I'm Not Missing

by Carrie Fountain

  “How was le cinéma?” He muted the TV.

  “Fine. Weird. Super-French.” I tried to sound okay. “Going to bed.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Get some sleep.” The sound came back, the familiar roar and squeak of a basketball game, the crowd calling de-fense. I’d slipped under his emotional radar. At least I’d done one thing right.

  “Night,” I said.

  “Love you,” he called back.

  “Love you too.”

  I closed the door to my room and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror above my dresser. I was wrecked. My eyeliner was history. I didn’t have it in me to walk down the hall and wash my face and brush my teeth. It’d been that kind of night. All I wanted was to be done having it.

  I put on my pajamas and climbed into bed. It felt good to be under the covers, to be surrounded by silence. I considered reading about some saints, but I was too exhausted for martyrdom and stigmata and trying to decipher whether or not my mother was crazy from her marginalia. I switched off the light, said a couple Gettysburg Addresses, and was drifting to sleep when I heard my phone ding from inside my purse across the room. It was a miracle! My phone wasn’t even in my windowsill. It had received a text from inside my purse on the floor. It was Ryan Gosling Saint Jude at work again! The IMPOSSIBLE had happened! My plan had worked! I’d gone fifteen hours without texting and she’d come around! I was a genius who had genius ideas!

  But it wasn’t her. I deflated.

  Instead I’d received a text from JERK-ASS DIPSHIT. I’d forgotten Syd had snuck into my contacts last year and substituted this name for Nick’s. It made me smile. But then came the deep, piercing sadness: my plan hadn’t worked. I wasn’t a genius. I missed Syd so bad right then. She wasn’t just my best friend; she was the best friend. Who else would sneak into my contacts and change the boy who’d hurt me to JERK-ASS DIPSHIT?

  That was when it dawned on me that Nick was texting. I moved to the window and tapped the screen and squinted as if opening my eyes only slightly would help my heart and head take in his words more cautiously.

  Okay, what just happened?

  I stared at the words. Did he not know what just happened? Was he a total idiot? I started composing a response—Are you serious?—but before I finished, he sent another.

  I should have been more clear at the ditch, he wrote. I wanted to go to the movie with you. Like, together. I’m not good at this stuff.

  It took me about fifteen seconds to read the text sixty million times. There was no way of misunderstanding it, even though I was trying my hardest.

  No, I reminded myself. No. It helped that the name above the text thread was JERK-ASS DIPSHIT. I thought of the dress. I thought of my father trying to get me to forget the disaster and focus on a grizzly murder instead.

  No, I wrote back. I can’t. I pressed send.

  Why not? he shot back right away.

  I started typing. Syd was right. I like you. I typed it. But I knew I could never send that, so I deleted it and wrote, Do you remember—but then I couldn’t figure out how to finish the sentence. Nick remembered. Of course he did. He’d apologized at the ditch. For everything. But it didn’t make sense. It didn’t add up. You don’t stand someone up for prom, never apologize or explain, avoid her for a year, and then, boom, suddenly want to watch French cinema like nothing ever happened. There was only one thing to do and that was to put an end to things. He’d forced me into it.

  I don’t trust you. I’ll never trust you. I typed it fast and then let it sit there until I knew for sure it was the truth. I deleted the second sentence: I’ll never trust you.

  I don’t trust you. I tried to find a reason not to send the message, but before I could: tap. I’d sent it.

  I don’t trust you. The words sat there, shining in their bright blue bubble.

  I laid my phone down before me in the windowsill. It glowed in the dark, an oracle. This time Nick took a few seconds before he began composing.

  Okay, he wrote finally. My heart sank. But then he started composing again. I stood, waiting. The three little dots looked like they were boiling. It took so long for him to send the text that I expected a paragraph, but when it finally arrived, all it said was: Can we talk?

  Now? I wrote back.

  Okay. He’d misunderstood me. I meant Now? as in Are you crazy?

  On the phone? I texted.

  No.

