I'm Not Missing

by Carrie Fountain

  I had to push him out of my mind. If there was anything that would make me stop and turn around, it was Nick. I could surrender, for him.

  And I couldn’t surrender. Not now. I just had to keep driving.

  * * *

  After Santa Fe, the landscape changed. The stark, sun-blanched desert became red earth dotted with lush piñon. I rolled down my windows and let the cool air in. Only when I heard it whipping through my car did I notice I’d driven the entire time in silence. No music. Nothing.

  It felt right. Silence was right. The world was gigantic here: mesas upon mesas, stretching across the entire horizon. They went on forever. I looked down at Saint Jude, his impassive face. He was unimpressed. But not me.

  Eternity, I thought.

  I’d driven to eternity in gold heels.

  It was so perfect, it was miserable.

  19

  Alamosa was small and flat. For some reason, I had the idea I’d cross the state line into Colorado and immediately run into a Rocky Mountain. But Alamosa was in a great valley. Like Las Cruces, it was all agriculture. In the far distance the Rockies sloped, green and huge and glorious. I pulled off the highway into a Walmart parking lot. The Walmart was hopping on a Saturday afternoon. For a moment I sat watching people come and go. It felt good to be in the land of the living, even if it was just Walmart.

  I knew the only real way to find Patience’s trailer was using my phone, so I set a rule: when I turned it on, I wouldn’t check to see how many phone calls I’d missed, how many voice mails, how many texts. I’d use the map and nothing else.

  But, of course, the second my phone came back to life, I couldn’t resist checking. I saw I had seven missed calls and twenty-two texts. Ugh. That was all I could think. Ugh. I resisted looking to see who’d called and written. I assumed all the messages were from my dad and Nick. Maybe Letty, if my dad had told her what I’d done. I felt heavy again with guilt.

  The road to Patience’s trailer turned out to be less than a mile from the Walmart. I pulled back onto the road and followed the electronic lady’s directions very carefully, listening for each one with a solitary focus. My stomach was one big cramp. All I’d eaten all day was a few almonds and a bottle of water. The banana languished on the seat next to Saint Jude. In the last few hours, it’d died.

  Far too soon, I was turning off the paved road and onto a thin dirt one. A sign made of plywood stuck on a telephone pole read LEO LANE in black paint. This was it, the address from the birthday cards. I steeled myself. But then, as I started going down the road, there didn’t seem to be anything on it. Not a thing. Just crops. It was a road to nowhere. I was certain I should turn around, but the road curved and I could see in the distance a yellowish trailer with a dirt lot in front. Behind it, a field of onions. Alfalfa on all the other sides. As I approached, I saw the trailer had no yard. It was just overgrown weeds and then the onions, ready to be picked, the golden skins pushing up out of the dirt. Three dangerous-looking steps led to a warped front door. There was no railing, no porch, no mailbox, and there were no cars in the driveway.

  The trailer looked abandoned.

  “Shit,” I said to my car. I parked on the side of the road. When I turned my car off, everything went silent. I told myself the absence of a car and a few weeds didn’t mean no one lived here. I got out and walked to the trailer. My dumb, high-heeled footsteps in the dirt were the only sounds happening on Earth. I climbed the three rickety steps and knocked. The door was thin, made of aluminum. I probably could’ve pulled the whole thing off the hinges if I wanted to. My knocks were sucked back into the silence of the day. There was no answer. I checked: it was locked. The blinds were down in the windows. I had no idea what to do.

  I walked to my car and grabbed my phone and tapped it to see the time. The alfalfa across the road waved in the breeze. It seemed the alfalfa went on forever down the road, all the way to the mountains. I tossed the phone back to the seat.

