Finding Abbey Road (4 page)

“We want to try again,” I say.

Jerrod shakes his head. “There's no way. It's too dangerous.”

“I need to see him,” says Caleb, finally reeling in his gaze. He stands up and faces Jerrod. “You tell him that.”

“I can't. It was risky enough to get him the message about New York,” says Jerrod. “And it wouldn't make a difference anyway. Eli hasn't answered any of my messages since Friday. It was a
huge
risk for him to come back. He had to use his real name on that ticket. His real address. I've got my people working overtime to make sure the wrong person never notices that, because if they do, all of this will have been for nothing.”

“So what,” says Caleb, “you're telling us
nice try, but sorry
?”

“I thought you should know the whole story,” says Jerrod. “Now you do. But this is the price of knowing. If you tell anyone, you're sentencing him. I've advised him to go back underground for a while, and erase whatever tracks he's made. Maybe after some time has gone by, he'll feel like it's safe enough to contact you again.”

“This is bullshit,” says Caleb.

Jerrod sighs. “I wish things were different. I'll never be sure if we did the right thing. I hope you can forgive me, and him.” He pushes back from the railing. “You'll have to take the bus back, I'm afraid. I can't be seen with you guys in my car.”

“That's fine,” I say, “we could use the time.”

“I'm sorry I can't do more,” says Jerrod . . .

And he walks away.

Caleb's gaze drifts out over the waves. “Wow.”

“Hey,” I say, hugging him. “It's okay.”

“How can it possibly be okay?”

“Because we're going to find him. Whether he and Jerrod like it or not.”

“But how?”

I wish I knew. “We have a thirty-minute bus ride to start figuring that out.”

12:43 p.m.

“Where do we even start?” Caleb asks. We sit on the bus, crawling across the city. He leans against the window, his gaze empty, his face pale. He has dark circles under his eyes, as if each hour since I told him has been the equivalent of a sleepless night.

“I'm looking for shows we could get in London,” I say. “There are a few indie festivals in the summer. . . .”

“That's so long from now.”

“I know.” I can't even imagine waiting until then. “There's got to be some way to get there sooner. We'll figure it out.”

Caleb's fist lashes out, punching the back of the seat in front of us. An older woman glances back, scowling. “He's my fucking dad! And he's been alive my whole life. It was bad enough when everyone knew who he was while I didn't. But now. . .” He sighs. “Just once. He could have picked up
a phone
one time
, or sent an email, mysteriously appeared outside school in a hat and glasses,
anything.
”

“It sounds like he and Jerrod were trying to protect you,” I say carefully. “Or thought they were.”

“For what?” Caleb can barely restrain his voice. “So I could have money? Who gives a—”

“Hey. I
know . . .
” I press a finger to his lips. Then my forehead to his. “It's so not fair to you. None of this is. He's a bastard for being alive just like he was a bastard for being dead. Either way, you're the one who lost out.”

Caleb shakes his head. His voice cracks. “Why didn't he ever want to reach out?”

“Well, but he did, through the songs. And last week.”

“Sixteen years later,” says Caleb.

“But not never,” I say. Caleb frowns at me. “I'm not trying to defend him. I'm just saying, that's why this matters now. Why we can't listen to Jerrod. Eli made the first move. Now it's our turn, no matter what he or Jerrod might want.”

“But there's no way to find him,” says Caleb. “Even if we went to London. It's kind of a big place. Jerrod was our only link.”

We're silent for a while, heads leaning on one another.

I check my email and a new message makes me freeze up. “Look,” I say, holding my phone so Caleb can see.

From: Andre Carleton ([email protected])

————————————————

Interview

February 23, at 12:17pm

————————————————

Dear Catherine,

I just wanted to say that it was a pleasure meeting you this weekend. The more I think about your journey, and your verve, the more impressed I become. I wanted you to know that I appreciate the effort you made, and I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but I have passed along an extremely favorable report to the admissions office.

Best of luck,

Andre

“You are totally getting in,” Caleb says, and he manages to sound supportive, even though I know he wishes I wouldn't go. That instead I'd take next year off with him, get a job and save money and work on the band. Although who knows if that plan will make sense anymore after all this?

“I am possibly getting in,” I say, and I feel like I might explode. It's like something has split open inside me, the uranium fuel cells melting down. Everything feels
enormous and yet completely small.

I think of Dangerheart, all in the van somewhere in Utah, seeing the world and listening to music and feeling like the future was forever from now.

That was only a week ago.

I think of getting into Stanford and four years of college and graduation and jobs and apartments. It all feels like it is coming tomorrow. Like it's already done.

A few quick scenes and life is over.

So much is about to be decided.

Or maybe it's already
been
decided.

But I also remember being at UCLA back in December, visiting our family friend Stacia. The way the campus bubbled with ideas and enthusiasm in the twilight, students headed to wherever their passions might take them, and the sense that something profoundly freeing awaited me there, too: the chance to no longer be Summer or Catherine. The chance to balance both. And the chance to no longer be a “type” like we are in high school.

To be something in progress.

Who knows what I could become?

How can I feel that sense of possibility, but then also this sense of doom about the future already being decided, all at the same time?

It's making my insides boil and my outsides freeze. I just want life to be
now
. Not the future or the past. I want the moment I'm in to be everything for once.

I also remember the other thing I thought in the UCLA café. Maybe all of this is intense right now because this is the last six months I have here in Mount Hope, in high school, and at home.

Change is coming.

Maybe that change will be awesome.

But I can't even look at Caleb while I think that, and I don't even know how to deal with how sad that makes me.

He rubs his hand over the back of mine. “It's okay,” he says quietly, sensing that now I'm the one with the overloaded brain. “We have time before you go. We don't need to think about that yet.”

