Hold Still (26 page)

I MISS YOU.

Carefully, I feel my way down. I return the bag to the projection room, where my backpack waits for me. I take out the journal again. The Wite-Out bird is completely chipped off now. I set the journal on a shelf between a few books and some old film reels. I stand up, walk to the doorway, and shine my light on the black cover for the last time. From here, it looks like any other book.

5

I wake up in my jeans and sweater. When I think about last night, it seems foggy and distant.

I look in my backpack, just to be sure. The zipper pocket is empty.

My parents have a cereal bowl set out at my spot at the table when I come down for breakfast. They are sitting together, reading different sections of the paper.

“We packed you a lunch,” Dad says. Mom hands me a brown paper bag. I peer inside. Peanut butter and jelly, an apple, a granola bar.

“Aw,” I say. “Like sixth grade.”

Mom rolls her eyes. Dad rumples my hair.

I only have a couple minutes to get out the door. I eat my cereal, brush my teeth, say good-bye to my parents, and start walking, for the last time, to the theater.

At the corner across the street from the strip mall, I hear a low rumble come from the road. A long row of semitrucks are coming toward me. I watch them move slowly down the main road, one by one, like a funeral procession. A driver in a red hat waves. I lift my hand.

It’s only a little past seven, but the sun already feels hot. Far ahead of me, the trucks slow and turn right, toward the theater. I follow.

By the time I get there, a crowd already stretches around the block, and the semitrucks are unloaded. Towering over everything is a huge orange machine. It looks a like metal dinosaur. For a minute, it makes me forget about skyscrapers and mountains—I’m sure it’s bigger than anything on Earth.

I ease my way through the crowds of old people and guys with lawn chairs and moms holding little kids, until I’m right up along the caution tape. It’s so strange to have all these people here, in this place that I always thought of as a secret. I wonder how many of them ever came here before today, and what this demolition means to them.

I sit cross-legged in the street with people all around me.

Then the orange machine comes to life.

It rumbles to a start, inches massively forward. Its mechanical neck raises to the sky, reaches at least thirty feet above me, before it crashes down on the side of the theater.

It all happens so fast after that. Powerful metal jaws at the end of the neck eat through the wall in only minutes, and then the machine rolls into the theater and attacks it from the inside, sending the back wall crashing in. The ground beneath me shakes. A man sprays water from a fire hose, stopping the dust from blowing into our faces. The air smells strong and toxic, but as I reach to cover my face, I remember this thing about Ingrid that I haven’t thought of for so long.

Once, my mom was taking us somewhere and we had to fill the car up with gas, and Ingrid rolled her window down as we pulled into the station. She stuck her head out, breathed in deep.

What are you doing?
I asked.

I love the smell of gasoline,
she said, exhaling.

I made a face. All I knew about gas was what my parents grumbled about—it was too expensive, Mom hated getting it on her hands.

Ingrid leaned out the window.
Try it,
she said.
You’ll love it
.

I didn’t.
You have problems,
I told her, and she laughed and inhaled again.

I recognize the gasoline scent now, mixed with the familiar must. And as the machines chomp away at the theater, and walls collapse deafeningly, I breathe in the smell of change. It isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, or maybe it’s so bad it’s intoxicating—I’m not sure which. Behind me, a baby wails, but I can hardly hear her over the noise.

Before I’ve prepared myself, the machine approaches the front of the theater. It stops right next to the marquee, raises its neck, opens its jaws, and my heart grows too big for my chest. My vision blurs. It crashes down. The roof crumbles. I imagine Ingrid’s journal tumbling from its shelf, pages flapping in the air like wings, hitting the ground face open. Water from the fire hose drenches the paper until the colors blend together, the drawings lose their shape, the words turn indecipherable.

A hand squeezes my shoulder. I look up. It’s Jayson.

He lowers himself next to me and pulls a pack of tissues from his pocket.

I don’t think I can speak yet. I try to force myself to smile, and it’s easier than I thought it would be. It lets out some of the pressure. He smiles back. The last wall collapses and I’m still smiling, blotting tears from my face with Jayson’s tissues, watching the wood splinter under the massive machine, the theater becoming less and less what it used to be.

After it’s over and the ground has stopped shaking, a dozen men flood into the site, filling the trucks with what’s left. The crowd starts to pack up and leave.

“Were you here for the whole thing?” Jayson asks.

I nod. “Were you?”

“Most of it.”

Soon, the crowd is gone except for Jayson and me.

“I’m gonna go run now,” he says, standing.

I look at the empty block. It’s already hard to believe that a theater once stood there.

“I’m staying a while longer.”

Jayson says, “See you at your place,” and jogs off. I watch the men as they work. They shovel wood into one truck, copper pipes into another. They break up the concrete from the foundations, wheel it away. I unpack my lunch and eat while they work. It’s been hours since my breakfast, but I haven’t felt hungry until now. Slowly, the blocks get emptier, the workers drive away. It’s about four in the afternoon when a man comes by to take the caution tape down.

“Show’s over,” he says to me, smiling. “Afraid there’s no more excitement for the day.”

He bunches the tape in his hands. His eyes are friendly.

“Was it your first demolition?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say.

