I'm Not Missing

by Carrie Fountain

  “Maryland? Is that close to Providence, where Brown is?”

  “Miranda.”

  “Really? Maryland? Okay. I see how it is.”

  “Oh god. Listen to me. This telescope has been in development since before you were born. It’s basically the most sophisticated piece of technology the world has ever seen to date.” He lowered his head. “I assure you, Miranda. The James Webb Space Telescope is not a ruse the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has cooked up so I can follow you to college.” He slapped the counter. “Please. Get over yourself.”

  We both laughed. “Dang,” I said. “Would you sell the house?”

  “Never. We’ll never sell it. You never need to worry about that.”

  “Oh my god. Will you get to do the press conferences?”

  “No. That’s—no. That’s not even on the table at all.”

  “Roll in, grab the mic, be like: Um, who ordered the Goldilocks planet?”

  He smiled. “That’s just how I’ve always imagined it.”

  “How big a deal are your thingies?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Google it.”

  14

  That night I googled my dad. It was weird. I didn’t know what to call his thingies, so I just put in Peter Black engineer NASA Webb Space Telescope. The articles that came up were mostly too technical for me to understand and only mentioned my dad briefly, or mentioned his in a long list of names. But buried beneath those, I found a short profile on the NASA website, complete with a photo of him standing between a small model of the Kepler and another of the Webb. In a sidebar Q&A, when asked his proudest achievement, he said it was raising his daughter. She’s my life’s greatest blessing. That was a direct quote: my life’s greatest blessing. I stared at the photo for a long time. I’d never once in my entire life heard my father describe a single thing as a blessing. It was sweet, but so strange. I could never mention it. I was sure it’d embarrass both of us. If he’d said, She’s my highest priority, I’d mention it. If he’d said, She’s got a pretty good head on her shoulders and I’m proud of a number of her decisions, sure. But not this. She’s my life’s greatest blessing. I must’ve read the sentence a million times before I closed my laptop and put on my pajamas.

  In bed, I read about Saint John the Apostle. My mom didn’t have much to say about him (Assumed author of Book of Revelation), but at the end of the day, he was probably my favorite saint. John was the only one of Jesus’s apostles who lived to be an old man, the only one who’d been spared a gruesome martyr’s death. As an old man he’d be asked to give mass and all he would say at the altar was, “Little children, love one another.” That was it. The whole mass.

  I was trying to concentrate on John, but my mind kept returning to the afternoon, to Nick’s shoulders, his moan. The way he’d asked me to prom so sweetly—“Really. Just please”—and I caved. When my phone dinged in my windowsill, I figured it must be him. He was having the same trouble sleeping. But when I scurried to the windowsill and grabbed my phone, it wasn’t Nick. It was HIM. After everything that had happened today, I’d nearly allowed myself to forget I’d ever even texted HIM. Finding Syd’s phone—having the wound of her absence ripped open again—and then texting a stranger from mine: hadn’t that happened in a different lifetime? Wasn’t I on the other side of the door? Finished. Complete. Wasn’t I was going to be like Saint John the Apostle, the one allowed to bypass the horrible pain and suffering and grow old in peace?

  Who is this? That was all. I stared at my phone and remembered my promise: if HIM texted me back, I’d delete the text thread. No matter what, I’d be done with it.

  But now, here was HIM. And here was me, finding it impossible to let it be.

  Who are you? I texted, before I could talk myself out of it.

  How did you get this number? he shot back.

  I considered telling him the truth. I was Syd’s best friend. I found his number in the phone she’d left me the night she disappeared—the phone that contained a stern text from him. But I knew that wasn’t a good idea. I’m Syd’s cousin. She put this number in my contacts. Sorry! I pressed send.

  Have you heard from her? he answered right away. He began composing another message, but then stopped. I sensed desperation.

  No, I answered. Have you?

  It took him a while to answer. No.

