Out of Reach

by Carrie Arcos

  “Nowhere!” a woman shouted back.

  “Nowhere,” the young man said, and continued talking about how everyone was a sinner and needed God.

  Someone clapped his hands as we walked past.

  “Thank you, brother,” said the young man on the wall, misinterpreting the gesture.

  “Let’s sit here a minute.” Tyler motioned to a bench not too far from the public restrooms. We sat down and he said, “You’re quiet.”

  “What do you think about that?” I pointed to the man on the wall, now thankfully out of earshot. “Do you think he’s crazy?”

  “What, like do I believe in God and all of that?”

  “Maybe.”

  He leaned back against the bench, put his arms behind his head, and faced the water. “I think too many people try to define things they don’t understand. Look at the ocean out there. We barely know anything about it. What really lives in the deepest parts? How can that guy stand up there and tell us what God thinks? He’s only saying what he thinks God believes.” Tyler paused for a couple of seconds. “God is beyond oceans.”

  “Wow,” I said, after I was sure he was finished. “You’re deep.” I grinned at him. “Get it?”

  “Oh, now you’ve got jokes.”

  “I can be funny.”

  He looked at me with one eyebrow raised. “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know. This place. This thing with Micah. Makes me wonder why God lets it happen. You’d think if there were a God, he’d get rid of all the stuff that sucks. You know, like evil and homelessness, and hunger and drugs and suffering in general.”

  “You forgot crappy food.”

  “And bad hair days and smog—”

  “Fungus and hangnails.”

  “Gross, but yeah. He could make it perfect.” I realized once I said it that I didn’t even know what perfect would look like.

  Though we weren’t close to the water, the sound of an extra-large wave crashed through all the noise on the boardwalk.

  “Where’d Dillon go?”

  “He said he had to take care of some things. We’ll meet up with him later.”

  “It’s nice that he’s helping us.”

  “Yeah, he’s cool.”

  “You think Micah’s really still here?”

  “Maybe. What do you think? You’re the one with women’s intuition.”

  I smiled at that. “I can’t tell.”

  At the outdoor showers near the restrooms, a mom held her kid under her arm like a football and washed the sand off the kid’s naked body. The kid screamed in anger. I hated sand. It got everywhere and in everything.

  A man wearing a red beret started to set up in front of us. He had all kinds of brooms in a large trash can, and he pulled them out, lining them up against the low brick wall. He invited those who were curious to form a semicircle around him. He threw some more sand on the boardwalk and then began pushing it around with one of the brooms. After a few seconds, I could see that he was creating a picture. He exchanged the larger broom for a smaller one, to create the detail of petals on the large flower he had sketched in the loose sand. The bristles of the broom marked long, thin lines so that the pavement showed through in places. He bent down, like a golfer examining his next shot. No one spoke in the surrounding crowd, waiting to see what he would do. He walked over to the wall and picked up another broom. This one he used to create the stem and a single leaf.

  Tyler leaned in to speak to me. His cheek practically brushed against mine. “Weird,” he whispered.

  I was startled but said, “It’s art,” trying to ignore how close he was and how my body was suddenly very attracted to his.

  “The guy is drawing a flower in sand.” Tyler stayed in the same position. “It’s stupidity.”

  “Well, he’s not as talented as you, but he could be onto something: sidewalk sand art.”

  The man walked over to the wall and stood before the brooms. He hesitated, seeming unsure of what his next move would be. He chose the smallest broom.

  “Sand castles are cooler.”

  “More work,” I said.

  “They last longer, though. My mom and I used to make those drip sand castles. You know, where you dig until you reach the water and then scoop out sand with your hand, letting it run down your fingertips and form globs, which you pile on top of each other.”

  “Yeah, I remember doing that. I liked trying to see how high I could make the towers.” I nodded toward the sidewalk artist. “He draws a nice flower.”

  “As soon as he’s gone, it’ll get ruined,” he said. “People will walk all over it.”

  “Not everything’s meant to last forever.” We watched the one flower slowly morph into a bouquet on the boardwalk’s pavement. A girl talking on her phone walked by, oblivious to what was going on, and stepped on a leaf. There was a collective gasp.

  “Sorry!” the girl yelled.

  “You think I’m talented?” Tyler asked.

  “You know you’re talented.”

  “It means more if you say it,” he said quietly, watching the artist work.

  I thought about that and what it meant. “You’re talented,” I said.

  The artist finished with one final swirl of the broom and bowed to the applauding crowd. A young boy who had been standing to the side of the artist walked around with an empty hat.

  “Come on,” Tyler said.

  Before we left, I dug in my backpack and found some change. I dropped it into the hat.

  “You want something?” Tyler asked, pointing to a snack and ice-cream shop.

  “Yeah, an ice-cream cone.”

  Tyler and I stood in line behind a young couple who had their arms around each other. He had a hand in the back pocket of her shorts, and he leaned down and kissed the top of her head.

