Good and Gone

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  He pulls down and I feel the truck drop into gear.

  “All right, foot off the brake and ease onto the gas. You’re clear. Pull on out.” He sits right next to me, our thighs touching like we are a four-legged, two-headed monster. “Easy. Easy.” I know what he means is “Slower, slower.” But my foot presses down until the world is spilling by us, the trees blurring into a streak of green, until we take off and head for the moon.

  “Well, shit,” Gabe says. “That is something I never, ever thought I would see.”

  “This truck is my new best friend,” I say as I climb down out of the truck that I parked across two spots outside the diner.

  “Well, shit,” Gabe says again.

  “I am going to eat through two of the Lumberjacks,” Clay declares.

  “Our funds are dwindling,” I tell him.

  He gives me a look. A shared look. A “come on, really, please” look. “We’re going to buy you guys breakfast and fill up your tank and pool whatever cash we have left for you to take with you on your drive home.”

  Inside, there is a group of teenagers in a round booth at the back, piled up on top of one another like piglets in their pen. Next to me, Charlie stiffens. Gabe seems to notice because, after giving the group in the back a wave, he leads us over to a booth closer to the counter and to the door. Clay hands me a menu as thick as a magazine and I begin flipping through it. “Their eggs are really good,” he says. “The pancakes are only so-so, but don’t tell them I said that. My aunt works here and if it gets back to her I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  I smile. “Lips sealed.”

  What I want to get is the yogurt with fruit because it feels like I haven’t eaten a healthy-ish thing for years. But I don’t want them to think I’m one of those girls who won’t eat in front of boys. But if I order an omelet or whatever, that will make me seem like a glutton. And I realize that there is nothing on this menu that I can order that is right. Every single thing could be used against me. Like when I went to Ruby’s with Seth and got everything chocolatey—how young I must have shown myself to be.

  I let the menu fall to the table.

  “Everything okay?” Clay asks.

  “There are a lot of choices,” I reply.

  I think of Harper, how she disguised herself—how she had no safe choices either, really. And all of a sudden it’s kind of freeing. If everything I can choose is wrong, I might as well choose what makes me happy. Maybe that’s why Debbi wore that ridiculous outfit onstage, maybe that leather bra made her happy and she figured she was either going to be called a sexed-up hussy or a joyless feminist or something else, so she might as well wear it, right?

  So when the waitress comes I order the yogurt and a coffee and a side of home fries that I plan to cover in ketchup.

  Gabe says, “Nice combo, Lexi.”

  And I say, “Yes, it is.” After we all order, I realize how I am dressed and how long it’s been since I’ve bathed. “Be right back.”

  In the bathroom, I take off two of my sweatshirts like I’m a snake shedding skin. I run cold water over my hands and splash it onto my face. There are circles under my eyes, and my hair is snarled and static-y, like Medusa’s snakes. I scrub my skin harder and turn it pink.

  On the way back to the table I glance at the counter, and there he is.

  Adrian Wildes.

  Adrian Wildes with two days’ worth of beard hunched over a cup of coffee, a wool cap pulled down over his ears. Adrian Wildes with a plate of eggs and sausages and beans half-eaten and pushed away. Adrian Wildes tipping a salt shaker back and forth.

  He looks up, sees me looking at him, and panic shatters his face.

  I go back to the table and slip in next to Clay. He has his phone out. “According to this, it’ll take you nine hours to get home if you don’t stop at all.”

  “These guys have to pee every hour on the hour,” I say.

  I can see Adrian Wildes from where I sit. He has terrible posture and the big, heavy cardigan that he wears looks like it would stink of yaks.

  Charlie isn’t talking. He’s staring into his cup of black coffee (Penelope’s influence yet again), counting the bubbles, maybe, or watching them pop. He has horrible posture, too. He didn’t used to.

  “You should probably leave right after breakfast,” Clay says. “But you’d be getting home pretty late.”

  “It’s fine,” Charlie says. “We can take turns driving.”

  “Me, too,” I say. “I’m pretty amazing, right?”

  “Pretty amazing.” Clay laughs.

  “You’re lucky,” Gabe says. “Get to drive right on out of here.”

  “Here we go again,” Clay says.