  I paused and thought of all the training Ms. Boone had given us in how to sniff out a story, or how to get to the real story hiding beneath the surface of another. He’d waited a full twenty-four hours to return my text—but he’d returned it. He could’ve ignored it, but he didn’t. Or he couldn’t. Maybe he’d made himself a vow and broken it too, unable to contain his curiosity. Maybe he was guilty of something and was worried I was on to him. Maybe he wasn’t. Still, I knew I’d have to be delicate with my next communication. I didn’t want to scare him away. He’d told Syd in that last text he was blocking her number. I didn’t want him to do the same to me. I wanted him to talk. This was something Ms. Boone preached to the newspaper staff: be open and wait. Everyone talks. Eventually.

  I waited two minutes. I timed it. I wanted to see if he’d say more. But he didn’t. So I texted, Hey, would you mind letting me know if you hear anything? Just want to know she’s okay, you know? I added an emoji of a hand giving the peace sign, for effect.

  I hoped I hadn’t gone too far in my casualness. I feared I wouldn’t get a text back. But then: ding. I will. You do the same? Please use this number to reach me.

  I remembered the thing Syd had texted me on prom night: Boys are idiots. Aside from the fact that she’d been lying to me at the time—and I was lying right now—the hypothesis felt so true, at least for this particular boy. He thought I was just a slightly concerned, kind of dopey cousin of Syd’s.

  Sure thing! I pressed send. I waited, but he didn’t write back. I put the phone in the windowsill and crawled into bed and returned to Saint John. After a moment I found myself staring off, thinking of the shed, resisting the temptation to sneak out of bed right now and retrieve Syd’s phone from the kingdom of spiders and scorpions. I’d already broken one of my promises. I looked down at the illustration of Saint John as an old man. Beneath it, my mother had written: Actually, not all other disciples died as martyrs. Judas fell on his sword. Died by suicide.

  I closed the book and turned off my light.

  The spiders won.

  * * *

  But it turned out my resistance to Syd’s phone would survive only until the morning. After my father left for work, I walked around the side of the house, past my enemy agaves, across the dusty backyard, and pushed into the shed. I slid my hands beneath the tarps and grabbed the box and took out the phone and letter and shoved them into my backpack. When I got in the car, I took out the phone and laid it on my passenger seat. It was still turned off. I threw my car into reverse and made it all the way to the paved road before I regained my senses.

  I was not going to fall on my sword. Not that Judas was a great example. But still.

  I drove forward, put the car in park, took the phone and letter around the house, back to the shed, returned them to the shoe box, and shoved the shoe box back under the tarps. As I batted at spiderwebs both visible and invisible, I considered the possibility I was developing a full-blown OCD-style ritualized relationship to the damn shed, but I encouraged myself to ignore that fear and just feel proud for having returned the phone to its rightful place: out of my life. Away. Saint John.

  I tried all day at school to forget it, and to forget HIM. I filled every minute of the day with activity. I dropped into the newspaper office before school and, with the issue at the printers and nothing to do, I cleaned up the desks and wiped the whiteboard clean, then ultra-clean. At lunch I went from table to table, like Syd would have, checking in with people. Marcy and the Mormons were especially happy to hear me blather on and on. I even stopped Quinn Johnson to congratulate him on being nominated for prom king. He looked down at me wit
h his watery eyes and said thanks, but I got the honest sense he didn’t know who the hell I was. I tried everything. But there was no use. Something about HIM’s last text kept bugging me, like a splinter in my skin; the more I worried it, the deeper it got. While I was telling Heather Thomas about how a picture of her in her prom dress would be the front cover of the newspaper, my mind was busy turning over this one question.

  Why had he said, Please use this number to reach me?

  Wouldn’t this number imply there was another number I was not to use?

  All day I tried to convince myself I was just being obsessive. But by the time Nick asked me after school if I wanted to go do homework at Milagro—or just go make out in his car—my mind was made up. I gave a lame excuse and exceeded the speed limit all the way home. As soon as I pulled into the driveway, I once again walked around the house, across the yard, pushed into the shed, slipped my hands under the tarps, and grabbed the box. My mouth was watering in anticipation. I felt every spider staring at me, every scorpion.

  The moment I took out the phone and turned it on, I felt I understood how it must’ve felt for Patience to take her first drink of wine after all those weeks in rehab. It was an absolute relief. Suddenly I had no other responsibilities. All I needed was Syd’s phone.

