“Me too!” June chimed in. “Pookie is way cool. I definitely think you should go with Pookie.”
I turned to Nico. “I don’t know why you have to come up with some stupid, ridiculous nickname for me.”
June replied for him. “Because that’s just how relationships work, Ali. If you want to stay together forever, you have to come up with the right pet name.”
Tyler and June shared a conspiratorial look. I hated when they did that. It was like they had invented their own secret language using only eyebrows and lip curls, and the rest of us were completely left out of the conversation.
“Exactly,” Tyler agreed. “Just look at June and me. We have, like, twenty nicknames for each other, and we’ve been together for almost four years.”
“Yeah, but that’s different. Yours are all dirty.”
Tyler shot June a flirtatious look. “Don’t you know it, Miss Sweet—”
I covered my ears with my hands and started singing “La la la!” at the top of my lungs. June rubbed my back, letting me know it was over. I lowered my hands.
“If I were you,” Tyler said, handing the list back to Nico, “I would just pick one and go with it. Eventually she’ll learn to love it.”
“No, I won’t.”
Nico stood up, walked around the side of the table, and sat down next to me. He turned sideways on the bench, one leg on either side of me, and pulled me in close, kissing my cheek. “Okay,” he said a moment later, grabbing the list and holding it between us so I couldn’t see the writing on the front. “I’m making an executive decision.”
“No, you’re not,” I said.
He ignored me. “Henceforth, I shall call you . . .” He closed his eyes and ran his finger up and down the page before stopping in a random location. He opened his eyes, and I watched a sly grin snake its way onto his face.
I cringed, waiting for the horror that was about to befall me.
“Monkey Buns!”
June burst into applause. “Yes! I love it.”
“No,” I screeched. “I hate it.”
“Too bad,” Nico said. “It is decreed. You are forever known to me as Monkey Buns.”
“If you ever call me Monkey Buns, I will never speak to you again.”
Nico ignored my protest. “Let’s give her a go, shall we?” He leaned into me and, with the grace and precision of a museum curator handling a piece of fine art, pushed a lock of my hair from my ear. As soon as his fingertips flicked again my skin, I knew my protest was all over. I would never survive whatever came next.
Then, he bent close to me, and with his lips barely grazing my earlobe, whispered, “Monkey Buns.”
The reaction was immediate. My traitorous body broke out in goose bumps. When Nico pulled back and glanced at my arm, he immediately noticed the hair standing up on end and announced to the entire cafeteria, “It worked!”
Tyler and June cheered. “Mon-key Buns! Mon-key Buns!” they chanted.
I glared at both of them. “I’m not speaking to you two, either.”
“Monkey Buns it is,” Nico declared.
I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to hide my body’s reaction to him. “That’s not fair. You could whisper anything in my ear and that would happen.”
Nico cocked an inquisitive eyebrow. “Anything? Really?”
He looked pensive for a moment before his face lit up with a bolt of inspiration. He scooted even closer to me, until I was pressed up against him and I could feel his chest slowly rising and falling against my shoulder. He shared a conspiratorial “guy” look with Tyler before cupping his mouth with his hand and leaning in close to me again.
For a moment, all I could feel was his sweet breath on my face as his lips lingered near. I closed my eyes. I waited for the delicious chill. I prepared myself for whatever he was going to say because regardless of what it was, I knew it would show all over my face.
Then, in the sexiest voice I’ve ever heard, Nico whispered, “The lasagna in the cafeteria looks disgusting.”
And I melted right onto the floor.
4:51 P.M.
ROUTE 128
INVENTORY: 1968 FIREBIRD 400 CONVERTIBLE (1), CASH ($769.35)
Nico rounds a corner and 128 becomes California 1. Through a small patch of trees, I spot the Pacific Ocean in the distance. Blue and sparkling and endless. Like it never left. Like it’s just been waiting there for me, wondering when I would ever come back.
Thirty minutes later, we cross the Noyo River and are in Fort Bragg. And just like that, the memories of the last time I was here come flooding back. As though that bridge over the river was actually a bridge back in time. Suddenly all I can see, as we drive down the main thoroughfare of the town, is Jackson stumbling drunk along the street, singing at the top of his lungs, high on music and beer.
“Looks like a nice town,” Nico says conversationally.
“Yes,” I say, just as conversationally.
“I hear there are some nice beaches here.”
“Hmmm,” I respond.
This is what we’ve resorted to over the past hour. Pointless small talk. Meaningless chatter. Safe topics that follow Ali and Nico’s Rules of the Road.
“Maybe we should check it out?”
“What?” I ask, before realizing it’s too late. He’s already pulled over. He’s already killed the ignition.
He points just up ahead to a sandy cement road leading to the water. “The beach?” he says, as though it’s obvious. “I could use a little change of scenery.”
I can’t decide whether that comment is meant to be an insult. “Change of scenery” meaning he’s tired of looking at the road? Or tired of looking at me? Maybe a little of both.
“Nico, no,” I protest. “We don’t have time. I promised Tom Lancaster we’d be in Crescent City by nine. It’s already almost five and we still have four hours of driving ahead of us.”
