Facing Linny is not an option. If I don’t hear her say she kept this from me, then maybe she didn’t.
I slip the photo into my pocket, and then I’m rushing out of the lion exhibit. Past the elephants. Into the parking lot. Down the street. A trapped scream burning up my lungs.
Don’t know where I’m going. Just—away.
35.
Linny
WHO: Sebastian
WHEN: This afternoon
WHY: Because of me. Return date unknown.
NOTES: Things fall apart.
You shouldn’t have given him the backpack.
Concentrating on the lions is about as easy as dismantling the Berlin Wall with a toothpick. How can I focus on anything but Sebastian, crouched on a bench, my backpack (with the photograph!) wedged between his feet?
But if I’d said, “I absolutely need to hold on to the backpack,” that would’ve looked too suspicious, right? How has everything suddenly kaleidoscoped into chaos?
Turning my attention to the lioness in front of me, her long tongue ruffling the fur of her cub, I convince myself it’ll be fine and do my best to get one usable shot. The after-rain sun is still throwing mottled light all over the long grasses, and the male lions are lazily devouring a shapeless piece of red meat. I zoom in on the cub instead, follow the outlines of her newborn form, and notice how the mother is cradling her like nothing bad will ever, ever happen.
At first I don’t even hear the footsteps. At first I’m so sucked into the shot—for literally a split second—that the pounding of sneakers on asphalt doesn’t break my concentration. But then a wave of realization crashes into the back of my neck. I spin around, almost dropping my camera.
My backpack’s there. Sebastian’s not.
Calm down. Maybe he . . . needed an urgent bathroom break?
Rushing to the bench, I drop to my knees and fumble desperately through my backpack. I feel in the pocket, around the edges, in every corner. No, no, no.
The whole zoo seems to tilt on its axis as I grab my stuff and dash toward the exit, calling Sebastian’s name. But when I reach the parking lot, I only see the back of his head, bobbing off into the distance.
THE LEFT-BEHINDS (SCENE 16, CONTINUED)
LINNY’s eyes snap to focus. We see that she is crying.
36.
Sebastian
“We are fairly certain that the universe began with a big bang . . . but how will it end?” A Brief Compendium of Astrophysical Curiosities, p. 43
I’ve had approximately twenty-five minutes of a wild sprint through the street to string together my thoughts. In which time I’ve narrowed them down to one: What the actual fuck?
When something dramatic happens, it’s natural to act dramatically. That’s why I’m hunched on the curb outside a 7-Eleven. Not quite believing what’s happening but trying to slurp myself to death anyway.
This Slurpee tastes red. Like high fructose corn syrup and a number 40 dye and other things that will surely give me debilitating stomach cramps. I’ve had two Slurpees in under twelve minutes. Wobbled back inside for another refill. The guy behind the register probably thinks I’m casing the place.
In my chemical haze, three things occur to me. 1) The human bladder can comfortably hold two cups of liquid. I’m well past the danger zone. 2) Floridians buy way too many powdered doughnuts. And 3) I WAS WRONG ABOUT ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING.
I set Slurpee number three between my feet and examine my knees, which are moderately bleeding. After bolting, I sped around in a blind flurry, tripping a few times on the pavement. Ended up three and a half miles away, dry heaving beneath an overpass. Because I did not see this coming. Not at all.
My energy level is so high I’m vibrating (although maybe that’s from the Slurpee). Even sitting on the pavement I’m twitchy, can’t sit still.
I pick up the Slurpee, take another hit, and dial Mom’s number.
Two rings, and then she picks up, excitement in her voice—“Sebastian! Oh, Sebastian, I’m so happy to hear from you.”
“I, you—” I splutter, staring at the photo in my left hand.
“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”
I’m so quiet, I can barely hear myself. “Álvaro left me, too, didn’t he?”
A pause on the line. Whispering: “Who told you?”
“No one,” I say. My lungs have forgotten how to accept oxygen. I’m dizzy. “No one. No one ever tells me anything.”
“I love you,” she says.
