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I'm Not Missing

Page 27

by Carrie Fountain


  “Yes,” a few adult voices and Luciana said at once.

  I walked over to Nick and stared up at him, then took his hand and pushed open the screen door. “Wait.” I stopped suddenly and turned around. Nick looked confused. “Yes,” I said to him. “Here. Lulu, come here. Show Nick that rad Barbie game.” Luciana stood and walked over dutifully. “Here.” I pushed Nick back inside. “Lulu, this is Nick.” Nick bent down and put his hand out and she shook it. “Actually, everyone: this is Nick.” I looked to Luciana. “He’s a real Eagle Scout, Lu.” Luciana looked way too impressed.

  “Two seconds,” I said to Nick. I gestured to the sofa and he sat down reluctantly. Luciana climbed up and sat next to him and shoved the Barbie game into his face.

  I bolted to Luciana’s room, threw open her closet, and found my dress hanging there limply on the tiny hanger, the fabric pooled on the floor. It was still gorgeous. I slipped out of my clothes and put it on. I yanked out the ponytail holder and let my hair fall onto my shoulders. I searched Luciana’s room for a mirror but could only find the tiny one inside her dollhouse. It was so small, I couldn’t even see my whole face in it. I spotted some Hello Kitty lip balm on the dresser and dabbed some on my lips. It was sticky, like glue, and smelled like overripe strawberries. I wiped it off with the back of my hand.

  I put on my gold shoes. I stepped out of Luciana’s room.

  Everyone at the table turned and looked at me. I died. I walked through the dining room and into the living room.

  “Get the glitter bombs! They give you the power!” Luciana was standing up on her knees and shouting directly into Nick’s face. I noticed she’d put on her Daisy Scout sash. “Why do you keep missing the glitter bombs?!”

  “Oh well—they’re bombs.” He was concentrating so hard. “I thought I was supposed to avoid them.”

  “No!” she yelled. “You have to get them!”

  He glanced up and saw me. “Oh,” he said. He placed the phone gently down on the couch. Barbie jingled. Luciana looked at me, then at Nick, then back at the phone.

  “You’re going to lose!” she said urgently.

  “Here,” Nick said. He handed her the phone without taking his eyes off me.

  He stood up. He glanced over to the tableful of people staring at us. I grabbed his hand and led him out the door, down the steps, and into the dark night. The goats bleated a welcome. I turned back to see Luciana’s face at the window, pressed there like a fly squashed on a windshield, my phone glowing with pink Barbieness in her hand. A hand grabbed her shoulder and her face was removed from the glass.

  I turned back to Nick. I had no idea what to say to him.

  I looked into his face.

  Thankfully, he spoke first. “Okay,” he said. He shoved the beret into his back pocket and slipped his phone from out of his front pocket. “Three things.” He swiped it on. “Thing one.” He handed it to me. I stared at it, puzzled.

  “It’s an empty room?” I said. The small room had beige carpeting vacuumed in meticulous stripes, a twin bed without sheets, and a window with the blinds closed.

  “My empty room.”

  “You moved out?” I asked, alarmed.

  “We moved out. My mom, too.” I didn’t know if it was good news or bad news or both. “He’s accepting a job at a lab in Phoenix.”

  “Whoa,” I said. “Is that good?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I think so. I mean, it sucks, of course. But yeah.”

  I handed the phone back to him.

  “And then.” He looked at me and smiled and swiped. “Thing two.” He handed me the phone again. It was a screenshot of an email from the Boy Scouts of America, thanking him for accepting the summer internship in the Jemez Mountains. My heart fell a little. If he’d taken the internship, it meant he’d accepted the offer from UNM. We’d be living across the country from each other.

  “Awesome,” I said, and I tried to feel it. “That’s awesome. You’re going. You’re doing it.”

  “But wait.” He took his phone back and swiped again. “I had to sort of negotiate that one. Because it was part of the offer from UNM.” He handed the phone back to me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off his face. I still couldn’t believe he was standing in front of me. He nodded at the phone. “Look at it,” he said firmly.

  I looked at it. It was another screenshot of another email.

  This one began, Dear Nicholas, I’m delighted you’ve accepted your place in the next freshman class at Harvard.”

  “What?” My eyes shot up to his. He was smiling. “Nick!”

  “Yeppers.” He shrugged.

  I threw my arms around his neck. “I’m so happy—I’m so happy for you.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I just hope I can get a job with a degree from that place.”

  “This is what you want?”

  “It is,” he said. “I talked to your dad a lot about it last night. And today I talked to my mom—I was all ready to fight. But the first thing she said, and I’m quoting her here: ‘I don’t give a shit where you go to college.’”

  “What? Your mom’s awesome.”