“So . . .” He sweeps his arm across the open blocks. “What did you think?”

I don’t really know what I think, so I open my mouth to tell him that. But what I end up saying is, “It was amazing.”

And I mean it.

“Sure was, wasn’t it? I’ve been doing this for more than twenty years, and it still gives me a thrill.”

He looks down at me and scratches his head. I know exactly what I look like to him—a crazy teenager just lingering here for no reason.

I pull my legs to my chest and squint up at him. I lift a hand to block the sun.

“I’m just remembering things,” I offer.

And that seems to clear something up. He nods and turns toward the empty space, as though he’ll see what I’m thinking about, projected in the air.

6

The night before Ingrid died, we studied for our biology finals halfheartedly on the floor of my room. We kept getting distracted, saying
I love this song
whenever something good came on the radio, turning it up and forgetting about our textbooks open to unread pages in front of us.

Ingrid said, “Fuck bio. Let’s plan our futures,” and her voice had all this urgency, this forced lightness, that I only partly noticed.

I shut my book and said, “Okay. You start.”

“
You
start.”

I turned onto my back and looked up at the ceiling. I said, “I want to go away somewhere for college.”

“Like the East Coast?”

“Like Oregon or Montana.”

“Do you want snow or ocean?”

“There’s a glacier in Montana. I heard that all the glaciers in America are melting. They’ll be gone before we’re old.”

“So snow?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I heard the Oregon coast is amazing.”

“So ocean?”

“I don’t know. I guess I can’t decide.”

“What will you major in?”

I said, “I have no idea.”

She said, “You like English, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, “but I just like to read for fun.”

She said, “Well, you like art.”

I said, “Yes. I like art.”

“So art, then.”

“Okay.”

“Maybe you’ll have a gallery show.”

“Or just go to a lot of galleries.”

“You’ll be brilliant,” Ingrid said. “Maybe you’ll be a professor or something, and all your students will have crushes on you.”

I smiled. I turned over to face her.

I said, “What about you?”

She shrugged. “You know. I’ll photograph, travel.”

“But what about college?”

I looked at her as I waited for her to answer. If there was any doubt in her face, I didn’t see it.

Finally, she said, “I’ll go wherever you go.”

I smacked the bio book in her lap. “If we even get
into
college.” When she laughed, I laughed, too, and I hardly listened to her, never thought:
This is the last time I’ll hear her laughing.

“We’ll get in,” she said. “It’s gonna be great. You’re gonna be great.”

And at some point, when she got up to leave, I must have looked away, and she must have slid her journal under my bed, and I must have thought some random thought, not knowing what was coming.

7

I sit at the demolition site for a long time. The caution-tape man leaves, and so do all the other men, carrying away pieces of the giant machine, remnants of the theater, until all that’s left is daylight and dust, and a level, empty street.

It isn’t the happy ending that Ingrid and I had dreamed up, but it’s all a part of what I’m working through. The way life changes. The way people and things disappear. Then appear, unexpectedly, and hold you close.

I stand up and unzip my backpack. I pull out the tripod and arrange my shot: a newly barren street. In the distance, the undeveloped hills of Los Cerros. Dust from what used to be shimmers as it settles to the ground. I adjust my focus until it is on a spot several feet from where I’m standing.

I set the timer, and step out in front of the camera.

I face the lens, walk backward until I reach the spot I focused on—close enough that I will fill most of the frame, far enough that my whole body will be in the photograph. The timer ticks faster and faster, getting ready to take the picture, and I stand straight, breathe deep, and exhale as the ticking stops. I hold completely still. I can almost feel it—the shutter opens, the film gains density, absorbs light, and there I am.

This is what I look like: an almost seventeen-year-old, caught standing, arms at my sides, feet flat on gravel, in the middle of an empty street. Straight auburn hair that hasn’t been cut for a year, now splitting at the ends where it grazes my back. A dozen small freckles on the bridge of my nose, left over from childhood. Sharp elbows and knees, strong arms from pounding and lifting. White bra straps showing through a white tank top, dirty jeans from spending a day in the dust. Small mouth, without lip gloss, without a smile. Brown eyes open wide and unguarded, alert in spite of a series of sleepless nights. An expression that’s hard to pin down—part longing, part sorrow, part hope.

acknowledgments

I am deeply fortunate to know too many wonderful people to mention by name on these pages. To all of you: my deepest gratitude for making my life so full of warmth and love.

To my mother, Deborah Hovey-LaCour, and my father, Jacques LaCour (who is neither a pirate nor a mathematician): my list of thank you’s could go on forever. I’ll be brief, and say this: thank you for always believing in me. To my little brother, Jules LaCour: thank you for being such an excellent person, and for making me laugh so hard and so often. To my grandparents, Joseph and Elizabeth LaCour: thank you for your unwavering love, and for teaching me the theory of relativity.

To Sherry and Hal Stroble: thank you for your love and generosity. I am so lucky, for so many reasons, to be your daughter-in-law.

To my editor, Julie Strauss-Gabel: thank you for bringing out the best in this novel, and, in the process, teaching me so much about writing. To everyone at Dutton: thank you for caring so much about this book. To my lovely agent, Sara Crowe: you make it so easy.