“I love you so much, Sebastian. I couldn’t let you . . . I couldn’t let you go through what I went through.”
Too late. Everything aches.
There must be another pause, because Mom says, “Talk to me, Sebastian.”
But I can’t. Doesn’t she understand that? How can I talk when I can’t even breathe?
It starts to rain again.
“How old was I?” I finally manage. “When he left?”
Mom is quiet, silence prickling the phone—I can tell she’s deciding something. “Eight days old.”
I dump out the rest of the Slurpee onto the concrete, watch it swish with the rain and trail into the gutter like foamy blood.
“I have to go,” I say.
“Sebastian, I—”
But I can’t hear another word without fucking exploding. I end the call, slap the photo—image side up—onto the concrete, and leave it as I walk away, rain splattering all over our grinning faces.
Linny sends me eight texts and calls three times before I switch off my phone.
I keep picturing her knowing, while we were . . .
I guess it doesn’t matter now.
By the time I take a taxi back to Ana’s, my chest burns. Literal heartache. The condo door is unlocked, like Ana’s expecting me. I wobble in, panting and unsteady from the Slurpee/sprinting/grief combo. She’s at the dining-room table. Drilling her fingers against the wood.
“I was worried sick about you,” she says when she sees me. And she looks sick. Red rings her eyes. Sweat rings her armpits. In sum: she looks completely unhinged. “You were supposed to be home four hours ago, and then your mom called and I—”
“Did you know, too?”
She scratches at her skin. Her voice is the low end of a bell curve. So quiet it’s concaving. “Yes. But Sebastian, cariño, your mom and I agreed that it was best for you to keep believing what you believed.”
When will this family learn that secrets always explode?
Sweeping her hair into both hands, she sighs, then lets her waves down again. The room is a box of tension. “Sit down and we’ll talk about this.”
“No, gracias.”
“Sebastian.”
I shake my head, hair flopping in my face. Rocket-charged, I lunge into the bathroom and lock the door. Spend the next forty minutes lying in the empty bathtub, fully clothed, because that’s the only place I can be alone. Ana keeps knocking. Sure, she probably has a key—but she’s too afraid to open the door and catch a glimpse of my man bits, forever scarring our relationship.
Scarring it further, I guess. It already needs stitches.
After the 107th knock, I bust out of the bathroom, out of the condo, into the street—needing to get some air. And then I’m on Ana’s bike, unsure of where I’m going until I’m at Linny’s house. It’s dark.
I turn on my phone and dial her number on the edge of her lawn. She answers “Hello,” and immediately I want her to tell me it isn’t true. But deep down I know it is.
When I say “We need to talk,” I already know it’s over between us.
A THEORY FOR THE END:
(See RELATIONSHIP WITH A GIRL)
37.
Linny
NOTES: Why am I still doing this? What’s the point?
Sebastian’s waiting at the end of my street, far enough away from my house that MomandDad can’t peek out the blinds and see. It’s just after nine at night, the sky heartsick blue and quickly bruising to black. As I walk up to him, I almost comme
nt that I feel like a shadow in this dark. But he won’t look me in the eyes, doesn’t even respond when I greet him with a weak “Hello.” Something terribly dark is trying to escape from his mouth.
“Hey,” I try again, but I fear it’s too late for hey and hello and how’s it going. In my stomach is a pile of stones weighing me into the blacktop. One more rock and I’ll be practically underground, scampering around with the mole people.
At Marla’s house, I should’ve said something. I should’ve told him every little detail of everything I knew. I should’ve placed the photo in his palms, because now explanations are slipping through my fingers like water.
I didn’t want you to know what it felt like.
I was protecting you.
How flimsy do those words sound, now that he’s swaying from side to side in front of me, intermittently blocking the moon?
After a long moment, he speaks in a shredded voice. “I am always the last to know, and I thought you—I thought . . . Why didn’t you tell me?”
I chew on my lips. “Because I didn’t want to hurt you, and I . . . I probably would have told you eventually, but—”
“Eventually? Wow, thanks. Glad I’m so important that you’d get around to it eventually.”
