I knew a year from now I’d be nothing more than a story Nick Allison could tell his Ivy League friends. This Girl I Stood Up on Prom Night. It was crushing. And there was nothing I could do to stop it. In a matter of months, I’d lose Nick to the world, just as I’d lose Syd—or as I possibly already had as of this unreal, god-awful morning.
“So what happened? With Syd? She was unusually insane last night.”
“Yeah.” I resisted the impulse to apologize on her behalf for humiliating both of us in front of his parents. “I don’t know,” I said. “She left. She didn’t tell me anything. We got in a fight—after what happened. In the restaurant. This morning she was gone.”
I pinned my eyes to the far end of the field, to a pump house with the words LCHS Agriculture painted in red but faded to pink. I could feel Nick looking at me, yet he wasn’t saying anything. It was unnerving.
“What?” I said, turning to him finally.
“I’m sorry, Miranda,” he said.
Hearing my name in his mouth was pure electricity. “Oh. It’s all right,” I said.
“I mean for everything. I’m sorry about last night. My mom. And I’m sorry about—everything.” He made the gesture again of tucking hair behind his ear, though this time there was no loose hair to tuck.
I returned my eyes to the pump house, its corrugated metal roof glinting in the bright morning sunlight. “It’s all right.”
It’s all right?! In my wildest dreams, I never imagined I’d let Nick off so easy. In fact, in many of the elaborate fantasies I’d been having for the last eight months, he’d utter those exact words and I’d slap him. Hard. Or I’d say something so perfectly mean, he’d wither. In most of the fantasies, though, apologizing was only the first step. Then the slap. And then, after that, he’d give some really decent reason for having done what he’d done. Then I’d accept his apology. Then we’d kiss.
The kiss was by far the most common ending to the fantasy.
Sometimes he’d ask me to give him another chance. He’d beg me to go out with him—maybe even ask me to prom again. I’d say no. Don’t be an idiot. But I’d soften. And just as he was walking away, all dejected and sad, I’d call after him: Hey. He’d turn, looking chastened, and I’d say: Whatever. Okay. I’ll go. And he’d break out one of his perfect all-lip, no-teeth smiles.
Then we’d kiss.
But the fantasies were always ruined by one thorny detail. I’d been trying for eight months to think of a really decent reason he could give for having done what he’d done. In eight months I hadn’t found a single one.
The bell rang and I jumped a little. In the handful of seconds between the sound of the bell and the sound of people beginning to pour out of the building, Nick and I just sat there, looking at each other. It was painful and glorious and totally ill-advised, like looking at a solar eclipse.
“I gotta go.” He broke the silence.
“Me too,” I said. We both stood.
“We missed the quiz,” he said.
“Oh crap.” I hadn’t thought about French.
“Madame Spencer said she’s giving extra credit for seeing a movie at the Fountain Theatre.” I looked up at him. “Didn’t she say that?” He pursed his lips. “We could go. To that.”
“You mean, together?” I asked, too bewildered to be embarrassed for asking.
“Okay.” Nick smiled. It was, I noted, all-lip, no teeth. “I was thinking of going Friday night.”
“Friday night?”
“Yeah,” he said.
Maybe it was the fantasies, all those kisses full of longing and apology. This weird half-invitation to see a movie for extra credit was somehow worse than nothing at all.
“Yeah, no,” I said.
“Oh.” He fiddled with his backpack strap.
“I don’t think we go back to being French class buddies. You know?” It broke my heart to say it, but it was true. I knew I couldn’t survive another blow.
“Yeah,” he said. “I get it.”
“Do you though?” I bit my lips together to try to stop myself, but it didn’t work. “Do you know how much this year has sucked for me?”
He heaved the backpack onto his shoulders. “Yeah,” he said. “Actually, I think I do.” That pissed me off. Had he suffered in the last year? No way. In the gross and distorted social economy of our small-town high school, his standing me up on prom night had only raised his status, elevating him from the fringes of lame (Instagram sunsets, Academic Decathlon, It’s a STEM thing) to low-level cool.