  I tapped the text from HIM. I tapped his contact page. I scrolled down. And there it was, shining like a little nugget of gold: home phone. Beside it, another number.

  I didn’t think twice. In fact, I hardly thought once. I took out my phone and dialed the number. The phone rang once. Twice. Three times. It was ringing so slowly. The shed was dark and hot and silent. With each ring, I became more aware of what I was doing and lost a little more of my nerve. I was about to hang up when the ringing stopped.

  A decade passed.

  “Miranda?” It was a familiar voice.

  “Nick?” I grabbed the old wooden shelf in front of me, sure if I didn’t that I’d faint and fall and break my head open on the stack of cinder blocks in the corner.

  I thought immediately of Judas falling on his sword.

  “Oh,” I scrambled. “Hi.”

  “Hey. Why are you calling my landline?”

  Just then someone picked up another line.

  “Hello?” It was Nick’s mom. I clenched my teeth and tried to die.

  “Mom, sorry, hang up. It’s Miranda.”

  “Oh, hi, Miranda!” Her voice was as bright as the shed was dark.

  “Hi, Dr. Allison.” I tried to make it sound like I wasn’t having a nervous breakdown among spiders.

  “I hear you two are going to the prom. It’s so fabulous. You and your appendix get a do-over.” Even though my head was on fire and I was about to vomit from nerves, I thought it was cute that, like her son, she, too, had called it a do-over.

  “Mom,” Nick said.

  “Okay. Sorry. But I do hope you stop by before the dance. I want pictures. Jason never went to prom. Miranda, sweetie, you’re our family’s only hope.”

  I laughed and said, “Okay,” at the exact same moment Nick said, “Hang up!”

  “Hanging up now.” She hung up.

  “So what’s up?” Nick said. I had absolutely no way of answering. I’d almost forgotten I was having a nervous breakdown.

  “So this is your landline?” I tried to sound bored.

  “Yep,” he said. “This is it. Pretty cool, huh?”

  “We haven’t had a landline since I was, like, ten.”

  After a short pause—too short, I thought—Nick said, “Miranda, did you just call to make fun of my family for having a landline?”

  “No, sorry. Okay. Sorry. I’ll text you later.”

  “Wait, what?”

  Ah, Nick. Wait, what? A better question had never been asked.

  “Oh, no,” I said. “I just called—I must’ve written your number down. I just found it here. In an old notebook. I thought it was your phone number. I just called. To make sure. I guess I could’ve just looked it up.” Of course, it hadn’t occurred to me until I said it that it was true. I could’ve looked up the number and avoided this hideous web of lies I’d begun spinning.

  “Oh. Okay.” That was all he said. “I got a tux.”

  “You did?”

  “It’s the same exact one I got last year. There’s a hole in the pocket. Same hole.”

  “That’s crazy. Can we hang up? Phone calls make me nervous.”

  There was a long, painful pause. Then Nick said, “You’re such a weirdo.”

  “Okay, fine, nerd. Bye.” I hung up.

  It was such a pure relief to be off the phone. It took a long, cool moment for my brain to start working again. It was like the circle on Syd’s phone when I’d first turned it on, swirling and swirling.

  It didn’t make sense. Nick’s number and HIM’s number didn’t match. I checked. They didn’t match! Syd hated Nick and Nick hated Syd. Nick wasn’t HIM. There was simply no way Nick was HIM.

  But then again Syd let the air out of Nick’s tires the night she left town. That had always bugged me.

  Why had she done that?

  Wait. My mind snagged on something. The world stood still. Wait.

  Syd hadn’t let the air out of Nick’s tires that night. Not Nick’s tires.