  My father was right. This was a monumentally stupid plan. In fact, it wasn’t a plan at all. It was just me, driving off, leaving a scorched path in my wake. I looked at the sky and thought of Nick. I thought I was doing the right thing. I pressed my eyes shut to keep the tears from coming. The sky was huge and blue and the few balloony clouds against it looked out of place. They were stupid too. I wished I could travel back in time. Maybe I could’ve talked Nick into opening the door before everything had been ruined. I could’ve gone in, pressed my cheek to his chest bone, felt his warm skin and his smell—all salt and forest and boy. We won, I could’ve said.

  What was I doing here?

  I looked in at the clock again: 1:50. The next time I looked up, a jet had sliced the sky cleanly in two with a sharp white contrail. I watched the jet disappear into the blue, then watched the contrail widen slowly, then dissipate, then vanish, until the sky was one whole thing again. My feet hurt. I opened the door to my car and got back inside. It was two o’clock. It was decision time. I was either staying here as long as it took on the off chance Syd would show up, or I was driving home right now and begging the forgiveness of my father and Nick.

  If I left right now, I might even make it back in time for part of prom. If I left right now, there was still a very small chance everything might be okay. Saveable.

  I looked over at Ryan Gosling Saint Jude. He had no advice.

  Hey, girl, his serene eyes said. Don’t ask me.

  I didn’t need advice, anyway.

  I was staying. I needed to talk to Syd. I needed to see her, to know that she was alive, that she had existed.

  I folded my arms and waited. I didn’t think a single thought or have a single emotion. I must’ve dozed off. I woke when I suddenly heard car tires on gravel and turned to see a car coming down the road. I was sure it hadn’t been more than fifteen minutes, but when I looked at the clock, it was 3:03.

  There, I thought. It’s official. I’d stood Nick up. Again. I’d treated him like crap the morning after the worst day of his life. He’d never forgive me, and he’d have every reason not to. Inside me, something broke cleanly. Snap. Done.

  But I had to put that aside. Because holy crap. It was Syd’s car pulling into the dirt space in front of the trailer. I could see the top of her head over the seat back, her wild curls pulled back.

  Syd was alive. She was real. She existed.

  I opened my door and walked to the car and looked in. She was sitting stone-faced, staring out the windshield. She was wearing a Wendy’s uniform. She turned to look at me. She looked down at my shoes. She looked at my face. Then she swung the door open and got out of the car and stood there. She looked so tired. Her hair was barely contained in a thick ponytail. Her name tag read WELCOME TO WENDY’S. I’M SYDNEY.

  “Hi,” I said. I resisted an urge to throw my arms around her.

  She stood with her mouth shut and her arms crossed. She looked at me as if I were a door-to-door salesperson. She was being polite, waiting for me to talk for thirty seconds so she could say she wasn’t interested and then go inside. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  Though I’d been hurling myself toward this conversation at eighty-five miles per hour all day, pursuing it at the expense of all the good things in my life, now that it was actually happening, I found I had no idea what I was doing here.

  “I have your phone,” I came up with finally.

  When she didn’t say anything, I walked to my car and opened the door and grabbed her phone and the Stanford letter. She watched me walk back in my heels. Without expending a single facial expression, she made it clear she believed I was the single most ridiculous person alive.

  I held the phone and the letter out to her. She glanced at the Stanford letter and then folded it in three and shoved it into the pocket of her khakis. She slipped the phone into the other pocket. “Okay,” she said, as if everything were taken care of.

  “Okay.” I tried to find something else to say. I didn’t want to start with Stanford or Dr. Allison or the fac
t that she disappeared four months ago without a trace and how I’d like some answers as to why she’d done that. “How’s your mom?”

  She snorted in disbelief, as if I’d asked a really insensitive question. “She’s a mess.” She made a gesture toward the dilapidated trailer. “She’s not here.” Her mouth shut and she commenced looking at me with the same deep lack of interest.

  I wanted so badly to feel sympathy for Syd. I’d found sympathy for her even after I found out she’d lied to me for months about Nick. But standing here in front of her, feeling her indifference pouring onto me like smoke, I felt a gigantic anger well up inside me. I’d risked everything—Nick would never forgive me, and my father would never trust me again—and she’d be happy ending our conversation right now and never seeing me again as long as she lived.