  I remembered when Keith and I looked that happy—holding hands at school, watching movies, hanging out with friends—back when everything was simple and defined, back when I was blissfully unaware that he was sleeping with other girls. We didn’t even talk anymore, which was strange at first because we used to talk or text every day. What he did made it easier to get over him, that’s for sure, but it was still painful to know someone that well and then become total strangers. It made me afraid to get that close to someone again.

  The couple in front of us ordered a single cone to share. I wanted to gag. Tyler asked me what flavor I wanted.

  “Vanilla.”

  “Vanilla? No chocolate?” he asked.

  “Nope. Vanilla’s good.”

  “Okay. One plain vanilla,” he said to the woman taking orders inside the booth. “I’ll have strawberry and chocolate.”

  “Way to live on the wild side,” I said.

  “You have no idea,” he replied, handing the woman money from the wallet in his back pocket. He gave me my cone first and then reached for his. He asked the woman if she’d seen Micah. She hadn’t.

  “Thanks.” I licked the ice cream. It felt cold and good against my tongue. “You didn’t have to pay for me. I mean, it’s not like we’re on a date or something.” I immediately winced at having said the word “date” again.

  “Who says I would pay for you on a date?” he said. We walked toward a large grassy area. On the lawn, people relaxed on blankets and chairs, and a couple of guys passed a Frisbee between them.

  “You wouldn’t pay for a girl on a date?” I asked him as we walked.

  “Maybe not. Women are liberated today. They don’t have to suffer from such inequality as to think they couldn’t pay their own way.” He licked the chocolate side of the cone, catching some before it ran over the edge.

  “It depends on if you want a second date.”

  “You wouldn’t go out with a guy again if he didn’t foot the bill?” Tyler seemed genuinely surprised by the notion.

  “I don’t know.” Keith had paid for me most of the time, but most of the time we didn’t do anything that cost a lot of money. “It would bother me. There is an unspoke
n rule that the guy should pay, at least on the first date. If there are more dates after that, then I suppose he doesn’t have to keep paying. Sometimes the girl could pay or they could go Dutch.”

  “I think it’s a good test,” he said.

  “Test?”

  “See if she really likes me or my money. If I don’t pay the first time around, she won’t be expecting it, so when I do pay, it comes from genuine desire, not obligation.”

  “That’s the biggest cop-out I’ve ever heard.”

  “Why is it fair for the guy to always have to pay? Today both men and women work. Girls are flipping burgers alongside the guys. They should have the same opportunity to spend their money like a guy would.”

  “So has this little system of yours worked well?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, how many second dates have you had?” I reached out to poke him in the ribs.

  “Enough.” Tyler sidestepped my poke and finished his cone in one big bite.

  “Hmm,” I said. I still had half of mine left.

  “Hmm?” he replied. “You doubt what I’m saying?”

  “If you say it works, it works. I can’t prove it otherwise, but you sound like you’re evading the question. I asked you how many second dates you’d been on. You didn’t give me a number.” I enjoyed our pseudo argument. “I mean, what is ‘enough?’ Two? Five? One?”

  “A couple.”

  “Again with the guessing.” I smiled.

  “How many dates did you go on last year?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, which was the truth. What counted as a date when you were with someone for a whole year? Did hanging out at his house watching TV count? Or taking the car to the car wash? Or running errands with me for my mom?

  “See!” He said it triumphantly, as if he had just made major points.

  “It’s hard to keep track when you’re seeing someone.” I regretted the words as soon as I said them because I had wanted to avoid the subject of Keith. I had been able to escape him practically all summer, but for some reason, Keith kept popping into my thoughts today, and now here he was between us. It was like a huge hose sucked the air out of our banter.

  “Yeah, that’s right. Keith. That was pretty shitty, what he did.”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course everyone at school knew what Keith had said about me. I wondered if Tyler believed any of it. I didn’t want to get into it and have to explain.

  “Yeah, well . . .”

  “Micah never really knew what you saw in Keith. He said he was the type of guy you generally wanted to beat the shit out of.”

  And so we were back to Micah again. For a moment I had forgotten why we were here, as if I were just strolling along a beach boardwalk with a cute guy who had bought me an ice-cream cone.

  “Good thing he won’t have to worry about that anymore,” I said, and tossed the end of my cone into a trash can.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rachel.”

  I had kept my eyes closed.

  “Rachel,” Micah had whispered again.

  I didn’t want to look at him. I was afraid. Ever since he had come back from rehab, I had been waiting for something to happen, something to break again between us. I could sense him sitting on the floor by my bed. I pictured him holding his knees to his chest.

  “You don’t have to wake up.” He waited. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  I lay very still.

  “It’s weird being back. Everyone’s walking on eggshells with me.”

  I barely breathed.

  “You don’t have to do that. You can, like, talk to me normal.”

  As if we ever talked anymore.

  “I was going crazy in there. Those people. They’re totally messed up. I know I’ve got some problems, but I can handle it now. I just needed some time away from everything.”

  He stopped talking. I heard him get up, but he didn’t leave my room. I peeked at the clock—3:42 a.m.

  “I know you’re pissed at me,” he said from across the room. He stood looking out the window. His silhouette cast a shadow on my wooden floor.

  “I’m not pissed,” I whispered.