  It was so overwhelming, I had to sit down. I looked around the dark shed and found the stack of cinder blocks was the only thing available, so I perched on them until it came to me. That night at La Posta. In the middle of Syd’s bizarre performance at the Allisons’ table, she’d stuck her hand out, first to Nick’s mom, and then to his dad. His mom looked confused. But his dad—hadn’t his dad looked absolutely horrified? Caught off guard? I remember he’d stood up halfway and stayed that way the whole time. He was bright red. She shook his hand so long, it became utterly unbearable, as she gushed about how she’d seen him lecture on computable model theory and how she’d loved it. It’d blown her mind, she’d said. She said she introduced herself to him after class. Sydney Miller, she’d said coolly. You probably don’t remember me. And Nick’s dad had stumbled on that. At first, he said he was sorry, it was a long time ago. But then a moment later he said of course he remembered her. Now that I thought about it, though, I don’t remember her telling me she introduced herself to Nick Allison’s dad after his mind-blowing lecture on computable model theory. She’d told me about the lecture, yes. I remembered very well. I’d pounced on the opportunity to ask questions about Nick’s dad. Was he tall? Was he short? Fat? Funny? Hot? She’d seemed totally uninterested, as if she couldn’t remember a thing, though it’d just happened.

  A couple months later she dropped out of Academic Decathlon. She choked in the semifinals. Everyone’s parents were there, Nick had said. Syd quit that day. She walked out and never returned. And then she started treating Nick like he had the plague. A month later she set me up with Quinn for prom. When Quinn couldn’t make it and Nick stepped in, she was mad. And when Nick didn’t show that night, she said she’d texted him, but he hadn’t returned her text. But of course, that was a lie.

  Everyone’s parents were there.

  I grabbed Syd’s phone and went to the HIM text.

  I grabbed my phone and Googled: Allison Math Department NMSU. Two taps and there he was: Dr. Samuel Allison, Ph.D., smiling smugly.

  Things were falling into place. I tried to stop them. I waited for something to stand out, to make me say to myself: Stop. See. You’re being insane, Encyclopedia Brown. But I couldn’t find a damn thing.

  That night at La Posta, I thought Syd was hell-bent on humiliating Nick when really her humiliation was aimed at someone else. Wanna get tacos at La Posta? she’d suggested out of nowhere at the party, right after she’d received that last, annoying text.

  I looked again at the photo of Dr. Allison, his sleepy eyes and windblown hair.

  Half of my mind knew it was ludicrous. I was looking at an old-ass math professor, for crying out loud. The other half knew it was true.

  Either way, I had t
o find out.

  I clicked OFFICE HOURS. Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:30–4:30. Today was Thursday. It was three thirty. If I left my house right now, I could catch him. Catch him. It was a terrible notion. There was nothing I wanted to do less than to catch Dr. Samuel Allison doing anything. I still remembered the dread I’d felt at the dinner table on Christmas, the fear he might at any moment toss me an impossible word problem to solve.

  Still, I had to do it. If it was nothing, it was nothing. I’d make something up. I was just on campus and thought I’d stop by.

  If it was something, though, it was everything. I understood this somewhere deep in my body.

  I drove crazy. My father would’ve killed me. I cruised through a light that had just turned red and thanked god there was never any traffic in Las Cruces. I drove under the highway and past the high school. The parking lot was still half full. There were students hanging out, sitting on the hoods of cars. I longed to be one of them, just a normal teen doing normal teen things. I pressed the accelerator. I passed strip malls and Laundromats and the Baskin-Robbins.

  My heart jumped when I heard my phone ding inside my purse. I dug around and grabbed it. It was Nick. He wanted to know what kind of flower I wanted in my corsage. You’re getting one, my lady friend. Even if you don’t want one. I tossed the phone down and winced in shame. Suddenly I screamed at the top of my lungs to relieve the tension. That helped a little. Then I glued my eyes back to the road and drove faster.

  * * *

  The only place by campus I knew I could park was the west end, which was devoted to the corrals and stables and barns of the agricultural school. It smelled bad and was far away, but I knew I could park there without a permit, and I wasn’t going to waste time looking for a spot on campus. I pulled off the road and parked haphazardly beside the arena where the rodeo team was out practicing in the cool afternoon sunlight. I jumped out of my car and started huffing it. As I passed the arena, someone blew a whistle and a girl on a fast horse took off, running the barrels at lightning speed. It looked dangerous. I was glad she was wearing a helmet. The horse kicked up a wall of dust as they made their way across the dirt. A bunch of cowboys were hanging over the fence, watching the girl, whooping encouragements at her and the horse. They never even noticed me go by.