There she was.
Finally, Isa got up. She wove her way around the tables until she was standing directly in front of me.
“Emmy,” she said, pushing her sunglasses up so they were perched on top of her head.
I snapped out of it. The feeling of weightlessness vanished, my two feet firmly back on the ground. I threw my arms around her and hugged her tightly, and her hair shifted in such a way that I realized she was wearing a wig.
“Let’s go talk somewhere a little more private,” she said.
She led me around the back, where there was another outdoor seating area, separated from the first one by a wall of wooden trellises. There were several tables, all of them empty, and we sat down at one of them. For several long moments, neither of us said anything. Finally, Isa smiled.
“Say something,” she said.
“I can’t believe it’s you. That you’re here.”
The smile widened. “I could say the same about you.”
“What... what are you doing?”
“What am I doing? Living life. This place is beautiful, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
Isa looked over my shoulder. “That guy you were with looked totally familiar. Where’d he go?”
“He wanted to give us some time to talk by ourselves.”
“Ah. A gentleman.” She snapped her fingers. “He was at Heathens that night, wasn’t he? One of the security guards. That’s where I know him from.”
I stared at her.
“What?” she said.
“How can you act like we’re just resuming a conversation? Like everything is totally fine?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
“You mean you weren’t expecting to ever see me again. Because you just disappeared. You totally vanished, without a trace, without bothering to tell anyone where you were going or why you were going or... or anything. You just disappeared! How the hell can someone do that?”
“Whoa,” she said, holding up her hands. “Listen, Emmy. I know that someone like you wouldn’t understand this—”
I got right up into her face, which was like looking in the mirror, in a way, except not. “What do you mean, someone like me? Someone who’s responsible? Who wouldn’t just take off without telling anyone? Who would actually be considerate of the people in her life and would have the courtesy to let them know that she was okay? All things that you completely neglected to do? I can’t believe that you’ve just been up here in Canada the whole time doing—what? Being a hermit?”
“You are the last person who should criticize me over something like that.”
“I just can’t believe that you didn’t think you’d need to get in touch with anyone. What about Mom and Dad? They’ve been worried sick.”
“When is Mom not worried about something? I mean, part of me was hoping that maybe this would finally get her to leave the house! If the disappearance of one of her own children doesn’t, then that’s it, Emmy—I don’t care what anyone else says; that woman is never leaving the house.”
“Don’t even try to turn this around and make it sound like some sort of humanitarian mission you were engaging in. Don’t even try that, because I’m not going to buy it. What you did was completely selfish. The police got involved. People were holding benefits for you, and trying to raise money. Les—remember him?—he put flyers up all over the city for you. And Morgan.”
Isa snorted. “Oh, great—Morgan? He got in touch with you? Morgan’s a little too territorial for his own good.”
“He’s in love with you! He left his wife and kids for you!”
“We had a good sex life and he liked that I wasn’t boring like his wife. That’s what he liked.”
“Whatever. The point is you just left without saying anything. You couldn’t even be considerate enough to at least let one person know where you were going. Do you know how much time I’ve spent looking for you? Trying to talk with anyone who might be able to shed any light on this? I don’t even know why you left. Why, Isa, did you leave? Could you at least tell me that?”
She looked out toward the horizon, as if the answer was somewhere out there, where the sky faded from blue to light blue to washed-out bluish gray. “I left because I had to,” she said, still looking toward the horizon. “I was done with that way of life, and everything about it. Everyone probably thinks it’s so glamorous and exciting to be a DJ—I did too, for a while. I loved it. And parts of it I still do love, and I miss it. But it’s just time for me to do something else.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Plenty of people decide to change careers or whatever. But they don’t vanish off the face of the earth—unless they did something really bad.” I tilted my head and looked at her. “Did you? Did you do something really bad?”
“I wasn’t always as good as you are, no,” she said. “And I might’ve gotten involved in a few things that I shouldn’t have.”
“Like with Lucas Oddland?”
“What do you know about Luke?”
I cringed hearing her use the shortened version of the name. “I know that he tried to kill me after I told him I wouldn’t do whatever it was that you did with him. He would have killed me if Jason hadn’t come in at the last minute.”
“Your knight in shining armor,” Isa said with a smile. “Good for you. He’s hot. And Luke? Luke and I had an appreciation for each other because we are into the same things. Some of the same things. Things that other people aren’t really into.”
“Like what?”
“Let’s not go there.”
“Why not? I think you at least owe that much to me—honesty.”
“I just don’t think it’s the sort of thing you want to hear. I don’t think it’s the sort of thing that I want you judging me for.”
“I don’t know if I could judge you any worse than I am right now.” Though I knew I could. I knew there was plenty she could say that could make me look away in disgust.