  “Yeah, you are.”

  “Whatever.”

  He was quiet. I waited, but the waiting got a little awkward.

  Finally, Micah said something. “You should check out this moon, it’s totally full.”

  Something inside me wanted to connect with him, to return to the way things used to be with us, so I pulled back the covers and joined him at the window.

  The moon was huge and felt too close. It illuminated our backyard and cut through the night like sunlight, without the blinding brightness. Everything glowed in a soft bluish tint.

  “Why can’t you sleep?” I asked him.

  “Too much on my mind.”

  “Like?”

  “Lots of things.” The words spilled from him. “The band. Writing new material. Returning to class. Graduating. Being stuck in this house. The future.”

  I put my hand on the glass. It was colder than I thought. Then I did something I hadn’t done since we were kids. I put my lips up to the glass and blew a big fish face. I pulled away, and the window was all fogged up in that spot. I wrote my initials, RS, with my finger in the gray mist. Micah did the same thing, then wrote MS a little farther up the window.

  “Are you afraid to go back to school?”

  He sucked in his breath. “No. That’s the least of my worries.” He stepped away from the window. “So, we’re cool, right?”

  I shrugged. “Right.”

  “You know . . .,” he hesitated. “I’m still your big brother. If you ever need anything.”

  I nodded. I thought of what had happened with Keith. How if Micah had been more himself, maybe Keith wouldn’t have got away with it.

  “I’d better try and get some sleep,” he said when I didn’t say anything.

  “You could try writing,” I suggested.

  He dipped his head down. “Nah, I think I’ve lost my muse.”

  “She’ll come back.”

  “Maybe.”

  He closed my door behind him. I heard him enter his room and shut his door. I turned back to the window. Our initials wobbled and ran down the glass. By morning they’d be gone. Smudges or streaks, the kind little children’s fingers made, would be the only reminder that Micah and I had stood there together.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The afternoon sun tipped in the sky toward the horizon. Tyler and I were running out of time.

  “Maybe you should call Jones,” I said, stopping to lean against the railing of a ramp that led to a clothing shop.

  “Is that the tone of defeat in your voice?” Tyler asked.

  “Well, it’s like trying to find Waldo or something. Even if Micah were here, it would take a miracle to find him.”

  “Don’t you believe in miracles?” Tyler lit another cigarette. He must have been halfway through his pack already.

  I shrugged. “My life hasn’t been the most miracle-prone.”

  “Nope, they’re rare.” He blew a ring of smoke.

  “You’ve seen miracles?”

  “No, just one.”

  He took out his phone and dialed.

  “You’re not going to tell me?”

  “I don’t know if you’re worthy.” His eyes teased.

  I didn’t give him the enjoyment of a reply.

  The door to the shop opened, and I moved aside as a couple of tall, skinny girls in extremely short shorts exited. Their long hair had been flat-ironed so it swayed as they walked. They each carried a small shopping bag. I saw Tyler follow them with his eyes. I thought, I would never look like that. Not even if I starved myself.

  “He’s not picking up.” Tyler frowned. “Jones,” he said into the phone. “It’s Tyler. Give me a call when you get this.” He hung up. “That’s it. Phone’s dead.”

  “There’s always a pay phone.”

  “Do they
still have those?”

  “Somewhere.” I looked around but didn’t see any, and realized I had no idea where to find one. And I’d given all my change to the street artist. I guess we could call collect, but I didn’t even know how to do that.

  I was losing steam. Everyone had begun to blur together. I figured we should stop in the tattoo shop up ahead, but I didn’t know if I could take it anymore. I felt guilty about being so weak. It hadn’t even been a full twenty-four hours of searching, but I was emotionally exhausted.

  “I’m tired,” I whined, giving in to my fatigue.

  “I have an idea,” Tyler replied.

  “What?”

  “Come on.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me with him.

  * * *

  I waited in line while Tyler purchased our tickets. He had insisted on paying again, and this time it really did feel like a date.

  “Thank you,” I said as he handed me the number of tickets I needed for the ride.

  Tyler stood behind me; each hand held one side of the railing. I resisted the urge to lean back against him like couples did when they waited in lines at amusement parks.

  Two little girls on the coaster screamed and screamed, and laughed in between their screams. I couldn’t remember the last time I had yelled like that on a ride.

  “Did Micah ever talk to you?” I asked. “I mean, like confide in you about his problems or what he was thinking?” Out of all of Micah’s friends, he seemed the closest to Tyler.

  Tyler leaned forward. “Your brother and me—wait, and I—”

  “I’m not like that.” I hated it when people did that around me just because I was in honors classes.

  Tyler laughed. “Sure, you’re not.”

  I started to protest, but he said, “Okay, okay, I was just kidding. Anyway, Micah and I had this, I don’t know, this thing between us. I think Micah really got me, you know? He liked my art. We used to talk about real stuff, not just how hot some girl was or stupid shit.

  “We had plans. We weren’t going to stay, work our way up to manager at some place, get married, and pop out a few kids. We were going to, I don’t know, change things.” Tyler stopped as if he realized he’d given away too much of himself.