I'm Not Missing

by Carrie Fountain

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.

  “I am. Are you?”

  I walked over and peeled off his hoodie, pulling it awkwardly down his arms and dropping it to the floor. Nick watched me. His face was close to mine. I could hear his breathing. We stood looking at each other for another long moment.

  “I’m going to take off my clothes,” I said with embarrassing straightforwardness, as if I were announcing I was going to start puking.

  His eyelids fluttered. “Okay. Are you sure?” I felt my cheeks burn. “It’s okay if you don’t want to do this. It won’t change anything.”

  “No. I’m good.” I was trying my hardest to make it true.

  “So that’s a clear yes?” he asked. He hadn’t laid a hand on me.

  “Well, yes. Unless it’s a no. For you.”

  Nick tilted his head and looked confused. “It can be. Yes. A no for me. Yes. It feels like a no for you. Honestly. Even though you’re saying it’s a yes. I’m just—seriously—I’m just on the level of straight-up consent 101. Your yes doesn’t sound like a yes.”

  I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation. Syd was ruining everything once again.

  I looked into his face for a few thousand years, not knowing what to say. I tried once again to rally. I imagined how Syd’s phone would shatter so satisfyingly under a hammer.

  “I’m just nervous,” I said.

  “Yeah, okay.” He smiled an actual smile and everything felt better. “Me too.”

  “Did you earn a Boy Scout badge in consent 101?”

  “Shut up, please,” he said.

  “Enthusiastic yes,” I said, giving him a Scout’s salute. Then I kissed him.

  “Here.” I led him to my bed. We sat down. I thought of Syd’s stupid phone at the back of my closet. Why hadn’t I taken it out of the room? I leaned in and gave Nick another prolonged kiss. He responded, pulling me closer. It was all systems go. I could feel it. Nick put his hand on my waist, and his fingers moved down.

  “Can we stop?” I asked suddenly. His fingertips had traveled no more than a millimeter under the waistband of my panties.

  He pulled away, looking guilty. He looked like he wanted to throw his hands in the air. “Of course. I’m sorry. This is what I didn’t want to do—I didn’t want to pressure you. We don’t have to do this.” He swallowed. He looked a little relieved, too, but also a little frustrated. “That’s what I was saying.”

  “I know.” I put my face down into my palms. “I’m sorry. I want to jump your bones, Nick. So bad. But I just can’t. Tonight.” I considered telling him a lie—I’d started my period at dinner? But I didn’t need to do that. Nick didn’t need a lie. I sat there for a moment. My body was so confused. It wanted to keep going, but my mind wouldn’t let it. “All I need is, like, twenty-four hours.” I shot Nick a glance. “Twelve, even.”

  Nick put his hand on mine and knocked my shoulder with his and pointed at the alarm clock on my dresser. “Twelve hours from now we’ll be in French. So, that’ll be super-convenient.”

  I laughed. It felt so good. I leaned into him. “Do you hate me?”

  “Why do you ask that when you know the exact opposite is true?”

  “Yeah?” And what was the exact opposite of hate? I swallowed hard. This was it. It was going to happen. Right now. It had to. What Nick just said was an invitation. “You know…” I began. But the fear scaled my spine again and stopped me.

  “I do not. Know.” He bit his lips together. He was just as bad at this as I was.

  I clasped my hands together and clenched my jaw and tried, but it wouldn’t come. I looked at him. He looked at me. Finally I just spat out the first thing I could think of. “Do you know what a Goldilocks planet is?”

  Oh my god. What was I doing? And why did I have to go outside our solar system to do it?

  But then Nick’s eyes lit up. He sat with his back a little straighter and searched the ceiling with his eyes. “Okay, wait.” He closed his eyes. “Okay.” He quietly cleared his throat. “A so-called Goldilocks planet is a planet that orbits within the circumstellar habitable zone of a star and has a planetary surface that, given sufficient atmospheric pressure, could contain liquid water and thus could support biological life. This habitable zone is commonly known as the Goldilocks Zone, an analogy taken from the fairy tale about a girl who chooses among three bowls of porridge, rejecting the one that is too hot and the one that is too cold, and finally choosing the one that is, quote, just right. Unquote.”

