Instead, someone has stuffed the envelope with twelve playing cards, all of them jokers.
“Oh my God!” I screech, my head jerking up to see if I can still spot the SUV. But it’s long gone. “That kid scammed us again!”
“No,” Nico says, burying his face in his hands. “They both did.”
2:33 P.M.
ASTORIA, OR
INVENTORY: FEELS LIKE (0)
The chasm opens up beneath my feet.
The gaping hole swallows me, and I’m sinking.
Sinking.
Sinking.
Sinking.
Into the dark, vast nothing.
Nothing.
We have nothing.
We are broke. We are broken. We are done.
The ground keeps disappearing beneath me. The hole that Jackson dug so relentlessly during his life seems to cover this entire parking lot, this entire city, this entire planet. It hasn’t stopped growing since he died. It’s only grown faster. The rate of deterioration has only accelerated.
And now I’m trapped inside of it.
The walls are too high to climb out.
The dirt is too soft to stand on.
I will continue to sink deeper and deeper until I disintegrate into the earth’s core.
They conned us. They took those Seahawks tickets right out from under us. They planned the entire thing. The fight, the sulking, the tears. That woman put on a whole performance about her dead father, while Gabe was in the SUV making the switch. I wonder how many times they’ve used that same Rolex to do exactly what they just did to us.
How could we let this happen? How could he let this happen?
The blood boils in my veins.
The simmering fire inside of me bursts into wild, destructive flames.
I glance over at Nico, his head still buried in his hands.
“This is all your fault!” I scream.
Nico looks up at me, completely taken aback. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me!”
“Um, how is us getting scammed by a mother-son con-artist team my fault?”
“You’re the one who convinced me to go on this stupid journey to begin with. You’re the one who said we could make money on Craigslist. Craigslist will fix all of our problems. All we have to do is trade up. You made it sound so easy. But I told you. I told you Craigslist was full of dangerous, shady people!”
“Actually I think I said that part.” He tries for humor.
I ignore the attempt. “And now we’re stuck here with no money, nothing to trade, a car that’s practically worthless, and they’re going to take my house away! They’re going to take my house away, and Jackson is going to win!”
I lean against the side of the Firebird and sob into my hands. Nico doesn’t say anything for a very long time. And for a moment, I’m pretty convinced he’s left. Walked away. Just like I always knew he would. Just like Jackson always did.
But when I lift my head and brush the tears away from my cheeks, I’m surprised to see he’s still standing there.
He hasn’t left.
Throughout this entire trip, he hasn’t left.
Why hasn’t he left? Why is he still here? Why is he helping me?
“Ali,” Nico says carefully, and I know from the tone of his voice that whatever he says next, I’m not going to like. “Is this about the house? Or is this about Jackson?”
And I was right. I don’t like it. Because it’s a stupid question to ask.
“What are you talking about? It’s about both!”
Nico’s gaze softens as he comes to stand next to me. “I don’t think it’s about both. I think this is all about him.”
I roll my eyes and sniffle. “Of course it’s all about him. Everything is all about him. Jackson is the house! He’s tied up in everything! There’s nothing in my life that’s not about Jackson.”
“So why not make a fresh start? Leave him and the house behind?”
“Because . . . because . . .” I hiccup. “Because . . .”
No matter how many times I start that sentence, I can’t seem to finish it. I no longer know what comes next. Why not leave the house behind, with its cracked paint and ugly shag carpeting and leaky shower and broken first step? Why not just let it go?
“Maybe because somewhere deep inside, you don’t actually want to leave him behind?” Nico guesses.
Something sharp stabs me in the chest. “Are you crazy? Of course I want to leave him behind. What do you think I’ve been doing this entire time? I’ve been trying to leave him behind. I’ve been trying to get out from under his mistakes. Why else do you think I’ve been on this road trip with you? It’s certainly not for my health.”
Pain flashes across Nico’s face, and I suddenly feel horrible. I open my mouth to apologize, but he doesn’t let me get there. “I think you’ve been on this road trip because you’re trying to find something.”
I scoff. “Yeah, I’m trying to find twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“No,” Nico says gravely. “I think you’re looking for a reason to forgive your father.”
I push myself off the Firebird like a rocket coming off a launchpad. “You’re wrong. You’re so wrong, it’s funny. I don’t give a crap about my father. My father was a lying, cheating deserter who never stopped disappointing us. He never did anything for me. I don’t need to forgive him because I don’t care enough about him to even bother.”
“He left you the car,” Nico points out.
“Which was worth nothing.”
“It was worth something to him.”
“And nothing to me.”
Nico smiles as though he knows a secret. “I don’t think that’s true.”
“Why are you here?” I shoot back, turning the tables. Let’s put Nico under the microscope and see how he feels about all the pushing and prodding.
He flinches at the tone of my voice. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what are you doing on this trip?”
“You needed someone who could drive stick shift. And you promised me a thousand dollars,” Nico replies, as though it’s the obvious answer. And it may be the obvious answer, but it’s certainly not the truth.