“I shouldn’t have asked.” He tucked another phantom piece of hair behind his ear. “See you later.” He turned and hiked up the slope of the ditch into the bright sunlight.
“Hey,” I called to him, just like I had in all those fantasies. But when he turned and looked down at me, I didn’t say, Whatever. Okay. I’ll go. I shielded my eyes from the sun bursting over his shoulder. “What did Syd mean? About telling me the truth?”
He looked out over the field for a long moment. Then he shrugged. “Who knows?” He hooked his fingers around the straps of his backpack. “Your friend’s a mystery to me.”
Then he turned and was gone, over the footbridge and down the other side of the ditch, lost in the swarm of bodies moving in and out of the math wing. My heart popped in my chest, a stuck balloon. I stood and waited for the pain to recede. Then I smoothed out the note on my palm and looked at it. She likes you. I took out my phone and sent another text.
NICK ALLISON???? WTF????
I hiked up the ditch and over the footbridge. From up high, I looked again to see if I could find Nick’s head in the crowd. But I couldn’t.
It was for the best, I told myself. I put my head down and insinuated myself into the crowd, adding one more anonymous body to the sea of bodies, making my way to whatever disaster was waiting for me next.
6
At lunch I bought a burrito at the canteen and went out to hide in my car and eat it. I called Letty at her office at Child Protective Services in Santa Fe. It was good to hear her voice, though she didn’t have anything hopeful to say. Syd was over eighteen. She wasn’t a minor. She wasn’t missing. Legally, she’d run away. And in New Mexico it wasn’t illegal to run away. The authorities weren’t going to be much help. Like Tonya, Letty was sure Syd had done research.
“She planned this, Miry,” she said. “She put the most important thing right there in her note. I’m not missing. You know?” All I could give her was silence. She stayed with me in it for a long time. Finally she spoke again, her voice softened. “In a lot of ways, your Syd is the type to run away. You know? Her home life was so bad, and her mom was gone. I mean, I know Syd was really good in school. She was trying so hard, sweetie. But I see this all the time. Some things are just too much for a kid. You know what I’m saying?”
The thing was, I didn’t. I didn’t know what she was saying. I knew these facts about Syd’s life were technically true. But it was impossible for me to conceive of Syd in that way. Syd wasn’t a victim. She wasn’t a troubled youth. She was a champion. She was the founder and president of the goddamned Life Club. The things Letty was talking about: those were the odds. And Syd had long ago decided to beat them to a pulp.
“She’s waiting to hear from Stanford about early admission. Why would she run away? It doesn’t make sense.”
“It happens. I see it all the time. Plain, old self-sabotage.”
“Well, my mom’s gone.” I sounded petulant, like a child, and I hated myself for it. “I’m not gonna run away.”
“Well, you’re right,” she said. “But Syd doesn’t have what you have, Miry.”
“Like what? Like because she’s poor? Or whatever, because—” I was about to launch into an abbreviated summary of Syd’s trenchant ideas about money and power and class, how that can’t define a person, but Letty cut me off.
“No, sweetie,” she said. “I mean your dad.” There was a smile in her voice.
“Oh,” I said.
* * *
Speaking of. By the end of the day, my father had sent thirty-two texts. Each time my phone vibrated, I broke out in a cold sweat. But it was never Syd. It was always my dad. In history, he wrote to ask if Syd had ever enabled the Find My Phone feature on her phone. No, I wrote back. I knew she hadn’t.
Do you have that feature enabled on your phone? Between the word phone and the question mark, he’d inserted an emoji of a crab.
No, I responded.
Would you enable that feature, please? After this one, he sent a lightning bolt. My father was an enthusiastic but perplexing emoji user. It drove me bananas. I never knew what he meant. I decided this little golden bolt was meant to suggest that any second the solution to our Syd problem would present itself in a flash. Out of nowhere. Lightning.