  He opened his eyes. He beamed, triumphant.

  I stared into his face, dumbfounded. “What the hell was that?”

  “Academic Decathlon.” He grinned. “I can do lots. The fundamentals of microeconomic development in Latin America. Titles of paintings by Frida Kahlo. Songs by American folk music icon and Nobel Prize–winner Bob Dylan.”

  “That is totally insane.”

  He shrugged. “I’m very smart. Number one in my class, if you remember.”

  “Okay, whatever.” It was back to the task at hand. My heart started racing again. I could hear my breath get shaky and hoped he couldn’t. “I’ve just been wanting to say—to you. That I’ve thought about it and—I think—it’s like you and me. It’s like, I think this is my Goldilocks planet. I think— You’re in my habitable zone.” I looked at the floor. That had gone even more miserably than I could’ve ever expected. Not only had I not said the words I’d meant to say—I love you, three simple words—now I’d added the fuel of the world’s stupidest metaphor. The Dumpster fire blazed brightly. If anything, now that it’d come out of my mouth, it sounded like I was telling him I was pregnant. I shrunk with embarrassment. When I ventured to look up at him, I expected total bewilderment on his face.

  Instead he was smiling widely. “Seriously?” He looked down at me.

  “Seriously,” I whispered. Two more seconds and I’d be in tears.

  He looked at the ceiling again, the way he had before, as if he were trying once again to recall the correct answer. “Okay. Yeah.” He nodded. “I love you too, Miranda.”

  “Oh.” He said it. My heart burst in my chest. “Really?”

  “Is that what you were saying? With your space metaphor?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But I didn’t say it.”

  “Well, one of us had to.” He put his hands in his lap.

  “We’re bad at this.” I reached over and took his hand and squeezed it, hard. “So: I love you.” I nodded once, for emphasis.

  “So: I love you too.” He leaned in and kissed me. We looked at each other for a long moment, as if trying to detect a change.

  “Okay.” I felt supercharged suddenly. Unstoppable. I swung around so I was suddenly straddling him. “Twenty-four hours.” I pushed him down onto my bed. “Things are gonna get real up in here, sucker.”

  “You are so weird,” he said, looking up at me dreamily.

  “So are you,” I answered.

  * * *

  That night, I couldn’t sleep. I read (quite appropriately) about my favorite of the virgin martyrs, Saint Cecilia, who, determined to remain chaste for the love of God, told her husband she was betrothed to an angel. I read Saint Patrick, famous for having driven the snakes out of Ireland, though that wasn’t an actual confirmed miracle. Evidence shows postglacial Ireland never had snakes, my mother had written at the bottom of the page. Sorry, Patrick. I read Saint Peter and Saint Ignatius and the harrowing story of Saint Joan of Arc, with whom my mother had clearly been obsessed. “I was in my thirteenth year when I heard a voice from God to help me govern my conduct. And the first time I was very much afraid.” Oh, Joan. Oh, JOAN. My mother was a sucker for the voices. She wrote so much about these tortured saints, I’d long ago begun to believe she’d heard voices herself. Maybe she was crazy, as many people in town obviously believed. Maybe it was her voices that told her to leave.

  I switched off the lights and tried to sleep. But I couldn’t.

  My dad came in at 11:15,
put his keys in the bowl quietly, kicked off his shoes, and walked to his bedroom. I heard the water go on and I heard him brush his teeth. I heard him pee loudly and then flush. Then it was ultra-quiet. After a few minutes he blew his nose so loudly, I was startled. If I’d been asleep, it would’ve woken me up. I smiled and rolled my eyes in the dark. I lay there and wondered if he’d ever have anyone living in this tiny old house with him after I moved out, someone to smile when he blew his nose like an elephant in the night. Was he going to live alone in the childhood home of the woman who’d left him? Was he going to die here, a lonely old man, in the room where my mother had slept as a newborn?

  Eventually, my thoughts wandered back to Syd. Her stupid phone was burning a hole in my closet. Who was I fooling? I threw back the covers and tiptoed to retrieve it and then climbed back in bed.