“That’s not what I—”
“Did you know when we were having sex?”
My heart treadmills. “What? No! Only since this morning, when we found Joe’s address. It was . . . Álvaro kept it on his nightstand, tucked in a book.”
“So you knew the entire time we were with Marla.”
“Yes, but—”
“Jesus, Linny. Doesn’t this”—he motions between him and me—“doesn’t this mean anything to you? I thought we were . . .” He trails off as the air twists and burns around us. “All I can think about is how you lied to me, like everyone in my family.” The way he says it does something weird to my skin.
“Sebastian, I didn’t lie to—”
“I think it’s best if we don’t speak for a while.”
I almost tumble forward. Might as well have said, “I think it’s best if you don’t breathe for a while.” Same effect. “Oh” is all I can muster. What did I expect, for him to immediately understand my reason for not telling him? For us to have a nice little chat at the edge of my neighborhood in the dark? I get this shredded thing more than ever. “Do you just need some time?” I ask, hopeful.
His jaw clenches. He’s chewing the angriest piece of gum. “Time won’t fix it, Linny. I’m going to college at the end of the summer anyway, so . . . I think maybe, I don’t know. . . .”
No. Please. Please. Please. Don’t say it.
You know how people claim that when you die your whole life flashes before your eyes? I can attest that the same thing happens during breakups: every moment of your relationship, frame by frame, whips through your brain.
Cinderella shoe. Ball pit. Kisses under glow-in-the-dark stars.
His skin to my skin, coated in color.
“I think maybe it’s wrecked,” he says in a volcanic voice, his hands like birds scattering, “this thing between us.”
The words scorch my skin. Wrecked. And he thinks I’m the one who wrecked it.
I feel myself nodding. Why on earth am I nodding? Maybe my neck’s the only working part of my body. Everything else is immobile, smothered. I mind-film the street—all the Dolphin Egg Blue houses collapsing.
At this point, would sorry make a difference? No. The answer is definitely no.
Tears burn my cheeks, and at first I assume it’s raining. But no, it’s me. I’m breaking, sinking, leaking from the inside out.
“You know how this feels?” Sebastian continues, tearing up a bit himself. He doesn’t finish the thought, even though I already know how it must feel: worse than betrayal, an ax mark through his trust.
Say something, my every brain cell screams. Anything! But all I do is watch dumbly as he runs a hand through his mussed-up hair, clasps his handlebars, and says one last thing: “I loved you, you know?”
No, I didn’t, not really. The past tense of the word socks me right in the cheek. Judging by the creases in his face, love has transformed into something very different.
The worst thing? I love him—present tense.
In the movies, girls always fall for guys who are a little broken; but usually, they’re not the ones to break them.
Maybe Álvaro broke him first. Maybe we used the same ax.
Sebastian’s feet are a whir in the pedals, speeding away like I’m a bomb about to explode this whole neighborhood to smithereens. (Maybe I am. Sure feels like it.)
Four days ago, he was saying, “I’m not a leaver,” and what does he do the first major chance he gets? Why does everyone leave me when I need them to stay?
When he doesn’t look back—not once—an overwhelming need to run floods through me, so I do; I spin around and sprint, praying I’ll go so fast I’ll sprint myself back through time. I run until my hands bleed into the air. I run until my breath is faster than I can catch. I run until the stars on my shoes can’t hold on any longer, until they lose their grip and slip off like they were never there.
It rains.
In classic films, rain symbolizes renewal, but on the first day of Sebastian not speaking to me, as rain seeps under cracks in doors and windowpanes, I realize that’s a bunch of baloney. I feel just as wrecked as I did before.
Early in the morning, I call in sick to Silver Springs. It’s the truth, isn’t it? All my symptoms mimic the flu. In the shower, I double over from all the guilt and hurt flooding my abdomen in electric waves and afterward plunk down on my bedroom carpet, my hair still wet. Staring up at the plastic constellation on my ceiling, I pray that it has retained some magical wish-upon-a-star quality. So far, no luck. By ten a.m., Sebastian hasn’t texted, called, or sent a carrier pigeon.