  Adrian Wildes swings his foot next to his stool. He’s wearing canvas sneakers, like me, and I wonder if his feet are cold. He doesn’t have the old tube socks to keep them warm. This is the person that Charlie has been looking for. Adrian Wildes doesn’t look too promising to me, but this is the person that Charlie believes can save him.

  “Mr. Temple wants me to do a PG year. Do you know what PG years are for? Stupid jocks who can’t get into college their first try. I’m not stupid.”

  “You’re not,” Ari agrees. “But boarding school sounds kind of fun.”

  Adrian scratches at the back of his neck. His hair has grown and is curling up underneath the bottom of his hat. Which makes me wonder if he has been planning this escape for a while. Did he start building his disguise while he waited for just the right moment to disappear?

  Charlie finally lifts up his coffee and takes a sip.

  Can a destined-to-be-faded pop star save your life? Probably not. Maybe it’s like wishes and believing enough gives them power. Charlie believes. He believes that finding Adrian Wildes will somehow set him back on the steady road. Charlie saved me from drowning. The least I can do is try to pull him from whatever imaginary-turned-real weeds are pulling him down. The least I can do is try to pull him back.

  I slip my Good Feelings Book from my pocket. I choose one marked Optimism is hope given wings. On the back I write, Watch me. Don’t tell anyone.

  Then I tear out another one. This one says Home is the place they always take you back. I write: Your secret is safe with me. Please do me a favor, though, and keep this paper indefinitely on your person at all times. From Lexi, who is trying to believe.

  “Sorry,” I say as I slide the paper to Charlie, my hand on top of his under the table. “I need to go to the restroom again.”

  “And you say we pee all the time,” Zack says. “She’s the one who had to go to the strip club.”

  They are talking about the strip club and the strippers and how they are the ones who told us to go to the camp. I go into the bathroom and just stand there. I count to one hundred in my head. I stop at the counter on the way back, right next to Adrian Wildes. He doesn’t smell like yak. He smells like maple syrup.

  “Excuse me,” I say to the waitress behind the counter. “I forgot to order an orange juice.”

  “Sure, sweetie.”

  My hand is on the counter, the paper under my hand.

  The waitress hands me my juice, and I take it in both hands, the note now right next to Adrian. He looks at it, I think, but doesn’t touch it, not at first.

  Back at the table, I slip in next to Charlie, across from Clay, who slides his leg forward so his calf touches mine. It’s distracting, electricity jumping the line, and I spill some of my juice on the table.

  Clay wipes it up for me.

  I lift my gaze then and look back toward Adrian. He’s gone. So is the note.

  TEN

  Once upon a time, in a great and beautiful kingdom, a princess was born. The kingdom was built upon a cliff that looked out over the blue, churning sea. The view was so magnificent that no man could go to the edge of the cliff without throwing himself from it. The king was losing his finest knights and soldiers to the ocean. The only way to break the spell of the cliff was for a man to resist its pull. The only beauty
more powerful than that of the sea was that of his daughter, the princess. And so the king issued a proclamation: any man who could go to the edge of the cliff and resist its pull would have his daughter’s hand in marriage. Princes and commoners, old men and young, wise and foolish men, they all traveled from near and far to test their will, but not one could pass the test. Each man who ventured to the edge of the cliff threw himself into the sea. The princess could not bear the loss of life another day. At the break of dawn, she marched out to the cliff’s edge. There she stood, the sun rising over the ocean, which had momentarily stilled. She had passed the test. When she turned, she saw beside her a bold knight, his armor glinting in the early sunlight. He was filled with envy and rage, and he charged at her. She tumbled backward off the cliff and down into the water. She sank down, down, down into the dark and swirling ocean until she found herself in the home of the sea witch. “Must I stay below the ocean forever?” she asked the sea witch. The sea witch shook her head. “What you need to do, my fair princess, is fly.” The princess said that she did not know how to fly. “Your wings are not broken, dear. Use them.” So the princess tried. It took her days and days of swimming, but eventually she burst through the surface of the water and then she flew right up into the golden light of the sun.