  “I think Ray reported your car stolen,” I said. “FYI.”

  “Okay,” she answered sternly. “I’ll figure it out.”

  I waited to see if she’d say anything else, but she didn’t.

  “I’m glad you’re okay.” I swallowed.

  She snorted again. I noticed that each time she’d made the little snort, I felt like punching her. “Thanks,” she said flatly.

  “I guess I’ll go then.”

  “Okay.” She straightened. Her gaze went past me, following the alfalfa to the distant mountains.

  “Wow.” I looked at my shoes. “That’s it? Just see ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya? After everything?”

  “Everything?” I saw her face redden. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about, Miranda. Just get back in your car and drive home. To your dad.”

  A few months ago I’d have died from the look she was giving me. Died. But not now. Not today. I took a step forward. Then another. Then, unbelievably, I took another, until I was standing inches away from her. I could hear her breathing.

  “I came here to help you.” It came out sounding like a threat.

  She puffed up. “I don’t need your help.”

  “Well, good,” I said. I wanted to push her—that was what my body wanted to do. I straightened my arms at my sides to keep it from happening. “Great.”

  I turned and walked to my car, my legs shaking beneath me, my brain on fire. I flung the door open. My phone was lit up on the seat. My dad was calling. Of course. Perfect. I grabbed it and turned it to silent.

  “Wait.” Her voice was like a slap in the face.

  “What?” I yelled. “You wanna insult me some more? No, thanks.”

  “Just wait a minute.” She took a step.

  I stood there with the car door open.

  “Last year. The prom thing. I had to do that. It was the only thing I could do.”

  “No, Syd. It wasn’t. You could’ve just told me the truth.”

  “Yeah.” She looked exhausted. “But I didn’t. Because I know you. And you’d have acted like a lunatic.”

  It was that word: lunatic. It made me think of my mother.

  “No. You don’t say shit like that, Syd.” I was surprised by my calmness. “I am not a lunatic. I’m a person. And don’t act like you had to take care of me. That’s bullshit and you know it. I’m sorry about whatever went down between you and—” Hard as I tried, I found I couldn’t say his name. “Whatever. I’m sorry. About everything. But I drove here to see you. I’ve been looking for you for months. I’ve been dying worrying about you. And you can tell me to go home to my daddy. Whatever. You can go inside and close the door and we can never speak to each other again. I can live with that. Totally. But I won’t stand here and let you call me names. That time is over.” I didn’t want to stop. I felt righteous. Correct. Now I could get in my car and drive away. I was the winner. Of what? Who cared? “Oh—and by the way, Sydney, I believe the words you forgot were: I’m sorry. There they are, in case you want them.”

  Syd shook her head quickly. She scrunched her nose. She brought her fingers up to her temples. I thought for a moment she was going to have a sneezing fit.

  But she didn’t sneeze.

  She started to cry.

  I realized after it’d started happening that I’d never seen Syd cry. Not once.

  “God,” she said. Her face contorted. “This is so stupid.” The feeling of correctness drained out of me. There was no winner. There wasn’t going to be a winner. Had I driven all this way to be the winner of an argument? To make Syd cry?

  “I am sorry,” she said. “Miranda. I’m sorry.”

  “You just left,” I said after a long silence.

  “I know.”

  “And then I find out you lied. And the phone in my glove box. Very dramatic, by the way. And you never even called or wrote a single email or anything.”

  “I know.” It was so weird to see Syd cry. “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, okay. It’s okay. I know.” I would’ve preferred staying angry. That was easy. Watching Syd crying was possibly the most difficult thing I’d ever done.

  “You wanna come inside?” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. I grabbed my phone and closed the door to my car. She nodded and walked up the stairs and put her key in the lock. I followed her, careful on the stairs in my shoes.