  I read everything. I read the texts Ray had sent, all business.

  That car is in my name and you need to return it.

  You have a stack of mail here.

  The last read: Shutting off this phone.

  It was as heartbreaking as it was infuriating and made me feel like I’d been a terrible friend to Syd. Why hadn’t I forced her to live with us? Why hadn’t I ever even asked her?

  I read Big Boy’s texts and Math Ass’s texts.

  I read her texts with Erin Harris. Syd would’ve loved them so much, the way they built to an end-of-times fever pitch. THANKS SO MUCH FOR RUINING MY LIFE! Then, the next day, after I’d put the posters up and everyone knew Syd was gone, she sent one more. Yikes, hope ur okay. Now that ur missing, I got an extension on the lab. XO.

  I read every thread. I looked at every photo. I listened to all her voice mails. I devoured everything on the phone, just like I knew I would. If she hadn’t deleted all her social media apps and her Gmail, I’d have scoured those as well.

  I guess I hoped the phone might help me figure out where she was and what she was doing and why. But in the end, I’d learned absolutely nothing. The biggest unknown quantity was the single message from HIM. I kept going back to it. What had gone too far? I got out of bed and grabbed my own phone off my windowsill and entered HIM’s number into new a text message to see if one of my contacts would come up. But no. Nada. Whoever HIM was, he wasn’t in my phone.

  I glanced at the clock. It was after midnight.

  Who cares? I thought. Who is this? I typed into the text box on my phone. But then I realized if I received a text from a strange number asking Who is this? the last thing I’d do is answer. I deleted that.

  Do you know anything about Syd Miller? I typed.

  I let it sit. I acknowledged it felt wrong to send it. But then I pressed send. Delivered. As soon as the word appeared under the text bubble, I regretted it. What was I doing? I felt gross again. Dirty. I deleted the thread from my phone and tried to pretend it never happened. I stashed Syd’s phone in my bedside table and turned my own phone off and threw it in the drawer too.

  As I lay in the dark, I made myself three promises.

  First: if I received an answer from HIM on my phone, I’d simply delete it. Unless HIM wrote back with a physical address and a video of Syd holding up that day’s newspaper and asking me to come get her at that address, I’d pay it no attention. I wasn’t Encyclopedia Brown, hot on the trail. I was Miranda Black, who needed to come to terms with the fact that her best friend was gone. She was gone, of her own volition and without a desire to be found. Her note said: I’m not missing. Her other note said: I NEED YOU NOT TO LOOK FOR ME. She’d removed herself from her own life, and so she’d been removed from mine, too. This was the truth. I’m not missing. I needed to start reciting it to myself like the Gettysburg Address. I needed to stitch it into my consciousness. Yes, it sucked. But the truth often sucked. And I’d survived worse.

  Second: first thing in the morning, I’d take Syd’s phone out of my room, preferably out of the house, maybe to the shed, and I’d leave it there until the reason I had to retrieve it was because Syd was standing in front of my face, in the flesh, asking for it. I’m not missing was never going to sink in if I spent my days poring over Syd’s life. That was sick. She’d burdened me with the responsibility of her phone because she couldn’t be trusted with it. But I couldn’t be trusted with it either. So I’d get it out of my house. If the shed wasn’t enough, I’d destroy it. With a hammer. Or a brick.

  Third and most important: barring natural disaster, zombie apocalypse, death, or dismemberment, I was having goddamn sex tomorrow for the first goddamn time in my goddamn life with the goddamn boy I loved and it was going to be goddamn great because we were goddamn in love.

  Full stop.

  Amen.

  Good night.

  13

  As she did at the beginning of each class, Madame Spencer was standing at the whiteboard, dry-erase marker flying, drilling us on the verb conjugations we’d likely see on the AP exam. I was concentrating hard—the irregular verbs always tripped me up—when Nick turned around in his desk and looked at me. He still sat a row over and three desks up. Will wouldn’t budge. He was not going to allow me even that simple gesture of concession. I allowed my eyes to move for one second from the whiteboard to Nick’s face.

  What? I mouthed to him.