Each of his texts required a response. He’d ask a question about Syd or ask how I was doing. If I couldn’t respond right away, he’d text again. What’s up? Everything okay? Hello out there? As soon as I walked through the door at the end of the day, I saw him relax. I was usually home hours before he was, but today I walked in to find him sitting at the kitchen table, a fresh cup of coffee in front of him.
“Any word?”
“No.”
“Okay, here, sit,” he said. I sat down and let my backpack clunk to the floor at my feet. My dad had a legal pad in front of him covered in his chicken scratch handwriting. He’d scoured the internet. He’d posted in a few forums for parents of runaways. He’d called the police himself. I expected his diligence would’ve yielded a long list of things we could do. But all he’d come up with was that I should put up posters around school and on the campus of NMSU, and that I should contact anyone who had a relationship with Syd. The basic idea was to get the word out. Some people, he’d read, felt so guilty about the motives for a loved one’s disappearance that they were hesitant to reach out. They were paralyzed by their own shame and fear. This was a big part of the problem. The more time passed, the less likely the runaway would return. This wasn’t going to be us, he reassured me.
“Okay.” I swallowed. I’d lied all day when people asked me where Syd was. I’d told people she was home sick. The only person I’d told the truth to was Nick, and that was only because of the note. Was I full of shame and fear? Was I a big part of the problem? All day I’d thought of how I’d yelled at Syd the night before. How she’d stared out the window, chastened. How I’d driven off before she’d even made it through the door of the trailer, even after she’d told me she loved me and kissed my forehead. And how I hadn’t said it back.
My dad glanced over his notes. He asked again if Syd had been involved with a boy. I didn’t know a lot, but I knew Syd didn’t get involved. Boys were a hobby. Besides, what boy was there? Medium Hottie?
“Nothing happened last night?”
“Well,” I said.
“What?” His eyes shot to mine.
“We had a fight.” I laid it out there. It was a fact and he needed the facts. “Last night. I screamed at her. I told her she acted like she was the only person on Earth.”
“Why?”
“She did something embarrassing. To me.” I felt like I was giving confession. “I never screamed at her before, Dad.”
“No.” He pointed at me for emphasis. “No.”
“What?”
“This is not your fault.”
I almost laughed, thinking of how many times my father said those exact words to me in the weeks and months after my mother left. How many ways he’d attempted to convince me they were true.
For weeks after my mother had gone to the Garden, I held tight to the notion she’d wanted me with her. I believed there was some secret plan in the works that would involve the two of us being reunited. Things weren’t finished yet. Any second she’d call to say she was coming home—or coming to get me. She was better. Cured.
But after a month or so, that fantasy began to dissipate. She wasn’t coming back. It was just my dad and me, and it was going to be just my dad and me. For good. I was silent, obedient. I didn’t cry or mope. Outwardly, I was fine. I was stoic, as I overheard my dad tell Benny on the phone. I looked the word up. I agreed. I was totally acting stoic. But inside, I was filled with terrible thoughts—thoughts I couldn’t shake. I worried. At night, especially, my worries bred, they’d grown in the dark, fed by the logic of my sadness and shame. I became sure my father hated me and wanted to get rid of me. My father, barely hanging in there himself, tried his best to help me deal, but even that made me feel awful. He asked if I wanted to see a therapist. I said no, but then he took me to see one anyway. When that one failed to make me less stoic, he sent me to another, and then another. I was a burden on everyone. That was how it felt. I was a burden on everyone I’d ever met. Even my dad. Especially my dad. My mom had escaped the vortex that was my neediness—she’d gotten away, lucky her. And my father, he was sad for having been left behind, left responsible. I was so far gone, I started having fears my father was going to put me up for adoption. I got hooked on that thought. In bed at night it would grip me, and any effort to stop it only made it worse. Finally, one morning, after I’d spent the entire night awake—had not slept even for one moment—I found my dad drinking coffee on the patio and I just asked him. Was he going to put me up for adoption? I just needed to know, either way. Either way was fine. It was the not knowing that was killing me.