  SPRING, OR, WHAT HAPPENED AFTER

  When we get home, Mom and Dad hug us like we’ve been on a journey around the world in a hot air balloon. They hug us like we’ve been kidnapped by wolves and finally returned. They hug Zack, too.

  On the first day of school after February vacation, Zack waits for me in his car at the end of his driveway. He rolls down his window and says, “Hop in.”

  “You couldn’t come down and get me?” I ask.

  “That’s the opposite direction from school.”

  “It’s not even a quarter mile.”

  “So you shouldn’t mind walking. Do you want a ride or not?”

  I open the passenger’s side door. I can’t say I’m excited to get back into the stink mobile, but if it has one thing going for it, it’s that it’s better than the school bus. I slide into the front seat. “So this is what it’s like when you get out of the cheap seats,” I tell him. It actually is a little bit more comfortable up front. The seat is squishy and kind of gives me a little hug. “You wanna let me drive?” I ask.

  He doesn’t even bother to answer. When we get to school, we pull in right after Seth. I don’t think Zack notices until we get out of the car. I sit in the front seat and don’t move. “Do you think you could—” I begin. Zack nods. He walks around the car and opens my door. He extends his hand. “Milady,” he says. I take his hand, warm and soft, and he pulls me to my feet. “Too bad Clay isn’t here with that big red truck. That would show Seth.”

  “No,” I say. “No, this is good, too.”

  Seth watches us. I can feel his eyes on me. But Zack steers us right toward the door of the school. It isn’t until we get to the walkway and I turn and look over my shoulder that I see Hannah standing in Seth’s shadow.

  In homeroom I think about following Hannah into the bathroom and saying to her just what Remy said to me. But of course that won’t work.

  Ms. Blythe makes an announcement about a sophomore class community service activity, collecting books and toys for kids in a homeless shelter. “Who wants to sign up?” she asks. I raise my hand. Gwen does, too. I think about the kind of girl Gwen wants to be—the joiner and the star, but also the girl on the edge. I’m still not sure what kind of girl I want to be, but now I know I want more than the spaces in between. That’s why I raise my hand.

  Instead of following Hannah into the bathroom, I watch for Remy. She’s in the band room a lot of the time, and I wait outside the door during my study hall one day. When she comes out, I call her name. She hesitates, and I think maybe she isn’t going to stop. But then she turns to me. “Yeah?” she asks, cautious. I guess I deserve that.

  “You were right,” I tell her.

  Her face crumples and she looks away from me. When she doesn’t say anything else, I say, “Thanks for trying.”

  “I guess I knew it wouldn’t change anything, but I had to try, right?”

  Maybe Seth is right. Maybe we could’ve been good friends in some alternate world. But we are in this world, the one with Seth in it, and there is too much debris between us for us to be friends.

  I go back to study hall in the library. Zack is there reading Rolling Stone, and I sit next to him on the weird little couch. I curl my body against his, and Ms. Blythe doesn’t say anything to stop us. I press my eyes against his shirt sleeve and let the tears come down. When the period is over he says, “Lexi Green, you’re going to go and make people think I’m straight.”

  “I’m just that magnetic,” I say. And then sniffle like Dewey DeWitt during allergy season.

  Charlie sleeps for three days, and I think maybe the whole trip has been a stupid waste.

  But on the fourth day he wakes up. He’s in the bathroom when I need to get ready for school. Half of me is relieved, but half of me is annoyed. I bang on the door. He opens it and he’s dressed and his hair is combed back from his head. “I need to get ready for school,” I tell him.

  He doesn’t move. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

  “Okay?”

  “Why’d you come on that trip?”

  “Well, I just knew you would do something stupid like fall through the ice on a lake, and you’d need me to rescue you.”

  “For real, Lexi. Why’d you come?”

  “For real,” I said.

  “I didn’t ever expect he’d save us. I just felt like if we could find him—I felt like then I would know that there was a way through.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s why I came.”

  We were both looking for that way through. We still are. Not a shortcut. We just want to know there will be something there when we get to the other side. That there is another side.

  He puts on real clothes and he comes downstairs and eats Cheerios and says, “I have some appointments at school today.”

  Mom says, “Hmmm,” and buzzes in her seat.

  Dad says, “That’s great,” and punches Charlie lightly on the arm.