I scoff and cross my arms. “That’s a load of crap and you know it. What are you looking for, Nico? Why are you really helping me? I know now it’s not because you’re a Fixer. So, why, Nico?”
He runs his fingers through his hair and speaks haltingly. “I don’t know, I guess because I . . . wanted to try to make things right between us.”
Of all the things I thought he would say, that was not one of them.
I take a step back, unable to speak.
But Nico closes the space between us, and suddenly his hand is wrapped around mine. It’s warm. It’s comforting. It’s unexpected. A chill starts in my toes and travels all the way up through the top of my head, leaving me feeling . . . not cold, yet not warm, either. Almost numb.
I turn away because I can’t look at him anymore. I can’t make sense of him. But mostly because I can’t hold on to my anger when he says stuff like that. It’s like a slippery eel that keeps wiggling out of my fingers.
But I have to hold on to it.
Because that anger is all I have left to protect myself against him. It’s the barrier that sits between us, dividing the world in half.
Nico’s side.
Ali’s side.
It’s the only thing that keeps me safe.
And yet now, with Nico’s hand still wrapped around mine, it’s as though he’s reached across that barrier, broken through it. Trespassed right over to my side of the universe. My side of this breakup. He’s bridged a gap that suddenly seems impossibly smaller than it once did.
But I can’t. Because I’ve seen how this goes. I’ve heard those words before.
“I can make it right.”
It was Jackson who said them, but the outcome is the same. It will always be the same.
I pull my hand away from his. “You can�
�t. You can’t make it right.”
Neither of you can.
Nico suddenly lets out an animalistic growl. “Why not, Ali? Why can’t I make it right? Because I’ll leave again? Because eventually I’ll walk out on you, just like Jackson did?” He starts pacing in front of me. “You know, when we were together, sometimes I felt like you were just waiting for me to screw up. Every day, I felt like I was on trial, but I didn’t know what the crime was. And then when I did screw up—when I let you down once—that was it. You jumped ship. You walked out on us. You left me out there in the rain. And I could never figure out why. But now I know. It was never because of me. It was because of him.”
“Are you kidding!?” I scream back at him, causing a few people in the parking lot to glance anxiously over at us. “You left me! You disappeared that night. With no explanation. Only lies.”
Nico stops pacing; he closes his eyes like he’s trying to control some wild beast that’s been living inside of him this whole time, begging to be let out.
When he speaks again, his voice is fierce but controlled. Soft but raw. “I might have disappeared, but I came back. Don’t forget, you’re the one who left that night. You’re the one who threw us away. Just like you throw everything away. Because nothing is sacred to you. As soon as something lets you down, you simply write it off and toss it in the trash.”
My voice is tight, my throat stinging with another influx of tears. “I don’t throw everything away.”
“No,” he agrees. “Just the things that matter. Just the things that could possibly love you back.”
I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. Tears are streaking down my face. “That’s not true, Nico. It’s not true.”
“What happened to the birdhouse we made on your birthday?” he challenges, like he just knows. Like he was at the dump that day. “Do you still have it?”
I ball my hands into fists. I dig my fingernails into my flesh. But I don’t say anything.
“You know what I think?” Nico says. All of the kindness has been stripped from his voice. The only thing left is resentment. “I think you wanted me to be Jackson. I think I got that label from the very start. And then, you were just waiting for me to prove you right. You were just waiting for me to become him so you didn’t have to love me back.” He scoffs. “You wanna know the truth? You wanna know why I really came on this trip? It was never because of the money. It was always to prove you wrong.”
“Prove me wrong?” I repeat in bitter disbelief.
“Yes. I had to prove I’m not the guy you thought I was. I’m not the guy you were so quick to label and cast aside. I am not him! How can I make you understand that, Ali? I AM NOT JACKSON!”
Suddenly I can’t be here anymore.
I can’t stand to look at him for another second.
I turn, yank open the driver’s-side door of the Firebird, and get behind the wheel. I jam my foot down hard on the clutch as I start the engine and peel out of the parking space. The car doesn’t judder or shake or halt; it just drives. As though it knows exactly what to do. As though it’s practically driving itself.
And I guess that makes sense.
It has done a lot of leaving in its lifetime.
For a moment, I swear I hear Nico’s voice calling out to me, but the engine is too loud and I’m already too far away. Still, I don’t turn around. I don’t look back. I just drive.
Because apparently escaping in a 1968 Firebird convertible is in my DNA.
2:45 P.M.
ASTORIA, OR
INVENTORY: LESS THAN (0)
I don’t get very far.
The car keeps stalling.
I keep stalling. In life. In love. In everything.
And now I’m stuck.
Stuck in the middle of this massive parking lot with the memory I’ve been avoiding for the past month.
On the night of Fabian’s Comet—eighty-eight days after Nico and I got together—the rain didn’t clear up as everyone hoped it would. The clouds still hovered ominously above our little town, blocking everyone’s view of this supposedly spectacular cosmic event.