  He shot his eyes up and to the left then turned to face forward again before Madame Spencer noticed.

  I followed to where his eyes had gone and found the clock above the window. It was 8:25. Twelve hours later. I stifled a laugh and Will snapped around and glared as if I were being totally disruptive and compromising his entire educational career. “Sorry,” I whispered, and he turned back around. Still, I couldn’t stop smiling.

  I’d woken up feeling resolved. Making those three promises last night had given me strength that carried me forward all day long. After my dad left for work, I put Syd’s phone in a shoe box along with the Stanford letter, and I walked out to the dusty shed, ceremoniously pushed open the heavy, stuck wooden door, and hid the box beneath a tall pile of painting tarps my dad had neatly stacked on a shelf. I hated the shed. It was full of spiderwebs and the lurking possibility of scorpions and worse. Somehow this seemed like insurance enough that I could leave the box out there. I could leave it alone.

  Throughout the day, the sound of my phone dinging with a new text caused me a small panic attack. It was like the first days after Syd disappeared all over again. But once I’d made it to the end of the school day without hearing back from HIM, I knew I was in the clear. If HIM was going to text back, he’d have done it by now.

  After school, I walked Nick to his car. I had to stay on in the newspaper office because we were putting out a double issue on prom that had to be at the printer by six o’clock. Our journalism teacher, Ms. Boone, was having a meltdown about the deadline and so it was all hands on deck.

  And Nick had been tutoring a middle schooler for the last few weeks and they were having a cram session before the kid’s big math test. “What are you doing after?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Nick said, suppressing a grin. “Nada.”

  “Come over,” I said. “For real.”

  “Okay.” He attempted to nod casually. “I’m sorry, I mean yeppers.”

  * * *

  It turned out Ms. Boone’s freak-out was a false alarm and the newspaper was actually much closer to being finished than we’d thought. Anyway, most of what was left to do was up to the photographers. Copyediting the stories on prom preparations—all those dresses and limos and dinner reservations—had started to make me anxious. I kept having flashbacks. I scrammed as soon as I could.

  I thought I might have time to make things perfect before Nick came over. Light a candle? Is that something sex people did? I hauled ass home. But when I turned into my driveway, I was surprised to find Nick’s car parked in the space where I usually parked mine. I got closer and could see he was sitting in the driver’s seat, doing his homework. He looked up when he heard my car. I gave him a bewildered look. He put his notebook down and p
icked up a small bouquet of flowers—lilies and poppies and some strange blossoms I couldn’t identify.

  “Oh my god,” I said, and rolled my eyes. We got out of our cars. He handed me the flowers.

  “Thanks.” I put them to my nose. “What happened to the cram sesh?”

  “He has strep throat.” He smiled.

  “Oh, that’s so freaking awesome.” I grabbed his hand and we dashed into the house and I tossed the flowers onto the table in the hall as we fumbled into my bedroom. I locked the door. We looked at each other. Neither of us had to ask or say anything. But then, because he was Nick, he did anyway. “This is a yes?” he said as we started peeling off our clothes.

  “Oh my god.” I looked up into his face. “Yes!” I pulled off my T-shirt. When I reached behind my back to unhook my bra, Nick’s face lit up, as if he were having a really great idea. My bra hit the floor. He sighed heavily. He took off his T-shirt. Again, his muscles surprised me. His shoulders were even more perfect naked, dusted with light freckles. He looked at me so sweetly, so thoughtfully, my body ached. I must’ve looked flushed or funny, because he leaned down and kissed me.

  “I’m nervous,” I said. “Are you nervous?”

  “Yes.” His breath was shaky.

  “Do you want to stop?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Do you?” he asked.

  “Absolutely not.” I swiped off my jeans and tossed them. Then my panties. “Shit’s getting real,” I said. He laughed. I fumbled with the buttons on his jeans and when I couldn’t undo them, he took over. He stepped out of his jeans and stood in his boxers and socks. He slid off his boxers. We stood there a long minute, neither of us daring to look down.

  “Okay, I can’t just be standing here in my socks,” he said. He flicked them off in two quick motions.