Ex-mas (10 page)

100

Cooper and Tyler stood there, shoulder to shoulder, sporting identical smug grins. The two boys waved excitedly as the train picked up speed. It hurtled forward, taking Beau and Lila with it, away from the platform.

And farther and farther away from their brothers.

101

***

OAKLAND AMTRAK STATION

OAKLAND, CA

DECEMBER 23

1:43 A.M.

***

In the middle of the night.

Without either of their brothers, or Beau's car.

Lila had spent the train ride cal ing and texting Erik from Beau's phone with zero success. She final y gave up and let Beau try to reach their brothers.

So much for the big go-to-Stanford-and-abandon-Beau plan. Or for the
screw your final and go catch my brother at the San Jose train station and keep
him in a headlock
addition.

Beau looked up from his phone, catching Lila's gaze. "We're screwed. They stil aren't picking up."

"I see you've mastered the power of positive thinking," Lila

102

muttered, even though she actual y agreed with him. She pul ed the elastic out of her hair and attempted to tame her locks into a neater ponytail. They were now an hour from Beau's car--and their horrible little brothers. Assuming, of course, that Cooper and Tyler had stayed put. For al Lila knew, they could be on their way to Timbuktu at this point. By raft.

"And Erik's a dead end?" Beau asked.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded, a defensive spark skittering up her spine.

Beau blinked. "I mean, he didn't answer his phone when you cal ed, right?"

Fluorescent lights buzzed softly overhead. Someone had scratched the initials
KZ + JM
into one of the station's glass wal s. Lila tugged on her new ponytail and scowled at him. "Like I told you on the train, he has a major take-home final due tomorrow. So yeah, it'd be awesome if he could come pick us up, but the truth is, I'd be shocked if he answered his phone. He's probably holed up in the library, working his ass off. He's real y determined to get great grades this semester, which takes a whole lot of dedication and work--I mean, he was obviously going to come to my party until he found out about this exam...."

A man in the corner with a gray mustache rustled his copy of the
Oakland Tribune.
Beau was staring at her, his eyes bluer than ever in the canary yel ow lighting. The expression in them wasn't mocking or superior--just weary.

103

Which for some reason made her feel even more defensive.

"Even if he has his phone with him at the library," Lila continued, knowing she was rambling but unable to stop the word vomit, "And even if it's turned on at this point, why would he answer? He probably doesn't answer unfamiliar numbers, and obviously he doesn't know yours. Why would he? It's not like you and he have ever even spoken a sentence to each other, much less been, like, phone buddies!"

Beau held up a finger to silence her. "I have an idea," he said in his careful tone, the one Lila had always hated. He handed her his phone. "You stay here and keep trying. I'm going to go over there"--he pointed across the station toward the information booth--"and see about getting a train back to San Jose, so we can at least have a car while we figure out our next move. Okay?"

"Fine, but I'm tel ing you, he won't pick up," Lila said. Mustache Man folded up the paper and dropped it in a trash can, frowning at a straggler who was passed out on a long wood bench. "He probably thinks somebody from my party is drunk-dialing him."

She envisioned Erik, hunched over a table in the library, surrounded by towers of dusty books. In her fantasy, he was even wearing glasses, looking

incredibly scholarly and cute. He would glance at the number that kept flashing on his cel phone

104

screen, but of course he was
far
too busy to engage in a conversation in the middle of an exam.

Lila ignored the niggling voice in the back of her mind tel ing that he wasn't responding to her texts, either. But maybe he'd just finished his take-home final a little early and crashed. Why stay up when he was finished? And why leave the ringer on when he was desperate for a good night's sleep?

She opened her mouth to point that out, but Beau just shrugged and started for the booth. Lila glared at his retreating back and wrapped her scarf in a tighter knot around her neck, punching in Erik's number once again.

The phone rang and rang, until Erik's voice came on the line:
Hey, this is Erik. Leave me a message and I'll hit you back.
Lila hung up, feeling like hitting something herself. Surely a truly perfect boyfriend would be able to sense, somehow, that she was stranded a zil ion miles from home, right? That she was having a sibling emergency of the worst kind. Even if he was at the library, or asleep?