  I say, “It’s about fucking time.”

  And Charlie agrees: “It’s about fucking time.”

  And so I do what I should have done ages ago, too. I text Hannah: If you ever want to talk, I’m still here.

  She doesn’t reply, which I guess is to be expected. I couldn’t ever hear what Remy had to say. And anyway maybe someday she’ll come to me and we’ll be able to talk and I’ll actually be able to help her. Maybe.

  Three weeks after we return home a video is posted on YouTube. The user name is Schlockster, and he only has one video. It’s shot in silhouette, like when they interview people on TV and don’t want to reveal their identities. But if you know someone, you know their shape, even without all the details. And people know this shape. And even if we didn’t know the shape, or doubted because of the apparent beard and longer hair, we know the voice. He sings his “Lexi” song, but he changes the last verse:

  At the diner on the edge of town,

  The boys kept you for their crown.

  And I must go, I must go, I must go.

  Lexi, won’t you follow me home?

  He’s wrong about the boys and the crown. I never said he was the most astute observer. And of course he doesn’t want me to follow him anywhere. Not the me of me, but the idea of me, maybe. Everyone has their own idea of me. And so he can build up that version of me, the one that melds with whoever the original Lexi was. It’s become a lot easier to be generous with myself when no one is trying to steal me.

  “That’s pretty cool, Lex,” Gwen says after we watch it for the third time. “Lexi Green, star of an Adrian Wildes song.” I know that she will tell people my story whenever the name Adrian Wildes comes up. She’ll say, “My friend Lexi saw him. He isn’t dead at all.”


  “What do you think he meant about the boys and the crown?” she asks.

  My instinct is to say that she’s the lyric analyzer, not me, but I’m trying to be careful. This bridge we’re building to each other is fragile, and the two ends don’t quite meet yet. I’m not sure they ever will again. I’ve told her all about our trip and showed her all the pieces of proof I’ve brought home—the Polaroid of me and Harper, the toothbrush from Annie, the clothes from the camp, the picture of Alana Greengrass, and the Good Feelings Book with the torn edge that will someday match up with a slip of paper held by Adrian Wildes. I show these things to her as offerings, a way of apologizing for how I acted but also as a test to see if this friendship is worth mending.

  “We were sitting at a round table in the diner. Four boys and Ari and me.”

  “Maybe Ari is the jewel,” Gwen said.

  “She probably is,” I agree. Ari, who added me on Instagram and posts pictures of gargoyles and the ice on the lake and pictures of Gabe’s eyes and Clay’s face—she really is more of a jewel than I am. I’m more like sea glass, I think, still wearing off those edges.

  Charlie doesn’t go back to school right away. He has to wait until the fall. And he still lives at home. His doctors want him to go on medication, but he’s not sure he wants to. It takes him a while to agree, and then it takes a while to get the dose right. Some days he’ll be moody and mean. Other days he’ll be so amped up he can’t sleep and so he stays up watching television and posting inspiring messages on Facebook. And sometimes he sleeps for days. When he sleeps like that, I go into his room and do my homework there, or send text messages to Zack or his dorky friends who I guess are becoming my dorky friends. One of them is in my grade. She’s almost six feet tall and she’s in my math class, so I ask her what the homework is even when I already know it. And in the background I play Adrian Wildes music, which really, when you get right down to it, is not the worst music in the world. Sometimes it’s not so much the song as who you listen to it with. That’s not one of my Good Feelings sayings, but it should be. And so I write it down on one of the blank pages, and one day, when Charlie is out of his room, I tape it to the bottom of his bed. I crawl under between the unmatched socks, the tissues (gack), and the dust bunnies. It looks so lonely there that I start ripping out all the rest of them—except for the two on either side of the one I gave to Adrian Wildes. I rip the rest out and tape them all to the bottom of Charlie’s bed, weaving them together into a safety net. If he slips off the edge of this world, they will catch him. We are all of us falling, all of us dancing on the edge of a cliff above a churning sea or a rolling river. Any one of us can slip at any time. Any one of us can crash through the ice—or be pushed down deep to places we never wanted to see. He pulled me out from under that ice. He will pull me out again, and I will be there to pull him back, too. Neither of us is going anywhere.