But Nico is already out of the car. “Relax,” he says, clearly annoyed. “We’ll just take a few minutes to stretch our legs.”
The car door slams on the argument that’s hanging on my lips. With a sigh, I grab my backpack from the back seat, open the passenger door, and get out. I trudge behind Nico down the path to the beach, hoping he’ll get a quick glimpse of the water and then turn around.
I don’t want to be here.
I want to be past here.
I want to keep driving.
I find Nico standing at the edge of the sand, as though he’s afraid to step into it, afraid of sinking straight through to the other side of the world. His gaze is fixed on the water.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been to the beach,” he says absentmindedly.
“Me too.”
“My dad used to take me when I was little.”
Startled, I turn and look at him. Nico barely ever talked about his parents. And when I asked, he would give me short, impersonal answers that sounded like they were taken straight out of a preapproved script.
I swallow, wondering if I should ask questions, push for more information, but before I can think of anything to say, Nico starts walking, trudging through the sand toward the foamy white surf of the ocean. For a moment, it doesn’t look like he has any intention of stopping. As though he plans to walk straight into the sea and disappear.
But he halts just short of the water’s edge and sits down, pulling his knees to his chest. His shoulders are stiff. His back is hunched a little.
He looks as restless and agitated as the waves.
I slowly walk toward him, drop my backpack into the sand, and sit down a few inches away, mirroring his position.
He keeps his gaze trained out to sea. “Sorry. I know you’re anxious to get back on the road. I just really wanted to see the water.”
I bite my lip, a million questions dancing through my mind. Questions I know I won’t get answers to. Because Nico doesn’t answer questions. At least not real ones.
“That’s okay,” I reply. “It’s . . .” I turn and
look at the ocean, searching for the right word to describe it. But there is no right word. So I choose the worst word. “. . . nice.”
I expect Nico to make fun of me. To flash me that teasing smile and tell me I’m not giving the ocean its due credit. But he doesn’t. Actually, he doesn’t say anything at all.
“The car was my father’s.” I finally answer the question he posed way back on Route 128.
I look at him, but he keeps his eyes on the ocean. As though he’s giving me space. Privacy. A screen in a church confessional. Obviously Nico knows about Jackson. Well, he knows some. I told him just enough for him to recognize that it’s not a subject I like to talk about. And after that, he never pressed. He never pushed me to divulge more. He respected my secrets. Now, I wonder if he only did that because he was keeping his own. And if he pried, that would give me the freedom to pry back.
“He left it for me before he died,” I continue.
Nico flinches, stealing a glance at me before remembering the invisible privacy screen and quickly turning back to the water. “I . . . didn’t know he—”
“No one knew. I mean, I’m sure he had people who knew. But Mom and I didn’t even know he was sick.”
Nico raises his eyebrows, and I answer the question before he has a chance to voice it. “Liver cancer. The hospital called afterward.” I unzip my backpack and pull out the envelope, keeping Jackson’s handwriting facing away so that Nico can’t see my real name scribbled on the front. “This envelope arrived two weeks later. It has the title to the car in it. It was his most prized possession.”
I wait for Nico to start asking questions.
Why are you really selling it?
Is this the best idea?
What are you hiding from me, Ali?
But he doesn’t ask any of those questions. Because Nico has never done anything I’ve ever expected. It was always one of the things I loved about him. Until it was the thing I couldn’t love about him.
Instead he asks in a taut, strangled voice, “Do you want me to say I’m sorry?”
I blink and look at him, but he still won’t meet my eye. “What?”
“That’s what you do when someone dies. You say, ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ But I’m not sure if that applies to you. From the way you talked about him, I figured it might not, so I thought I’d ask.”
I stare down at the envelope still clasped in my hands and run my fingertip over the remnants of thick clear tape that once held the whole thing together. That kept the contents locked safely inside. It’s funny how you can’t unopen an envelope. Can’t unopen a glove box. Can’t put secrets back in once they’re out.
“You can say I’m sorry,” I tell him quietly.
Nico pulls his eyes from the ocean long enough to look between me and the envelope. He blinks. Once, twice, three times. As though he’s trying to dispel some unwelcome thing from his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Ali.”
Then, we both fall silent. We just sit there and watch the violent waves.
Rolling. Crashing. Dragging dead things out to sea.
When I was eight years old, Jackson picked me up from school and told me we were going on a special trip. As I buckled my seat belt in the back seat of the Firebird (my mother never allowed me to ride in the front), I asked excitedly if Mommy was coming on this special trip with us, and Jackson’s expression shifted. He said no, Mommy wouldn’t like this particular trip. And then he made me promise never to tell Mommy that we had gone.
I remember how those words sunk into my bones, gnawed at them, made me feel nauseous. Jackson had been asking me to keep more and more secrets from my mom, and even though I always agreed, each one seemed to compact upon the growing pile of lies that was already living in our house—lies that I seemed to be a part of. Each one felt heavier than the last. Like another piece balanced precariously on top of a Jenga tower, another likely chance that this could all topple over and bury us.