But Erik's perfect-boyfriend sensor was clearly on the fritz, because he failed to pick up the next three times she tried, one right after the other--like the clingy, needy, high school girlfriend she had always prided herself on never being.

"I told you," she said matter-of-factly when Beau walked back to her side and looked at her expectantly. "He's taking an exam."

105

Beau rocked back a little in his Converse sneakers and shrugged. "There are no more trains back to San Jose tonight."

"Crap." Lila rubbed at her temples. "Okay, what do we do?"

"The way I see it, we have two options," Beau said. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans and shook his shaggy hair out of his face. "Number one, we sleep here, on the floor."

"Pass," Lila said immediately, wrinkling her nose at the sticky linoleum tiles. They were covered with suspicious-looking brown splotches.

"I figured as much." He studied her face for a moment. "Option number two is we cab it to Stanford and find Erik. Borrowing his car wil be faster than waiting until tomorrow morning for the next train?"

"Done." Lila said at once. She frowned at him. "Wait. Why did you present that like it was a bad option?"

Beau heaved a sigh and nodded toward the station's doors. "Do you want to find a cab or stand here talking about how great your missing boyfriend is?"

Fuming, Lila brushed past him and headed for the doors. Suddenly, she was desperate to see Erik, to remind herself what a great guy looked like.

The cab reached Palm Drive, the palm tree-lined stretch that served as the entrance to Stanford, at exactly 2:12 a.m.

106

Even though she was exhausted, Lila marveled at the lush oval great lawn and the graceful stone buildings that stood sentinel over it.

She climbed out of the cab, leaving Beau to pay the driver, and took a moment to drink in her dream campus. Since she was a little kid, the word

college
had evoked images of Stanford--the red-roofed buildings, the colorful facade of Memorial Church, the rol ing foothil s that loomed in the distance.

Tonight, students in smal groups wandered across the wide lawns and walkways, heading to and from parties. Their laughter and shouts cut through the

darkness, making Lila's whole body tingle in anticipation. Suddenly, she knew that everything was going to be okay.

"So...where do we look first?" Beau asked, coming up behind her. The cab picked up a pair of drunk boys dressed in eighties gear and sped off. "Any idea where he'd be?"

His tone sounded the opposite of thril ed, like of al the mishaps they'd endured tonight, this was a particularly excruciating chore. For him, it probably was. She thought of what he'd said back in ninth grade, after he'd found out Lila was dating Erik.
I'm sure you two will have a lot to talk about,
he'd sneered.
Like Erik, Erik, and, oh yeah, more Erik.

"Of course I know where he'l be," she said loftily, and quickly led Beau down the path to the Green Library. The building soared above the quad, red-roofed and graceful, practical y daring you to come inside and learn.

107

Lila opened the door to the side entrance Erik had showed her when she'd visited in October, then wove her way through the labyrinth of bookshelves

and study carrels. It didn't take long to find Erik's favorite study spot, hidden away in a corner of a special col ections room.

It was empty.

"That's weird," Lila said, frowning at the wood desk.

"Maybe he's sitting somewhere else," Beau suggested. "This place is huge." He turned on his heel and started down a different aisle.

Lila trailed after Beau, supposedly searching for Erik, but her heart wasn't in it. He had told Lila a mil ion times that he did al his work in that nook, and Erik was a guy who liked his habits. Meaning...if he wasn't in his usual spot, he wasn't studying.

"Maybe he's back in his dorm room," Lila said, as much to herself as to Beau, when they walked back out of the library.

"Yeah, you're probably right." Beau nodded al too agreeably.

Lila hitched her purse higher on her shoulder, not trusting the casualness of Beau's words.

They walked in silence across the library's lawn over to the main quad, where Erik's al -freshman residence hal was located.

A boy in a Santa hat and boxers let them into the building.

108

Lila had to stop herself from running up the poured concrete steps to Erik's room on the fourth floor.