  I’d have to sneak out. I was surprised I’d even typed this. I didn’t know what to do. This was precisely the type of situation Syd was so good at navigating. She wouldn’t need to think. She’d simply know the one, correct way to proceed. And that was what she’d do.

  I know what Syd meant about telling you the truth, he wrote.

  WHAT? I texted. My heart pounded in my ears. TELL ME.

  I can’t do this over text, he wrote.

  I took a deep breath and held it. There’s a pecan orchard down the dirt road right next to my house. Meet me there in five. BE QUIET. It’s not our orchard.

  Nick wrote back. On my way.

  For a moment I stood there, dazed. I thought I’d made it to the end of the worst week of my life, but I was wrong. The week wanted to go on. Screw it. I flew into action. Why had I asked for only five minutes? I checked my face in the mirror. I looked like hell. I figured it’d be dark outside. It wouldn’t matter what I looked like. I slipped back into my jeans and put on the R.E.M. T-shirt. I slid on my Vans and rifled through my purse until I found one last piece of spearmint gum at the bottom. I picked off lint and shoved the gum into my mouth.

  I tried to decide the best way of getting out of my house with my father awake down the hall. Option one: I could stroll into the living room and tell him I was going out for a walk. Going for a walk at night wasn’t unheard of in our household. I knew how to find the craters of the moon using only binoculars. I could grab the pair hanging on the hook by the front door and put them around my neck to look convincing. There was a moon out there. I’d seen it through my tears driving home. Waxing gibbous, I’d noted out of habit. He might buy it. He was, after all, the one who’d taught me the phases of the moon and how to find the craters. He’d taught me to look up at the chaos of the night sky and find order in the constellations.

  A night walk wasn’t unheard of for him, either. The year after my mom left, I’d sometimes wake in the night and find the house empty. I’d wait on the porch and yell at him when he came walking up, earbuds plugged into his old-fashioned Discman. He’d apologize. There was always something happening in the sky and he was always looking for it. But even at nine I knew what he was doing out there was wandering around, lost, wondering if we’d ever see my mom again.

  No. It wouldn’t work. No way. It was too late now. If I walked into the living room and announced I was going for a walk, he’d say, “Um, no, you’re not.” Or—more likely—he’d switch off the game and grab his coat, excited to check out Tycho with the binoculars. Waxing gibbous, he’d say. Here we come.

  I had two other options: I could sneak out the front door or I could brave the window. The front door was my preferred method, but only when my father was already asleep. His room was farthest from the front. The door was ancient, squeaky, and the dead bolt was engaged. And he wasn’t asleep. So I was left with the worst-case scenario: I’d have to open the old, heavy, wood-paned window in my bedroom and climb out of it without impaling myself on the giant agave cactuses my father had planted beneath it, most likely to discourage me from doing the very thing I was planning on doing right this very second. The window was treacherous. I’d only done it once, with Syd, when Benny and Letty were visiting and my dad was sleeping next door in the guest room. It was easier with Syd. She was dexterous and strong. She’d scrambled out first and then coached me as I tried, eventually yanking my long legs out the window at a diagonal, away from the razor-sharp spines of the agaves.

  I went to my closet to get my coat. As I grabbed it, I was aware of the gray garment bag hanging farther back. Reall
y? it seemed to ask me. You’re going to climb over a frickin’ cactus to meet That Boy?

  I shimmied the window open inch by inch, trying to be quiet and failing. There was no screen, thankfully, only the sky above and the sea of agaves below. I grabbed the chair from my desk and moved it beneath the window, then climbed to the sill and carefully swung one leg through. I remembered Syd telling me the most important thing when sneaking out is to be fast. You can even be loud, as long as you’re fast. It’s the slow, persistent noises that get attention. I straddled the wide windowsill, staring down into the spiny abyss. You got this, I imagined Syd saying. I turned clumsily onto my belly, hitched my other leg over. I tried to stay close to the house as I dropped.