Jackson wouldn’t tell me where we were going or why. For the entire hour-and-forty-five-minute drive, I kept asking him to give me hints. He kept flashing me that mischievous smile in the rearview mirror and saying obscure things that made absolutely no sense, like “Solace waits and love negotiates.” Or “Run away, go away, hide away, sneak away.”
I told him grumpily that he was terrible at giving hints.
He just winked at me.
I don’t know what it was about Jackson’s wink, but it always made the world feel like a better place. There was this twinkle in his eye. It was like a lighthouse in a stormy sea. There! There it is! See that? We’re safe. Everything is going to be okay.
We arrived in Fort Bragg, at a place called the Black Bear Saloon. After we were seated with menus, he told me this was a special occasion and I could order anything I wanted. At eight years old, I was too young to be suspicious. I was too young to understand what bribery was. Or that the silence of a child could be bought.
Even so, I tested his promise. I ordered french fries and chocolate silk pie for dinner, watching him out of the corner of my eye to see if he balked at this, the way I knew my mother would.
He didn’t. He just laughed and said to the waitress, “You heard the boss. French fries and chocolate silk pie.”
She nodded and made it official on her little pad of paper.
“And for you?” she asked Jackson.
Jackson caught her eye as he handed her the menu. “What’s your name?”
She smiled. “Wendy.”
“I’ll have a cheeseburger, inside out, with extra pickles and a draft beer.” He paused and added in a sweet voice. “Wendy.” Then he winked, and in a less than a millisecond, that wink lost a tiny drop of its superpower.
By the time we finished our meal, the place was already filled with people. I’d barely noticed them trickle in. But when I looked up from my empty plate of pie, I noticed how crowded the restaurant had gotten. And most people weren’t sitting at a table, like us. They were standing around, all facing the same direction as though waiting for something to start.
“What’s going on?” I asked Jackson.
He took a sip from his third beer and said, “What’s going on is that you’re about to experience history in the making.”
I frowned at him in confusion, wondering if this was another one of his unhelpful cryptic clues.
He laughed and reached out to ruffle my curls. “The greatest group of people to ever play instruments together is playing here tonight for the first time in nine years!”
He said this like it was supposed to impress me, but I wasn’t impressed. I was still confused.
“My favorite band of all time is reuniting tonight,” he explained. “And you get to witness it. People are going to talk about this day for decades to come. This is going to go down in the music hall of fame.”
Then, when he could see my enthusiasm was still not up to the same level as his, he added, “You’re named after one of their songs, you know.”
My brain scrambled to catch up. To line up all the pieces so that they made sense.
This is what the special trip was?
Jackson had dragged me all the way up to Fort Bragg to see some old band play?
“Why can’t Mommy know about it?” I asked.
The smile on Jackson’s face instantly vanished, as if I’d just told him that one of the band members had fallen ill backstage and the concert was off. He leaned in close, his eyes boring into mine. “Because your mom doesn’t understand how much this band means to me. How much I need this right now.”
The confusion dug itself deeper into my mind. “Why not?”
Jackson scoffed and downed the last of his beer. “Beats me, kiddo.”
I could tell his energy had shifted, and I immediately felt guilty. I’d said the wrong thing. I’d popped a hole in his seemingly impenetrable balloon.
“So, that’s what all of these people are here for?” I asked, nodding to the growing crowd that seemed to be closing in on us from al
l sides.
“That’s right,” Jackson said, his excitement rebounding. He spread his arms out wide. “These are my people! These people get it!” Then he shouted to the entire restaurant, as though they’d all been friends for years, “Fear Epidemic rules!”
This sent the crowd into a tizzy. People cheered and whooped and hollered. Then Jackson stood up in his chair and started singing at the top of his lungs. “Run away, go away, hide away, sneak away!”
Everyone in the room started to sing along, not missing a single lyric or beat. “There’s got to be a better way to face each day!”
Everyone but me, that is.
I was the only one still sitting, the only one not singing. And yet, I didn’t feel like the outcast. I felt like the only sane person in the room. And as I glanced up at Jackson, standing on the chair, performing to the crowd like a wolf performing to a full moon, I realized I’d never seen my father look crazier.
I run my fingertips through the rough wet sand beneath my feet, noticing for the first time that it’s peppered with tiny colorful pebbles, some of them so small, you can’t even distinguish their deep-green and sapphire-blue hues unless you squint.
A wave crashes a few feet out, and the lingering tide creeps up to the toes of my shoes. It comes and goes in less than a few seconds. But this time, instead of taking everything with it, it leaves something behind. Like a gift. An offering.
It’s a larger pebble, approximately the diameter of a quarter, and the color is a deep amber, like maple syrup. The real kind. Mom brought home a tiny bottle once from one of her fancy catering jobs.
I reach forward to pick it up, quickly realizing that it’s not a stone at all, but a piece of sea glass. All smooth edges and salt-frosted sides.
“Ali,” Nico says beside me, oblivious to my find. It’s the first time that we’ve spoken since I told him about Jackson. “I’ve been thinking about the car.”
I scoop the sea glass into my palm. “What about it?”
He leans back on his elbows, like he’s sunbathing. “I don’t think you should sell it.”
I roll my eyes. We’re seriously going through this again?
The Geography of Lost Things Page 7