“What’re you talking about, chicken head?” He said this in his earnest way, tossing down his New Yorker. I guessed he couldn’t quite comprehend the notion I was presenting to him. Maybe he thought I didn’t understand the meaning of the phrase put up for adoption.
“Are you going to send me away? I just need to know. I won’t be mad if you are.” Saying the words felt good. They’d been trapped inside my body—inside my brain—and now they were out there, floating around the patio. They were free.
It was strange, the way they landed on my dad’s face. I could see him get what I was after. I thought it was promising he looked so surprised by this notion. Maybe he hadn’t been considering it at all. Then I worried I’d planted the idea for him. Now that you mention it …
My father pushed his chair back from the table. He kneeled in front of me and grabbed my shoulders, holding them tightly. He looked into my face, very seriously. I didn’t know what was going to happen. He seemed angry, but not really angry, just very serious. “I am never going to leave you.” He squeezed my shoulders when he said it.
“Okay.” I was a little scared.
“I need you to tell me you understand that I will never leave you, Miranda.”
“Okay,” I said again. I just wanted this to end. I’d made a mistake.
My father let go of my shoulders. “No, listen. Miry.” He took a quick deep breath. His own shoulders fell. He looked a little more relaxed. That helped. “Say it back to me.”
“What?”
“Say it: You will never leave me.”
It was so difficult to say it. Almost impossible. I had to make the words come up from a secret place, somewhere deep inside my body. When I was little and would go to church with my mom, I was always confused by the idea of having a soul. I thought the soul must be an organ. And even when I understood it wasn’t, I still liked to think of it that way. Some little gland, deep inside, where each of us kept the magical thing that made us a person. That was where I had to go to get the words. As they came out of my mouth, I saw them form above my dad’s head. “You. Will. Never. Leave. Me.”
“Okay,” my dad said. He put his arms around me and pulled me into a tight hug. “We’re going to be okay,” he said into my hair, then he pulled back and looked me in the face. “Oh my god, have I not said that?” I shrugged. “Well, we are. No matter what. We’re going to be okay.”
“Okay,” I said. It was such a relief. It felt like I’d been running for days and days and finally—finally—someone had told me it was okay to stop. It was okay. I could stop running.
And that was when I
started crying.
I cried for two hours straight, sitting on the couch with my dad. It was like I had the stomach flu and was puking. He just sat there with me and let me do it. Occasionally he’d say something like “That’s it. That’s okay.” And then I’d start bawling again. He got up twice, once to get me a glass of water and once to get me a cold washcloth to put on my forehead.
“I don’t know why I got this.” He smiled, folding it in thirds and putting it to my forehead. “My mom always used to give us a washcloth when we were sick.”
When I finished crying, he looked a little surprised. A little shocked. Like, Now what?
He took me for ice cream at Dairy Queen, even though it was 10:30 in the morning. We were the only ones there. I was still in my pajamas. We sat in a booth. We didn’t say a word. My father looked happy—or not happy, but okay. And he hadn’t looked okay in a long time. I fell asleep in the car on the way home. My father must’ve carried me into my bedroom and closed the door. When I woke, it was night. My room was dark and cool. Everything felt better. Not good, but better. I could hear out in the hall that my father had turned on the white noise machine he kept in his bedroom. It was the low roll of the ocean, one single wave, duplicated, coming and going again and again and again. I didn’t know where my father was. But I knew he was out there. I went back to sleep and didn’t wake until morning.
How absurd that ten years later, we found ourselves in the same place. Left behind. Only now it was Syd my father was talking about. “She didn’t leave because you yelled at her. You know that, right?”
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