I press my lips together to keep from screaming bloody murder.
The rest of the morning, I gorge on M&M’S, watch An Officer and a Gentleman, absorb none of its plot, contemplate if happy endings are only realistic in unreal worlds. But most of all, I think of Sebastian.
I think of us in Cass’s garage. I think of us putting each other back together, only to tear ourselves apart.
Checking my phone once more—seeing there’s nothing from him—is enough to tip me off the edge. My heart guides my fingers, knowing just what to do.
Cass answers groggily on the third ring. “Linzer Torte?”
“Hey”—forcing out words—“can I come over?”
I can hear her sitting up, concerned. “What’s wrong?”
“Just, can I come over?”
“Yeah, yeah, we’ll make breakfast or something.”
“It’s noon.”
“We’ll make noon breakfast.”
In her kitchen twenty minutes later, I run my fingers over one of the orange streamers still hanging from the party. “Haven’t cleaned up yet?” I say.
Cass grips her temples, obviously hungover. She’s wearing a royal-blue dress with a crisscrossed back, like she passed out after the club. For a second, I feel even worse. Did she go out with Ray last night? And why wasn’t I invited? “My parents thought the streamers added a certain je ne sais quoi. But that’s beside the point.” She throws a hand over mine on the countertop. “What’s going on?”
I steady myself. “It’s about Sebastian.”
“Are you okay?” she says. “Did you two . . . Linny, did you have sex?”
Seriously? Can she read it on my face?
“No, of course not.” It’s a knee-jerk reaction, what I’ve been blurting out for years. I don’t even know why I say it—because this time I’m no longer the Virgin Marilyn. I quickly realize that Cass would make me feel like I’ve joined a club; all the specialness would leach out of it, and I want it to be ours—just mine and Sebastian’s—a little bit longer. Isn’t that all I have left?
Cass says, “Half the school saw you guys making out in that tree, you know. I
t wasn’t too far of a stretch. . . . So what’s happened then?”
There’s a fumbling down the stairs as Ray emerges in jeans and a pajama top, scratching his head. “Waffles or pancakes?” he asks before he sees me, and then: “Oh, Linny’s here! Hi! Definitely waffles.”
I’m pondering what about me inherently signals waffles when Cass explains Ray’s presence. “We had a late night last night and his parents are in New York.” To Ray: “Linny was about to tell me something,” and instantly all eyes are on me. It’s too much. Are the lights getting brighter?
“Not before waffles,” I say, attempting to sound cheery.
Cass surveys the fridge, which has a few lonely cans of beer in the vegetable containers.
“Can you put alcohol in waffles?” Ray asks.
“Why would you want to?” I say.
“Doesn’t matter.” Cass slams the fridge. “My mom forgot to buy eggs. And flour. And sugar. Soooo . . . Pie in the Sky?”
“Pie in the Sky,” Ray repeats.
The three of us hop into Cass’s mom’s Subaru, Cass (still in clubbing clothes) at the wheel. Light pours into the car. Also on the hangover struggle bus, Ray groans, “So. Bright.”
“Kind of ironic,” I point out gloomily, “coming from a former Ray of sunshine.”
Ten minutes later, we rock up to the bakery. It’s kind of our place since Grace left. Sometimes we’ll skip third-period gym and drive here to stuff our faces with double-chocolate mocha chip cookies. Cass always claims, “It’ll just go to our chests,” and who can argue with that logic? (Well, Ray. He has no desire for boobs.)
Inside, Pie in the Sky is air-conditioned bliss. We order coffee and enough pastries to feed a small African village.
“We’ll take seven croissants,” Cass says, “and three chocolate doughnuts.”
“And coffee,” I grunt. “Just—all the coffee.”
Cass and Ray are already at our usual table—the one at the back, by the windows—and Ray is still complaining: “So. Freaking. Sunny.”
As I sit down, Cass waggles a piece of doughnut under Ray’s nostrils. “Take a bite. Yummy, yummy, soak up the alcohol in your tummy.”
If Birds Fly Back Page 22