“Okay,” she said. “Fine. You want to know the truth? The truth is there is a side to me that you don’t know about, that most people don’t know about. For the longest time, I tried to ignore it; I tried to be good, like you. You’ve always had it so easy, you know that? No, I don’t think you do. I don’t think you realize how easy you have it, because you’ve always done the right thing. And not only that—you want to do the right thing. It’s not even like you have some desire to do something bad and you have to fight against it—you don’t even want that in the first place.”
“We’re not talking about me right now. We’re talking about you.”
“Did you like it when Luke strangled you?”
I stared at her, my mind flipping back to a few minutes ago when I had first brought Lucas Oddland up. Had I said anything about strangling? No, I was pretty certain I hadn’t. “How did you know that?”
“Because that’s one of the things I like.”
I stared at her. “You let him do that to you?”
“Not only let him—would let other people watch. Aside from the club, Luke has a production company. Makes all sorts of videos, mostly of the sort that I’m sure you’ve never seen before.”
“You mean like porn?”
“Adult videos, yes.”
“You’ve done porn?”
“Not recently. But yes.”
“Why?”
“Because why not? I wasn’t being forced to do it—I wanted to. I enjoyed it. It aroused me even more to think that there would be people watching it, and they’d be getting aroused by something that I was doing. It was empowering. But, in the end, Luke wanted too much. They all wanted too much.”
“Like who?”
“Like Warren, trying to get me to agree to this residency in New York, and then another thing in Amsterdam. Like Rory Dark.”
“Rory,” I said.
She gave me a skeptical look. “Don’t even try to tell me that you talked to Rory,” she said.
&nbs
p; “No, I wasn’t able to. I didn’t know how to get in touch with him. Warren wouldn’t give me his number. Who is he?”
“He’s a drug dealer. I used to smuggle drugs into Ibiza for him.”
“Oh, my God, Isa—why? You could go to jail if you got caught for that!”
She shrugged. “I don’t know why. I did it for the thrill. Because I could. Because the people at customs got so used to seeing me that they barely even noticed when I went through. I mean, I probably could’ve just put the stuff in my purse and gone right through and it would’ve been fine. I didn’t, of course, but I could have.”
“Where did you put it?”
“If you use your imagination, you’ll probably be able to figure it out.”
I didn’t want to think about that. All this conversation was really making me realize was the fact that there was probably something a little bit wrong with my sister. It didn’t seem normal to smuggle drugs into a country just because you were “looking for a thrill.” Or to make porn videos. Or to enjoy being strangled.
“But I got sick of all that,” Isa continued. “I’m sure Rory isn’t too thrilled—not that he has any reason to be mad. I never ripped him off, don’t owe him any money. We did have a good little thing going on, and I’m sure he’s pissed that it’s over—or maybe not; maybe he’s already moved on and found my replacement. He was always very resourceful, so I certainly wouldn’t put that past him.”
None of her answers were good enough, though. Nothing made any sense. I pressed my hands up to my temples and rubbed. Isa laughed.
“Come on, Emmy,” she said. “You’re being a little dramatic with all of this, don’t you think? Is this really necessary?”
“How can you say that? Is your family just supposed to forget about you?”
She gave me the tiniest of smirks, a glimmer in her eyes. “It’s not like you and I had this amazing bond or anything. You wouldn’t even come out to see me in Ibiza. I bought you a ticket and everything.”
“That’s not the point! So what if I can’t just drop everything because you say so! That doesn’t mean anything other than I have responsibilities that I’m not just going to leave behind.”
“Your drawing? I thought that’s what the whole appeal of the work-at-home, telecommute life was all about—your schedule is flexible. You’re here, aren’t you? You must’ve been able to do some rearranging.”
She continued talking, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. It was like I didn’t even know who she was. And I realized that was true. That hadn’t really changed, ever since we got to high school and started to venture our separate ways. Until a point, our lives had been on the same trajectory—then that path had split, two lines that were destined to never truly intersect again. In the time she’d been gone, though, I had somehow convinced myself that she was different, that I was different, that our relationship would be different if only I could see her again. Yet here I was, and the realization that nothing had really changed slammed into me with hurricane force.
“Hello? Earth to Emmy?” Isa waved her hand in front of my face. “Did you hear me?”
“Sorry—what?” I blinked, trying to grab on to the last thing she’d said.
“I said, why don’t we just try to enjoy ourselves and not talk about all this other stuff? Let’s have some fun. When was the last time you and I had fun together?”
“That’s it then, huh?” I shook my head. “You want to pretend that we’re all on some vacation together, something we planned to do, not something that is happening because you decided to run away. What are you—twelve? It’s so ridiculous, Isa; I don’t think that I can just let this go and pretend everything is normal. Because it isn’t. Because a normal person wouldn’t do something like that.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She waved me off. “I’m not normal. I think we established that already. I’ve already tried to explain it to you, and you don’t really seem to want to understand. You’re just being stubborn. You’re just clinging to this idea of how a person is supposed to live their life—an idea that is sadly limited.” Isa came over to me, put her hands on my shoulders and looked right into my eyes. “When you can get past all that, when you can shed all those ideas that you’re supposed to do something for someone because that’s what the rest of the world expects, well... it’s very freeing. It makes you realize just how screwed up your life was before.”