When they reached 4C, Lila elbowed Beau out of the way. "Let me do the talking." She pounded on his door for a ful minute, but there was no answer.

Beau cocked an eyebrow. "Try the door," he suggested.

"And total y violate his privacy?" Lila huffed, hands on hips. Cool girlfriends did
not
storm their boyfriends' rooms in the middle of the night. Wel , unless a make-out session was involved.

Beau just tapped his watch, then turned the metal door handle.

The door swung open noiselessly. Beau lounged in the doorway while Lila walked inside and stood for a moment, breathing in the emptiness. There

was a light on next to Erik's bed, his laptop closed up tight on his desk. The window was open, and there was a duffel bag on the floor, but no clue as to Erik's whereabouts. She could feel Beau's eyes watching her.

He wasn't in the library. He wasn't in his room.

Lila was forced to confront the possibility that she didn't know Erik's every last move the way she thought she did. And she could tel by the way Beau was flaring his nostrils that he'd reached the same conclusion. A rush of irrational anger coursed through her veins--at Erik for vanishing into thin air but, even more, at Beau for witnessing it.

109

"What are we going to do?" she asked, sinking down on the bed as calmly as possible. Her throat felt tight, and her left leg was shaking the way it always did when she was on the verge of hysteria. "I have no idea where he is."

The strains of a Kanye song floated through Erik's window, fol owed by a loud crash and a high-pitched giggle.

"Sounds like someone is having a serious party," Beau said, ignoring her question and--thankful y--her glassy eyes. He crossed the room and stuck his head out the window. "I think it's just one floor down."

"Wel , I'm glad someone's having fun," she muttered as the new JT hit started blaring. She thought briefly of al her friends at Yoon's party, taking pictures, playing Beirut, and probably laughing about how poor Lila got grounded because of her loser brother.

"Come on," Beau said, standing up and jerking his chin toward the door. He was grinning.

"Huh?" She blinked up at him.

"Weren't you supposed to be at a party tonight?" he asked. "So what if this one is three hundred and fifty miles away from the one you planned?"

Lila shook her head but got up. She and Beau fol owed the noise downstairs until they found themselves on the edge of a

110

huge party spil ing out from a set of rooms along the third floor hal way. Everywhere Lila looked, happy Stanford students drank from red plastic cups, laughed with their friends, or danced on. blond wood desks.

Natural y, Beau dove right into the chaos.

Lila reached out and grabbed the back of his hoodie, which didn't exactly stop him in his tracks. Instead, she somehow found herself moving through

the throngs to keep up with him.

"What are you doing?" she demanded.

"This is a party, Lila." He glanced back at her, smirking a bit. "Surely
you
of al people know how to party."

"Very funny," she said, having to lean closer and raise her voice over the music. "We are not here to party. We are here to find Erik, get his car, and stop our moronic brothers before they actual y make it to the North Pole!"

"Yes," Beau said, turning to face her. Her hand dropped away from his sweatshirt. The smirk left his lips, his eyes suddenly serious as they met hers.

"But we don't even know what train they're on at this point"

"Beau, we don't--" Lila began.

"Lila." The way he said her name made her go quiet. Or maybe it was how the light bouncing off the haphazardly strung-up disco bal made his eyes seem oddly hypnotic.

"Cooper and Tyler--"

--are probably being fussed over by some sweet Amtrak

111

worker right now," Beau said. "They have a phone. They'l cal if they need us. And how far can they get tonight?"

"I don't know," she said. A lump lodged itself in the back of her throat. She swal owed hard. A group of kids in the hal were chanting, "Chug, chug, chug!"

"Breathe," he instructed. "We've had a very long, very stressful day. We've been hitting our heads against wal s al night. Let's relax for a few minutes--

regroup. Maybe taking a second for ourselves wil help."

She let his words sink in, and just like that, the lump evaporated. Maybe Beau was right. How much more defeat could she handle tonight anyway?

Why
not
enjoy an il icit Stanford party?