he was waiting for me to do the same thing. I blushed around him and was embarrassed about it at first until I realized his neck turned red when he was near me too.