  “Yeah. And I just sort of realized you were right. I can’t live my life that way. Being scared. All of a sudden, it just was like: yeah. This is it.”

  “I’m sorry, Nick.” I pulled back. “I’m sorry for what I said this morning. I didn’t mean it. And I’m sorry for leaving. I honestly didn’t even know I was leaving. I just—left.”

  “I’m sorry too,” he said. “I should’ve told you everything.” He looked down at my dress. “You look amazing, by the way.” He seemed suddenly nervous.

  “You look amazing too,” I said. He laughed. “So this is it? This is the uniform.”

  “I figured it was a go-big-or-go-home sort of deal, you know. Driving all the way up here. The only way this’ll work is if we’re honest with each other. And so, you know. I’m just going tell you the truth. And the truth is I have achieved the highest advancement ranking attainable within the Boy Scouts of America.” He smiled.

  “Oh my god, I’m so glad you’re here,” I said.

  “I didn’t have anything better to do. It’s prom night, but my date stood me up.”

  “That’s cold,” I said. “What a bitch.”

  “Nah, she’s cool.”

  “Oh. Good,” I said. “Here, come here.” I reached up and adjusted his neckerchief.

  “Here.” He leaned down and kissed me so sweetly.

  “Hey, you wanna see something?” I asked.

  “You know I love seeing things.”

  “Wait here for two seconds?” I took off back up the stairs.

  “This didn’t end well for me last time,” he called.

  I turned and gave him a Scout’s salute. “I promise. I’ll be right back.”

  I ran into the house. Everyone had resumed eating and talking but got silent again when the door slapped. Vanessa was clearly getting annoyed with my shenanigans. She shot her boys a look to indicate I was an example of one very particular way they should never even consider behaving.

  “Uncle B, can I drive your truck? Just over the hill and down into the valley?”

  Without hesitation, he reached into his pocket and tossed me his keys.

  I couldn’t believe it. “Oh my god, really? Thank you!” I turned to run back out.

  “Bandita.” He stopped me with his big voice.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, turning back to him, breathless.

  “Don’t mess up my truck.”

  “I won’t,” I said. “I promise.”

  “Bandita,” he said again.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Don’t mess up my truck.”

  “I swear,” I said. “I won’t even change the radio station.”

  He furrowed his brow. “Okay, ándale, then. Go get your boy.”

  “I love you!” I shouted into the room.

  I ran back out and around the side of the house where Benny’s giant silver Ford F-150 was parked under
the carport, gleaming. It was daunting. I hiked up my dress and climbed up into the cab. I pushed the seat way up and started the truck. The engine rumbled on. I felt like I was sitting behind the wheel of a semi. I backed out carefully, inch by inch, then turned around and pulled out of the driveway, stopping where Nick was standing by the side of the dirt road, looking at the goats, his hands in his pockets and a big smile on his face. When, after many trials, I finally figured out which button did what, I rolled down the passenger-side window.

  “Hey, you,” I called down to him. “Get in my truck.”

  He got in and closed the door. “This is a freakin’ truck,” he said.

  “I know a place,” I said.

  I pulled forward and turned down the rough dirt road adjacent to Benny’s. The goats in the side yard stopped what they were doing to watch us rumble past. The two who’d been out earlier must’ve found their way back into the enclosure. One goat was standing on top of the little house at the center of the pen and looked confused and unhappy about it.

  A little ways down, the road got steep and took us up onto a tall mesa. On the other side, there was nothing. Glorious nothing. Just high desert and the little road going off into the pure darkness.

  I drove slowly. “I feel like a boss,” I said. I turned on the radio and country music started blaring. “Nope,” I said, and switched it off.

  We went about a mile farther, the darkness becoming more and more profound. Then I stopped and turned off the truck.

  “Watch.” I turned off the headlights. It was pitch-black. “Look.” I pointed up, out the windshield.

  And there it was. The Milky Way. My old God. My zero. Just the same as I remember seeing it for the first time on the hood of my dad’s car, still so close that it felt like I could reach up and touch it.

  “Whoa,” Nick said, looking out the windshield.

  “Right?” I said. “My dad used to bring us out here. But come on. Ándale, pues.”

  We climbed out of the truck and walked to the back and I pulled down the tailgate. “Little help, Eagle Scout?” I said, and Nick put his hands around my waist and helped me up. Then he hopped onto the tailgate himself.

  Because my uncle Benny was a self-respecting person, he kept his truck spotless, even the bed. There wasn’t even a stray leaf in there. “Check it,” I said. I tried to maintain as much dignity as I could as I hiked up my skirt and climbed on my knees into the bed and lay back. Nick lay back beside me. I loved the feeling of his body—his being—next to mine.

  “Wow,” he said again, quietly.