Maybe I was just being overly cynical, but I couldn’t help thinking that it was all our fault. That if Nico and I hadn’t been together, hadn’t been so doomed from the start, that maybe the town of Russellville would have been able to get its unobstructed view at this rare object in the sky.
Maybe the rain had been a sign from the very beginning.
A sign we just failed to see until it was too late.
That night, Nico was supposed to pick me up so we could drive somewhere to watch the comet. Somewhere far away from the lights of our little town and the lingering clouds. Somewhere where hopefully the rain couldn’t find us.
But Nico never showed up.
He didn’t text.
He didn’t call.
He just sort of vanished.
I left him seven messages. I sent him as many texts as there were unseen stars in the sky. He didn’t answer them.
As darkness fell and the entire town was staring up, trying to catch glimpses of the bright bullet of light streaking across the sky, I was the only one looking down. Looking at my phone. Waiting for my own streak of light to come.
But worry clouded my vision until I couldn’t even see the screen anymore. I convinced myself that something had happened to him. His truck had gone off the road and was lying in a ditch somewhere. He’d run out of gas and was stranded in a place with no cell phone service. A meteor, jealous of the comet’s worldwide attention, had plunged down to earth and destroyed him.
Or maybe it was much simpler than that. Maybe his phone had just run out of battery and he’d forgotten his charger.
Night settled around Russellville, and I braved my first glance up at the sky. I expected to see some wondrous light show, worthy of a big-budget Hollywood movie. I expected to feel changed somehow, the way people claim to feel after witnessing something of cosmic proportions. I expected to feel less significant in the grand scheme of things, my little domestic problem eclipsed by the massive celestial object hurtling through space.
But all I felt was more hopeless.
The comet, from what was visible through the gaps in the clouds, was small. Nothing more than a passing blur, dwarfed even by our measly little moon.
I got in my car and headed into town. I drove from one end of Russellville to the other, looking for him. I drove past his house, but his truck wasn’t in the driveway. I considered knocking on the front door and breaking through the barrier that Nico seemed intent on building between me and his home life, but the lights in the house were all off.
I drove downtown and ducked into the Frosty Frog. It was empty. I walked over to the library and checked every stack and every cubicle. No Nico. I went by his favorite coffee shop—Brewed Awakenings—but it was closed. A big handmade sign had been posted in the window that said: GONE TO CHASE FABIAN—SEE YOU TOMORROW!
The town felt deserted. As though Nico wasn’t the only one who’d abandoned me that night. I checked my phone a thousand times, until my battery started to die.
But there was no denying it. Nico was gone.
I thought about going to June’s—she was having some friends over to watch the comet—but the idea of seeing all those people and talking to anyone made me want to stick my head in one of those rusted cast-iron ovens sitting in June’s yard. So I went home instead.
When I turned down the driveway, I saw two bright red taillights cutting through the darkness. I slammed on the brakes, coming to a jarring halt.
My first thought was Jackson.
He was back. This strange celestial event had guided him home once again. A surprising sting of hope filled me. But then I noticed the taillights were too high off the ground to be the Firebird. And they were the wrong shape.
Jackson’s taillights were two thin, rounded rectangles, stacked on top of each other.
These lights were tall and stout, with sharp edges.
A
truck.
My stomach swooped. It was part relief, part dread.
The motor was running, exhaust from the tailpipe visible in the crisp night air. I wasn’t sure how long he had been waiting for me. I wasn’t sure why he didn’t text me to tell me he was here. A small, foolish part of me wanted to believe he’d actually been here the whole time. And, like a lost shoe hidden under the bed, I’d simply overlooked him.
I pulled up alongside him and killed the engine of the Honda. For a few seconds, I sat perfectly still behind the wheel, telling myself to take deep breaths. Don’t overreact.
I opened the door and stepped out. I half expected Nico to leap from the truck as soon as he saw me, wrap his arms tightly around me, and whisper sweet apologies into my hair, but his door remained closed. As though he’d fallen asleep inside. I walked to the passenger-side door and opened it.
Nico was looking straight out the windshield, his face gaunt, his expression stony.
“Hi,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “Where have you been? I texted you, like—” The words got caught in my mouth when my gaze fell on the phone plugged into the charger, perfectly functional. The screen was alight with a notification of my latest attempt to get ahold of him.
Disregarded.
Ignored.
I expected an explanation, right then and there. I prayed it would be a short, simple one that would somehow magically erase the last few hours and return us back to where we started eighty-eight days ago.
One that would finally prove once and for all that Commissioners and Fixers could last.
But I didn’t get one.
I never got one.
At least not a real one.
Nico simply turned toward me with deadened eyes and a somber expression and said, “Will you take a drive with me?”
My heart told me not to do it.
My brain told me not to do it.
Even my feet were screaming at me not to do it.
Do NOT get in that truck with him!
I got in the truck.
Nico and I drove in silence until we were out of Russellville, until we were twisting and turning around the tight bends of Route 128. As though we were afraid the town had ears.
The Geography of Lost Things Page 28