  “Why are you wearing those fucking shoes?” she said, turning from the top step and looking down. There were still tears on her cheeks. “Oh my fucking god. Is it fucking prom? Please tell me it’s not prom.”

  “Yes. It’s prom. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about Nick.”

  “Does Nick know?” she asked. I could tell it hurt her even just asking.

  “Yes,” I said. “He knows.”

  She nodded.

  It was dark and stale inside the trailer. To the left was a tiny kitchen. Syd opened the blinds over the sink and the afternoon light poured in. There was hardly any furniture, just a beat-up sofa and a TV in the corner sitting on a chair, a bookshelf, a folding chair, and a TV tray. Syd opened the blinds in the window over the sofa and revealed the field of onions, the road far beyond it. I could see one bedroom down the dark hall. That was it.

  “Where do you sleep?” I asked. She nodded at the sofa then plopped down on it. She let down her mass of hair and shook it out. She smacked the cushion and I walked over and sat down beside her.

  “Pretty glam, huh? You should’ve seen it when I came. It was disgusting.” I noticed the kitchen was spic-and-span.

  “She’s bad?”

  She nodded.

  “I wrote her. She wrote me back. She said you weren’t here.”

  “That was me,” she said. “I wrote it with my left hand. I was sure you’d know.”

  “No way,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m sorry about that, too.”

  “I guess I couldn’t believe you’d come here.”

  “Yeah.” She didn’t offer anything more and I didn’t press her.

  We sat in silence for a while. It was cold in the trailer. There was nothing on the walls. The longer I sat there, the more questions I had. Could she go back to school and graduate? Was there any chance she could still go to Stanford? I didn’t want to ask.

  My phone rang again. “Crap,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  I answered it. “Dad,” I launched in. “I’m with Syd right now. I’ll be home—”

  He didn’t let me finish. “Okay.” He was calm. It was unnerving.

  “What?” I said.

  “Write this down. Get a pen.” He sounded exhausted.

  “Do you have a pen?” I asked Syd. She got up and went to the kitchen and came back with a pen and handed it to me. “I have a pen.” I held up the pen and Syd smiled.

  “Write down this address: 14 Camino La Mesilla, Española.”

  I wrote it on the back of my hand.

  “Okay,” I said. “Got it. I’ll be home tonight. Dad, did you hear me say that?”

  “Did you get the address?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s Benny’s. We’re staying here tonight. It’s one hou
r and fifty-eight minutes away from where you are. If you’re in Alamosa, Colorado.”

  “I’m in Alamosa.” I looked at Syd. I couldn’t imagine leaving her. The notion that in a few hours I’d be watching cartoons in a roomful of cousins was preposterous.

  “I’ll be there,” I said. “I’ll call when I’m on my way.”

  “Yes.” He was trying to keep his voice steady. “Please call.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Mir,” he said. “I was really pissed at you. I still am. But I love you. Okay?”

  “Okay.” I didn’t want Syd to hear me tell my dad I loved him. “Me too.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, bye.” I hung up.

  “You need to go.” Syd was so vulnerable. It was weird.

  “What if you came with me?” I said.

  “That’s really sweet.” She nodded, holding back tears. “But I can’t.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to stay here. Until the fall. I took the GED. I got into NMSU and UNM. I think I’ll go to UNM. They offered me a scholarship.”

  “What about Stanford?” I felt a stab of guilt for asking.

  She nodded slowly. “Well. I asked if I could defer my enrollment. Until next year. I explained everything. Well, not everything. But how I had to come here and how I’m sort of taking care of my mom. I thought they’d laugh in my face, but they were actually pretty cool. The request is still under consideration. I guess I’ll know sometime soon. But I don’t even know if I want to go there. I only applied there because—ugh.” She looked down into her lap. “It’s so stupid now, I don’t want to say it. But I only applied there because Samuel told me—he told me he was trying to get a visiting professorship there.” She seemed not to believe what she was saying, how ridiculous it was. She took a sharp breath and held it and shook her head. “I was so stupid.”