  We let it be silent for a long time. I still couldn’t quite believe Nick was here. He’d driven all the way here—to eternity—for me. I reached for his hand.

  “Is Syd going to be all right?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “I think so.”

  The silence returned. It felt like the silence wanted to be part of our conversation. It was that huge, and that insistent. It was the only thing that was certain—right there, all around us.

  The silence wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I’ve had a crush on you since freshman year.” I offered this truth to Nick and the sky and the big, silent night.

  He turned to me then turned back to the stars. “The single biggest fight my mom and I ever had was after freshman year. Because she wanted me to switch from French to Spanish. She thought Spanish would be more useful. And there was no way in hell.”

  “For reals?” I smiled.

  “I hate French, Mir.”

  “And you’re so terrible at it too.” I laughed and looked at the stars. They were so bright and so close, I could feel them inside me, inside my eyes, inside my brain. For a moment I had that same weird feeling I’d be able to hear them, if only I could get quiet enough. They were ready to talk. They were going to answer all the big questions. They were going to account for all the longing and not knowing and wanting and wanting and wanting.

  But, no. It was only silence. It was only our breathing, and the rest of our lives out there, waiting for us. Unknown. Unknowable.

  “I’m going to Brown,” I said.

  “I figured that,” he said. “I mean, I hoped.”

  “I decided before you. Just so you know.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Because. You know Brown is, like, an hour away from Harvard.”

  “It’s actually one hour and twenty-one minutes by train,” he said. “Then there’s a nineteen-minute walk from the station to the Brown campus. So, me to you, it’s one hour and forty minutes all together. Give or take a few minutes, depending on which dorm you end up in.”

  I felt my heart rise up in my chest. It felt like it was floating there above me. “Nah.” The stars got all smeary through my tears. “Your math’s off, nerd.”

  “What?” He sounded actually offended.

  “Do you really think I wouldn’t meet you? At the station?”

  “Oh,” he said. “God. I hadn’t even thought of that.”

  “We walk together,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “We walk together.”

  We looked back to the stars. Somewhere deep in my memory I could hear my dad slapping the hood of his car, saying, The Milky Way is right here!

  “Oh my god.” I turned to him. “This is it.”

  “This is what?” He turned to me.

  “The do-over.”

  His smile came slowly. “The do-over,” he said.

  “We won.” I offered up my fist and he bumped it.

  “We won!” he yelled into the giant, silent night.

  “Suck it, haters!” I called out.

  The silence vanished our words.

  We stayed out there a long time, looking up.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks to those who read this book and, with their light, helped it grow: Kimberly Belflower, Carra Martinez, Steve Moore, Jenna Jaco, Sherry Kramer, Naomi Shihab Nye, Rachel Feferman, Susannah Benson, Beth Eakman, Dalia Azim, Quetta Carpenter, Graham Reynolds (whose catalog is complete), Abe Young, Travis Riddle, Clair Homan, and James Magnuson. Kirk Lynn, always and forever my favorite reader, thank you.

  I’m grateful to Reed Elliot at NASA for his insights, and to Rolfe Shmidt who explained pure mathematics to me in one pristine email. My friend David Modigliani went to Harvard and he seems to have turned out fine. I appreciate his thoughtfulness on the subject. Tennessee, Jensen, and Ophelia: my NM teen squad, thanks for answering so many weird questions. Without the support of St. Edward’s University, especially Dean Sharon Nell, I wouldn’t have written this book. Thank you.

  I’m indebted most of all to Sarah Barley at Flatiron Books, and to my agent, Emily Forland. You two have given this book so much—so much time and attention and smarts and care. I simply can’t give enough thank-yous for all you’ve given me.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Carrie Fountain’s poems have appeared in Tin House, Poetry, and The New Yorker, among other publications. She is the author of two poetry collections, Burn Lake, a National Poetry Series winner, and Instant Winner. I’m Not Missing is her debut novel. Born and raised in Mesilla, New Mexico, Fountain received her MFA as a fellow at the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. Currently writer-in-residence at St. Edward’s University, she lives in Austin with her husband, the playwright and novelist Kirk Lynn, and their two children. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part I

  Chapte
r 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part II

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  I’M NOT MISSING. Copyright © 2018 by Carrie Fountain. All rights reserved. For information, address Flatiron Books, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reproduce from the following:

  W. S. Merwin, excerpt from “Another to Echo” from The Moon Before Morning. Copyright © 2014 by W. S. Merwin. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

  www.flatironbooks.com

  Cover design and illustration by Phillip Pascuzzo

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-250-13251-2 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-250-13252-9 (ebook)

  eISBN 9781250132529

  Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact your local bookseller or the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  First Edition: July 2018

 

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