It's big of him to say. I wish I could believe him. Here I am
not
in the moment even though that's what I want.

Ugh.

“I know,” I say. And I smile but it feels fake so I just lean my head into his shoulders and when the tears come I keep them as quiet as possible.

Caleb rubs my hair. He hears them anyway.

1:23 p.m.

We jostle over a brutal bump, and I snap awake. We're in a snarl of construction traffic. Both of us had dozed off, the heat and snail's pace of the bus lulling us into submission.

I start searching again for shows overseas. If not in London, how about France? There's a tunnel train; it's only
a two-hour trip. Whatever we do, it has to be soon. Summer will be too late. Maybe there's something in the spring. April vacation is only six weeks away. . . .

Of course these searches assume we even have a band. We either need a new guitarist and bassist or we have to find Val and get Jon back. And can Matt even tour again after ending up in the ER last weekend? Did his parents find out about that? I mean, they must have, right? I planned on asking him today, before we ended up crossing the city.

“Anything?” Caleb asks.

“Not yet,” I say. A festival in Madrid? That's not exactly England. . . .

Caleb's phone buzzes. “I might have something.” He holds out his phone. “Check this out.”

I take it and see a page of pictures. It's a Photobug account, and each photo is a thumbnail for an album. The page is titled
M. C. Fowler's Photos.

“This is . . . Melanie's account? How did you get into this?”

Caleb makes a face somewhere between a smile and a grimace. “Val.”

“You're in touch with her?”

“I have been since Saturday morning,” says Caleb. “You were already on the flight back . . . and she swore me to secrecy. She said her mom's got the police looking for her.”

“Is she at your house?”

“No, but she's in town. She took the bus all the way back to LA. Just got in this morning. Borrowed money from her friend Neeta, I guess. She's going to stay with a friend of one of her old band mates, in Manhattan Beach. She didn't even come back to our place for her car. I swear I was going to tell you soon. . . .”

“It's okay,” I say. “I get it.” I say this a little bit because I have to say it . . . but also I do understand. The fewer people know where Val is, the safer she is. And I know the jealous feeling I always have when it comes to Val is something I need to get over. I know she trusts me, too. But not as much as her brother.

“I texted her while we were in Ari's car,” Caleb says. “About Eli being alive. When I told her about London, she sent the link to this account, and the password info. She said Melanie doesn't really use it anymore, and that a lot of the photos are from back when Val was a baby, and from before that. Back to when Eli was around. She thought there might be something here. She would have searched herself but she's trying to stay off her phone as much as possible. She's worried the police might be tracing it or something.”

I scroll down, traveling back in time through Melanie's life. There's not much from these last ten years, but before that, the photos increase, including lots of shots of Val as a kid.

“Check this out,” I say, tapping one album and enlarging a photo. It's Val at age four, naked except for a cowboy hat.

“She'd kill us if she knew we saw that,” said Caleb.

“Yup,” I say, clicking on it and saving it to my phone.

“Don't,” says Caleb.

“Just this one,” I say. “Sometime when this is all over, we'll show her and it will be hilarious.”

I keep scrolling, past albums labeled
Christmas 1999, Rehoboth Beach . . .
And here's one . . .

“What's
Fowler Photography
?” I ask, clicking on it. The folder is dated 1999.

At the top are a few photos of the beach, of fog over the sand. The photos are arranged chronologically. I scroll down through a series of shots of the same street sign in different exposures.

Below that are black-and-white photos of Allegiance to North, very professional-looking. These are just like the photos that Melanie sent back at Christmas. There are live shots, the band members caught jumping around onstage, dripping sweat. And then a series of backstage candids. Their arms around guys and girls I don't know. Some are dressed like they're part of the industry, some look like fans. I check the dates on the photos:
June 1998
. One of the shows on the last tour . . .

“Melanie was good,” says Caleb, looking over my shoulder.

I point to one near the end of the black-and-white set, showing Melanie between Eli and Kellen, an arm around each. “That's awkward.”

“Yuck,” says Caleb.

The next photos are Polaroids, scanned in. They are similar to the shots Melanie sent us. Washed-out images of her and Eli, of a rickety boardwalk and Eli with a soft-serve ice cream . . . maybe Coney Island?

Then I see a picture that stops my breath. “Here.” It's Eli, standing outside a row of three-story brownstone apartments. He's wearing gold-framed sunglasses, a denim jacket, and torn black jeans. His arms are crossed over his chest, but he's holding up one hand, dangling a set of keys.

It's the same building we saw in the little painting in Eli's guitar case, and in the photo that we saw on the wall at Melanie Fowler's house. . . .This one is dated July 1998.

This is the place.

“There,” says Caleb, pointing to the photo beside it. It's Eli in front of the same brownstone, but this time, in the corner of the frame we can see a street sign on the building wall. Only half visible, and blurry, but I can make out the letters “-ITH STREET.” When I zoom in on the building behind Eli, I can read the number on the door: 55.

“On the ‘Encore' tape, Eli called it the
summer Soho sessions,
” I say. I hand Caleb his phone back and then open the map on my phone. Zoom out until I can scroll across the country, across the Atlantic. All the way to London. Soho neighborhood. I zoom in and slowly slide the map, scanning the street names.

“There,” I say, holding up the phone. “Frith Street.”

“Wow,” says Caleb. He types a search for it into his
phone, then just stares at the little map. “I can't believe that's the spot. Like, where he is . . . wait.” He zooms in. There's a little house-shaped icon floating over the address. He clicks on it. “Uh-oh.”

The link takes him to a real estate page.

HOT NEW LISTING

55 Frith Street #3

AVAILABLE FOR RENT 3/1.

My heart starts to race. “That could just be a coincidence,” I say.

“Jerrod told him to hide again,” says Caleb. “He's going to run.”