  Amazingly, I landed on my feet. I was not impaled. I inched out around the agave and tiptoed into the side yard and hopped the low adobe wall at the edge of the dirt road. I looked toward the street and saw no sign of Nick’s car, so I turned and walked along the road toward the orchard, waxing gibbous hanging just above the bare treetops. I felt like I was floating. I looked up and found Orion, then Cassiopeia. They calmed me down. I zipped up my coat. It was cold, but the cold felt good. I felt alive. I reached the orchard. I waited. I swallowed my gum. I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and secured it with the elastic band around my wrist.

  I looked again to the sky. It was a perfect night. If it was just a little darker, if I was about twenty miles away from the city lights, I’d be able to see the Milky Way. I tried to eke out a little prayer. Four score and seven years ago. But I was too nervous. I peered down the road. I thought of walking back toward the street. Maybe Nick was lost. I took a step and felt something strange and warm on my ankle. In the same moment, a searing pain shot up my leg. I freaked. My first thought was I’d been bitten by a rattlesnake. It was my biggest fear, living in the desert, and I’d seen plenty. But I’d heard nothing. Could you get bit by a rattlesnake and not know it?

  I fumbled for my phone and turned on the flashlight and pointed it at my ankle. Two ribbons of blood were flowing across the top of my foot into my shoe. I hitched the leg of my jeans up and shone the flashlight on a three-inch gash across my ankle, oozing blood. Profuse was the word that sprang to mind. This was profuse bleeding. Immediately upon seeing it, the pain doubled. I heard Syd saying, Don’t barf, okay? the way she had when she poked my finger with the pin.

  “Oh my god.” I sat on the ground. “Oh my god.” I was sure I was going to puke or die or both.

  “Miranda?” I heard a voice. I couldn’t tell if it was Nick or my dad.

  “I’m here,” I said. I flashed my phone’s light in the direction of the voice. I heard footsteps and pointed the flashlight to see Nick standing there, squinting.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  “I cut my leg.” I didn’t mention how close I was to puking, though that felt like a much bigger, more immediate problem.

  “How?” He crouched beside me.

  Don’t barf don’t barf don’t barf.

  “Climbing out of my window.”

  “Okay.” He took my phone and shone the light onto my leg. It was weird how commanding he was. “Here.” He sat down and straightened my leg and lifted it onto his lap. He rolled my jeans up carefully until the gash was revealed. It was so bad, it looked fake. “Oh man,” he said. “That’s gnarly.”

  “Thanks so much,” I said, feeling more pukey than ever.

  “Sorry. Don’t look,” he said. “Just keep your eyes on me.” For a moment his eyes met mine and he nodded and I forgot about the pain. I kept my eyes on him. He reached into his back pocket. At first I thought he was going for his phone—to do what? Take a photo for his weird Instagram? But when he brought his hand back, he was holding a neatly folded piece of cloth. A handkerchief? I thought. Who carries a handkerchief? I felt woozy and didn’t know if it was Nick’s weird-perfectness or me beginning to bleed out. He pressed the cloth firmly to the cut. I braced myself, thinking that would hurt more, but it didn’t. It actually felt better. “I’m going to apply pressure for several minutes,” he said, holding my calf with one hand and pressing the cloth firmly to my leg with the other. “What happened? You broke the window?”

  I laughed. “No,” I said. “There’s a cactus outside my window.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Agave?”

  “Wow, Sherlock,” I said. “So am I going to live?”

  “I think so. But you’re going to need to clean the wound with hydrogen peroxide and put on a mondo Band-Aid. If you have one of those butterfly-closure things, that’d be perfect. You know those things? You might need two actually. You might actually need stitches if the bleeding doesn’t stop.”

  “You know a lot about wound care. You inflict a lot of wounds?” I was trying not to be distracted by the way he was holding my calf while he applied pressure with the other hand. Gentle, I thought. How can someone so gentle be such a dick?

  He looked at me and smiled. “Well, since you’re probably going to die right now, it won’t matter if I tell you something, but you have to swear not to tell anyone.”

  “What?”

  He raised the cloth and took a quick peek at the cut. “I’m an Eagle Scout.”

  I busted out laughing. “Shut up. That’s hilarious.”

  “Yeah.” He was embarrassed. I felt like a jerk.

  “You’re a Boy Scout?”