“It sounds to me like you’re trying your best to rationalize a completely selfish decision.”
“You’ve always played it safe, Emmy. You’re too afraid to ever do something outside your comfort zone. A lot of people are like that. Look at our own mother! Our whole lives she’s been a total basket case, and now she can’t even leave the house. Is that how you want to end up?”
“Of course it’s not!” I snapped. “But that doesn’t mean I need to go and do something like what you did. And why is that guy inside calling you Callie? Is that what your name is now?”
“That’s how people around here know me. That’s what my driver’s license says.”
“You have a fake ID?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. I’ve had fake IDs since I was teenager.” She leaned her forearms on the table and smiled. “Listen, Emmy. I sure hope you didn’t come all this way just to start some sort of fight with me. I am at peace with all the decisions I’ve made, which I know might not suit some people. But is that my problem? Am I in control of how other people feel? If all you do is concern yourself with doing what other people think you should, you’re going to drive yourself crazy. Or end up wanting to kill yourself, because you’re never going to be able to make everyone happy. How does that saying go? As long as you do what you want to do, at least one person will always be happy?”
“What is that, your life motto or something?”
“I guess so. And I don’t know how long I’m going to stay up here, or where the wind is going to take me. But I love that. I love the idea of just being able to go where I want, when I want, not having any responsibilities or people’s expectations holding me down. Maybe I’ll even come back to California someday.”
“Just like that, huh?” I said. “You’d just waltz back into everyone’s lives like you’d never left in the first place, and expect everybody to just be okay with that.” The thing was, they probably would be. Sure, some people might be mad, but only for a little while—nothing that they’d be able to sustain. “And then what? You get sick of that life again and you just take off?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
She took a sip of her drink. There was no point in trying to argue with her about this, in trying to get her to understand how screwed up it really was. I understood that now. Had she always been like this? Had she always been so thoughtless when it came to how her actions might affect other people?
If I was honest, the answer was probably yes, but because she’d never done anything this drastic, it was easy to just laugh it off and say that’s just how Isa is. Marches to the beat of her own drummer. The black sheep of the family. Whatever tired cliché you wanted to use.
“What should I tell Mom?” I said. “I told her that I was coming up here, but not because I was trying to find you.”
“I was going to get in touch with Mom eventually. You can tell her whatever you want. You can tell her how awful you think I am, because I can clearly see it on your face—you think I’m awful.”
“I think what you did is awful, because you don’t realize the amount of stress you caused so many people. People you don’t even know. Have you been online? Do you ever check your old social media accounts?”
“No. I don’t. It’s surprisingly easy to just ditch all those things. Very liberating, actually.”
“Well, I can tell you that there’s a ton of people—fans of yours—who would really like to know what happened to Isa.”
“Are you going to let them know?” Something faltered in her expression. It was brief—so brief that I would’ve missed it if I ha
d blinked—and I realized I’d found perhaps the one action that could ruin this whole thing for her. All I had to do was reach into my purse, pull out my phone and snap her picture. Upload it to Instagram, or Facebook, tag the shit out of it. Start a new hashtag: #isahasbeenfound—“be sure to check in at this café,” and her fans would swarm the area.
“Don’t you think they deserve to know? At least that you’re safe? I mean, people thought you were kidnapped. Being held somewhere against your will.”
She smirked. “I would never be held anywhere against my will.”
“Right, I forgot. You’ve got superhero powers. No one can hurt you.” I said it sarcastically, though I was starting to wonder if perhaps that was the truth. “It would be the kind thing to do.”
She nodded as though mulling this over, then leaned back so she could pull something out of her pocket. A pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
“You smoke now?” I asked as she lit the cigarette. The smoke wafted toward me and I sat back in my chair.
Isa laughed. “God, look at your face. Yes, I smoke every now and then. It’s probably the least offensive thing I’ve done.” She exhaled a plume of smoke.
I sighed, slumping back in my chair. I hadn’t known what to expect if I saw Isa again. I had believed I would, and now here I was, but the conversation certainly wasn’t going how I wanted it to. I wanted her to say she was sorry; I wanted her to say she would come home and tell everyone else there she was sorry. I wanted her to tell me that she’d felt bad we hadn’t been as close as we could have been and she’d like to remedy that.
But none of those things seemed forthcoming.
“We’re staying here,” I told Isa, and gave her the address. “If you’d like to come by before we leave, you can. If not, well... I won’t be too surprised.”
“At least let me give you a ride,” she said. “Unless your man is waiting?”
“His name’s Jason. I told him I’d text him when I was done. He might’ve gone back to the house.”
“I’m giving you a ride. You came all the way up here to find me; the least I can do is give you a ride back to your place.”
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