  “No. I mean I was, yes. Now I’m an Eagle Scout.”

  “You’re being serious right now?”

  “I think it’s pretty obvious I’m serious.” His cheeks reddened in the moonlight.

  “Oh my god,” I said. An awkward silence commenced. “That’s—interesting.”

  “It’s pretty dorky, actually. I know. I joined when I was a kid. It’s basically the only way I get to do anything outdoors.”

  How on Earth had I missed this gem? I’d seen every photo of Nick online. He was rarely in the foreground, but I could find him. Anywhere. Tomás’s Instagram was my gold mine. The Allison in his native habitat, my favorite photo was captioned. In it, Nick sat on a log in early morning light, barely awake, his hands pushed between his legs, staring at a fire. Cumulatively, I probably stared at that photo for at least three hours.

  Had those been Boy Scout trips?

  “Huh.” I tried to fit this information into my brain. What could I find sexy about an adult-size Boy Scout?

  “Do you wear that costume?”

  “It’s a uniform. And no. Only when absolutely required. Like, I’ve worn it once.”

  “Wow.” I guessed it was going to be like the ponytail. I never thought I’d love an Eagle Scout. Now I had no choice. “Guess you’re earning your first-aid badge right now.”

  He lifted the handkerchief, which, in light of his Eagle Scout revelation, made a little more sense. He revealed the cut. It was weirdly precise and bright red, but where I expected the blood to come gushing out of it again, it stayed. Applying pressure for several minutes had worked.

  “I already have my first-aid badge.” He smiled. “I have, like, all the badges.”

  “Right,” I said. “Of course.” I wanted to ask where he kept them. Were they sewn onto a sash like Luciana’s Daisy Scout patches?

  He used the handkerchief to wipe the lines of blood on my ankle. He attended to the task with such care and tenderness, I could almost watch him do it without wanting to barf. But I couldn’t. I looked up at his face. His face is right there, I thought. He looked into my eyes. For one second it felt like we might kiss—we might kiss!—like that might be what was going to happen next. It didn’t make sense, but that was how it felt.

  But then again he broke the gaze and looked away.

  “Do you hate me?” I blurted out.

  “No,” he answered plainly.

  “I think you really hate me.”

  “That’s not the case.” He looked back at my leg. “Can I ask you something?”

  “What?” My heart quickened.

  “Do you have any blood-borne
diseases?”

  “What?”

  “According to the Boy Scout Handbook I’m supposed to ask that.” He seemed to understand immediately that he’d made a super-lame joke.

  “Oh.” I fake chuckled. “That’s funny.” I felt like a fool. A few seconds ago I thought he might kiss me. “So what’s the deal? I can’t be out here bleeding all night.”

  Nick looked as if a giant weight had been returned to his shoulders. He moved my leg carefully to the ground and sat beside me on the orchard floor, his arms wrapped around his knees. It’d been a long time since the orchard had been irrigated. The top layers were cracked like the pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle. He picked up a puzzle piece and it crumbled, turning to dust in his hand. He took the world’s deepest breath and exhaled. He looked up into the bare branches of the pecan trees. I couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “Do you know where Syd is?”

  “No,” he answered. “No. But I need to tell you something. About last year. About what happened.” He looked like he was in actual pain.

  “What?” I tried to soften my voice. “Just tell me.”

  “That night. You know. I didn’t come to your house.” He stopped, unable or unwilling to continue. I was getting impatient.

  “I’m familiar with the events of that evening, yes, Nick.”

  “Okay. Well. It was Syd.” He propelled the words from his mouth with such force, it was almost a shout. “She told me not to come.”

  “What?” I was baffled.

  “She texted. She said you’d changed your mind.”

  I must’ve looked like I was watching a TV with no sound, trying to decipher the dialogue by reading lips. When I said nothing, he continued. “She told me not to text you. She said to just leave you alone. So I did. I thought maybe you were sick or something, but she wouldn’t tell me. And then, the next day, she started doing all that stuff. Calling. Texting. She did that stuff to my locker. Everyone was telling me I was a dick. I didn’t know what was going on.”